president trump

In 1913, Antonino Alati left southern Italy to find a better life in a land where many people regarded him as little better than scum.

He joined millions of his fellow countrymen in the United States, where the press vilified Italians as poor, dirty, violent Catholics who had too many babies, refused to assimilate and could never possibly be considered “white.”

Politicians were already working to shut the door on them. A congressional report released two years before Alati’s arrival cited southern Italians as evidence that “the new immigration as a class is far less intelligent than the old.” They came to the U.S., the report asserted, “with the intention of profiting, in a pecuniary way, by the superior advantages of the new world and then returning to the old country.”

Alati wouldn’t let bigotry win. He soon sent for his wife and children, including his infant son Salvatore. Alati turned to Alito, Salvatore became Samuel. A generation later, the family had a Supreme Court justice in Samuel A. Alito Jr. — the second Italian American, after Antonin Scalia, to sit on the highest court in the land.

During his 2005 confirmation hearings, Alito praised his father as an “extraordinary man who came to the United States as a young child and overcame many difficulties” to ensure a better life for him and his sister. By then, Italian Americans were established as an essential part of this country’s fabric, from music to politics to food.

It’s the most American of tales — which is why it’s so surprising, yet not, to read Alito’s blistering dissent in the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision rejecting President Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship.

If there’s one constant in this country besides death and taxes, it’s how quickly descendants of immigrants, and sometimes immigrants themselves, forget how loathed their ethnic group was and how they proved the haters wrong. Too many become uncharitable to the policies that helped them and the immigrants who followed.

But Alito’s stance against birthright citizenship goes beyond just forgetting his roots. His 39-page opinion describes the supposed impact of undocumented migrants on the U.S., using words — “overran,” “soared,” “exploded,” “massive,” “a stream,” “huge” — that read like the same invective used against Italians in his grandfather and father’s time.

The justice channels anti-Italian conspiracies of the past by casting doubt on the national allegiances of the U.S.-born children of Mexican, Guatemalan and Salvadoran immigrants — the same patriotism test that Italian Americans faced generations ago when xenophobes questioned their Catholicism. Alito claims without evidence that millions of agricultural workers were able to apply for American citizenship after President Reagan’s 1986 amnesty “at least in part because of fraud” — a charge also leveled against Italians who sought to naturalize back in the day.

And so it goes, each passage a jumbled argument dressed up in judicial interpretations largely rejected by his fellow Catholic Supreme Court justices John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh. Coney Barrett signed on to the majority opinion that Roberts wrote, and Kavanaugh concurred.

Rev. William Barber II speaks during a rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court on April 1 while justices heard oral arguments on birthright citizenship.

(Al Drago / Getty Images)

I know how quickly families forget their own immigrant histories. Yet I look at people like Alito and wonder how they ended up thinking the way they do, because I could never imagine doing the same.

My maternal grandmother was born in Arizona to parents who fled their home country during the Mexican Revolution, becoming an American citizen by birthright. My father, who crossed the border in the trunk of a Chevy, legalized his status in an era when it was far easier to do so.

Like Alito’s paisanes, my Mexican family was also demonized for supposedly being insufficiently American and posing a threat to national unity. They also sacrificed their own dreams so their children and grandchildren could achieve theirs.

And just like Alito, some members of my family have forgotten our history and support Trump or favor some of his immigration policies, dismissing new arrivals as criminals or lazy. That’s why I will always side with undocumented people and welcome anyone who gives birth in this country with the hope that their newborn finds a better life.

It seems from his dissent that Alito somewhat agrees with me. He posits that millions of Americans who were born in this country to parents without papers “have a strong moral claim to be able to remain in the land where they grew up.” Congress “can and should address their situation,” he writes.

The justice blasts birth tourism, where women from China and other countries travel to the U.S. to have a baby, then return home, benefiting from our generosity and offering nothing in return.

I agree that’s a mockery of what being an American should be and ruins it for people who want to contribute to building a better nation. But Alito throws out the baby with the bathwater by failing to recognize that Trump’s attempt to erase birthright citizenship via executive order is presidential overreach based on bigotry, not rule of law. He’d rather cut up the Constitution to spite something he doesn’t like. Thank God his side lost, yet it’s sad that Trump’s pathetic attempt to define who can be an American went as far as it did.

Alito concludes by stating that the court’s decision to uphold the 14th Amendment is “a mistake that will seriously affect the country’s future.”

What new immigrants might inflict on this country is the perpetual worry of immigration restrictionists — and yet history keeps proving them wrong. Alito’s family did; so did mine. Only in these United States can the progeny of people once portrayed as parasites and invaders side with those making the same argument about the latest batch of newcomers.

History will see Alito’s vote for what it is: a forsaking of the promise his family once fulfilled, to support the people who never wanted them here in the first place.

WASHINGTON — New Jersey Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. revealed Tuesday that he spent months away from Congress being treated for depression.

“It is physical, it is emotional, and until you experience it yourself, it is difficult to fully understand how powerful this illness can be,” he said on the House floor.

Kean’s reappearance comes after he won an uncontested primary on June 2 and months since he last voted in the House.

“Today I stand before you healthier, stronger and excited to return to the work that I love,” Kean said.

A second-term lawmaker and scion of a New Jersey political family, Kean represents a battleground district that includes President Trump’s Bedminster golf club. He’s missed more than 100 votes in Congress this year and hadn’t been seen publicly in Washington or his district despite winning the Republican nomination to serve another term.

The mystery over Kean’s absence carries potential political implications, given the competitive district he represents and the Republican Party’s narrow control of the House. His office has said he is still running for reelection and is set to face Democratic nominee Rebecca Bennett, a former Navy helicopter pilot, in New Jersey’s most high-profile contest in November.

Democrats have targeted the district as a prime pick-up opportunity, given that the seat has changed hands in the last two midterm elections. Kean won in 2022 by defeating Democrat Tom Malinowski, who had defeated Republican Leonard Lance in 2018.

Kean’s last vote was months ago

Kean last voted in the House on March 5, but his absence wasn’t explained.

In April, his social media account said he had been dealing with a personal medical issue and his doctors expected him to recover.

Kean’s absence has also complicated matters for House Republican leaders, who are struggling every day to pass bills with their razor-thin majority, 218-212. Speaker Mike Johnson and other GOP leaders repeatedly told reporters they were in touch with Kean, but said he would have to address the circumstances himself.

Trump has endorsed Kean’s reelection, without mentioning his absence.

Kean comes from a long line of public servants, stretching 250 years to the country’s founding when one of his ancestors became New Jersey’s first leader since independence.

His great-grandfather was a senator, his grandfather was a congressman and his father is the former two-term governor, Tom Kean Sr.

Catalini and Cappelletti write for the Associated Press.

ATLANTA — President Trump has tried many ways to tighten his grip on U.S. elections, from signing executive orders to pushing restrictive legislation in Congress. Monday’s Supreme Court ruling siding with states that accept late-arriving mail ballots was the latest example showing the limits of his reach.

It followed back-to-back rulings last week that barred his two sweeping executive orders seeking to change national election rules, more court rulings preventing his Department of Justice from obtaining detailed state voter data and his stalled attempts to get the Senate to pass the SAVE Act. That measure would eliminate nearly all absentee voting, require citizenship documents to register to vote and impose photo identification requirements nationwide right before the midterm elections.

“It’s been a mixed bag for Republicans,” said University of Notre Dame law professor Derek Muller. But the president, he added, “has come up mostly empty-handed.”

Trump’s efforts have not been entirely fruitless. Republican-run states have satisfied his demands to redraw congressional district lines, efforts buoyed by the Supreme Court striking down a key section of the Voting Rights Act, and he has been directing his Department of Justice to investigate voting and election operations, which Democrats see as a possible prelude to their involvement in November.

All the activity around how the nation votes and runs its elections is a reflection of the Republican president’s long fixation on his false claim that his 2020 election defeat was rigged. He has been so frustrated by the inability of the Senate to pass the SAVE Act that he has refused to sign a bipartisan housing bill.

He weighed in again Monday after the Supreme Court’s decision in the mail ballot deadline case, saying on his social media account that he is trying to “save America from crooked elections.” Voting rights groups and Democrats see him abusing power and attempting to suppress legal voters to gain an advantage in the midterms, when control of Congress is at stake.

Regardless, Muller said Trump faces legal and political realities: The Constitution gives the states and Congress authority over elections while providing no such role for the president.

“That’s how federalism works,” Muller said.

Here’s a look at Trump’s efforts to reshape election rules and what options he might have left for the November midterms.

Focus on noncitizens and voter data has met roadblocks

The president has repeatedly said U.S. elections are riddled with fraud in part because of noncitizen voting. Research shows the problem to be rare, accounting for a minuscule percentage of fraud cases. Convictions are measured in the hundreds over periods in which tens of millions of ballots are cast.

Trump’s view resulted in a multiagency push to nationalize voter data and use federal resources to help states remove voters from the rolls. The Department of Justice has sought detailed voter files from multiple states, data that would include dates of birth and partial Social Security numbers. Democratic and some Republican secretaries of state balked, and federal lawsuits followed. The administration has lost every case so far.

Homeland Security citizenship check rejected in court

Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, with help from the DOGE effort led by Elon Musk, revamped a government tool called SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements). The program has been a key pillar of his efforts to cull potentially ineligible voters from state rolls.

Last week, a federal judge blocked its use as a mass citizenship check.

The administration, according to its own news releases, had allowed local election administrators to search users by the thousands, using a wider range of metrics rather than DHS-issued identification numbers. At least 67 million registrations, primarily in Republican-controlled states, were analyzed. Tens of thousands were flagged as potential noncitizens or people who have died, but some voters were wrongly identified as ineligible.

U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan ruled that Trump’s changes aggregated Americans’ sensitive personal data in a way that could result in voters being wrongly purged from the rolls.

“All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” Sooknanan said in her order.

Executive orders used in place of legislation

As presidents before him, Trump signed executive orders when Congress would not enact his policy preferences.

Trump’s first order reflected his emphasis on noncitizens. Like the SAVE Act pending on Capitol Hill, it sought to require would-be voters to document their citizenship to be able to register to vote.

U.S. District Court Judge Denise Casper put a temporary block on the order last year as she considered the case and last week made her decision permanent. The Constitution, Casper wrote, “does not grant the President any specific powers over elections.”

Trump issued a second order in March, as the SAVE Act’s rough path in Congress became obvious. He called for a national voter list using data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Social Security Administration. Further, the order would have empowered the U.S. Postal Service to determine who gets an absentee ballot and threatened local elections officials with prosecution.

Absentee voting is a staple of U.S. elections, but Trump describes the practice, incorrectly, as allowing fraud — even as he has used it himself. A 2025 report by the Brookings Institution found that mail voting fraud occurred in only 0.000043% of total mail ballots cast.

