WASHINGTON — Two Republican senators who threatened to block acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche’s bid to lead the Justice Department said Monday that they will vote to advance his nomination, ending an impasse over plans to create a fund to compensate allies of President Trump.
The statement from Republican Sens. John Cornyn and Thom Tillis came after Blanche issued an order late Sunday formally rescinding the $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” to compensate people who believe they were unfairly prosecuted by the Justice Department.
Cornyn and Tillis, whose votes Blanche needs to advance through the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, had said they would not endorse his nomination without written confirmation that the fund is dead.
“We want to express our gratitude to Mr. Blanche and his staff for working with us on this, and we look forward to voting to advance his nomination out of the Senate Judiciary Committee soon,” Cornyn and Tillis, who are not returning to the Senate next year, said in a statement.
DOJ order says ‘beyond any doubt’ that fund is dead
In a statement accompanying the order, the Justice Department said that “although the Acting Attorney General has repeatedly advised Congress through testimony, including under oath, as well as in written responses, that the Fund is not moving forward, and the Department has repeatedly represented to district courts that the Fund is not moving forward, today’s Order officially rescinds the May 18, 2026 Order.”
Since the settlement of the president’s lawsuit against the IRS was announced, “No Members were appointed; no funds were transferred; no process for receiving claims was established; no claims were paid,” the order says. “This order establishes, beyond any doubt, that there is no Fund.”
The document released by Blanche on Sunday night also limits the scope of another provision of the settlement that provided broad immunity for Trump and members of his family from tax audits.
The deal clarifies that the tax audit immunity agreement “applies by its terms only retroactively” to claims open at the time of the settlement and does not protect the president from examination of future tax filings.
Cornyn, who lost reelection this year after Trump endorsed his primary opponent, and Tillis, who is retiring when his term ends in January, have blocked Blanche’s nomination as many of their GOP colleagues have criticized the fund.
The Judiciary Committee postponed a vote on Blanche’s nomination that had been scheduled for Thursday morning after Tillis and Cornyn said they needed more from the administration before they could provide the necessary votes.
The two senators have repeatedly said the Justice Department seemed interested in reaching an agreement, but the White House wouldn’t budge even to aid the confirmation of Trump’s loyal former personal attorney, who has aggressively pursued the administration’s priorities as acting attorney general.
“I think as far as Blanche and the Department of Justice, we were pretty much on the same page,” Cornyn said Thursday. “But then when the president got wind of it, he wasn’t willing to go along with it.”
Trump continues to express support for his settlement
The two sides have been negotiating for weeks, but Trump has said repeatedly during the talks that he thinks the fund should go forward and threatened to move forward with it if Blanche was not confirmed.
After the Thursday vote was delayed, Trump said in a social media post that he might pull Blanche’s nomination and resubmit it after Cornyn and Tillis leave office next year.
On Sunday evening, Trump said that people who had faced charges from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and could have benefitted from the fund had “their lives destroyed.”
“This would be a reimbursement for the pain that they suffered,” Trump said. “A lot of people like it.”
Jalonick and Richer write for the Associated Press.
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Saturday sharply criticized U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro’s assessment that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was the result of shoddy construction and not the work of vandals, as he claims.
Pirro’s office, in a court filing Friday, moved to drop criminal charges against a former Olympian, David Hearn, who had been accused of deliberately damaging the pool after it went through a renovation ahead of the nation’s 250th birthday celebration last month.
Trump, in a posting on social media, acknowledged that there “may have been some contractor difficulty” in the installation of a new pool liner. But he continues to insist, without evidence, that “the major damage was caused by VANDALS!”
“I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool,” Trump added in his post.
The dismissal was a striking reversal for a Justice Department that had previously echoed Trump’s claims and billed the prosecution as pursuing accountability for damage at a Washington landmark, a pet project of Trump. Despite Pirro’s conclusion that there was no evidence of vandalism resulting in widespread damage, the president continued to allege Saturday that most of the damage to the pool was caused by vandals.
Government lawyers in their 20-page court filing Friday said that additional documents provided by the Interior Department since the indictment of Hearn show that the damage was the result of a botched installation by a contractor as well as “the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration in the weeks surrounding Independence Day 2026.”
In addition, a recent visual inspection revealed damage throughout the pool, including in the middle — where prosecutors say a vandal would not likely have attempted to peel the lining.
Hearn, a former Olympic canoeist, was accused of pulling up a two-foot-square piece of the pool’s lining.
“Given all of this newly discovered information, it is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism, let alone to establish that fact beyond a reasonable doubt,” Pirro, a Trump appointee and former Fox News host, said in her filing asking a judge to formally dismiss the case.
In the filing, Pirro also blamed the Interior Department for providing “less than fulsome information at the outset of the case.”
The filing added that had “DOI been forthcoming with the information clearly in its possession, the government would not have sought a grand jury indictment.” It was a jarring turn in position from Pirro, who claimed the government’s case was built on “tremendous evidence” when she announced the indictment against Hearn last month.
Hearn’s legal team on Saturday criticized both Trump and Pirro and said it was weighing “legal remedies” on behalf of their client.
“Trump is mad at Pirro because she finally admitted what we made clear in our legal filings all along: Trump’s botched renovation was responsible for the damage — not Davey Hearn,” the legal team said in a statement. “However, her claim that she and her office were previously duped by Interior is nonsense. Starting immediately after the arraignment, our motions repeatedly proved that the administration was to blame for the Reflecting Pool failures, not Davey.”
Trump on Saturday also posted a nearly four-minute video that appears to have been taken from a security camera, in which three individuals can be seen with their hands in the pool, including one for an extended period.
The president claimed the video shows “material is being cut with a knife or a box cutter, for all to see!”
It’s not clear from the video, which appears to be shot from some distance, that any vandalism occurred. Workers can also be seen standing nearby and don’t appear to notice the people sticking their hands into the water.
In May, Trump announced plans to beautify the Reflecting Pool this spring. Virginia-based Atlantic Industrial Coatings was awarded a $14.7-million, no-bid contract to repaint and waterproof the pool’s concrete floor.
Atlantic Industrial Coatings did not respond to requests for comment.
Water was drained and Trump directed that the bottom be painted with what he called “American flag blue.”
But problems emerged within days of the project’s completion, with chunks of the new liner peeling off.
The work on the Reflecting Pool is just one of a number of projects Trump has spearheaded across the nation’s capital. Most prominently, he demolished the White House’s East Wing to build a $400-million ballroom and plans to build a towering arch between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.
Heading into the final weekend of this summer’s World Cup, The Guardian reported that support for FIFA president Gianni Infantino had climbed to record levels. More than 200 of FIFA’s 211 member associations formally endorsed Infantino’s bid for a fourth term as head of world soccer’s governing body, the paper reported, making next March’s vote more of a coronation than an election.
Two weeks later, that support disappeared. Not only is Infantino’s reelection campaign in tatters, but there’s a chance he won’t survive until the spring, with British Prime Minister Andy Burnham and Javier Tebas, president of Spain’s soccer association, calling for his resignation and close confidants such as Carlos Cordeiro, the former president of U.S. Soccer, and Kevin Lamour, FIFA’s chief operating officer, publicly breaking with their boss.
At the center of that reversal was a closely guarded scheme to raise $4.2 billion by selling a 20% stake in the World Cup to private investors, who would be given influence in planning and executing future events, including broadcasting and commercial deals tied to the tournament.
In short, Infantino was planning, in secret, to sell shares in the World Cup. And once details began leaking in the media, he was forced Friday to scrap the whole thing, an embarrassing retreat that has left him vulnerable just two weeks after he had seemingly reached the heights of his third term as FIFA president.
Infantino’s idea, called the FIFA Forward Enterprise, was intended to turn the World Cup, FIFA’s milk cow, into a golden calf. But to do so, he needed the approval of at least 106 of FIFA’s 211 member countries, so he promised countries that backed him that they would receive $20 million each by mid-September. Those who declined would get just a fraction of that.
Infantino was certain the piles of cash would buy the acquiescence — or at least the silence — of enough members for the plan to go through. Instead, the bribe blew up in his face and FIFA issued a statement late Friday, under Infantino’s name, that basically said “never mind.”
“Having listened carefully to all the views, it has become clear that the project has created divisions of a nature that, regardless of the level of support, are no longer in the interest of the objective set out in the first place,” the statement read.
The question now becomes whether Infantino’s presidency will proceed.
He wouldn’t be the first FIFA president to be grievously wounded by unbridled ambition, but the speed and depth of his fall is staggering. The 2026 World Cup was, by nearly every measure, wildly successful. The largest and most complex sporting event in history the tournament, hosted by the U.S., Mexico and Canada, exceeded expectations, drawing more than 6.8 million live fans and a global TV audience of more than six billion. The four-year World Cup cycle brought FIFA revenues of about $15 billion, making it the first sporting event in history to earn more than $10 billion.
Infantino has never been shy about pushing boundaries despite heading a Swiss-based organization that, its wealth notwithstanding, is officially a nonprofit. Nor was this the first time he tried to bring private equity into the World Cup: In 2018, two years into his first term as FIFA president, he considered a plan to raise $25 billion to fund tournaments, only to cave in the face of massive opposition.
He didn’t give up the idea of squeezing more money out of the World Cup, though.
This summer, he introduced three-minute hydration breaks in the middle of each half — ostentatiously a nod to the heat and humidity, but in reality a ruse that allowed broadcasters to generate millions in additional revenue through TV commercials. FIFA also staged a halftime show for the first time ever during the final, sold VIP tickets priced at more than $1 million each and introduced dynamic pricing for the tournament’s 104 games, driving prices for some seats to four times what fans paid four years ago in Qatar.
That pushed the tournament beyond the reach of many of the sport’s most loyal supporters — and soccer, more than any other sport, belongs to the fans. It’s why teams are called clubs and fans are called supporters.
The World Cup, then, wasn’t Infantino’s to sell. So the pushback to his latest idea was immediate and unsparing.
“Football does not belong to investors,” Burnham said in an Instagram post. “Once you have sold a piece, you have sold out. Football belongs to the fans. It always has, and it always will.”
What really angered stakeholders, however, was Infantino’s brazen move to develop the FFE in secret, only to have its details leak out.
Bernd Neuendorf, president of the German soccer association and a member of the FIFA Council, the group’s most influential body, said he first learned of the FFE by reading about it.
“I was very surprised, and also annoyed, that we had to find out about something like this from the press,” he told a German news outlet last week.
Another self-inflicted wound was Infantino’s decision to launch the project with Thrive Eternal, a venture capital firm founded by Joshua Kushner, the 41-year-old brother of Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and a kind of all-purpose White House advisor and negotiator. Thrive Eternal focuses on long-term investments in scarce cultural institutions that technology cannot replace, but it has little relevant experience in managing something as large and complicated as a World Cup.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino, left, and President Trump wave during an award ceremony following Spain’s win over Argentina in the World Cup final July 19.
(David Ramos / Getty Images)
Moreover, the partnership would draw Infantino further into the orbit of Trump, whom the FIFA president has openly courted for years. Infantino, who has been a frequent visitor to the Oval Office and Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, attended the president’s inauguration and accompanied him on visits around the world.
Trump’s relationship to Infantino was questioned when Infantino presented him with the first FIFA Peace Prize last December, then became even more controversial when Trump phoned Infantino three times to lobby to have the red-card suspension of U.S. forward Folarin Balogun overturned ahead of a World Cup elimination game last month.
FIFA eventually cleared Balogun to play, marking just the second time in tournament history a red card ban has been lifted. For some, Infantino’s decision to partner with someone close to Trump on his latest venture was a bridge too far.