Democratic secretaries of state sued, and U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani made the same legal assessment as Casper. The provisions, she wrote last week, “unconstitutionally violate the separation of powers.”

The White House has indicated it will appeal.

Even Trump says the SAVE Act has long odds

Trump on Monday called the Senate logjam “crazy” and one of the holdouts, Republican Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, “Trump-deranged.”

It’s the latest legislative tussle that prompted Trump to demand Republicans scrap the filibuster, which requires most major legislation to get support from 60 of the 100 senators. But that likely wouldn’t matter in this case, with four of the Senate’s 53 Republicans declaring their opposition to the bill itself: Murkowski, Susan Collins of Maine, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

The president acknowledged Monday that the SAVE Act is “probably not going to happen.”

Trump still has options for the November elections

Both major parties have national operations to monitor elections, including legal teams ready to file challenges.

Despite the Republican National Committee losing the mail ballot case, Chairman Joe Gruters on Monday alluded to those efforts: “We are not going to be deterred by this decision, and the RNC will keep fighting to have elections end on Election Day,” he said.

Meanwhile, Trump has been developing a possible roadmap for more aggressive actions.

His U.S. attorney in Los Angeles said in June that he had opened multiple election fraud investigations, and he sent a prosecutor to the county’s vote-tabulation center after California’s June primary. Six months earlier, FBI agents executed a warrant and seized ballots and other records from the 2020 election in Georgia’s Fulton County, which includes Atlanta.

Muller, the law professor, said local elections officials “already are having conversations about chain of custody disputes” for ballots as they are cast, collected, counted and stored.

He and UCLA law professor Rick Hasen noted that judicial warrants are required for the kinds of actions that happened in Fulton County. Muller predicted “the bar would be even higher” for any warrant the administration requests during a live election.

Hasen added that he’s working to educate judges around the country on the importance of chain of custody for ballots.

“Republicans believe him when he says the election is rigged. And then when Republicans try to change voting rules to tighten things up, that causes Democrats to also think that the election system is being rigged,” Hasen said. “So, if what he’s trying to achieve is undermine voters’ confidence in the election process, he seems to have succeeded spectacularly.”

Barrow writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the Constitution’s promise that all those born here are citizens of the United States, regardless of the status of their parents.

In a 6-3 decision, the justices rejected President Trump’s plan to revise the Constitution by executive order and to end citizenship at birth for newborns whose parents were here illegally or temporarily.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts spoke for the court to reject Trump’s proposed limits on birthright citizenship.

“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community,” he said. “The Framers of the 14th Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’ We keep that promise today.”

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined in full. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh concurred in the outcome based on the federal law that incorporates birthright citizenship.

But the outcome was closer than most had predicted.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito and Neil M. Gorsuch dissented in agreement with Trump.

The decision is the second major defeat for Trump from a conservative court that usually supports broad presidential power.

In February, the court struck down Trump’s sweeping worldwide tariffs, his signature economic policy. Roberts said Congress, not the president, has the power to raise revenue and impose taxes, including duties on imports.

In April, Trump came to the court to hear the arguments over birthright citizenship. He sat in the gallery while the justices posed steadily skeptical questions to his solicitor general.

He left after an hour having heard enough to know he was likely to lose.

It was the rare Supreme Court case which was decided based simply on the words of the Constitution.

The justices, both conservative and liberal, say they look to what the Constitution says and how its words were originally understood.

The 14th Amendment adopted in 1868 says: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the State where they reside.”

The amendment overturned the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857, which declared that Black persons could not become U.S. citizens.

In its place, the Reconstruction Congress adopted the broad view of citizenship based on the place of birth, not parentage, that had been part of English law for centuries.

In the 19th Century, it was understood that the only exceptions to this rule of birthright citizenship were for the children of foreign diplomats, foreign troops on American soil or, for a time, Native Americans who lived on tribal reservations.

In 1924, Congress extended full citizenship to all Native Americans who were born in this country.

The Supreme Court had also confirmed the broad understanding of birthright citizenship in 1898. The justices upheld the U.S. citizenship of Wong Kim Ark who born in San Francisco to Chinese parents who later returned to China.

“The 14th Amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory,” the court said then. “In clear words and in manifest intent, [it] includes the children born, within the territory of the United States, of all other persons, of whatever race or color.”

Congress added birthright citizenship to the immigration laws in 1952.

But in his first day back in the White House, Trump signed an executive order to revise the citizenship laws.

“The privilege of United States citizenship is a priceless and profound gift,” he wrote, and in the future, it will not extend to newborns whose parents are in this country unlawfully or temporarily, such as on tourist, student or work visa, he said.

His proposal was quickly blocked by judges as unconstitutional, and it never went into effect.

In his appeal, Trump’s attorney argued that judges have been “misreading” the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction.”
He said this refers to “political allegiance.”

By that standard, the children of temporary visitors and unlawful immigrants are not citizens because they and their parents “not completely subject to the United States’ political jurisdiction,” according to the administration.

Trump could have proposed legislation on tariffs and birthright citizenship and urged the Republican-led Congress to adopt new laws. Instead, he chose to try to change the law and revise the Constitution by executive order.

Before the Supreme Court, Trump’s attorney pointed to the surge of illegal immigration in recent decades.

“We’re in a new world now,” he said, one that calls for new restrictions on citizenship.

“It’s a new world. It’s the same Constitution,” responded Roberts.

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court on Monday turned away Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz’s defamation suit against CNN, refusing to reconsider the high bar for press freedom set in the New York Times vs. Sullivan case.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch dissented.

The no-comment decision may signal the justices are not anxious to revisit another civil rights era landmark.

But the Dershowitz lawsuit may have been a less than ideal test case.

He sued CNN for $300 million, alleging its commentators distorted his arguments during President Trump’s first impeachment trial before the Senate.

He lost before a federal district judge and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. Judges said he had presented no evidence of “actual malice” or knowing falsehoods, citing the doctrine set in the landmark decision.

Dershowitz’s appeal urged the Supreme Court to reconsider and discard the “actual malice” rule or to limit its use against private citizens who are treated as public figures.

In 1964, a unanimous Supreme Court said the 1st Amendment’s protection for the freedom of speech and the press limited state libel verdicts.

An all-white Alabama jury had awarded a $500-million judgment to Montgomery city commissioner L.B. Sullivan over a fund-raising ad for the Rev. Martin Luther King that had appeared in the New York Times.

The ad did not mention Sullivan by name but he said he was defamed by the ad’s criticism of the police.

Reversing that verdict, the court’s opinion said the 1st Amendment was intended to protect debate and criticism of public officials.

With that goal in mind, the justices barred defamation suits over minor or honest mistakes and said plaintiffs must show the defendants displayed “actual malice” by making statements they knew were false or showed a “reckless disregard” for the truth.

The decision was later extended to include public figures like Dershowitz.

In 2020, he defended President Trump’s conduct and told senators it fell short of an impeachable offense.

The House had accused Trump of threatening to withhold military aid to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into investigating his political rival, Joe Biden, and his son Hunter.

In response to a question about an alleged quid pro quo, Dershowitz said a president can make deals that are in the public interest or his political interest, but not for a corrupt personal benefit.

“If a President does something which he believes will help get him elected — in the public interest — that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment,” he said.

That statement drew sharp and immediate criticism on CNN.

Commentator Paul Begala asserted the “the Dershowitz doctrine would make presidents immune from every criminal act.”

CNN aired the full video of Dershowitz’s testimony and invited him to appear twice in the next two days to clarify his comments.

Months later, he filed a lawsuit alleging defamation and said CNN had perpetrated “a deliberate scheme to defraud its own audience.”

His suit was dismissed by judges who said he did not have enough evidence to send the case to a trial.

“In his zealous and highly scrutinized representation, Dershowitz made a spontaneous series of remarks before Congress that, he says, were misinterpreted by pundits,” Judge Britt Grant, a Trump appointee wrote for the 11th Circuit Court.

“If anything, the evidence shows that they believed in the truth of their reporting, and that they formed their opinions independently. Without evidence of actual malice Dershowitz’s defamation claim cannot go forward,” she said.

TIJUANA, Mexico — Vivianne Petit Frere’s brightly painted Haitian restaurant sits blocks from the towering U.S. border wall in Tijuana.

Called Lakou Lakay, the name in Haitian creole means “home,” and it reflects her family’s deepening roots in their adopted homeland where her granddaughter was born two years ago, automatically making her a Mexican citizen.

Like the United States, Mexico extends citizenship to children born within its borders.

President Trump insists the U.S. is the only nation to do so as he seeks to deny birthright citizenship for children whose parents are living in the country illegally or have temporary legal status.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to weigh in soon on the constitutionality of his birthright citizenship order. Trump signed it on Jan. 20, 2025, the first day of his second term, amid his Republican administration’s broad immigration crackdown. The idea has faced skepticism from conservative and liberal justices alike.

In April, Trump posted on Truth Social: “We are the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow ‘Birthright’ Citizenship!”

In fact, about three dozen countries, mostly in the Americas, guarantee automatic citizenship to children born on their territory — among them, Canada, Honduras, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and of course, Mexico.

Petit Frere fled Haiti in 2019. She traveled from Brazil and walked through the Panamanian jungle to Mexico chasing the so-called American Dream with the intention of crossing the border and settling with relatives in Florida. But she soon learned that was an illusion, while Mexico opened its doors.

Her restaurant’s name symbolizes in her Haitian culture a shared space affording a sense of belonging. On the walls she has framed signs in Spanish, English and Creole that make clear it is more than an eatery offering tasty traditional Haitian dishes, such as fish with plantains, and rice and beans.

“Every dish tells a story, every detail connects cultures,” one sign says. “We aim to promote an authentic cultural exchange between two peoples with similar historical roots yet where Haitian identity proudly blossoms on Mexican soil.”

In just over five years in Tijuana, Petit Frere has established a thriving business, become fluent in Spanish and is getting a degree in social work.

And she welcomed the first generation Mexican in her family, her granddaughter, Alexca.

There are no figures on how many children born to noncitizens have received Mexican birthright citizenship. Tens of thousands of Haitians are living in Mexico. In 2021, when Mexico saw a significant increase in Haitian migration, at least 10 percent of arriving Haitian women were pregnant, according to the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration.

Citizenship and birth

In the U.S., birthright citizenship was enshrined after the Civil War through the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, in part to ensure former slaves would be citizens.

The right was expanded to immigrants’ children in the late 1800s when the Supreme Court ruled nearly anyone born in the U.S. — no matter their parents’ legal status — has citizenship.

The practice, many legal historians believe, dates to the 1600s and 1700s, with European rulers encouraging migration to the expanding American colonies. Those colonists, though, wanted any of their children born overseas to retain European citizenship.

So even as the colonial boundaries shifted “you’re a citizen as long as you’re born within the domain of the king, of the monarch,” said César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, a law professor at Ohio State University. “But the legal tie between the home country in Europe and the settlers remained strong through the promise of birthright citizenship.”

Dominican Republic removed birthright citizenship

In 2007, the Dominican Electoral Council officially ordered the denial of citizenship to all children born to parents without legal status.

Six years later, a Dominican court applied it retroactively to 1929.

Over a decade later, as many as 130,000 people remained stateless despite passage of a law in 2014 to correct the court decision after it drew strong international condemnation, according to the Center for Migration Studies of New York. The law now impacts the next generation, which remains vulnerable to deportation.

Her growing Mexican family

Petit Frere was born in French Saint Martin, a Caribbean island that does not offer automatic birthright citizenship. She and her mom, who is Haitian, were deported to Haiti when she was 6.

Petit Frere left Haiti seeking a better life. She was dismayed to discover when her teenage daughter left Haiti to be reunited with her in Tijuana three years later, she was nearly five months pregnant. She had been a teen mother herself and had hoped for a different path for her daughter.

But Alexca, a bubbly toddler who giggles and runs about, has conquered her grandmother’s heart. Petit Frere said she’s grateful her granddaughter was born in Mexico rather than Haiti, where surging gang violence has left more than 1 in 10 homeless.

A Mexican passport will make travel easier, she said. Few nations allow Haitian passport holders to visit visa-free.

“As a Mexican citizen, she will have more opportunities,” Petit Frere said.

That’s also true for her three nieces who were born in Brazil and were made automatic citizens there, she said.

Petit Frere said she and her daughter had permanent residency in Mexico before her granddaughter was born. But other parents in Tijuana’s Haitian community did not. Mexico allows the parents of children with birthright citizenship to become permanent residents.

“There are a lot of children in Tijuana who are 6, 7, 8 years old now who are Mexican and their parents who are Haitian did not have legal status but now have become permanent residents because their children were born here,” she said.

Petit Frere started paperwork for Mexican citizenship, which would make it easier to expand her business.

Petit Frere also is a community organizer with the Haitian Bridge Alliance, advocating for the Haitian migrant community. She said she hopes to pursue another degree in international migration, possibly through a U.S. university.

“The children of immigrants are proving to be the most outstanding in the world,” she said. Efforts to limit birthright citizenship “could just be out of jealousy,” she said.

Watson writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Tim Sullivan in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

NEW YORK — President Trump said he is nominating Lance Schroyer, a former Oklahoma state trooper, as the next director of Immigration and Customs and Enforcement.

On his social media platform Saturday, Trump described Schroyer, a former Marine, as “a proven leader” with “real operational experience.”

Schroyer hails from the same state as the new Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, a former congressman. Earlier this month, Mullin brought Schroyer on stage at a National Sheriffs’ Assn. event, calling him a “good friend of mine” and noting the department had recently hired him.

Mullin quickly praised Schroyer in a statement highlighting the former trooper’s 29-year career and his work with federal and state partners on a U.S. immigration enforcement program.

“President Trump made a great pick, and I’m confident Lance’s strong leadership and firsthand experience will empower the men and women of ICE to deport criminal illegal aliens, secure the homeland, and protect the American people,” Mullin said Saturday.

If confirmed, Schroyer will lead ICE at a time when the public mood has soured on Trump’s immigration crackdown, which sent surges of federal immigration officers into many U.S. cities. Those raids sent tensions soaring and prompted clashes between protesters and federal agents, including the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis this year.

Trump returned to the White House on a promise of mass deportations, and ICE has been a central executor of that vision. The agency is undergoing massive growth from a onetime injection of $75 billion last year, which has allowed for the hiring of 12,000 officers and increased detention capacity.

Mullin, who started in his role in March, has promised to keep his department out of the headlines and has indicated a softer tone on immigration, although he aligns with the president’s priorities on mass deportations.

Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former senior ICE official, said prior confirmed ICE directors have often been attorneys, though some state and local law enforcement officials have also been nominated. She said his background in Oklahoma suggests Mullin probably influenced the pick.

“I think probably given the attention on ICE, he wants to feel like he has somebody he can trust in there,” she said in an interview.

John Torres, another senior ICE official, said Schroyer faces an uphill climb toward Senate confirmation, but his experience being at the state and local level instead of the federal level might help.

“He won’t have any of that baggage, where they’re going to turn around and say, ‘Oh, well, he worked for this administration or that,’” Torres said.

Schroyer’s nomination comes after former ICE Director Todd Lyons resigned at the end of May. David Venturella, a former executive at a private prison operator, has been serving as the acting head of the agency. Venturella is expected to stay on as the acting director until Schroyer is confirmed, according to a Homeland Security official speaking on condition of anonymity.

ICE has not had a Senate-confirmed director since the Obama administration, a result of polarizing politics around the agency and immigration policy.

Swenson writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Elliot Spagat and Rebecca Santana contributed to this report.

The 250th anniversary of America’s liberation from a king kicked off with a campaign-style rally on the National Mall by President Trump, whose face already stares down from banners fluttering from federal buildings across the nation’s capital.

The images illustrate how the president has dominated daily life since returning to power, evoking more the style of a monarch than the leader of the world’s oldest democracy. But more than anything, it is how he has wielded that power that has led to comparisons of an imperial reign.

Since returning to office in January 2025, Trump has nominated one of his personal lawyers to serve as attorney general, ordered the Department of Justice to pursue his political enemies, deployed the U.S. Marines to the nation’s second largest city and leveraged the presidency to enrich himself and his family.

He has demanded that comedians who mock him be fired, has slapped his name on the Kennedy Center, has pushed to seize control of elections, has filed lawsuits against news organizations whose coverage he disliked and has sued his own government seeking $10 billion in taxpayer money.

Trump also is the only convicted felon to hold the presidency, and a separate felony indictment over his attempts to keep himself in power after losing the 2020 election was dismissed only after he was reelected four years later despite those facts.

With the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding approaching, Trump’s own celebrations have overshadowed the bipartisan, congressionally authorized commission that was supposed to coordinate events commemorating the moment. He plans to return to the National Mall on July Fourth for what he calls a “Trump rally.”

The president’s actions have led to comparisons with King George III, the British monarch whose rule inspired the American Revolution. It is a parallel Trump rejects.

“I’m not a king,” he told CBS’ “60 Minutes” earlier this year. “If I was a king, I wouldn’t be dealing with you.”

A different view of the presidency

There is a long American political traditional of opponents reviling presidents as kings. But Julian Zelizer, a Princeton University historian, said the label fits differently on Trump.

“It’s more about how he imagines who is he and what the presidency is,” Zelizer said. “We’re celebrating founding principles, and that was a driving issue — fears of how a centralized power can be corrupted. And here we are again.”

When King Charles III visited Trump this year, the official White House X account posted an image of the two men with the caption “Two Kings.” At the start of his second term, Trump declared he had ended a New York City transportation program and posted: “LONG LIVE THE KING.” The posts also seemed to indicate a willingness to leverage the label and the reaction it provokes in his critics.

The main resistance movement in Trump’s second term has adopted the slogan “No Kings.” Ezra Levin of the group Indivisible said activists were thinking ahead to 2026 and the America 250 celebration when they chose the label.

“It looks like the same kind of tyranny we were rebelling against 250 years ago, the type of domination of Americans by a secret police force that’s murdering people in the streets like in Minneapolis this year and in Boston in 1770,” Levin said, referring to demonstrations against the administration’s immigration crackdown that led to the fatal shootings of two protesters this year by federal officers.

When asked for comment, the White House referred to Trump’s statements about his use of executive power. The president has weighed in multiple times defending his maximalist approach.

During his first term, he referred to Article II of the Constitution when he told participants in a youth summit, “I have the right to do whatever I want as president,” while declaring that it “gives me all of these rights at a level nobody has ever seen before.” He told the New York Times in an interview this year that the only check on his global power was “my own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

Yet he also has said that portrayals of his approach as authoritarian were wrong: “I’m not a dictator,” he told reporters last year. In response to a question about whether he was concentrating power in the presidency, Trump told Time in an interview last year, “I don’t think so. I think I’m using it properly, and I’m also using it as per my election.”

Supreme Court has sided with him

With a deferential, Republican-controlled Congress, courts have become the last check on Trump. The president has harshly criticized judges who have ruled against him, and his administration has sometimes defied their orders.

Yet his quest to expand presidential power has been aided by the conservative majority — including three of his appointees — on the U.S. Supreme Court, which has sided with Trump numerous times after lower court rulings hampered him.

In the middle of his 2024 campaign, the high court ruled that presidents have broad immunity from prosecution. The decision derailed multiple investigations stemming from Trump’s first term, including the one focused on his attempts to overturn his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

Trump has argued the courts cannot constrain the president on key issues, including his claims that he has the ability to fire members of independent agencies. The most notorious example was in 2024, when a judge asked during the immunity case whether a president could be prosecuted for ordering the assassination of a political rival. Trump’s lawyer, D. John Sauer, answered with a “qualified yes.”

Sauer is now solicitor general, the administration official who oversees arguments before the high court. He has continued to insist that courts cannot review presidential acts.

“Once the president has made a determination … at that point, there’s no work for the reviewing court to do,” Sauer said during Supreme Court arguments in a case over whether Trump could fire Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve governor.

But the Supreme Court has allowed Cook to remain on the board while it considers the case. The majority also slapped down his global tariffs, finding that only Congress had the authority to impose them.

Such rulings demonstrate that presidential power does have its limits, according to John Yoo, a conservative law professor at UC Berkeley who served in the George W. Bush administration.

“The presidency today, even when colored by President Trump’s worst excesses, is not a monarchy,” he said.

Direct financial enrichment

Trump was the richest man to ever become president. During his first term, he was criticized for owning properties where foreign dignitaries and others hoping to curry his favor spent lavishly. The conflicts of interest have escalated in his second term.

Trump launched cryptocurrencies before and after returning to office. By conservative estimates, one has pulled in $320 million this year alone, while another sold $550 million worth of tokens. A third received a $2-billion investment from a foreign wealth fund.

Trump took a new step earlier this year, filing a private $10-billion lawsuit against the IRS for the leak of his tax returns during his first term. His Department of Justice directed the IRS to settle the litigation to create a $1.776-billion fund to pay damages to people who claimed the federal government unfairly prosecuted them.

The administration pulled back the settlement amid an outcry from congressional Democrats and some Republicans. But Todd Blanche, a former personal lawyer for Trump who is now acting attorney general, said at least one provision remains — a ban on the IRS auditing Trump.

Zelizer said Trump’s financial entanglements might be the most monarchical part of his administration.