“It’s a really bad look for Infantino given the concerns about political interference that were already there after Balogun,” said Steven A. Bank, a professor of business law at UCLA who has written and lectured extensively on the economics of soccer. “Especially with the fund led by Jared Kushner’s brother.”
Once details of Infantino’s secret plan began to leak, UEFA, the confederation that governs European soccer, held an emergency meeting during which all 55 members — including Spain, the reigning men’s and women’s World Cup champion — voted to boycott all FIFA competitions.
“Some things are simply too important to sell. The FIFA World Cup belongs to football. It always will,” UEFA, the largest and most powerful of FIFA’s six continental confederations, said in a statement.
CONCACAF, which oversees soccer in North America, Central America and the Caribbean, said its 41 countries also rejected the plan, an opinion the U.S. Soccer Federation backed in a sparse post on X.
“U.S. Soccer stands with CONCACAF and its members,” it wrote.
The Asian Football Confederation joined in, saying in a statement its 47 members stand “in solidarity with UEFA and CONCACAF in expressing serious concerns over FIFA’s proposal to introduce private investment into FIFA’s flagship competitions.”
When it became obvious Infantino would not get the votes he needed to go forward, he pulled the plug on his plan. But it may not have been so much that the idea was bad as it was the execution.
Soccer is awash with private investors. The biggest clubs are owned by billionaires or sovereign wealth funds and many leagues — including Spain’s La Liga, which Tebas oversees — have sold commercial stakes to private equity firms in much the same way FIFA proposed.
Alan Rothenberg, a former U.S. Soccer president and the driving force behind the 1994 men’s World Cup and 1999 women’s World Cup, among the most successful tournaments in history, said the idea of selling a private equity stake in the World Cup isn’t a bad idea. But the way Infantino tried to implement his plan led it to failure.
“What is proposed is not that revolutionary,” Rothenberg said. “There have been private equity investors in MLS, in one of the subsidiaries of the NFL, in F1.
“But I think the combination of everything has doomed it. It does raise the possibility that Infantino, he’s finally become Icarus and gotten too close to the sun. It actually may doom him politically.”
Others including Cordeiro, a former vice chairman at Goldman Sachs, questioned the need to bring in outside investors.
“FIFA already has access to extraordinary financial resources. The organization sits on billions of dollars in reserves and no debt,” Cordeiro pointed out in his resignation letter. “If member associations believe additional investment is needed to develop the game, FIFA already has the financial capacity to provide that support from its existing resources.”
Infantino has flaunted consensus before without significant consequence, cozying up to autocrats while overseeing the 2018 World Cup in Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the 2022 tournament in Qatar before being accused of awarding the 2034 tournament to Saudi Arabia in a rigged vote.
This time, however, the stakeholders within FIFA were pushed too far by Infantino’s penchant for wielding unilateral power, so they pushed back and the president blinked. Hours before he backed down, an ally of Infantino’s told the Financial Times that he would not bend, seeing the standoff as “a fight to the death.”
Infantino’s presidency might not be dead, but it is surely in critical condition.
SACRAMENTO — California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his wife, documentary filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom, have earned at least $11 million since he took office, with most of their income coming from wineries, restaurants and other investments, according to tax returns from 2019 through their most recent filings for 2024.
The tax records show the couple has earned between $1.4 million and $3.5 million per year, putting them in the upper echelon of Americans when it comes to annual income.
Newsom allowed reporters on Thursday to view four years of the couple’s jointly filed tax returns after receiving criticism for not disclosing his filings since he last released the information for the tax year 2020.
The release of the tax records comes just weeks after Newsom accused the Department of Justice of launching — at President Trump’s request — a baseless and politically motivated investigation into him and his wife, including her business interests and charity work. The governor said the probes, which federal officials have not confirmed, were a personal vendetta launched because he’s considering a run for president in 2028.
Siebel Newsom leads the Representation Project, a nonprofit that advocates for gender equity through film and education programs, and Girls Club Entertainment, a for-profit production company she owns that holds the copyrights to her documentaries. The nonprofit has faced criticism for accepting donations from companies that lobby the governor, including Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and AT&T.
The tax records released Thursday showed that her salary from the Representation Project was $145,000 to $150,000 annually from 2021 though 2024, similar to prior years. While Girls Club paid her $100,000 in 2021, and $11,700 in 2022, she did not report any income from the production company in the two years that followed.
The governor’s office, in a summary of the tax returns provided to reporters, stated that financial documents contradict “the FALSE right-wing claims that the Newsoms ‘enriched themselves’ through new ventures and nonprofit organizations.”
The memo stated that their income has declined since Newsom became governor. The tax records also show that Girls Club Entertainment has been losing money in recent years.
The governor signed a law during his first year in office to require presidential and gubernatorial candidates to release five years of tax returns to appear on the primary ballot. Democrats passed the law in response to Trump’s refusal to make the information public.
Less than six months later, the California Supreme Court struck down the portion that required presidential candidates to comply with the law. Gubernatorial candidates are still required to disclose their tax filings during election season.
Though tax returns became a flash point in the California vs. Trump political saga, Democrats have for decades demanded that candidates for governor and president release their income tax filings.
Presidential candidates dating back to the Nixon administration routinely shared their filings, with only President Ford and Trump refusing to do so. Former Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and his Republican opponents also declined to share their tax returns before the 2010 and 2014 California gubernatorial elections.
Newsom released his tax returns during his campaigns for governor in 2018 and 2022, again in 2020 and before he beat a recall election in 2021. California candidates, elected officials, judges and some public employees also file annual economic interest statements.
“In the interest of transparency, he’s now voluntarily making all remaining filed tax returns available — going beyond what the law requires — as part of his longstanding commitment to transparency,” said Izzy Gardon, a spokesperson for the governor, in a statement.
The governor and his wife put their investments in a blind trust when he took office. Their earnings, which have totaled more than $1 million per year since at least 2011, stem from investments in wineries, restaurants, bars, hotels and hospitality management companies based in San Francisco, Napa Valley, and Lake Tahoe, according to economic interest disclosures filed with the state.
The latest batch of tax returns covers 2021 through 2024. Reporters were allowed to view, but not copy, more than 700 pages of tax records at the governor’s office in Sacramento on Thursday. Their 2025 tax returns were not available because, as he has done most years, the governor filed for an extension with the Internal Revenue Service and he doesn’t expect to file until October.
The couple’s reported income was the highest in 2021, when they sold their home in Kentfield, a wealthy enclave in Marin County, for $5.9 million. The Newsoms reported receiving more than $55,000 in rent for leasing out the home that same year, but declared an overall loss for tax purposes of $70,000 due to their mortgage payments, taxes, legal fees and depreciation.
The family previously moved to a mansion in Fair Oaks that they purchased for $3.7 million in 2019 following a brief residence at the Governor’s Mansion in downtown Sacramento.
The family kept the Fair Oaks home and purchased another $9.1-million estate in Marin County in 2024, where they primarily live and their four children attend school. Newsom and his wife also spend time in Fair Oaks while working at the state Capitol.
During those four years, Newsom and Siebel Newsom paid a high of $1,253,187 in federal income taxes in 2021, and a low of $488,821 in 2023. Their state tax income bill ranged from $34,307 to $213,331 during that time. The annual property tax bills hovered between $48,000 and $64,300 over that span.
The governor’s income included his government salary, which ranged from $167,647 in 2021 to $192,087 in 2024.
The tax returns showed the family paid from $154,000 to almost $200,000 each year for household employees from 2021 through 2024. The returns showed that they paid for Social Security coverage, Medicare and the state’s unemployment benefits fund as part of those expenses.
The governor and his family donated more than $200,000 to charity from 2021 to 2024. While most of those donations were in cash, they also gave $4,900 in “Armani Business Wear” to the Oakland nonprofit organization Restorative Justice, and toys, furniture, appliances, books and other goods to Goodwill in Sacramento.
Among their listed expenses in 2021 was $3,542 in storage costs for silver and platinum holdings. Previously, the couple made nearly a half-million dollars trading silver bars in 2011 alone.
Javier Ramirez was handcuffed in the back of an unmarked car, bruised and confused, when immigration agents used a word he had never heard before.
It was June 2025, and they were bragging about the raids in the Los Angeles area that swept up hundreds of immigrants — and a few U.S. citizens, like Ramirez. The unfamiliar word caught Ramirez’s ear.
Tonk.
“I wondered what that meant — I thought it was some code,” the 33-year-old tow truck driver told me over a Zoom call this week. “But I didn’t make a big fuss about it then.”
Masked men had thrown him to the ground outside a tow yard in Montebello, for reasons they wouldn’t divulge. He ended up in the car with a man detained in another roundup, headed for the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles.
The color disappeared from Ramirez’s face when I explained what “tonk” means.
For at least half a century, Border Patrol workers have used the onomatopoeic word, referring to the sound of someone getting hit, as slang for undocumented immigrants. Body camera footage and text chains from last summer’s immigration raids, released this week in a court filing, captures agents throwing around anti-immigrant insults like “wet” and “tonk” with the same ease that the rest of us say “and” or “the.”
The most egregious example, I told Ramirez, was directed at him and his friend, fellow U.S. citizen Brian Gavidia.
A video shows an agent shouting, “One tonk f— got away, dude!” as colleagues manhandle the pair. The same agent, who spoke with a Chicano accent, later sped off in a vehicle while asking in Spanglish, “¿Alguien arresto un tonk, güey?” — Did someone arrest a tonk, man?
“Oh, wow, OK, that’s really bad,” Ramirez finally said, laughing bitterly while gathering his thoughts. “It’s kind of hurtful. They’re just assuming who I am.”
Ramirez asked his attorney, Luis Castillo, if the agents who accosted him “had violence on their mind when they used that word.”
“You’re getting a double whammy,” the longtime civil rights lawyer replied. “They’re hitting you twice, physically and psychologically.”
No, Luis: they’re hitting us all.
Brian Gavidia stands in a parking lot next to East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park in 2025 a day after he and his friend were roughed up by immigration agents outside a tow yard in Montebello. The two are suing the federal government for violating their civil rights.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
If you’re still doubting that racist violence fuels President Trump’s deportation deluge, just consider what Gavidia and Ramirez have been through.
La migra roughed them up even as they screamed that they had documents to prove their U.S. citizenship. They took Gavidia’s Real ID and never returned it. Ramirez was detained for five days and charged with trying to assault a federal officer and interfere with their work — a case that went nowhere because he did no such things.
The American Civil Liberties Union and Public Counsel, along with other groups and private attorneys, included the body cam footage in a court filing asking a federal judge to bar immigration agents from making stops based on racial profiling.
Gavidia is part of that lawsuit, while Ramirez has sued separately. Now, the two men are more certain than ever that the Trump administration’s deportation strategy isn’t about getting the worst of the worst.
To la migra, all Latinos are tonks.
“I never even heard the word, but once [lawyers] told me the explanation of what it meant, I was disgusted instantly,” said Gavidia, 30, who fixes up and sells cars. “They already knew what they were coming to do. We told them we were Americans. It didn’t matter. We were brown, and that was enough.”
“I saw [the tonk video] 300 times,” Gavidia added, “and it’s giving me more trauma.”
“Tonk” has been a dirty little secret of the Border Patrol for decades — workplace lingo showing that the banality of evil that’s la migra on its best days has transformed into something far uglier under Trump.
The slur is so vile — predicated on violence by law enforcement, unlike ethnic jabs that insult food or culture — that it has never crossed over into mainstream English. “Tonk” in its anti-immigrant meaning doesn’t appear in the Merriam-Webster dictionary or even the Dictionary of American Regional English, the premier academic collection of American slang.