“We have not seen a person who has a business operation of this scale and scope benefiting directly from the decisions he makes,” Zelizer said.

Targeting political rivals

The Justice Department’s role in the IRS lawsuit is one example of how Trump has decreed that executive branch employees should act as agents of his will.

In breaching what is supposed to be a firewall between the White House and Justice Department, Trump has demanded that federal prosecutors target his foes. In one social media post last year, he called out by name Pam Bondi, who was attorney general at the time, in pushing her to prosecute several of his political opponents: “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” Trump wrote.

Indictments followed shortly after, including against former FBI Director James B. Comey and New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James. The charges against both eventually were dismissed, but the department under Blanche filed new charges against Comey.

The pursuit is not limited to Trump enemies of the past.

For his 80th birthday this month, the president hosted a fight held by UFC — a company he invested in — on the White House lawn. The event was broadcast on a network owned by the son of one of the president’s major donors. The spectacle drew a rebuke from California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a persistent critic and potential 2028 Democratic presidential contender.

“The White House was built to serve the American people. Tonight it was used to promote a company the President owns stock in, sell subscriptions, promote corporate sponsors, push Trump crypto, and enrich the President and his family,” Newsom wrote on X. “The founders warned us about kings enriching themselves from public office.”

Days later, Newsom disclosed that Trump’s Department of Justice was investigating him and his wife.

Riccardi writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Lindsay Whitehurst and Fatima Hussein contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — A spectacular economic upturn is on its way, President Trump promised Americans last week, galvanized in part by a deal brokered this month to end his war with Iran.

“Very soon you’ll be at $2.50 a gallon for gasoline,” Trump told a crowd Wednesday night on the National Mall. The next year, he said, “is set for an economic boom the likes of which no nation has ever seen before.”

Economists are skeptical. The effects of the war and other factors driving inflation are likely to stick around for months, experts say, presenting an ongoing challenge to American households — and to Trump’s party as it seeks to retain control of Congress in November’s midterm elections.

Yesenia De La Torre, 24, from Culver City pumps gas at the Chevron gas station on Sawtelle Boulevard and Culver Boulevard on June 15. Despite an agreement announced Sunday to end the Iran war and open the Strait of Hormuz, high oil, gasoline prices and energy supply problems won’t be solved overnight.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

The war’s end will not create “a complete snap-back,” said Patrick Harker, professor at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School and former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

“Markets are still cautious, and the infrastructure that’s been destroyed [in the Middle East] is going to take a while to re-create,” Harker said. “Inflation’s going to stay elevated for a while.”

Oil prices were dropping last week — falling to their prewar level Friday — and average gas prices fell by 7 cents per gallon over a week ago. But it will take significant time for oil shipping to ramp up through the Strait of Hormuz, infrastructure to be rebuilt and gas prices to drop, said Michael Negron, senior fellow for economic opportunity at the Center for American Progress.

“I would expect there to be a continued inching downward,” Negron said, but “we’re not going to just go back within weeks to $2.90 per gallon.”

That means the prices of gas and of other essentials aren’t likely to improve dramatically before the midterms, in which affordability has become a driving issue. It could heighten challenges for Republicans, who are defending their majorities in the U.S. House and Senate, as Democrats seek to leverage the issue to gain ground.

Positive messaging about the economy from Trump and other officials “doesn’t really resonate” with Americans who are struggling to make ends meet, said Gina Plata-Nino of the Food Research and Action Center, a national anti-hunger advocacy organization.

“When you’re still making the same amount of money but there’s less for you to be able to pay [for] your basic needs — gas is more expensive, food is more expensive — it doesn’t really add up,” she said.

A fruit stand on West 7th Street sells bananas for $2 per bunch.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

Americans question the costs

The Iran war has cost the average American household between $775 and $1,300 so far in fuel and taxpayer costs, according to an analysis by Roger Pielke, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

The national average gas price sat at $3.90 on Friday, according to AAA, and California’s average was $5.48 per gallon, down 13 cents from a week earlier.

The increase in oil prices has also affected diesel and fertilizer prices, creating a ripple effect through several sectors, including agriculture. Consumer prices rose 4.1% in May from a year earlier, putting the inflation gauge at a three-year high.

Trump has leaned on a bullish message about the economy, but he has largely dismissed Americans’ worries about affordability, calling it a “fake word” and a “hoax.” Last week, he undermined the first major progress by Congress on the issue, refusing to sign a bipartisan housing affordability bill after both chambers passed it.

President Donald Trump closes his eyes as Dr. Ben Carson, left, speaks during an event with the White House Religious Liberty Commission in the Oval Office on Friday.

(Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)

Meanwhile, the president’s approval rating on the economy dropped to 33% last week in an NPR/PBS News/Marist Poll — his lowest ever for that poll and 3 points below former President Biden’s worst reading on the question during his term.

Nearly four-fifths of respondents said that gas prices present some sort of strain, with 34% categorizing it as a major strain and 44% calling it a minor strain. Half of respondents who said they were not vacationing this summer said cost was the reason.

And only 23% of Americans say the war was worth the costs, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted days after the Trump administration announced the framework agreement to end the conflict earlier this month.

“People [are] just feeling like they’re getting left behind,” Harker said. “That’s a very real, palpable feeling when you go out and talk to people. They’re worried.”

The president and his party need a midterms message that “real economic change” is coming, said Brian Reisinger, a rural policy analyst in Wisconsin and a former GOP strategist.

“It has to be substance behind the sell,” Reisinger said.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) speaks to reporters after the weekly Senate policy luncheons at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday in Washington, D.C. Thune spoke on a meeting with President Trump on the Iran deal.

(Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images)

U.S.-Iran talks on shaky ground

Trump’s boosters have hailed the Iran deal as a victory for the president. And Trump has justified the shock to gas prices as “worth it not to have a nuclear weapon” in Iran, though the war has not achieved the president’s stated aims, which included the elimination of its nuclear program.

“President Trump was clear all along that there would be short-term, temporary disruptions to energy markets, and that oil and gas prices will quickly fall as soon as the Iran situation is resolved,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said Friday.

How rapidly the conflict will be resolved is not yet clear. The U.S.-Iran negotiations were on shaky ground by week’s end, with each country offering diametrically opposed messaging on the status of key points of negotiation.

Analysts say much of the increase in traffic through the strait has been driven by the return of Iranian oil to global markets. Trump agreed in the controversial deal with Iran to lift sanctions on Iranian oil, allowing Tehran to resume trading its most valuable export and breaking with decades of U.S. policy.

The unpredictability of the talks is another factor keeping energy companies, shippers and insurers cautious for now, Negron said.

“Everything is to be negotiated in the next nearly two months,” he said. “It is natural to expect there to be additional risk priced into each barrel of oil, into the insurance people are paying, just because of the volatility and uncertainty of where we are.”

OCHOPEE, Fla. — The immigration detention center in the Florida swamps known as “Alligator Alcatraz” is closing after nearly a year, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Thursday.

DeSantis said the center was always supposed to be temporary and now federal officials have enough ability to handle detention and deportation in more permanent facilities.

“It served its purpose for the time,” the Republican governor said.

Officials announced a temporary closure of the facility earlier in June, saying hurricane season made it unsafe to keep the detainees in the Florida Everglades. All the of people kept at the isolated airstrip had been sent to other facilities.

Immigration advocates said the tents were never humane or safe to hold people. Detainees at the facility have talked about their difficulty accessing lawyers and have described poor physical conditions, including worms in the food, toilets that don’t flush, flooding floors with fecal waste, and mosquitoes and other insects everywhere.

The detention center was built by DeSantis’ administration in a matter of days in 2025, and President Trump came to visit site.

DeSantis and Trump said the detention center was critical to Republican efforts to return people in the country illegally back to their home countries. The Republican governor said 21,000 people were deported through the facility.

Collins writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans who were berated by President Trump over opposition to his war in Iran held a late-night vote Wednesday to try to appease him, rejecting a war powers resolution a day after a similar measure passed.

Trump harangued GOP senators face to face earlier in the day for allowing a vote to block his war in Iran on Tuesday, further escalating a feud that has diverted GOP efforts to focus on election-year affordability issues and brought much of the chamber’s business to a halt. He exchanged particularly harsh words with Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, one of four Republicans who had voted with Democrats on the measure.

Hours later, though, Cassidy was invited to receive a personal briefing on the war at the White House from Vice President JD Vance and envoy Steve Witkoff. Cassidy then returned to the Capitol to vote against a separate but nearly identical war powers resolution.

“I want to thank Vice President Vance and Special Envoy Witkoff for the thorough briefing this afternoon on Iran. I appreciate the quick invitation to the White House to address many of my concerns,” said Cassidy, who lost reelection last month after Trump endorsed his opponent, in a post on X.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican who has repeatedly voted with Democrats to halt the war, voted present this time “to give the President more space and leverage to negotiate a lasting peace,” he said on X. The measure failed 47-50-1 just before midnight on Wednesday, and the Senate then left town for a two-week recess.

It’s unclear whether the move will be enough to appease Trump, who had called the Republicans “losers” for voting against his war and had called Cassidy a “lunatic” at the lunch after their tense exchange. But the vote was a clear signal to the president from Republican senators who still want to placate him, despite increasing tensions in recent weeks and his decision Wednesday morning to reverse himself and delay signing a housing bill that received overwhelming bipartisan support.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and a small group of his Senate GOP colleagues called Trump after the vote. Thune told reporters that the president was “pleased with the outcome.”

Trump later thanked Thune in a social media post and noted that Cassidy and Paul had switched their votes. “This vote puts Iran on notice!” he wrote.

The war powers measure blocked by the Senate on Wednesday was on a separate track from the nearly identical resolution adopted on Tuesday, which had also been passed by the House. Both votes were largely symbolic, and the measures do not carry the full force of law.

Cassidy had sharp words for Trump

Invited by Florida Sen. Rick Scott to speak at a GOP luncheon in the Capitol, Trump had signaled ahead of time that he would use the closed-door meeting to push senators to pass his proof-of-citizenship voting bill. But the conversation was more focused on Tuesday’s vote on war powers.

Most Republicans stayed quiet. But Cassidy stood up and defended his vote.

“I stood and said, ‘You have not told the American people what’s going on,’” Cassidy told reporters after the meeting. “This was supposed to last four weeks, it’s lasted four months. Our original objectives have not been achieved.”

The two men “went back and forth,” Cassidy said, and he “matched his tone and volume.” Cassidy said that he eventually de-escalated, but he did not want to be bullied.

“I am voting for war powers until I get a briefing,” he said afterward.

Trump repeatedly told Cassidy to sit down, according to a person familiar with the private meeting who was not authorized to discuss it. At one point, the president called the senator a “lunatic.”

Publicly, Trump said afterward that they had “a really great meeting.” But he hinted at the discord.

“We like everyone in the room,” Trump told reporters on his way out. “I don’t like a few people, but that’s OK.”

The luncheon capped weeks of friction between Trump and Senate Republicans and added a new layer of frustration as Tuesday’s vote was the first time the Senate had adopted a war powers resolution on the Iran war. Trump made clear he was in no mood to compromise before it even started, calling off a scheduled signing ceremony on a housing bill that passed both chambers overwhelmingly this week and that GOP lawmakers were touting as an election-year achievement.

Trump reverses on housing bill

Republican senators were eager for a conciliatory meeting with the president after escalating tensions in recent weeks. But Trump upended their plans when he declared on social media just beforehand that he wouldn’t sign the legislation until they send him the SAVE America Act, his bill to require proof of citizenship for all voters.

North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis said he doesn’t know why Trump is holding the housing bill “hostage” for the voting bill that “will never pass in this Congress.”

“It makes no sense to me,” Tillis said as he walked into the luncheon.

Thune said the housing legislation, which aims to lower costs, is “an affordability issue,” and that ”eventually I hope he finds a way to sign it.”

It’s unclear if Trump might veto the legislation or if the late Wednesday night vote will change his outlook. But by rejecting a public bill signing, Republicans worry that Trump is indicating a level of indifference to voters’ affordability concerns heading into November’s midterm elections.

Trump and Senate Republicans have been at odds

Trump’s move on the housing bill is his latest reversal after weeks of being at odds with Senate Republicans.

Trump has blocked the Senate from confirming one of his own nominees, asked them to fund parts of his White House ballroom project despite opposition and forced them to defend the Iran war even as they question the strategy and endgame.

Trump has also helped whittle down his own support in the Senate after endorsing primary challengers to two GOP incumbents who were previously reliable votes for his agenda — Cassidy and Texas Sen. John Cornyn. Both men have become more critical of Trump since losing reelection.

“If we’re going to win the midterm elections, we need to get on the same page,” Cornyn said ahead of the meeting. “We’re not on the same page now, and that I think is dangerous.”

Trump pushes Thune on SAVE America Act

Trump has pressed Republicans for months to kill the Senate filibuster and focus on the proof-of-citizenship voting bill, even though Thune has repeatedly told him that neither has the votes.

While Thune remains popular in his conference and cordial with the president, he has spent much of his time lately telling Trump what he doesn’t want to hear. Thune said Tuesday that while Trump and some in their conference want to see the voting bill pass, “it’s just not realistic.”

Thune devoted weeks of floor time to the voting bill earlier this year and has said he supports it. But he has repeatedly said there aren’t enough votes to scrap the filibuster that triggers a 60-vote threshold to pass most bills in the 53-47 Senate. And Democrats are uniformly opposed to the bill.

“I think people at some point have to come to grips with that,” Thune said.

Jalonick, Sloan, Cappelletti and Mascaro write for the Associated Press. AP writers Josh Boak and Kevin Freking contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The Senate for the first time approved a war powers resolution Tuesday seeking to block U.S. military action against Iran, as lawmakers warily watch President Trump’s efforts to resolve a conflict that the administration launched on its own and now needs Congress to fund.

It was the 10th time the Senate has tried to stop the war, and the outcome, on a vote of 50 to 48, was a stunning turnaround from past efforts. While the resolution is largely symbolic, and does not fully carry the force of law, it reflects the growing concerns from a number of Republican lawmakers in both the House and Senate over both the war and the deal Trump struck with Iran to end it. The House approved the resolution earlier this month.

“Time after time, the vast majority of Senate Republicans sided with Trump and his war instead of the American people,” said Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York.

Schumer said Americans have paid the price for “Trump’s historic blunder in Iran. It’ll go down in the history books as one of the worst foreign policy forays America has ever made.”

In the past, as many as four GOP senators have voted for the war powers resolutions, and they did so Tuesday — Republicans Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. One Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, voted against the resolution.

On this vote, the absence of two Republicans, including Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who was admitted to the hospital recently for an undisclosed matter, left the GOP without a full majority to halt the effort. Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.) also missed the vote.

The vote also comes as the Pentagon is seeking $80 billion from Congress, mostly for the Iran war as it backfills munitions and stockpiles.

Trump to meet senators as Republicans balk at Iran deal

Trump himself is headed to the Capitol this week to meet with GOP senators as Vice President JD Vance has been overseas working to negotiate with Iran to end its nuclear ambitions — which had been among the stated rationales for the war.

The president is not pleased with the Republicans who have been critical of the deal he struck with Iran, according to one GOP senator granted anonymity to discuss the private dynamics.

The terms of the Iran deal are spelled out in a memorandum of understanding that Trump signed last week, starting a 60-day clock for the sides to reach a broader agreement over ending Iran’s nuclear program.

But Republicans have particularly objected to the $300-billion fund to help Iran rebuild, which is far greater than the $1.7 billion then-President Obama refunded the country under his administration’s 2015 Iran deal.

“I believe President Trump is getting very poor advice on Iran,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said last week on his podcast after the deal was made public.

Democrats have repeatedly forced Iran votes

Over and again, Democrats have been forcing votes on the Iran war, almost since the U.S. and Israel launched missile strikes on Iran on Feb. 28.

Nearly each week they’re in session, the Senate Democrats have put forward war powers resolutions, but they have failed to amass the majority needed for passage in the narrowly split chamber, where Trump’s Republican Party holds the majority.

The House pushed its own version to passage earlier this month, with four Republicans joining all Democrats in approving the war powers resolution, over the objections of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and the GOP leadership.

While such resolutions do not go to the president for his signature, passage stands as a powerful, if symbolic, statement from Congress and a rebuke of the administration’s military actions.

Sen. Tim Kaine, the Democrat from Virginia who has led his party’s efforts, said the pause in warfighting, as Trump’s team works to shore up a fragile ceasefire, provides the perfect time for Congress to step back and assess “what should the next chapter be.”

Hegseth seeks $80 billion from Congress for the Iran war

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is also on Capitol Hill this week, seeking roughly $80 billion in supplemental funding to shore up defense supplies in the aftermath of the Iran war, which is drawing scrutiny when many Americans are reeling from high gas prices and costs of living.

The Pentagon early on had estimated the war cost $11.3 billion during its first week, and experts have put the overall price tag at close to $100 billion.

The Defense Department’s funding request is part of a broader beef-up of military money the White House wants as part of its budget request this year.

The Trump administration is seeking $1.5 trillion in defense funding this year — a 50% increase — including $350 billion that it wants in a so-called budget reconciliation package. Johnson and GOP leaders are working to pass that package on their own, over the objections of Democrats, much the way they approved Trump’s big tax cuts bill last year.

The 2025 tax cuts package also included a sizable increase of about $175 billion for the military.

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press.

MACUNGIE, Pa. — President Trump visited a Mack Trucks facility in battleground Pennsylvania on Tuesday, attempting to shift attention to the U.S. economy in his first major public event outside the nation’s capital since he signed an interim agreement to end the Iran war.

The trip to Macungie, in the Allentown suburbs, came as Trump works to put the conflict — and the higher gasoline prices it caused — in the rearview mirror as the November midterm elections draw closer.

Trump had a private tour of the facility, but his speech often felt more like a reelection rally from two years ago than an effort to promote his second-term accomplishments.

The president listed longstanding political grievances, and made only passing mentions of promoting Republicans ahead of Election Day — while spending more time bragging about the UFC fight he staged on the White House lawn in honor of his own 80th birthday than he did the economy.

At one point, Trump even called UFC fighters Bo Nickal and Anthony Cassar to the stage and mused about whether he could beat either one of them in a wrestling match if he were to “work out for the next couple of months.”

It was Trump’s fifth second-term visit to Pennsylvania, a state whose support in 2016 and 2024 helped him to win the White House. The truck factory is in a district where incumbent Republican Rep. Ryan Mackenzie faces Democratic challenger Bob Brooks in November.

“For more than 100 years, this legendary company has been making trucks right here in eastern Pennsylvania,” Trump said, “building the heavy duty machinery that keeps our economy rolling, our factories moving, and our industries roaring all across the nation.”

His visit coincided with rising prices that could color the verdict voters render on Trump’s stewardship in the fall. About one-third of U.S. adults approved of Trump’s approach to the economy, according to a June Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll. That’s in line with last month for Trump on the issue.

The Iran war, which began Feb. 28, has also been a politically difficult issue for the president. Most Americans continued to disapprove of his handling of Iran, according to the June AP-NORC poll, which was being fielded as Trump announced a tentative deal with Iran and concluded just before the interim agreement was signed last week. It found that 65% of U.S. adults disapprove of how the president is handling issues with Iran, unchanged from May.

Still, while most Democrats and independents view Trump’s actions negatively, only about 3 in 10 Republicans are unhappy.

This is the kind of district that matters in November elections

Trump addressed a cheering crowd from a stage erected on the factory floor, flanked by two red, white and blue trucks and rows of workers in fluorescent safety vests under a large “American Workers First” banner.

It’s the kind of district that may prove pivotal to Republicans holding narrow control of the House, where a loss could hobble the president’s final two years in office.

Mackenzie, a freshman lawmaker, is looking to hold on to a district Democrats have targeted to flip. Brooks, president of the state firefighters’ union, has support from Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, who’s also seeking reelection this year.

Trump urged the crowd to support Mackenzie, saying of his trip, “I’m not doing this for my health.” But he devoted more energy to issues such as the U.S.-Mexico border, opposing transgender rights and decrying “Marxist” judges, while also referencing his administration’s efforts to lower prescription drug prices.

“We gotta win the midterms,” Trump said, in one of the few references he made to the midterms. Later, however, he suggested it wasn’t actually a “political season,” perhaps because he himself won’t be on the ballot in November.

On Iran, Trump suggested that the country would be smart and keep negotiating during the ceasefire. “Otherwise we’ll have to finish the job, which will take about, maybe less than a week,” he said.

An odd moment came when the president offered, “The ideology of the Muslims is slightly different than the ideology of the Catholics. We have the Catholics and the Muslims slightly different.” He didn’t elaborate.

Biden came to the same plant previously

Trump’s predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, visited the same Mack Trucks facility in 2021 to highlight regulations aimed at promoting manufacturing jobs. Manufacturing employment peaked in 1979 at nearly 19.6 million jobs. It trended downward after the 2001 recession and the 2007-9 Great Recession. The figure now stands at 12.6 million as of May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In 2025, the truck facility got hit by market uncertainty, including sweeping tariffs that Trump’s administration imposed, and about 170 people were laid off, according to Mack spokesperson Kimberly Pupillo. She added that by the end of last year, almost 150 people were recalled to work and anyone laid off last year was given the chance to return.

There are about 2,800 workers at Mack, Pupillo said.