And that’s exactly how the Border Patrol likes it.
The earliest use of “tonk” to demean immigrants that I’ve been able to find is in a 1976 book by Paul Schuster Taylor, an early pioneer of Mexican American studies best known for documenting the plight of Dust Bowl refugees along with his wife, photographer Dorothea Lange.
Taylor quoted a Border Patrol inspector referring to Mexicans as “tonks” but offered no definition. In a 1978 hearing, Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Leonel Castillo said the slur was “sort of like the new term” for “wets.”
Castillo — no relation to Luis — nevertheless defended his agents’ use of anti-immigrant words.
“I think it’s the way — the tone in which you use it, and then how you treat people,” he said, maintaining that the verbiage was ingrained in the “very fine gentlemen” who worked under him.
“It’s very hard to change them,” he said. “But they’re not necessarily bad people.”
A year later, an anonymous Border Patrol agent writing for the white supremacist publication Instauration debunked Castillo’s apologia. He claimed that “tonk” derived from the thudding noise when agents smashed a flashlight on an immigrant’s head.
“The Anglos of the Border Patrol are not as intimidated by federal guidelines as people might think,” the agent wrote. “We have our own methods of interrogation in the desert.”
San Diego State English professor William Nericcio has spent his career studying anti-Mexican hate. He grew up around Laredo, Texas, in the 1970s and 1980s with “guys and their dads who worked in Border Patrol because it was a good job.”
Yet he hadn’t heard of “tonk,” either.
Immigration agents detain two men at a car wash in Montebello, Calif., in 2025.
(Gregory Bull / Associated Press)
“A drum roll of anti-Mexican violence turns into a soundtrack — wetback, beaner, spic and now, tonk,” Nericcio responded when I asked why the slur has stuck for so long among immigration agents. “Of all these anti-Mexican terms, this is the only one that directly connects to an act of violence. It’s a thing of pride when you say it — ‘Hey boss, I got a tonk today! Where’s my bonus?’ It’s glory days for them.”
The casual use of “tonk” by la migra eventually became a PR embarrassment even for the Trump administration. In 2019, during Trump’s first term, a Customs and Border Protection spokesperson told an Arizona public radio station that the slur “is now considered a derogatory term and CBP does not condone its use.”
This time around, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told my Times colleagues that “agents are focused on protecting the American people — not entertaining performative outrage.”
CBP didn’t respond to my multiple requests for comment about whether its internal guidelines continue to discourage “tonk” and whether agents face any discipline for using it.
If you’re not disgusted by this devolution in protocol, I’m not sure what can possibly disgust you.
ACLU lawyer Mayra Joachin said the body cam footage is “clear evidence that these stops were always about individuals’ appearance of being Latino working class” and is proof of the “culture of racism underlying” the Trump administration’s deportation strategy.
How are Gavidia and Ramirez feeling now, after being called a racist slur they hadn’t even known existed and that doesn’t even technically apply to them?
“If you’re a U.S. citizen, you can’t be free in the U.S.,” Ramirez said. What happened to him “can happen to anyone, it can happen to their kids and family, and when it happens to their family, that’s when they’re going to see the truth of what’s happening.”
Gavidia, who voted for Trump in 2024, said that immigration agents think they “are above the Constitution and law.”
“That’s sad and disgusting,” he said. “If we don’t stop this and fight this now, it’s going to get worse and worse.”
The Federal Communications Commission has demanded for months that ABC prove its stations deserve to stay on the air — a proceeding with no precedent in the last half-century. This week, the network delivered a sharp retort, accusing the agency of waging a campaign of political retribution.
“The retaliation against ABC is a signal to every media company in the country: accommodate the Administration’s view of what news coverage should look like or pay the price,” Disney’s attorneys wrote in the 109-page filing.
ABC has enlisted prominent elected officials, community organizations and seasoned litigators for the 1st Amendment showdown that could ultimately reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Burbank entertainment giant’s combative stance comes after the FCC, led by Chairman Brendan Carr, took the rare step this spring of demanding that Disney defend the broadcast licenses of its eight ABC stations — including KABC-TV Channel 7 in Los Angeles — years before the permits were set to expire.
The government’s move represents a significant threat to Disney because the loss of licenses would hobble the ABC network by forcing its largest stations off the air. Other ABC stations at risk include those in San Francisco, Fresno, Houston, Philadelphia and New York.
The FCC is expected to make a determination next month. It could require ABC to defend the stations in a hearing or before the commission.
The FCC, in a statement, defended its inquiry and hinted that it may go further.
“For decades, Americans of all stripes have been subsidizing broadcast media to the tune of many billions of dollars by giving TV stations free use of a valuable, public resource — the airwaves,” an FCC spokesperson said in a statement.
“Broadcasters are required by law to operate in the public interest — not in the narrow or partisan interests of a political party,” the spokesperson said. “The FCC is going to hold broadcasters accountable to the full extent of the law, regardless of any disinformation campaign that some of them may choose to run.”
ABC accused the FCC of overreach.
“The FCC has spent the last 18 months searching for some pretext for revoking the stations’ licenses,” ABC wrote in the filing. “The Commission has found none, because the stations easily meet the standard for license renewal.”
Disney‘s attorneys cited the unusual nature of the proceedings, linking the FCC’s action to Trump’s dislike of certain ABC network programs. The FCC launched its review in late April — one day after the president lashed out at ABC after late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel made a joke about Trump’s health and First Lady Melania Trump.
Until this spring, the FCC had not called for an early license review in more than 50 years.
“For the first time in history, the Federal Communications Commission has ordered an entire group of local television stations … to undergo simultaneous license renewal proceedings well before their current licenses expire,” Disney’s attorneys wrote.
“This is as clearcut an example of retaliation as one could imagine,” ABC said in the filing. Damage has been done even if the FCC stops short of revoking the licenses, the network said.
“The mere investigation and the threat of finding a violation are sufficient: ‘the value of a sword of Damocles is that it hangs — not that it drops,’” ABC wrote.
The FCC has previously said the review grew out of an inquiry it launched early last year to scrutinize Disney’s internal diversity, equity and inclusion programs to see if they violated federal anti-discrimination laws — part of an expansive Trump-led campaign against DEI initiated as soon as he returned to the White House.
This year, the FCC opened a separate inquiry over whether ABC’s “The View” should keep an exemption granted to news programs so they are not obligated to provide equal airtime for opponents of various political candidates. The FCC had given “The View” the exemption in 2002.
By calling for the early review, the FCC allowed petitioners and ordinary residents to chime in on the stations’ operations and ABC network programming.
By Wednesday night’s deadline, the FCC had received more than 153,000 public comments. An estimated 96% of respondents wrote to support their local ABC station, the company said, including L.A. County Sheriff Robert Luna, L.A. Police Chief Jim McDonnell and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.
In his letter, Luna said KABC — which has operated in Los Angeles for more than 75 years — provides residents with “timely and accurate information that has … undoubtedly saved lives.”
Lawmakers, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance), Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) and Ro Khanna (D-Fremont), have called on the FCC to drop the review, saying the agency has politicized its regulatory powers.
Disney has hired prominent attorneys Beth Wilkinson, Jennifer Tatel and Paul Clement, a former U.S. solicitor general with experience arguing before the Supreme Court. Disney’s chief legal officer, Horacio Gutierrez, is leading the team.
Several conservative groups have questioned whether ABC was fit to hold its licenses.
“ABC’s rights are important, but they are not preeminent,” Center for American Rights President Daniel Suhr wrote in his 66-page petition to the FCC to deny ABC’s local licenses, adding that the commission must instead focus on “the right of viewers of ABC stations.”
“Disney’s lawyers can wish upon a star, but they cannot make this record disappear,” Suhr said in a statement Thursday. “Disney does not own the public airwaves, and an FCC license is not a corporate entitlement. The FCC should reject Disney’s effort to avoid meaningful scrutiny, require full answers, and designate these applications for a hearing.”
The FCC doesn’t license networks, only the local stations that carry network programming.
In one public comment, an ABC critic named Lawrence Caswell agreed with Suhr’s contention: “ABC is just a grossly biased propaganda arm of the Democratic Party.”
“I rely on their broadcast for accurate, timely, and trusted local news, breaking weather updates, and essential public safety information,” Illes wrote. “ABC 7 Chicago is a vital institution in our community.”
Stations typically file for a license renewal once every eight years. The commission then determines whether the station has “served the public interest” and has not run afoul of the “rules and regulations of the Commission.”
“The FCC has no authority to police the ideological balance of the airwaves, and no matter what this Commission does next, the record now makes clear that this was never a genuine search for the public interest,” Gomez said in a Thursday statement.
There are three commissioners: Gomez and two Republicans — Carr and Olivia Trusty, who joined the panel last year.
Congress restricts the FCC from any regulatory moves that trample on free speech rights for broadcasters.
A coalition of progressive groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, urged Disney Chief Executive Josh D’Amaro to continue to defend 1st Amendment freedoms in the company’s battle with the FCC.
“When you’re standing up for yourself, you are standing up for all of us,” the group wrote. “All of our rights are in danger when the FCC is allowed to censor comedians, journalists, and critics.”
WASHINGTON — The American Dream may not be dead for many Black Americans, but it is further away than at any point since the Civil Rights Movement, warns a report by the National Urban League.
Released on Thursday, the annual “State of Black America” report grimly describes Black Americans ‘ economic and political prospects as having worsened due to policy changes from President Trump’s administration, according to a copy obtained by the Associated Press.
The report contends that the challenges it highlights for Black communities are warning signs for the prosperity of all Americans.
“It may be the focus is us, but the impact is not just us,” said Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League. “While they have targeted and focused on Black Americans, these attacks are going to impact broadly working Americans, poor Americans, aspirational middle-class Americans, and this is what this report points to.”
Tracing the arc of American history, the Urban League describes Black Americans’ struggle for emancipation from slavery and equal economic and political rights as a gruesome but optimistic part of the American story.
Now, the report says, the Trump administration is at odds with the goals and achievements of the Civil Rights Movement, citing the overhaul of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, as well as the president’s focus on overhauling voting laws through the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, as examples of rollbacks of long-sought civil rights policies.
The report’s authors offer policy and strategy recommendations for civil rights groups aiming to combat the Trump administration.
“The civil rights community must consolidate its legal resistance and turn courtroom wins into durable policy,” the report says. “The movement must build economic infrastructure that doesn’t depend on the goodwill of any one administration.”
The AP reached out to the White House for comment on the report.
Report contributors include a potential Democratic presidential contender
This year’s report includes contributions from members of Congress, and policy and legal experts, as well as some media personalities.
U.S. Senators Angela Alsobrooks, Lisa Blunt Rochester and Raphael Warnock all contributed to the report, as well as Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey contributed a video message to the report.
Moore, who is widely viewed as a potential 2028 presidential contender, submitted an essay focused on closing the racial wealth gap and Black Americans’ history of economic advancement in the face of adversity.
“With wisdom and grit, my mom was able to lift me and my family to a higher rung on the economic ladder. But too often wisdom and grit aren’t enough,” Moore wrote.
He later called closing the racial wealth gap “a matter of moral clarity” but cautioned that “government alone cannot close the racial wealth gap. It’s going to take all of us,” referencing the private sector and civil society.
Report blasts ‘economic assault’ on Black Americans
Whether corporate America and major nonprofits are still willing to participate is an open question. The report condemns the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back diversity initiatives and economic advancement projects in the private sector, and expresses frustration with companies that cooperated with an “economic assault” on Americans, especially Black Americans.
“This has been a campaign of coercion and oppression directed at these institutions who have been out here working hard to, if you will, change America,” Morial said. “The important thing about companies is that every company has not bent the knee. Some may have done some cosmetic changes. Some have been in full and complete retreat.”
The DEI rollbacks are a jarring reversal for the Urban League, which held sway in the Biden White House on economic and social policies. The report lauds President Biden’s administration for signing a sweeping COVID-19 stimulus package, as well as laws supporting minority small businesses and a bipartisan infrastructure bill.
“Not every promise was kept, and the current administration is pushing to roll our wins back, but these wins serve as a blueprint for what is possible through sustained advocacy and a clear vision,” the authors write. The agenda, the Urban League declares, was “the most consequential federal investments in Black America since the Great Society.”
The organization and its civil rights allies now find themselves in a strikingly different political environment under the Trump administration.
“Looking at our current political landscape, the calls for racial healing and righting of this nation’s wrongs in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd feel like a fever dream,” the report reads.
But the study also acknowledges that Black Americans have overcome more dire and discriminatory moments.
Latest Black America report is the Urban League’s 50th edition
The Urban League’s inaugural 1976 report on the state of Black America was described by the New York Times at the time as “a profoundly depressing document” that laid out the persistent disparities between the economic outlooks of Black and white Americans, a decade after the Civil Rights Movement’s crowning achievements were signed into law.
The report was established as a response to that year’s State of the Union address by President Ford and the Democratic response, neither of which mentioned the economic outlooks for Black Americans. The report offered policy recommendations on crime, education, housing, social services and general economic policy.
“It is a document that does not attempt to cover up the seriousness of the situation black people find themselves in,” the authors wrote at the time. Several of its recommendations were later taken up by President Carter, who was elected to the White House months after the report’s release.
This year’s 50th anniversary document echoes the frustration found in the inaugural report. While Morial acknowledged that the Urban League’s assessments may lead to pessimism, he urged Americans concerned about civil rights and economic progress to respond at the ballot box and with their pocketbooks.
“We cannot be dejected. We cannot be cynical. We must act,” Morial said. “We have to fight to make sure that those that are really trying to kill the essence of the American dream don’t win.”
By almost every measure, Latino communities are bearing the brunt of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, according to a new report.
The League of United Latin American Citizens or LULAC, a Latino civil rights organization, found that court-sanctioned racial profiling has contributed to the disproportionate targeting of Latinos regardless of their immigration status.
“The impact of mass deportation is falling on Latinos as an ethnic group, not on undocumented immigrants as a legal category,” the report read in part. “U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, work-authorized immigrants, and multi-generational American families are absorbing measurable harm: economic, physical, and civic.”
Although other immigrant groups have been targeted, LULAC found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have mostly focused on immigrants from Latin America, particularly workers with no criminal history, who are also more likely to face violence or be placed in detention centers with substandard conditions.
Citing a recent UCLA study, LULAC said from January to October, federal immigration agents arrested more than 187,000 Latinos and deported more than 126,000.
In an email response to The Times, a spokesperson with the Department of Homeland Security rejected the report’s findings.
“Allegations that DHS law enforcement engages in ‘racial profiling’ are disgusting, reckless, and categorically FALSE,” the spokesperson wrote. “What makes someone a target for immigration enforcement is if they are illegally in the U.S.—NOT their skin color, race, or ethnicity.”
“Law enforcement officers use ‘reasonable suspicion’ to investigate immigration status and probable cause to make arrests consistent with the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” the spokesperson added. “The Supreme Court has already vindicated us on these practices.”
LULAC’s report comes amid recent court filings claiming that federal immigration agents were caught on body camera footage and in text messages using racial slurs when referring to Latinos.
Additionally, Congress recently approved nearly $70 billion in immigration enforcement funding to cover the rest of Trump’s term with at least $38 billion to go to ICE and $26 billion to Customs and Border Protection.
LULAC said in putting the report together it reviewed public data and published studies to provide a fact sheet that paints a broader picture about the impact mass deportations are having on Latinos.
“The people being removed are disproportionately working-age, employed and without criminal records — the demographic core of the workforce in construction, hospitality, agriculture, food processing, and care work,” the report read.
As of July 11, more than 65,000 people were being held in detention and about 70% of the population had no criminal convictions, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data gathering organization.
ICE detention data show that about 40% of detainees were being held for civil immigration violations including visa overstays and work visa violations.
Unless previously deported, living in the country illegally is considered a civil violation rather than a crime and carries penalties such as arrests, fines and deportation proceedings.
The indiscriminate immigration raids that terrorized Latino communities appeared to have worsened after the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in September, according to LULAC’s report.
The Supreme Court justices overturned a district court injunction that barred immigration agents in Los Angeles from roving around Home Depots and car washes, stopping brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking day laborers and others from arrest on immigration charges.
But once the injunction lifted, federal immigration agents descended once more on Latino communities, even stopping U.S. citizens, according to LULAC.
This month, the American Civil Liberties Union reviewed more than 1,200 enforcement incidents across eight states, identifying 155 U.S. citizens who were detained, targeted, or experienced law enforcement misconduct, and 437 incidents involving likely racial profiling. It also identified 214 children affected, including 32 Americans.
LULAC said the immigration raids had an economic impact. Citing a recent UCLA study, it said small business and Latino entrepreneurs in Los Angeles County saw foot traffic drop significantly, losing millions in potential revenue in June 2025.
A spokesperson for LULAC could not immediately be reached for comment.
WASHINGTON — President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskymet Tuesday ahead of Sen. Lindsey Graham’s funeral, with the two leaders discussing ways for Ukraine to produce its own powerful weapons and “other ideas that could help” in its ongoing war against Russia.
The sit-down in the Oval Office, which was closed to the media, followed a consequential meeting at the NATO summit earlier this month in Ankara, Turkey, where Trump announced that the U.S. will give Ukraine a license to make Patriot defense systems — a long-running request from Kyiv to counter Russian missile attacks.
In a post on social media after the meeting, Zelenskythanked Trump for the “good meeting” and the Republican administration’s efforts to aid Kyiv in the long-running war, which began more than four years ago when Russia invaded Ukraine.
“The President and I discussed licenses for Patriot interceptor production and several other ideas that could help,” said Zelensky, who also noted that he offered condolences to Trump for the death of Graham, a close ally. “We also spoke about diplomacy — it’s important that the diplomatic process be reinvigorated.”
The White House did not immediately return a request for comment on the meeting.
Trump welcomed Zelenskyto the White House as the Ukrainian leader traveled to Washington to honor Graham, whose final act as a public official was visiting Kyiv and securing an agreement on a package of sanctions that seek to punish countries that purchase Russian oil, gas and other exports.
In a Fox News Channel interview on Tuesday, Trump recalled Graham’s hawkishness and said the Republican South Carolina senator’s support for Ukraine never wavered. Trump said Graham had suggested it was time to make a deal with Iran but had no similar suggestion for the Russia-Ukraine war.
“Ukraine, he’s very militant about,” Trump said on “Fox & Friends.” “I mean, Lindsey liked war, to be honest with you.”
“It’s looking good for Ukraine, right?” Loomer said during an interview with The Associated Press. “Going into this meeting next week at the Oval Office is looking pretty good.”
A federal appeals court has upheld a ruling that in nearly half of U.S. states halted President Trump’s executive order to create a federal list of eligible voters and limit delivery of mail ballots only to people on that list.
The ruling Saturday by judges of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Trump administration’s effort to move forward with the mail-in voting restrictions in 23 U.S. states that sued ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Trump issued an executive order in March for the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the commissioner of the Social Security Administration to create a “state citizenship list” of eligible voters. It also ordered the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to people on that list.
Trump has claimed the proposed changes are necessary safeguards to keep non-U.S. citizens from voting, but state election officials argued they were ripe for abuse and could cause chaos.
Democratic officials in 23 states and the District of Columbia challenged Trump’s order in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Boston. They argued that Trump’s order was unconstitutional because the states and Congress, not the president, have the authority to set election rules.
U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani agreed and halted Trump’s order from being implemented for the Nov. 3 elections, but only in the states that have sued.
Trump’s executive order is part of his ongoing campaign to restrict voting access and raise doubts about the integrity of the election system before the November midterms.
The White House and the Justice Department did not immediately return an email seeking comment Sunday about the court ruling.
President Trump ordered his administration Friday to install signs in front of the Smithsonian Institution’s U.S. history museum telling visitors that some of the exhibits are inaccurate, his latest move to reshape how the story of the United States is told.
Trump’s move follows a report released July 4 by his Domestic Policy Council saying leaders of the Smithsonian and its National Museum of American History don’t tell history “in a way that is inspiring, unifying, and worthy of our great republic.”
The president lacks authority to quickly fire the Smithsonian leadership or to order changes to exhibits, so his executive order targets the sidewalks out front, which are maintained by the National Park Service. The order calls for signs telling visitors about the White House report and directing them to resources for what he calls “accurate information regarding America’s history.” It also calls for a temporary exhibit that corrects information he deems inaccurate.
Smithsonian officials declined to comment on Trump’s order.
Anthea M. Hartig, director of the National Museum of American History, challenged the White House report during congressional hearings last week.
“As we continue to fact-check the report, we unwaveringly attest that it does not fairly or accurately characterize the full body of work at the museum,” she told lawmakers. “There is always room for improvement. But I also know the beauty and the inspiration and the expertise that lies in our collections, our exhibits, and our programming.”
The Smithsonian operates outside the executive branch, and museum directors report to Smithsonian Institution Secretary Lonnie Bunch, who is subject to oversight from its Board of Regents.
Trump’s escalating effort to force changes at the Smithsonian marks the president’s latest move to transform cultural pillars of society, such as universities and art, that he considers out of step with conservative sensibilities. Trump had himself installed as chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts with the aim of overhauling programming, and his handpicked board voted to add his name to the building, only for a federal judge to later order the signs to be removed.
Trump has also imposed changes on historical sites beyond Washington, including in Philadelphia, where the administration won a court ruling this month allowing it to reinstall interpretive panels that critics say whitewash the history of slavery at the site of President Washington’s home. Advocates, academics and officials have been concerned for months that the version that complies with Trump’s order could give a history that plays down the pain in the nation’s past in favor of a more triumphant view.
Trump in March revealed his intention to force changes at the Smithsonian Institution with an executive order that targeted funding for programs that advanced “divisive narratives” and “improper ideology.”
President Trump’s $1.4-billion crypto windfall has become the biggest obstacle to passing his sweeping digital-asset legislation as Democrats demand tougher language to prevent the president from profiting off an industry his administration regulates.
Senate Republicans released a proposal this week intended to break a months-long impasse over the bill, known as the Clarity Act. But Democrats and consumer watchdog groups dismissed the terms almost immediately, complaining the bill would not stop Trump or his family from continuing to profit from his meme coin and other crypto ventures.
Trump needs the support of at least seven Senate Democrats to pass the legislation, which would set rules for digital assets. Ethics has emerged as the biggest, though not the only, sticking point.
“It’s the linchpin,” said Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, a Maryland Democrat and key negotiator who has been supportive of the crypto industry.
A spokesperson for the White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The White House has consistently asserted Trump is not involved in managing the family’s crypto ventures and has denied conflicts of interest.
Democrats have specifically taken issue with a provision that would leave Trump’s Justice Department as the primary enforcer of the new ethics regulations, preventing state attorneys general from acting as an independent check.
Another Democratic negotiator, Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona, and Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said they’re working on a compromise ethics proposal to send to the White House but didn’t provide details.