At a pizzeria down the road from the truck facility, workers and diners said they’d heard about the president’s visit and recalled Biden’s trip to the plant.

George Carver, a retired elementary school principal, said he wasn’t a fan of Trump’s. “I’m looking for a president who’ll clean up this mess,” he said, meaning improve the economy and better handle the war in Iran and immigration.

“I’m looking for someone who’s gonna tell the truth — that could be a Democrat or Republican,” Carver said.

Trump’s visit underscores Pennsylvania’s status as a crucial swing state.

Trump made a trip to Mount Pocono in December 2025 to road test messages that he’s addressing affordability; in July 2025, he was in Pittsburgh to tout tens of billions of dollars of recent energy and technology investments in the state; in June 2025, he was in West Mifflin to tell steelworkers he was doubling the tariff on steel imports to protect the industry; and in March 2025, he attended the NCAA wrestling championship in Philadelphia.

Denise Green, a retired software trainer, was among a handful of people protesting the visit outside a McDonald’s across the street from the plant.

Green said she was a former Republican who became a Democrat in 2007 because her original party backed policies where “all the money” was going to the rich.

Green said her key issue was Social Security funding, which she said she’ll need but is worried could run out.

“It’s outrageous,” she said.

Catalini and Kim write for the Associated Press.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday allowed the Trump administration to resume carrying out speedy deportations of undocumented migrants throughout the United States, not just near the border.

A divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out a lower court ruling that temporarily blocked President Trump’s expanded use of expedited removal. The ruling was a big victory for the Republican administration, which views the expansion of so-called expedited removal as a key tool for carrying out its mass deportation policy.

An attorney for the plaintiffs said the ruling “undermines the fundamental principle that people receive due process when the government seeks to deport them.”

“The Trump administration’s push for fast-track deportations will subject people to an unfair and error-prone system,” Anand Balakrishnan, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement.

Trump appointed the two judges in the majority in Tuesday’s decision. The third was appointed by President Obama, a Democrat.

The plaintiffs had not “shown that the expedited-removal process denies its members notice and an opportunity to be heard,” Judge Justin R. Walker, one of the Trump appointees, wrote.

Expedited removal — quick deportation without a chance to appear before a judge — has previously been applied to migrants arriving by sea or caught at or near the border shortly after crossing.

In January, Trump expanded its use to undocumented migrants all over the U.S. Immigration agents began whisking migrants away from courthouses where they had gone for immigration proceedings and then removing them from the country within days.

U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb ruled in August that plaintiffs challenging the expansion had made a “strong showing” that it was trampling on people’s due-process rights, and she issued a stay order putting the policy on hold. Cobb was appointed to the federal bench by President Biden, a Democrat.

Many migrants living deep in the U.S. have been in the country for more than two years, making them ineligible for expedited removal under federal law. Cobb said the administration had not developed procedures to ensure they and other groups of migrants were not wrongly deported under the expedited process.

The plaintiffs had put forward “substantial evidence” that the expedited removal process, on the contrary, carried a high risk of error when applied more broadly, Cobb said. The ruling cited examples of people who had lived in the U.S. for far longer than two years but were still ordered to be removed in expedited proceedings.

The Trump administration appealed, arguing in a court filing that its expansion was legal, and protections were in place to prevent arbitrary removal.

Cobb’s ruling was an “egregious error” that was depriving the administration of an “essential tool to combat the unprecedented surge of illegal immigration over the past few years” and efficiently deport potentially millions of people, Justice Department attorneys argued in the October filing.

Thanawala writes for the Associated Press.

The Walt Disney Co. is rallying public support for ABC as it faces an early Federal Communications Commission review of its TV station licenses and the guest booking policy of its daytime talk show “The View.”

ABC began running spots Monday asking viewers to comment on the FCC’s recent actions that Disney sees as an effort to stifle speech seen as critical of President Trump. The president has repeatedly threatened to pull broadcast licenses of TV outlets that feature journalists and hosts he dislikes.

In April, the FCC called for an early review of the licenses for Disney’s eight broadcast TV stations, a day after Trump demanded that ABC fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over a joke about First Lady Melania Trump. Carr has repeatedly threatened to use the levers of power he has to punish TV and radio stations that irritate Trump.

The licenses for the TV stations, including KABC in Los Angeles, were originally scheduled for renewal between 2028 and 2031. Calling for an early review is highly unusual, but the agency said its related to an inquiry into Disney’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies and whether they violated federal anti-discrimination rules.

The FCC has not declined to renew a TV license since the early 1980s. With court challenges, such a process can take years to enact.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has also taken aim at ABC’s daytime talk show, “The View.” He publicly questioned whether the program should have the status of news programs, which are exempt from having to give equal time to the opponents of political candidates who appear as guests.

“The View” was granted an exemption from the rarely enforced rule in 2002. ABC’s Houston station KTRK filed a petition with the FCC in May asking for a declaration that the program can maintain that status.

“The Commission’s actions threaten to upend decades of settled law and practice and chill critical protected speech, both with respect to The View and more broadly,” KTRK-TV said in the filing.

ABC has maintained that “The View” books politicians based on newsworthiness and not partisanship. The program featured Vice President JD Vance last week, where he received a cordial welcome.

ABC’s message asking consumers to support “The View” amid an FCC investigation.

(ABC)

ABC is airing spots which warn viewers that the FCC wants to control what viewers see on “The View.” The message opens with the voice of legendary broadcaster Barbara Walters giving her introduction to the program she founded — “I had this idea for a show — different women, with different points of view.”

Walters is followed by an announcer who says, “‘The View’ has welcomed your favorite guests and cover the issues you care about for nearly 30 years. Now the FCC wants to control who is allowed to appear on the show.”

The spot says “the FCC is questioning our support to the community.” A QR code shows up on the screen that takes viewers directly to the FCC’s electronic comment filing system where they can submit their comments, which is regularly part of the agency’s review process.

Disney is also airing spots calling for support of its local TV stations, including L.A.’s KABC. The spots are customized for each ABC station market, emphasizing their commitment to local news coverage.

Disney did not comment on the campaign. But an executive not authorized to speak publicly about it said “ABC believes it is important for the public to know what is happening, what’s at stake, and how to engage directly in the process if they want to make their voices heard.”

Disney’s aggressive defense of its stations and “The View” are a stark contrast to its decision to settle a lawsuit filed by Trump over inaccurate statements ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos made about a sexual assault civil suit the president lost in court.

ABC agreed to pay Trump $15 million in Dec. 2024 to end the legal fight — sparking an outcry among free speech advocates, who believed the network would have won the case.

ABC also caved In September, when Kimmel’s program was briefly pulled from the air after two major TV station groups refused to air it following the host’s comments about the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

Disney received major blowback from the Hollywood community, where Kimmel is extremely popular. Data also showed the company experienced cancellations of its Hulu and Disney+ streaming services in protest of the move.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Monday denied a request to disqualify top Justice Department officials from supervising the prosecution of the man charged with trying to kill President Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

Cole Tomas Allen had argued that involvement in his prosecution by Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche and District of Columbia U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro created a potential conflict of interest because they were among many administration officials present at the April dinner. Allen’s attorney also had raised concerns about the close friendship between Trump and Pirro, a former Fox News commentator.

U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden wrote in his ruling that neither their attendance at the dinner nor Pirro’s personal relationship with the president merited their disqualification. McFadden noted that Allen is not charged with attempting to harm Blanche and Pirro, and there is no evidence to suggest he even knew they would attend the dinner.

“They are unlikely to be trial witnesses, nor do they meet the legal definition of victims,” wrote McFadden, who was nominated to the bench by Trump.

Allen has been accused of trying to breach a security checkpoint armed with guns and knives. He has pleaded not guilty to various charges, including assaulting a federal official with a deadly weapon and attempted assassination of the president. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted of the attempted assassination charge alone.

Allen also is accused of firing a shotgun at a Secret Service agent during the attack, which disrupted and ultimately prompted an early end to one of the highest-profile annual events in the nation’s capital. The Secret Service officer who was shot once in a bullet-resistant vest fired his own weapon five times without hitting anyone. Allen, of Torrance, California, was injured but was not shot.

Richer writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The question hangs in the halls at the Capitol: Was it worth it?

Congress, which never authorized the war against Iran yet never fully objected to it, now must grapple with the consequences of President Trump’s nearly four-month conflict: the lives lost, the billions spent and the national security fallout that has reordered the political dynamics in the Middle East.

Ask senators what they think about the deal Trump struck to end the war, and they do not search too far for words.

“Pathetic. Failure. Inevitable conclusion of a combination of never making the case to the American people, flawed strategic vision, lack of grasp of the regional dynamics,” said Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“How many ways, can I say, bad, bad, bad?”

Many Republicans too have been critical. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said it’s hard to see what leverage the U.S. gained to force Iran to a better negotiation.

“You want to be able to give the benefit of the doubt,” she said. But, she said, “I think we’re in a place where there is a deal that has been signed, but it doesn’t appear to me that it puts us in that much of a different position than prior to the beginning of the war.”

Others in the GOP remain supportive of Trump’s efforts. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, a past chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said that because of the president’s actions, “We are safer today.”

“You can criticize — oh, he didn’t totally win,” Johnson said. “Well, that was always going to be very difficult.”

As Trump moves on to the next phase, it is left to the Congress to pick up the pieces: explaining the war to voters back home, restocking the military arsenal that has run low from bombing runs and trying to ensure the fragile ceasefire holds as the United States seeks to halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions and work toward an uneasy peace.

More money for the Pentagon

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made the rounds on Capitol Hill last week as lawmakers consider Pentagon funding as part of the Republican majority’s next big budget package.

The White House has asked for a remarkable $1.5 trillion for the Defense Department this year, on top of the extra money the GOP delivered as part of the Trump’s tax cuts package last year.

Republicans are considering a sizable, $350-billion-plus increase in Defense spending on par with the White House’s budget request that the GOP could pass on its own, through the reconciliation process that allows Senate majority rule over potential objections from Democrats.

Senators, meanwhile, are seeking to set some guardrails on Hegseth with a provision to block a portion of his travel fund until the Pentagon delivers various reports. One such report is on an investigation into the strike on an elementary school in Iran that killed more than 165 people on the first day of the war, most of them children.

Officials have acknowledged that they believe the U.S. was responsible for the strike and say it was based on faulty intelligence.

What’s next in Iran?

Lawmakers are still processing what just happened after Trump swiftly signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran and opened a window of 60-day talks toward ending Tehran’s nuclear program, which got underway Sunday in Switzerland.

“I understand the president’s trying to find a peaceful solution to this,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who serves on the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence committees. “I commend him for that. But we’ve got a lot of questions.”

Senators are particularly concerned about the tentative deal’s provision for a potential $300-billion fund for the “reconstruction and economic development” of Iran.