Senators in both parties said they see the negotiations in the coming week as key to whether a bill reaches Trump’s desk this year. But after the chilly initial reception to the latest White House offer, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.C.) said he didn’t think the Clarity Act would pass the chamber before the month-long August recess.
“We’ll see where the votes are,” Thune said.
Alsobrooks, Gallego and other crypto-friendly Democrats are demanding changes to other pieces of the massive bill, including consumer protection and illicit finance measures.
The bill has other issues, including opposition from banks intent on tightening restrictions on stablecoin rewards. Tillis and several other Republicans said they are considering backing changes to reflect banks’ concerns that their deposits could shift to stablecoin accounts, crimping their profits and customers’ access to credit.
Tillis has floated adding “circuit-breaker” language empowering the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. or other regulators to step in if bank deposits drop — an idea opposed by GOP Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, the crypto industry’s biggest backer in the chamber.
Porous provisions
Critics said the draft’s ethics protections are porous. It would let Trump divest a large stake in his crypto venture or move it into a blind trust for the rest of his term, but stops short of requiring him to sell.
“It’s going to allow him to keep making money the way he has in the past,” said Scott Greytak, deputy executive director of Transparency International US, an anti-corruption advocacy group.
The restrictions also hinge on whether an official has a “direct interest” in a crypto asset — a threshold that may not apply to Trump.
The president is a significant owner of World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto venture, through an entity called DT Marks DEFI LLC, which holds about a 38% stake. Whether that counts as a direct interest “isn’t clear,” said Zach Everson, research director for Public Citizen’s Trump Accountability Project. “Does direct interest describe how he holds the crypto?”
Because the bill wouldn’t apply to the children of government officials, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump could continue their own crypto business interests. And much of the family’s fortune has already been made: Trump and his affiliates have earned a huge windfall from meme coin and token ventures, income the legislation would not claw back.
Critics also decried a provision that would sunset the ethics requirements on Jan. 20, 2029, the day Trump’s successor would be inaugurated. That could prevent the next administration from holding Trump accountable.
The White House and Republicans argued that Trump had gone further in backing ethics restrictions in law than any previous president.
“History will remember this as the moment a president chose a higher standard of ethics than the law required of him,” Lummis, a key architect of the bill, said on X.
Democrats were skeptical even before the language was released. “Any meaningful ethics provision would be shot down by the White House,” Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said.
The politics of crypto have long divided Democrats, and a bipartisan deal on the legislation risks provoking a backlash from progressives. Failure to reach a deal, however, could make the party the target of a torrent of crypto campaign cash.
Crypto group Fairshake and its two affiliated super PACs have raised $164 million for the midterm elections, Federal Election Commission filings show, and have spent $66.6 million so far.
It’s the kind of political arsenal that Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York can ill afford to have aimed at his candidates as the party seeks to regain Senate control.
But others, like Murphy, have warned that blessing Trump’s big crypto bill would undermine Democrats’ midterm message.
A potential presidential candidate, Murphy said Wednesday while addressing the left-leaning Center for American Progress that the bill is before the Senate “because the industry paid for it” and urged Democrats to instead turn fighting crypto corruption into a potent campaign issue this fall.
Markets have grown less convinced a deal gets done. On Polymarket, the odds of the Clarity Act passing this year fell to about 1 chance in 3 earlier this week after Republicans released the new draft.
That’s about half the odds the prediction market gave passage after the Senate Banking Committee backed an earlier version of the bill on May 14.
Dennis and Patterson write for Bloomberg. Bloomberg writers Yash Roy, Lydia Beyoud, Aidan Williams, Bill Allison and Olga Kharif contributed to this report.
Tech scion David Ellison for months projected confidence that his blockbuster Hollywood merger was on a glide path to completion.
His media company Paramount Skydance’s pitch early this year was that its proposed $111-billion acquisition of rival Warner Bros. Discovery could easily clear regulatory hurdles — unlike Netflix’s competing bid.
Ellison has heavyweights in his corner: his billionaire father Larry Ellison, co-founder of software giant Oracle, is bankrolling the deal, and President Trump is eager for the Ellison family to own CNN and other Warner assets, including HBO and the Burbank film and TV studios behind “Batman,” Harry Potter, Wile E. Coyote, and “The Pitt.”
“We could technically close [the deal] tomorrow,” Ellison told business new channel CNBC during a March interview. “There is nothing in this transaction that trips anything that would create cause for concern.”
But Paramount made a dramatic retreat Friday after two weeks of legal setbacks. The firm had been aiming to close the deal by September but agreed to table its takeover — perhaps until next spring — to allow a fiercer than expected challenge from California Atty. General Rob Bonta and 11 other Democrat state attorneys general to advance to trial before an Oakland-based federal judge.
The state prosecutors allege Paramount’s proposed merger with Warner Bros. violates a century-old antitrust law by giving the combined company too much heft in theatrical movie distribution and cable television.
The delay could saddle Paramount, the smallest of the major media companies, with substantial legal fees and hundreds of millions of dollars in added deal costs. In February, Paramount offered Warner investors a sweetener, so-called “ticking fees,” to win the auction.
Those fees, which begin accruing in October, will cost Paramount an extra $7 million a day — until the purchase is finalized. And if Paramount fails to close the merger, it would owe Warner Bros. Discovery a $7-billion breakup fee.
“Anyone who thinks they know how this deal ends should think again,” Forrester Research analyst Mike Proulx said in a statement. “This deal may still close or it may not. … The path to either outcome just got longer, messier, and likely more expensive.”
Paramount now must strengthen its case for a high-stakes trial while fortifying Paramount’s existing businesses and holding together a coalition of financiers, which includes the royal families of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar which jointly agreed to contribute $24 billion for equity stakes in the combined company.
Paramount reversed course after U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín dealt the company a blow on Monday when she temporarily blocked Paramount from finalizing the acquisition until mid-August. Looming was a key Aug. 3 hearing for the judge to determine whether the moratorium should be extended.
Paramount was concerned the judge would block the deal for the foreseeable future.
“They saw the writing on the wall,” Bonta said in an interview.
Columbia Law School business professor Eric Talley added: “This doesn’t constitute Paramount Skydance coming out and waving a big white flag — but it is a small white flag of surrender.”
Paramount, in a statement, said heading straight to trial would prove advantageous.
“This is the fastest and clearest way to prove that this transaction is good for competition, good for consumers, and good for creators,” Paramount said. “We look forward to proving our case at trial.”
Last week, the Writers Guild of America separately filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the merger, alleging that writers would encounter less work and lower pay should Paramount buy Warner Bros.
Now the merger won’t close until after a resolution in the litigation or by June 1, 2027, whichever date comes first.
“This is what we’ve been asking for from the start,” Bonta said. “We just wanted the court to have sufficient time to review our case without the threat of the companies merging.”
Ellison, through a Paramount spokesperson, declined an interview request.
The delay brings a different set of challenges, Talley said, including pushing the date of the takeover until after November’s pivotal mid-term elections when control of Congress might change hands.
“That itself could be disruptive,” Talley said. “Suppose we get a flip of the House of Representatives or the Senate, then we may see testimony in Congress.”
Prominent Democrats, including Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) have expressed alarm over the potential consolidation, which would shrink the number of legacy film studios and bring CNN in addition to CBS News under Ellison control.
Attempts to get Ellison to testify in Congress have fallen short. The Paramount chief declined an invitation to appear before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights in February, as well as a subsequent request from Booker to appear during an April spotlight hearing.
“To what extent was the rush to get the deal done related to the midterms, and what press coverage was going to look like in the upcoming election season?” Talley asked. “CNN is not a huge money-making asset but it is a prominent asset of Warner Brothers Discovery.”
On Friday night, Trump extolled his friendship with the Ellison family during the White House Correspondents Assn. dinner while also criticizing prominent CNN anchors.
David Ellison is “going to make, I think, fantastic changes and keep some of the great stuff going,” Trump said.
CBS News has been roiled since shortly after the Ellisons acquired Paramount in August, and installed Bari Weiss as editor in chief of CBS News. She has overseen a series of controversial moves, including shaking up the evening news and sacking several “60 Minutes” correspondents.
Paramount scored one victory: the European Commission gave its blessing for the merger to go forward in the European countries it represents. The company now has gained clearances from more than 60 jurisdictions, including from the U.S. Justice Department, which found the merger would likely boost competition — not harm it.
Now, Paramount’s biggest obstacle is winning the case against Bonta and the other state attorneys general.
The states plan to request a trial in 2027, after the two sides conduct months of discovery to prepare their cases.
“We want to take depositions of employees. We want to take depositions of customers and competitors in these marketplaces that are impacted [and] we want documents,” Bonta said.
“We want to depose their experts and probe and test their experts’ opinions,” he said. “That all takes time.”
Bonta and the other state attorneys sidestepped the political landscape in making their lawsuit arguments.
“This is just a straight-up meat-and-potatoes antitrust case,” Bonta said. “The main point here is that antitrust enforcement is important because monopolies that lessen competition hurt everyday people.
“Once we have a trial, we’re going to win,” Bonta said. “So we think and we hope there will never be a merger.”
WASHINGTON — For the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner on Friday at Washington’s Waldorf Astoria hotel, security will be much tighter, the guest list smaller, the partying pared down, and the dress code more relaxed.
That much, the correspondents’ association can control.
What remains out of its control — and perhaps the biggest question — is what the dinner’s most prominent guest, President Trump, will bring to the table.
Call it White House Dinner 2.0, or Take Two, or, in Trump’s own words, a “HOT ticket.” The big unknown is whether Trump will bring the fighting words (“rather nasty,” he said) against the press that he’d planned to deliver in April — before the event descended into chaos when a gunman stormed a security checkpoint, forcing an evacuation of the room.
“The president looks forward to finishing what he started,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday, confirming Trump’s attendance. “I encourage everyone watching tomorrow night to tune in for what promises to be a very entertaining and memorable evening.”
Trump has been coy about what he might say
As for Trump himself, he indicated last month he wasn’t sure. “I don’t know whether or not I will give the same rather nasty statements, at least as it concerns certain people, but we will soon find out,” the Republican president wrote on his Truth Social platform. “In any event, it will be a ‘HOT’ ticket!”
Besides the pared-down approach, there is another change at Friday’s dinner: two additional awards. One will be presented to Victor Gonzales, the Secret Service agent who was staffing a security checkpoint in April and was struck in his protective vest.
“Officer Gonzales … ran toward danger so that thousands of others could make it home safely,” WHCA President Weijia Jiang said in a statement. “His courage stemmed from a dedication to service, which we are looking forward to honoring this week.”
A second award will be presented to the staff of the Washington Hilton hotel, site of the first dinner.
Other changes: With security in mind, there will be only one entrance at the much smaller venue, with airport-style metal detectors. Guests received individual QR entry codes in advance, and nobody can get in unless recognized. “There is NO red carpet at this dinner,” said a memo Jiang sent to some guests last month, seen by The Associated Press. “There are NO onsite pre-dinner receptions.”
The dress code this time is a looser “black tie optional,” and dinner includes grilled peach and burrata salad, lobster, and beef Wellington. The evening, as at the last dinner, has entertainment by mentalist Oz Pearlman, along with the awards presentations and Trump’s remarks.
Jiang and her fellow board members worked hard to bring about this WHCA dinner 2.0, not wanting to let a violent act — or the image of colleagues hiding under tables — remain the final thought. Announcing the rescheduling, she emphasized the dinner’s stated purpose: “a celebration of a free press and the vital role of journalism in our democracy for over a century.”
“We will not allow an act of violence to have the last word, especially during a year when we are reflecting on the 250th anniversary of America and everything we stand for,” Jiang said.
There’s still lots of criticism of the event
But it’s also clear that some people felt the dinner should not be rescheduled at all.
Many never thought it was much of a good look in the first place, with the sight of journalists in formal wear cozying up to their sources, or the objects of their reporting.
“It undermines the public faith in how the press does its work, and it makes it look like we are pals with the people we cover,” Kelly McBride, an ethics expert at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank, said when the deliberations were taking place.
The new dinner comes during a time of fast-increasing tension between the media and a president who, in his second term, has tried to exert pressure on media outlets he is unhappy with in a variety of ways. That pressure has ranged from sanctions against members of the White House press corps to regulatory actions through the Federal Communications Commission to outright lawsuits.
Those tensions have only escalated since April, with the latest example reaching a New York courtroom on Thursday. There, criticized by a federal judge for sloppy legal work, the government withdrew subpoenas that would have compelled three New York Times reporters to testify about their sources for articles about Trump’s Qatari-gifted Air Force One jet.
That escalation was the impetus behind a letter from a coalition of press freedom groups and hundreds of former journalists, urging the WHCA to stand up to Trump forcefully at the dinner.
“We believe it is hypocritical to celebrate the First Amendment in front of the man who relentlessly attacks it,” the letter says. “We urge the WHCA to condemn the administration’s actions from the podium and pledge to fight all attempts by his administration to undermine this core pillar of a functioning democracy.”
The Dodgers went to the White House on Thursday and met with President Trump for the second year in a row, following back-to-back World Series championships.
At the time of their visit, the Dodgers had the best record in Major League Baseball with 65 wins and 38 losses. Winning three titles in a row won’t be easy, but assuming they pull off another victory in October, here are five reasons the Dodgers should not go back to the White House next year.
What’s the point?
Ceremonial visits have been going on for years, and both Democratic and Republican presidents have embraced the tradition with athletes from various sports.
If you’d like to know why I didn’t have anything to say in 2021, when the Dodgers visited President Biden at the White House, that’s a good question.
I didn’t dwell on it at the time because I think such visits are kind of ho-hum. But now we’ve had three visits in five years, and in my head, this hammers home the point that baseball players have nothing to gain from a visit. They’re baseball players, and as such, there is no higher honor than winning the World Series.
I like baseball, but it’s not like these guys are astronauts, just back from the moon.
If the Dodgers want to mark their achievement and honor the game of baseball in the nation’s capital, fine. They should go to the Smithsonian as a team and visit the display where Jackie Robinson’s jersey is enshrined.
They’re being put in an awkward position
As Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts put it in saying that he wouldn’t join his teammates, he couldn’t win either way.
“If I do” go, he said, “people are gonna hate me. If I don’t, people are gonna hate me.”
That’s an exaggeration, but I get his point. Dodger utility man Kiké Hernandez said he wasn’t going, either, explaining that he was busy rehabbing an injury.
The Dodgers should take the pressure off the players by politely declining an invitation to visit.
Besides, people like baseball because it’s an escape, a distraction, a diversion. You want to have a clear head as you try to remember why you willingly packed up your kids and paid $400 for lousy seats and food at Dodger Stadium to watch Kyle Tucker, at $60 million a year, foul out to the catcher.
You do not want to think about the American political cesspool as you watch the Dodgers rally from behind, win in late innings, and inch ever closer to going back to the White House again next year.
They’re being used
The players were apparently told they could make their own decision about whether to go to the White House.
What they should have been told was that they were being exploited.
When a president hosts a team at the White House, there is only one reason.
It’s a photo op.
Not for the team, but for the president.
Baseball might no longer be the national pastime, but it’s a part of American culture, with fans of every political stripe in every state. There’s kind of a folksy quality in the manufactured banter between a president and the ballplayers. He can fawn over them and joke with them and look more like a regular guy — one of the boys.
“This is really a special team,” Trump said during the Dodger visit. “It’s special winners. They’re champions, and just unbelievable.”
Yeah, we knew that when they beat the Blue Jays.
Nine months ago.
Too much ring kissing is a turnoff
If you are going to go, can you at least not embarrass yourself?
Dodgers Chairman Mark Walter handed Trump a Dodgers jersey and World Series ring at the White House. Somehow, he managed to restrain himself from bending to one knee and kissing the president’s ring.
“Thank you for welcoming us today, Mr. President,” Walter said. “We’re proud of that team and what it has achieved, and we hope to be back here again next year.”
As The Times’ Maddie Lee noted, this was just days after Bloomberg reported that “two insurance companies controlled by Walter, as well as Guggenheim Partners, where Walter is chief executive, are being investigated by federal prosecutors for potential financial improprieties.”
“No charges have been filed,” Lee wrote. “Representatives from the parent company of the insurance firms as well as from TWC Global — the Walter business empire that controls his sporting investments, including the Dodgers and Lakers — have told reporters they are cooperating with the investigation.”
So that’s another problem with the Dodgers’ visit.
How can we not wonder about ulterior motives?
It’s hard to keep track of who’s kissing whose ring.
Politics is unavoidable
The Dodger brain trust has attempted to cast White House visits as an exercise in tradition, not politics.
“Like I’ve always said, my company line, my personal line is I hope that we get this invitation every year,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said before the visit. “Because that’s the goal: to win a championship, to get this invitation to the White House. And I’m not a politician, and I’m doing something that teams have done for decades. And so that’s where I stand, really. I’m a baseball coach. That’s what I do.”
That couldn’t be more naive.
The Dodgers love to project a wholesome, family-friendly essence. But American discourse has not been more vulgar, polarizing or politicized in my lifetime, and I’m reminded of the line, “Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.”
In Trump’s world, there are only two kinds of people: friends and foes. The Dodgers are now friends, and when Venezuelan World Series hero Miguel Rojas was singled out by Trump, who launched an unprovoked attack on his country, that reeked of calculated political staging.
The White House itself has been a staging ground for political assaults on the Dodgers’ home state and on immigrants who come from regions of the world that are home to some of the Dodger players. Election integrity has been politicized. The Supreme Court has been politicized. The water quality in the reflecting pool has been politicized. And at a White House cage fight, a former first lady was brazenly disparaged.
You can’t peel off your baseball uniform, put on your wedding suit, and stand there with the president, smiling and shaking hands and being voluntarily patronized, without having made a political statement.
Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham stands by her comments about transgender athletes competing: She says she just ‘wants to protect’ women’s sports.
Despite her views that were expressed in an ESPN article published Tuesday, Cunningham insisted the next day that she doesn’t have anything against the transgender community.
“I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,’” Cunningham said in the article. “I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”
The article became fodder for questions Wednesday before the Fever’s 123-88 victory against the Connecticut Sun.
“I think it’s kind of common sense,” Cunningham told reporters. “And I think I’ll always believe in that. I think it’s really important to protect children, and that’s little girls who are also involved in that category. And so I’ll stand on what I said, and I’ll always believe that.”
She reiterated that her feelings on the matter don’t stem from hatred.
“I think there is room for absolutely everyone here, and I think there is room to love everyone,” Cunningham said. “I truly think when you get people in the same room and you have conversations, you actually have a lot in common with a lot of people. And so I’m there to love.
“But I’m also there to love biological women, and I think that there are rights that need to be protected. And, like I said, I’m gonna stand true to that. I’ll never falter in my beliefs in that. But I have never once said that I hated the trans community. Like I said, I think there’s space for everyone.”
Cunningham appeared to triple down on her comments Thursday morning on Instagram, writing simply, “I said what I said.”
The topic of transgender athletes participating in women’s sports has become a polarizing issue in recent years. In February 2025, President Trump signed an executive order, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” that looked to ensure that entities receiving federal funding abide by Title IX in alignment with the administration’s view that a person’s sex is the gender they were assigned at birth.
Last month, the Supreme Court upheld laws in West Virginia and Idaho that banned transgender athletes from competing on girls’ sports teams. Days later, two transgender girls who were the first to challenge Trump’s executive order dropped their lawsuit in New Hampshire.
“Men should not be playing in women’s sports. It’s completely ludicrous that anyone could support that,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday. “It’s even more ludicrous that you do have [Sophie] Cunningham — a female athlete herself, very accomplished in her own right — coming forth and speaking that truth that men shouldn’t play in women’s sports, we want to protect women and girls, and the backlash she is receiving from Democrats and left-wing figures across the country is astonishing.”
The league’s collective bargaining agreement states that “only players who are women are eligible to play in the WNBA,” but does not specifically exclude transgender women. When reached for comment, a WNBA representative referred The Times to a statement released by the Fever on Wednesday.
“Our players are thoughtful adults with their own perspectives and voices, and those views are their own,” the team said. “We are committed to welcoming fans from every background and treating everyone with respect, and that’s what guides us as an organization.”
Cunningham has been called “MAGA Barbie” since her college days at Missouri, according to Complex, because some of the people she follows and engagement with conservatives on social media.
In 2022, when Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas became the first transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I national championship, Cunningham reposted a since-deleted tweet stating that “female collegiate athletes deserve so much better than this.”
Soon after, Cunningham posted a statement saying that she stands “with all people, especially my fellow athletes.”
“I do not judge, but support all races, religions, sexual preferences and gender equity,” she wrote. “We all have a place in this world to compete and I hope we are able to grant everyone that opportunity fairly.”
Even with a seeming endorsement from the White House and a nickname that’s followed her, Cunningham says her political views are “very much in the middle.”
“I agree with things on both sides, disagree with things on both sides,” she said in the ESPN article. “And that’s all I’ve ever said about my political beliefs. But people love to assume.”
On Wednesday, Cunningham went into more detail, telling reporters “I’m not a very political person.”
“But I do have beliefs, I have morals, and I’ll always stand on those and be true to who I am,” she added. “… And so when it comes to just protecting young girls in sport and women in sport, I feel very strongly about that.
“That’s why you have Title IX. That’s why you have some of the greats in women’s sports. If Title IX and women’s sports weren’t protected, then you wouldn’t hear about any type of women in sport.”
WASHINGTON — The House on Wednesday passed a defense policy bill that incorporates President Trump’s request for a historic $1.15 trillion in spending for national security and would designate the Department of Defense as the Department of War.
It also would provide for a pay raise next year ranging from 5% to 7% for service members, depending upon their rank.
The National Defense Authorization Act is generally one of the more bipartisan bills that Congress takes up on an annual basis. That’s not the case this year. The vote was 216-212.
Democrats took issue with steep spending increases for the Pentagon as Republicans attempted to cut numerous non-defense programs through other bills. They also opposed some of the conservative social policy riders that were included.
For example, the bill includes a prohibition on gender-related medical care under the military health program known as TRICARE. It also eases hurdles for service members to carry a privately owned firearm on base, following Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s lead on the issue.
Republican leaders’ decision to attach Trump’s elections overhaul bill to the defense bill upon its passing also amplified the partisan divide. Speaker Mike Johnson is working to accommodate Republican lawmakers who are angry that the Senate won’t pass the SAVE America Act and are insisting that it be included in must-pass bills until the Senate relents.
House bill tests a normally bipartisan process
Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said he knows there were areas of disagreement, but emphasized that Wednesday’s vote was a step in a long process. He promised to work in a bipartisan manner on a final product that can pass both chambers and be signed into law.
Rogers said the United States needs to reverse decades of underinvestment and neglect in the nation’s armed forces and defense industrial base.
“This bill will do that and much more,” he said. “It will build the ready, capable and lethal fighting force we need to deter China and other adversaries.”
Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the ranking Democratic lawmaker on the Armed Services Committee, said the defense spending the administration has asked for this year is approaching $1.6 trillion including separate efforts to pay for the war in Iran and boost weapons stockpiles.
“The American people are struggling to pay their bills and we’re going to put $1.6 trillion into the defense budget. It’s not a reasonable thing to ask,” Smith said.
Smith also expressed concern about the war with Iran and that in supporting the defense bill, lawmakers are “de facto supporting this war with no end in sight.”
“We are in an incredibly, incredibly dangerous time,” Smith said. “I want to maintain the bipartisan nature of this bill. I do. And I know that the chairman does. But if we’re going to do this, we’re going to need some Republicans to stand up to the president of the United States and say, ‘No. No, we’re not going to get you $1.6 trillion. No, we’re not just going to give you a blank check for a war that is totally out of control.‘”
White House backs parts of the legislation
The spending increases authorized in the bill would not take effect until Congress follows up with a separate defense appropriations bill. The Senate has not yet approved its version of the defense measure. It’s possible a final product won’t be ready until after the midterm elections.
The White House applauded the spending levels authorized in the House bill and the Department of War designation that it says recognizes the “willingness to fight and win wars on behalf of our nation.”
The president issued an executive order last year renaming the Defense Department, but it’s up to Congress to make the change official. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that the renaming could cost taxpayers as much as $125 million.
The White House’s statement also said that the administration has a number of concerns with certain provisions in the bill and would work with Congress before a final bill is presented to the president. Among those concerns was a section of the bill it said would limit or undermine the president’s ability to name military installations and property.
In 2023, during a national reckoning on issues of race in America, seven Army bases’ names were changed because they honored Confederate leaders. Last year, those bases reverted to their original names, but with different namesakes who share Confederate surnames. The Army found other service members with the same last names to honor.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has agreed to work with Saudi Arabia to develop a civilian nuclear program, a watershed moment following a years-long effort to curb the proliferation of nuclear technology in the Middle East.
The announcement comes as President Trump has vowed to continue executing a war against Iran over its own nuclear ambitions. On Wednesday, the president warned he would target a bridge or power plant for every commercial vessel Iran fires upon in the Strait of Hormuz, after earlier this week threatening to strike a new facility Tehran is reportedly building to conceal its continued nuclear work.
The Saudi deal stoked surprise and immediate concern across Washington, where lawmakers are expected to have a vote on the matter, as well as in Israel, itself a nuclear power that has long feared an atomic arms race could grip the region.
A Saudi nuclear program has long been tied to the standoff over Iran’s nuclear work, which successive U.S. administrations have said extends beyond civilian purposes. After Iran struck a nuclear deal with world powers in 2015, Saudi Arabia vowed to match whatever nuclear capabilities Tehran was allowed to keep.
In the decade since, U.S. officials had tried to keep Saudi Arabia from developing its own program, fearing it would fuel nuclear competition across the Middle East. But it became a consistent and central point of negotiation between the two allies.
Both the Trump and Biden administrations ultimately offered to support a limited, monitored program as part of a broader deal to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, hoping that a diplomatic breakthrough would mitigate the risks of an arms race.
But the agreement secured this week left skeptics in Washington and the region unclear what the United States had secured in return.
The deal comes after Trump told reporters this week that the goal of resuming war with Iran was to prevent them from ever obtaining nuclear weapons, a challenge that has vexed the international community since the outset of the century.
U.S. presidents have long sought to prevent Middle Eastern countries from acquiring technologies that could be used to build weapons of mass destruction. The 2003 invasion of Iraq over false claims about Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs prompted Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi to abandon his nuclear work. Over the next two decades, the United States and Israel also targeted Syria’s nuclear and chemical weapons programs under Bashar al-Assad.
But Iran’s slow march to nuclear weapons capability, enriching uranium near to weapons-grade with no clear civilian or scientific ends, has prompted other countries in the region to question whether they, too, might need similar capabilities to counterbalance a historic foe. Israel, which views the Islamic Republic and its nuclear program as existential threats, is widely believed to possess its own nuclear weapons.
Hours after the nuclear deal was reported by the Wall Street Journal, the White House was silent on the details and Trump administration officials were left scrambling when asked by lawmakers and reporters for answers.
While traveling in Manila, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters he was aware of the news reports, but deferred to the White House to provide more public information.
When pressed about the risks of such a deal, Rubio said he would not “opine directly on the agreement,” but said the United States “is not going to reach any agreement with any country in the world that leads to the risk of proliferation.”
The White House confirmed the deal Wednesday afternoon.
Back in Washington, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee that he has not yet seen the agreement with Saudi Arabia.
The deal, which would last 30 years and involve American firms developing the program, is expected to be submitted for review to Congress. Lawmakers will consider the deal as they grow increasingly uneasy about the Trump administration’s handling of an expanding Iran war, which Trump and Israel launched, arguing for the need to wipe out Tehran’s capabilities to build nuclear weapons.
As the war enters its fifth month, Trump has continued to defend the military efforts and has dismissed the idea that war is unpopular among Americans as they feel the economic effects.
“Americans aren’t against the war,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday. “Americans don’t want high gasoline prices but they’re not against the war.”
Trump’s remarks were made as he traveled to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to attend a dignified transfer of U.S. service members killed in the war. Asked what he would say to the families who lost their loved ones, Trump said he’d tell them they’re loved.
“All I’m going to say is, we love you. We love your child, and that’s what they are to them. They’re their children. There’s no games, no nothing,” Trump said. “That’s their child, and all you can do is throw out your heart.”
Earlier in the day, Trump said the United States will destroy a bridge or power plant in Iran each time it shoots at a ship in the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for the global energy supply.
Trump’s threat to target bridges and power plants would mark yet another escalation that could affect civilians in the region.
Hasan Ghashghavi, a member of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, denied Trump’s claim on Tuesday that Iran was requesting negotiations, saying in a statement on X that it was “in no way consistent with the facts.”
“It seems that Trump, in order to extricate himself from the quagmire he’s trapped in, should seek better paths,” he wrote. “Repetitive lies no longer even bring about short-term market relief.”
Times staff writer Nabih Bulos in Beirut contributed to this report.
More than 16 congressional Democrats accused the Federal Communications Commission this week of running a license-review process “tainted by animus and ideology,” demanding the agency back off its early scrutiny of Disney stations, including Los Angeles’ KABC-TV and San Francisco’s KGO-TV — while alleging the FCC has politicized its power.
The lawmakers signed letters to FCC Secretary Marlene H. Dortch to register their dismay and question the legitimacy of the FCC’s review protocol.
The letter campaign is a response to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s decision in April to order an early review of Disney’s licenses for the eight ABC television stations that it owns. The review is entering its home stretch; public comments are due to the FCC by July 29.
Calling a station’s licenses for an early review is rare, and it’s been four decades since the FCC revoked a TV station license.
Carr’s move requiring Disney to submit to an early review came after President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump expressed outrage over a joke by ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel that referenced the first lady.
“This early renewal process is merely a smokescreen to pursue President Trump’s vindictive agenda to silence minority voices and punish companies that decline to do his bidding,” according to the letter signed by Reps. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), Kevin Mullin (D-South San Francisco), Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), Ro Khanna (D-Fremont), Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) and others.
The FCC maintains the ABC station review sprung from concerns about Disney’s internal diversity, equity and inclusion programs, but the lawmakers said there was no evidence that Disney’s personnel policies violate any laws.
Instead, they said, Trump has made it clear that he sees TV license renewals as a means to squeeze media outlets whose coverage he dislikes.
Disney has pushed back against the early evaluation of its TV station licenses, which were originally up for review between 2028 and 2031. The Burbank giant filed its renewal applications “under protest.”
“The Commission had not demanded early renewal in over five decades,” Disney’s WABC-TV station, based in New York, wrote in a May filing with the commission. “And it has never before demanded simultaneous license renewal applications from a group of stations commonly owned with a network as it has here. The order has no legitimate purpose.”
California congressional Democrats have strongly condemned Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr’s decision to mandate early, unprecedented license renewals for eight Disney-owned ABC stations, including KABC-TV in Los Angeles.
(Google street view)
The FCC maintains that Disney is the one politicizing the station review.
“Contrary to Disney’s claim that the FCC called in their broadcast licenses for early renewal for no reason, the record shows something very different,” Carr said in a May statement. “Broadcast licensees have a unique obligation to operate in the public interest. The FCC will follow the facts and law wherever they may lead.”
In the tussle over whether “The View” qualifies for an exemption to the so-called equal time rules for politicians, an FCC spokesperson said in a statement: “ABC should focus on complying with its public interest obligations, rather than misleading the public about them.”
The lawmakers, in the two letters, did not wade into the controversy over “The View.”
Instead, they stressed the importance of the two stations — KABC and KGO — to their local communities.
“KABC is an important local television station that millions of our constituents rely on for daily news, traffic, emergency weather alerts, and programming that serves our local community,” according to the letter spearheaded by Friedman, whose district includes Disney’s headquarters.
“Any refusal to renew this license would be strongly against the public interest,” the group wrote.
Congresswoman Laura Friedman is leading a letter campaign by Democrats in Congress to defend Disney’s KABC-TV.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
A second letter highlighted the importance of Disney’s San Francisco station, which serves nine counties in that region.
“For over 75 years, KGO has been operating in the public interest in our region, offering reliable journalism, indispensable emergency information, and steadfast community engagement that our constituents and viewers rely on,” according to the letter headed by Mullin.
The station also serves as a broadcast partner to the San Francisco Chinese New Year Parade, the city’s Pride parade, the Oakland Black Joy parade and the Bay to Breakers race. It also raises awareness for organizations including Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired and Bay Area Autism Collective, the lawmakers said.
“KGO’s operations reflects the television station’s deep investment and commitment to viewers in the Bay Area,” the lawmakers wrote. “KGO is a community partner. … We urge the FCC to reconsider its unlawful censorship campaign against ABC and all other political opponents of President Trump.”
After U.S. strikes on Iran’s largest nuclear facilities last year, both President Trump and the White House were adamant that the Middle East nation’s nuclear program had been destroyed.
“Monumental Damage was done to all Nuclear sites in Iran, as shown by satellite images. Obliteration is an accurate term!” Trump wrote on social media.
“Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated — and Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News,” the White House wrote in a press release.
A year later, the U.S. and Iran are five months into a war Trump said would be over in weeks. Iran has gained leverage by seizing control of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital energy corridor, and the U.S. has been forced to the negotiating table as global gas prices have spiked — including again this week after a ceasefire agreement collapsed.
And Trump — facing mounting criticism that he has pushed the U.S. into another “forever war” despite campaigning on doing exactly the opposite — is leaning back into the notion that Iran presents an unacceptable nuclear threat and strikes are needed, namely at another Iranian nuclear facility known as Pickaxe Mountain.
“Pickaxe is a possible target for a nice big fat shot right near the front door,” the president recently said on “The Hugh Hewitt Show.” “We’re going to take out Pickaxe Mountain. Tell the Iranians to be ready.”
Pickaxe, a heavily fortified facility deep underground that would be difficult to penetrate even with powerful “bunker buster” bombs, was not targeted during last year’s 12 Day War between Iran and the U.S. and Israel, nor in the full-scale war of the last five months.
However, it is less than two miles from Natanz, one of Iran’s primary nuclear enrichment facilities, which was struck both last year and this year. On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Israeli intelligence believes Iran moved thousands of uranium-enrichment centrifuges into Pickaxe last fall — bolstering its ability to reconstitute a nuclear program that threatens the U.S. and regional allies.