To many skeptical Republicans, that money sounds similar to the “planeloads of cash” narrative they used against the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal, which offered a slim fraction of that amount, some $1.7 billion overall. To this day, Trump tells an exaggerated story of how that payment to Iran, for U.S. military equipment it never received, was made.

“The only concerns I have are the money and the conditions,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.).

“If we send a trainload, a shipload, it’s gonna age as well as that,” he said, referring to the Obama-era issue.

What was gained and lost

Over and again Congress tried and failed to exert its authority under the war powers act to halt the U.S. military action in Iran.

The House ultimately passed a war powers resolution that sought to force an end to the war after a small number of Republicans joined the Democratic measure last month. The Senate has voted nine times, including last week, but failed to reach the majority needed.

At the same time, Congress did not affirmatively authorize the war with a use-of-force resolution, as has been done in certain other conflicts, including the Iraq war.

“I’m glad that the conflict has finally ended and hope the ceasefire holds,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement.

But she said the country must be clear-eyed about what has come about. Not one of the president’s objectives has been achieved, she said, and Iran won significant concessions.

“The American people are paying the price with higher costs in every aspect of life and tens of billions in tax dollars spent,” she said.

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

CHICAGO — A spate of shootings in Chicago has led to seven deaths and at least 38 injuries since Friday evening, police say, prompting President Trump to renew his call for a military intervention in the nation’s third-largest city.

It is the latest in a series of threats made and interventions ordered by the Republican president against a Democratic-led city, including Los Angeles.

“Why isn’t Governor Pritzker calling me for help. I could make Chicago a safe City in ONE MONTH, in ONE YEAR, it would be one of the safest!!!” Trump said in a Sunday morning post on social media.

The office of Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a potential 2028 Democratic presidential contender who has repeatedly rebuffed Trump’s calls for a military intervention, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Under Trump, National Guard troops have been deployed on crime-fighting missions in Democratic-led cities including New Orleans, Washington and Memphis, Tenn.; and Marines and Guardsmen were sent to L.A. last year amid protests over federal immigration raids.

Although Chicago Police Department data show a slight increase in shooting incidents compared with the first half of last year, violent crime rates have generally dropped in the city over the last few years, in parallel with national trends.

Preliminary information shared by Chicago police indicate there have been at least two dozen shooting incidents since 5 p.m. Friday. Those killed by gunfire include a 21-year-old shot in the chest Sunday, an 18-year-old shot in the armpit Saturday evening and a 50-year-old shot in the chest Friday.

At least 12 people in a crowd on a Chicago street suffered gunshot wounds Friday evening after an SUV pulled up and two people inside started shooting, police said.

The eight men and four women in the group ranged in age from 17 to 47. They were being treated at four hospitals. Police said another man suffered unknown injuries and refused medical treatment.

That shooting happened on Juneteenth, a holiday that celebrates the end of slavery in the U.S. Earlier Friday, former President Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama welcomed the first visitors to his presidential center on the South Side.

“What should have been a night of celebration and community reflection for Juneteenth was shattered by a horrific act of violence,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said in an X post Saturday. “My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their loved ones.”

“Violence has no place in our city, and those responsible will be held accountable,” he said.

The U.S. Department of Justice — make that the U.S. Department of “Justice” — is sniffing around Gavin Newsom and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom.

This is widely seen as a throw-me-in-the-briar-patch gift from President Trump, coming as California’s governor edges ever closer toward a 2028 run for the White House. The presumed effort to cut down a political foe could instead boost Newsom’s chances of winning the Democratic nomination, or so it’s being suggested.

After all, look at how Trump’s verbal bludgeoning elevated former Rep. Adam Schiff. The House has typically been a dead end for lawmakers seeking statewide office in California. Today, the former Burbank congressman and Trump tormentor is a United States senator.

In truth, however, it’s far too early to say how the investigation of Newsom and his wife plays out politically, not least because it’s unclear whether there’s merit to the probe or if it’s merely a fruitless search-and-destroy mission by Trump’s Department of Retribution, Vengeance and Settling Old Scores

Beyond that, the first ballots of the 2028 campaign won’t be cast for roughly a year and a half. The Democratic National Convention, where the party will install its nominee, doesn’t begin for another 778 days.

Your friendly political columnist won’t resort to that hoariest of cliches about such-and-such duration being a lifetime in politics. But for some perspective, let’s go back 778 days.

President Joe Biden was running for reelection and about to challenge Trump to a pair of early debates. Trump was sequestered in a New York City courtroom being prosecuted on 34 felony counts.

A lot happened in the weeks and months that followed, including Biden’s self-immolation on the debate stage and Trump’s criminal conviction. A lot more will happen in the weeks and months to come. There’s no telling what. But it’s safe to say the fight for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination will not be decided by anything that’s taken place in June 2026.

Still, Newsom is once again sunning himself in the national spotlight and for that he has Trump to thank.

With his exquisitely tuned political antennae, the governor jumped out front of the president by announcing last week the feds were targeting him and his wife. (Naturally, Newsom’s revelation was accompanied by a rage-bait email — subject line: “Because I am thinking of running for president” — that denounced the “political witch hunt” and asked for money.)

“After calling for my arrest last year, Donald Trump directed his Department of Justice to investigate me,” Newsom said in a 4 ½-minute, direct-to-camera video that framed the investigation before prosecutors had the chance. “And just in the last week, I’ve learned his campaign has reached my own home: To get me, he’s coming after my wife, Jen.”

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Newsom and his wife both adamantly denied any wrongdoing and, of course, they must be presumed innocent until and unless proven otherwise.

But there was something a bit disingenuous about the governor’s chivalrous defense. Siebel Newsom, a documentary filmmaker who calls herself California’s “First Partner,” is no mere housewife baking cookies and holding teas, in the famous words of Hillary Rodham Clinton. (Hold the outrage, folks, this is not some retrograde criticism of career-seeking women.)

Among her many public-facing activities, Siebel Newsom heads The Representation Project, a nonprofit focused on challenging gender stereotypes. The organization has faced criticism for accepting donations from companies that lobby the governor, so it’s not unreasonable to ask whether those interests have improperly sought to influence Newsom by giving money to Siebel Newsom’s causes.

My Times colleagues reported that an investigation related to Siebel Newsom has been underway for about a year and was launched by federal prosecutors in Sacramento based on whistle-blower information provided in California. It was not, their source said, the result of a directive out of Washington.

A second probe, they reported, is related to Newsom’s ex-chief of staff, Dana Williamson, who pleaded guilty last month to bank and wire fraud involving a scheme to steal campaign funds from Xavier Becerra, the Democratic candidate for governor.

The problem with all this federal sleuthing is the utter lack of credibility attached to Trump’s Justice Department. Which is what happens when you turn the department into an arm of Trump’s malevolent fiefdom and deploy its prosecutors as henchmen targeting the president’s perceived enemies.

“This is a huge problem,” Randall Eliason, former chief of the Public Corruption Section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, told Politico. “In any political corruption prosecution, the defense almost always claims it is a ‘political witch hunt,’ that prosecutors are targeting him or her for some political reason.

“The best defense to that has always been [the Justice Department’s] tradition of independence from politics and long track record of pursuing corruption cases based only on the facts and law, without regard to political considerations,” Eliason said. “The Trump administration has abandoned that independence without even trying to hide it.”

The probe of Newsom and his wife presents more questions than answers.

It’s grody, but not criminal on its face, for lobbyists to curry favor with the governor by throwing cash at his wife’s endeavors — if, in fact, that’s been the case. Special interests spending money to gain access and influence is about as common in Sacramento and other capitals as statues, domed buildings and manicured lawns.

So why then are the feds investigating Newsom? Why now? Is there any fire, or is it all a lot of smoke?

Perhaps most important, where can you turn to get an impartial answer?

WASHINGTON — Colombian presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella has vowed to crush criminal groups and slash government programs. He promises to bomb “narco-terrorist” camps and build sprawling mega prisons if he wins Sunday’s runoff election.

De la Espriella’s views have earned him the vociferous backing of President Trump, who has broken with White House tradition by publicly seeking to tip the scales in foreign elections — particularly in Latin America.

After Trump gave his “complete and total endorsement” to De la Espriella, whom he referred to by his nickname, “El Tigre,” the candidate posted an AI-generated image of a bald eagle and a tiger, with American and Colombian flags waving side by side.

“You have paved the way for the people to defeat the entrenched powers that have long held sway,” he wrote to Trump. “In Colombia, we have now begun to follow the same path.”

De la Espriella, a political newcomer who built his campaign around gym workout videos and vows to “disembowel” the left, is part of a new wave of far-right, MAGA-aligned politicians in Latin America openly borrowing from Trump’s playbook, presenting themselves as outsiders who will trim the government, curtail immigration and militarize law enforcement.

In a region that remains plagued by high crime and inequality after a decades-long period of leftist domination known as the “Pink Tide,” the playbook appears working.

More Latin Americans now identify with the right than at any time over the last two decades, according to polling firm Latinobarómetro. A series of conservatives have won presidential elections in recent years, giving Trump a slate of willing partners as he seeks to expand U.S. power in the region, combat drug cartels and counter growing Chinese influence.

President Trump meets with El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, in the Oval Office of the White House on April 14, 2025.

(Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images)

Among Trump’s many allies are Argentina’s Javier Milei, a libertarian firebrand whose dramatic cuts to state services were a blueprint for Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE; and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, a mano dura autocrat who housed U.S. deportees in his notorious prisons to assist Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa has welcomed U.S. Special Forces, who are attacking drug traffickers in his country, and Chile’s José Antonio Kast has pledged a border wall along his country’s frontier with Peru and Bolivia in his quest to “make Chile great again.”

Trump might soon gain another ideological bedfellow in Peru with the election of Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of late autocrat Alberto Fujimori. With ballots still being counted, Fujimori was on track for a narrow victory

In a sea of nations led by conservatives, the left now retains power in just three key countries: Mexico, Colombia and Brazil.

It faces serious challenges in two of them.

Ahead of October’s presidential election in Brazil, incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist stalwart and one of the last vestiges of the Pink Tide, has been polling even with Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally convicted of convening a Jan. 6-style insurrection.

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, right, with President Trump during a dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., on March 7, 2020.

(Alan Santos / Associated Press)

And then there’s Colombia, where De la Espriella, a criminal defense attorney, surged ahead in the first round of voting and this weekend faces off against Sen. Iván Cepeda, an ally of leftist President Gustavo Petro.

Petro drew Trump’s ire by denouncing the U.S. military campaign to oust leftist President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and a spate of lethal U.S. attacks on alleged drug boats.

Petro slammed Trump’s endorsement of De la Espriella, calling on Colombians to “vote freely and not allow ourselves to become either slaves or anyone’s colony.”