Trump’s sudden focus on Pickaxe as a suspected hub of Iranian nuclear activity, which comes as his administration is trying to justify its continued entanglement in its unpopular war there, is an acknowledgment that two prior military campaigns and years of attempted diplomacy by his administration have failed to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Few experts ever bought into the Trump administration’s claims that Iran’s nuclear program had been completely destroyed, and even Trump and his closest allies have walked some of those comments back — including in discussions about Iran’s ability to retrieve and repurpose enriched material buried at Natanz and other targeted sites.
Some experts have cited construction activity around Pickaxe as evidence Iran is continuing to develop the facility in violation of recent agreements with the U.S., but have said the exact nature of the work isn’t known. They’ve also wondered if the Trump administration intends to use the work there to lay the groundwork for a broader, boots-on-the-ground war effort that would be unpopular in the U.S. but necessary to truly accomplish Trump’s stated goal of ending Iran’s nuclear program for good.
The Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington-based think tank, said last week that it wasn’t clear “if Iran still plans on installing a large-scale assembly facility” at Pickaxe Mountain “given the destruction of Iran’s centrifuge program,” but “if Iran starts to rebuild its centrifuge manufacturing capability, it could plan to install a smaller centrifuge assembly facility in Pickaxe Mountain able to serve a nuclear weapons program.”
The space under the mountain, the institute said, may be “large enough to also hold a centrifuge enrichment plant capable of producing weapon-grade uranium” and is “likely large enough to also hold certain nuclear weaponization activities such as making weapon-grade uranium metal and shaping it into nuclear weapon components.”
Retired Army Gen. Joseph Votel, the former head of U.S. Central Command, told The Times that Iran has had a substantial amount of time to relocate equipment since the bombings of last year and has “demonstrated that they are savvy on these kinds of things,” and the U.S. “should be serious about it and try to confirm the intelligence.”
And “if there have been centrifuges that have been moved there and are underground and spinning and developing nuclear bomb grade materials,” he said, “we should be very, very concerned about that.”
Benjamin Radd, a political scientist and senior fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, said it is true that Iran is continuing its enrichment program in clandestine ways that present an ongoing threat and that “the war is not going the way the president wanted.” He also said Iran’s activity around Pickaxe helps Trump justify the war — and its possible expansion.
Radd said Iran has used the war to block independent inspections of its nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency and reconstituted some of its nuclear capabilities in the process, including as talks with the U.S. shifted from its nuclear program to the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump and the U.S., meanwhile, have “vacillated” between trying to “manage” the Iranian nuclear program by reining in enrichment, to trying to “neutralize” the program with targeted attacks on its nuclear infrastructure. Radd said that “even though his rhetoric is there,” Trump hasn’t had “the resolve or the ability or the mandate” to move to fully eliminate Iran’s nuclear program, because that would require “much more forceful intervention” than the American public is willing to accept, such as U.S. troops on the ground in Iran.
He said he wonders now if the president’s talk about Pickaxe is part of a shift in that direction — or at least threatening it — after Trump and his advisors realized that the current cycle of war, negotiations and then more war is giving Iran the time it needs to reconstitute its nuclear program.
“I’m wondering if that is just a threat, or if it’s a genuine option that the president is actually considering,” Radd said.
Under Senate questioning Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declined to say whether American bombs were capable of destroying whatever is under Pickaxe Mountain.
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Sen. Darline Graham (R-S.C.) said Monday she’s running for a full term to replace her late brother Lindsey Graham’s Senate seat.
“I’ve made a decision,” Graham told Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity, according to a clip released of an interview set to air Monday. “I’m in.”
The entrance of Graham — sworn in last week to fulfill the remaining months of her late brother’s term, which expires in January — into the Republican scramble to select a new Senate nominee further complicates an already rushed process after Lindsey Graham ‘s death this month.
A weeklong filing period opens Tuesday for the special Republican primary, which will be Aug. 11. On Friday, President Trump said that Darline Graham had his “Complete and Total Endorsement” to seek the nomination, adding, “RUN, DARLINE, RUN!”
Last week, Gov. Henry McMaster appointed Graham to serve the remainder of her brother’s term.
In his announcement, McMaster made no reference to Graham as a placeholder or symbolic appointment, although a person familiar with McMaster’s thinking but unauthorized to speak publicly said the governor had never contemplated that she would run for the seat herself.
Before the emergence of Graham — and their Oval Office meeting after she was sworn in — Trump had suggested he could back a potential candidacy from Republican Rep. Russell Fry, who said Monday he would officially enter the special primary.
Funeral services for Lindsey Graham are scheduled to be held next week in Washington and South Carolina.
The millions in Graham’s campaign account aren’t funds that Darline Graham could directly access in a run of her own, said Bradley A. Smith, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission.
Under federal rules, Lindsey Graham’s campaign would be limited to transferring just $2,000 to a potential Darline Graham candidacy.
However, Smith said there is no limit on how much it could transfer to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which could — thanks to a Supreme Court decision last month — “spend an unlimited amount in coordination with Darline’s campaign.”
BEIRUT — President Trump long railed against forever wars.
For years, whether as president or candidate, he flayed electoral opponents and previous presidents with his signature barbs, calling their entanglements a “complete waste of time” (Afghanistan), “the worst single mistake ever made in the history of our country” (Iraq) and “stupid” (Ukraine).
Yet he now appears to be stumbling into a forever war of his own.
From the first days of the U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran, Trump and his officials insisted their adventure abroad would be the exception, that the conflict would end in a matter of weeks.
Now, 4½ months later, after a torturous, start-stop vacillation between truce and war, the U.S. is pressing on with a fight that has no end in sight — or even a clear definition of what an acceptable end would be.
In the last week, the ceasefire collapsed, with the U.S. and Iran trading daily waves of strikes, leading to the deaths of two American servicemen on Friday when Iranian ballistic missiles struck Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, where U.S. assets and personnel are stationed.
On Sunday, as the U.S. and Iran launched more air assaults, the U.S. announced that a service member was killed Saturday in Iraq during the controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian one-way attack drone.
On March 9, the remains of U.S. Army Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington, 26, of Glendale, Ky., then the seventh U.S. service member to die in combat during the Iran war, are transferred at Dover Air Force Base, Del.
(Julia Demaree Nikhinson / Associated Press)
The deaths in Jordan were the first combat fatalities since the U.S. and Iran agreed to a ceasefire. One soldier remains missing, according to a statement from U.S. Central Command.
Including the most recent casualties, 17 U.S. service members have been killed and more than 430 wounded since the war began, the Pentagon says.
In Iran, at least 57 people have been killed and more than 517 injured in U.S. attacks in the last three weeks, according to Iranian health authorities. The death toll since the beginning of the war has surpassed 3,500, and more than 27,000 have been wounded.
The U.S. and Israeli militaries have — in the telling of Trump and various officials — decimated Iran’s navy and air defenses, eviscerated multiple layers of its leadership and bombed tens of thousands of targets across the country.
Despite that military pressure, and Trump’s insistence that members of Iran’s leadership “want to make a deal” (he’s said that an accord was on hand no less than 46 times since the start of the war), Tehran has refused to surrender its nuclear and missile arsenals and continues to support its regional militia allies.
Iran has also created a new pressure point to use against adversaries by blockading the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas flowed before the war. And it has widened the war’s footprint by targeting countries hosting American military assets.
Trump has vowed to expand bombings to include civilian infrastructure such as power plants and bridges in what he says is a bid to force Iran into negotiations once more.
Trump thought wars in the Middle East would be like Venezuela: a big in-and-out without a prolonged war. And the reality is that it’s backfired
— Vali Nasr, Middle East expert
He has also brought additional forces to the Middle East. According to Centcom, there are now 50,000 troops in the region, along with 20 naval warships and hundreds of warplanes.
U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the region, declined to comment on the deployments, though on Sunday the New York Times reported that the U.S. was sending to the region F-16 fighter jets from Germany and stealthy F-35 jets from Britain.
For observers, those moves signal that Trump is falling into an escalation trap.
“From Trump’s perspective, the easiest way to demonstrate resolve and power is by just bombing Iran and seeing what that brings about,” said Andreas Boehm, a Middle East expert and lecturer on international law at University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. Although those strikes seem tactically impressive, they have not helped him strategically, he said.
“In reality, it doesn’t change the situation because the Iranians won’t budge. And if you confuse tactical and strategic success, then you’re not going anywhere in any kind of war,” Boehm said.
An escalation on Washington’s part is also certain to spark a similar reaction from Tehran, said Vali Nasr, professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
“Iran gets a vote here,” Nasr said, adding Iran could up the ante by closing Bab al Mandab, the vital strait connecting the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. It could also widen attacks on infrastructure in Persian Gulf countries — moves that would trigger an even bigger ripple effect across global markets.
“Trump thought wars in the Middle East would be like Venezuela: a big in-and-out without a prolonged war,” Nasr said, referring to the Trump administration’s strike that saw U.S. forces abduct Venezuelan leader Nicholás Maduro and force the remaining members of his government to submit to U.S. control.
“And the reality is that it’s backfired,” he said.
Trump is not the first American president to think a foreign engagement wouldn’t last long. Whether in Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq, U.S. leaders dispatched troops on operations they thought would last weeks or months, dismissing warnings that they would be bogged down in years-long occupations.
Iran would be an especially sticky quagmire if Trump were to commit ground troops.
The country’s area — about 636,000 square miles — is more than double the size of Afghanistan, almost four times the size of Iraq, and five times the size of Vietnam — all nations where the U.S. struggled to prevail against adversaries not as well equipped and arguably less ideologically motivated than its adversaries in Iran.
Meanwhile, for a president whose central foreign policy campaign promise was no more wars, the growing number of casualties, along with the escalating damage inflicted by Iran on U.S. assets and allies, has exposed cracks in the support the Teflon-like Trump has enjoyed from his advocates.
Onetime MAGA acolytes, including flagship conservative figures such as Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Alex Jones, have already turned on the president over the war and other issues. And Republican figures who had tied their star to Trump fear a drubbing in the midterms so long as the war continues.
If negotiations were to resume, it’s unclear whether Trump and his coterie of negotiators have the stamina or the foreign service expertise to bring about an accord.
After all, the 2015 Obama-era deal aimed at reining in Tehran’s nuclear program took 600 days and hundreds of diplomats and technical experts to negotiate.
With Trump relying on unconventional fixers such as his son-in-law Jared Kushner and real estate investor Steve Witkoff, not to mention his evisceration of the diplomatic corps, an agreement of that scale appears unlikely.
“Everything is dependent on the mood of one man,” Nasr said.
“It’s not the system that’s making the decision; it’s not the country making the decision,” he said. “It’s one man, and it depends how he feels like at one particular point in time.”
Tehran too may be less amenable to negotiations with Trump, given his history: During his first term, he pulled out of the nuclear deal and ordered the assassination of Qassem Suleimani, a leading Iranian general.
In his second term, he launched bombing campaigns on Iran during negotiations — twice. And Iran accused the U.S. of repeatedly violating the April ceasefire and the memorandum of understanding signed in June.
Asked on NewsNation on Sunday about Iran’s announcement that it would no longer abide by the memorandum, Trump said, “I couldn’t care less.”
Such factors, said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director for the International Crisis Group, lead to a formula for prolonged conflict.
“It’s a forever war in the making, and the reason why is that Trump has proven he’s impossible to negotiate with,” Vaez said.
If an agreement as superficial as the memorandum of understanding — which deferred thornier issues for late negotiations — was derailed, then there’s little option other than repeated cycles of violence.
“Once you’ve proven that diplomacy doesn’t work,” he said, “then there’s only war.”