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum also accused Trump of electoral interference after the U.S. announced drug trafficking charges against several members of her ruling Morena party and The Times revealed that two more sitting governors are under investigation.

“Is it truly a legitimate interest to combat organized crime?” Sheinbaum asked of the U.S. investigations. “Or are we perhaps witnessing how sectors of the American far right … intend to influence the 2027 election in our country?”

President Trump meets with Argentine President Javier Milei during the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 23, 2025, in New York.

(Evan Vucci / Associated Press)

The White House has declined to comment on Sheinbaum’s criticism. But Trump earlier this month warned Mexico that his administration is “focused on coming in by land” to deter drug trafficking.

“President Trump has been clear that Mexico must do more to combat the drug cartels running rampant in their country,” a White House official told The Times when asked whether Trump is planning a military operation there.

Trump, who publicly backed Kast and President Nasry Asfura of Honduras, as well as Milei’s political party ahead of Argentina’s midterm elections last fall, has openly mused that he should charge money for endorsement of leaders in foreign countries.

Guillaume Long, who served as foreign minister in Ecuador under leftist President Rafael Correa and who is now a fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, criticized Trump’s “unprecedented, unabashed interventionism in Latin American politics.”

“There are a number of taboos that have been broken,” he said.

Long added that Latin America is mirroring the United States in its political divisions. “I think we’re likely to see in the coming decades a very polarized politics,” he said. “And that doesn’t bode very well for political stability.”

Much of Trump’s activity in the region, including the deposing of Maduro, has been presented as part of a war on drug cartels, which the White House has formally declared terrorist organizations. Long described that rationale as a “pretext” for expanding U.S. political and economic influence in the region.

Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, are escorted by federal agents as they make their way to an armored car for a trip to a federal courthouse in Manhattan on Jan. 5.

(XNY/Star Max/GC Images)

He said he believed that focus on cartels had pushed some Latin American politicians to the right “because they think being security hawks will make them popular with the Trump administration.”

But James Bosworth, the founder of Hxagon, a company that provides political risk analysis in Latin America, said many leaders in the region have come to tough-on-crime policies on their own.

“I think that some of the hemisphere is willing to play along with it because the hemisphere has issues, including security issues, where the U.S. can be of assistance,” Bosworth said. “Many Latin Americans do want a greater military focus, so there’s certain alignment that’s occurred.”

Conversely, Mexican journalist Alex González Ormerod said he believes Trump has been influenced by Latin American leaders, including Bukele, who suspended civil liberties and began locking up alleged gang members en masse in 2021.

“I think there’s a lot of cross-pollination going on,” he said, crediting groups like the Conservative Political Action Conference, a gathering of right-wing activists and elected officials that has hosted events in Brazil and Argentina.

Many analysts cautioned that Latin America operates on a pendulum, swinging every few years between right and left.

“There’s a lot of evidence that voters are just unhappy and voting for the opposition, and then losing patience very quickly with whoever is in office,” said Benjamin Gedan, director of the Latin America Program at the Stimson Center.

Voters dissatisfied with the status quo so often vote out incumbents there is a phrase for it: voto castigo, or “the punishment vote.”

Ceballos reported from Washington and Linthicum from Mexico City.

JOINT BASE ANDREWS, Md. — President Trump on Friday showed off the new Air Force One, a formerly Qatari-owned — and much debated — jumbo jet that has been converted into the official U.S. presidential aircraft.

The new plane — gifted from the Qatari government, raising a host of legal, ethical and security questions — will take on a new look, eschewing the Kennedy-era robin’s egg blue exterior in favor of white on the top half, its underbelly navy blue with a red stripe above it.

“This plane was transformed into a flying White House at a level of luxury that nobody has ever seen before,” Trump said from inside the massive Joint Base Andrews hangar, as a couple of hundred assembled Air Force personnel looked on. He spoke after stepping off the new plane in a dramatic flourish, as his signature tune “God Bless the USA” played.

He confirmed that he would be taking the new jet to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Ankara, Turkey, next month and indicated that he would be returning to China “at some point,” presumably a reference to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit that China is hosting in November. His return from the Group of 7 summit in France this week was the last planned trip aboard the old Air Force One, he said.

“Now, when we land at airports in London and in Germany and different places, nobody tops this one, and that’s the way we have to have it for our country,” Trump said, noting that the colors and the design were to “my taste, I will say.”

He added that the new Air Force One will do a flyover during the July 4 celebrations next month.

The gift from Qatar is serving as a so-called bridge aircraft to carry the president until new planes ordered directly from Boeing arrive. That is currently slated for 2028.

The administration formally accepted a luxury Boeing 747 jet from Qatar last year to be used as the presidential airplane, despite questions about security and the ethics and legality of accepting such an expensive gift from a foreign government. Trump has claimed in the past that he would not fly around in the Qatari jet once he leaves office and said it would instead be donated to a future presidential library.

Trump on Friday said the U.S. was in a “little bit of a logjam” as it awaited the delivery of the new jets directly from Boeing, which had originally been scheduled for 2024 but have been delayed. He recalled asking the emir of Qatar for the use of one of their planes.

“See, a normal president wouldn’t do this. A normal president wants to stay away from aircraft,” Trump said Friday. “But our country has to be represented properly.”

Members of Congress and others have questioned the cost and effort that would be needed to make security modifications to an aircraft from a foreign government.

The Air Force said in a news release Friday that any plane deemed Air Force One “must meet rigorous security requirements” and that the Qatari plane “was modified under a disciplined engineering approach that prioritized these exact core capabilities above all else.” The Air Force also said “much of the previous head of state interior layout” of the plane was kept intact.

The Air Force has said in the past that security modifications to the jet would cost less than $400 million.

Trump’s efforts to reimagine the presidential airplane date back to his first administration, when he directed that an incoming fleet of new jets would adopt a color scheme that was nearly identical to that of his personal airplane. Then-President Biden reversed the decision in March 2023 as an Air Force review suggested that the darker colors could increase costs and delay delivery of the new jets, but once Trump returned to office, he returned to his desired colors for the plane.

Other government jets that carry other top administration officials will use a similar red, white and navy color scheme, the Air Force said earlier this year.

An Air Force spokesperson, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive plans, told the Associated Press that the two current planes, known as VC-25As, will not be retiring. Instead, they will remain in the fleet until the new Boeing planes, referred to as VC-25Bs, come into service, the spokesperson said.

It is unclear how the older jets will be used but the spokesperson said that both the Qatari jet as well as the VC-25As will be available for use and “the Presidential Airlift Group will select the appropriate aircraft for each mission based on operational requirements.”

Kim and Ceneta write for the Associated Press. Kim reported from Washington. AP writer Konstantin Toropin contributed to this report from Washington.

WASHINGTON — More than $350 million from President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” has been quietly directed to White House security, an allotment that Democrats warn appears to be helping fund his new ballroom project — despite the president’s insistence that no taxpayer dollars would be used.

The apportionment of funds, which the White House’s Office of Management and Budget made late Friday, comes from two accounts that were intended to provide the U.S. Secret Service with extra money for hiring and training in the aftermath of last year’s assassination attempts on the president, according to Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee. The shift was made days after Congress rejected a $1-billion request for the White House in a Homeland Security bill that Trump signed into law and as the ballroom project is tangled in legal challenges.

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley, whose panel initially drafted the security funding, said Thursday he was unaware of the allocations.

“The president said that it was all going to be paid for with private money,” said Grassley (R-Iowa). “And that’s what the country expects.”

Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, charged that Trump’s actions are potentially illegal.

“After repeatedly telling the American people that zero taxpayer dollars would be spent on his gold-plated ballroom boondoggle, now Trump appears to be using a smoke and mirrors tactic,” Merkley said in a statement.

“Trump has proven that he can’t be trusted to follow the law,” Merkley said. “He only cares about wasting taxpayer money on his vanity projects.”

Ballroom project hits setbacks

Trump has faced setbacks in his attempts to build the ballroom on the White House grounds, where he ordered the demolition of the storied East Wing to make way for it.

Touring the construction site last month, Trump called the development a “gift” to the American people. He has repeatedly said that it is being paid for by donations — which has also run into ethics questions from watchdogs concerned about potential corruption and conflicts of interest.

Congress refused the Trump administration’s request for $1 billion for the ballroom last month. The administration wanted the money as part of a Homeland Security bill, but Republican and Democratic lawmakers rejected efforts to tack it on. It became politically toxic at a time when Americans are reeling from inflationary high costs of living.

The Washington Post reported earlier this week that the price tag for the project has ballooned to $600 million, according to a project summary prepared by the contractor, with more than half of that funding coming from taxpayers. Roll Call first reported on the apportionment of new funds for White House security.

At its core, arguments are swirling over how much of the White House project is to bolster security underground, with bomb shelters and a medical facility, and how much of the costs are related to the president’s promised 999-seat ballroom on top.

White House says Trump and donors are paying for the ballroom

A spokesman for the White House said that Trump and donors are funding some $400 million for the ballroom development, and that the coordination with the Secret Service had been noted in the initial announcement of the project.

“The East Wing Modernization Project is inextricably tied to the security of the President, the White House grounds and the certain security infrastructure assets,” said White House spokesman Davis R. Ingle in a statement.

He said the events over the past weekend, including an alleged attack plan targeting the UFC Freedom 250 event at the White House, proves why the project is needed.

“President Trump and generous American patriots are funding the ballroom to the tune of approximately $400 million, which will be a secure and appropriate venue for Presidents for generations to come,” he said.

Government lawyers have argued that the project includes critical security features to guard against a range of threats, such as drones and missiles.

The White House has said in court documents that the East Wing project would be “heavily fortified,” including bomb shelters, military installations and a medical facility underneath the ballroom. The Secret Service told senators last month that $220 million of the White House’s $1-billion request would go to harden the ballroom addition, with bulletproof glass, drone detection technologies, chemical and other systems.

The rest of the money would go for other security improvements, according to a document provided to Senate Republicans, including $180 million for a new, “long overdue” White House visitors screening facility.

Congress holds power of the purse

The shifting funds are certain to ignite growing concerns in Congress over the separation of powers, and the president’s use of federal funds allocated by lawmakers.

The money comes from Trump’s big tax breaks and spending cuts bill that the president signed into law last summer. It provided more than $1 billion for Secret Service resources, including “personnel, training facilities, programming, and technology; and performance, retention, and signing bonuses.”

The provision was uncontested at the time, even as Democrats voted against the broader bill. Democrats said they did not challenge this section or try to strip it out from the package.

Under the Constitution, only Congress has the specific authority to allocate funds across the federal government, including the executive and judicial branch operations.

While the president holds the power to sign — or veto — those appropriation bills, once the funding becomes law, it largely must stand.

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press.