president

OMAHA, Neb. — “Do they still like Trump in Nebraska? I think so,” the president said during a recent event in Washington.

Given that the state easily backed Republican Donald Trump three times and hasn’t supported a Democrat for the White House since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, the answer may seem obvious.

But in Nebraska’s largest city, it’s an open question and could decide one of the country’s most-watched congressional races. Retiring Rep. Don Bacon ’s open seat pits fellow Republican and Omaha City Councilmember Brinker Harding against Democratic activist Denise Powell.

The district encompasses an increasingly Democratic-leaning Omaha metro area of 1 million-plus and its more conservative suburbs — famous for steaks and the Reuben sandwich’s birthplace, though New York disputes that.

It’s one of just eight districts nationwide that elected Republicans in House races while supporting Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris over Trump two years ago.

Harding and Powell have been making the rounds at parades and festivals where meat raffles offer oversized sausages as prizes. However, those on-the-ground appeals could be drowned out by Trump who, like most things in politics, has moved to shape November’s midterm elections in his own image.

The president is organizing a Republican midterm convention in Dallas next month that will serve as much a two-day rally for him as a boon to party candidates nationwide. Trump is also frequently visiting tightly contested districts, despite his low approval ratings and the unpopular war in Iran.

While Trump centers himself, Democrats are happy to oblige.

When Powell knocks on doors to talk to voters, she asks, “What’s keeping you up at night?” On a sweaty Saturday afternoon, John Rosseter responded without hesitation. “Well, Trump.”

“I want to see the history books written years from now,” said Rosseter, 67, who owns a carpentry business. “They won’t be pretty.”

The ‘Blue Dot’ hasn’t helped Democratic House candidates

Nebraska splits its presidential electoral votes, and the 2nd Congressional District’s delegate has gone to Democrats three out of five times since 2008, making it a “ blue dot ” in an otherwise Republican red state. But a Democrat has won the House seat just once since 1994.

Harding plays up Trump’s primary endorsement, and House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise campaigned for him. Harding said he has “the full confidence of, not only the White House, but leadership in the Congress.”

He has also tried to appeal to swing voters and says he knows the district better than does Powell, co-founder of Women Who Run Nebraska, which supports female candidates.

Two possible Democratic 2028 presidential candidates — ex-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Rahm Emanuel, an ex-Chicago mayor who was President Barack Obama’s first White House chief of staff — have campaigned with Powell.

She talks about how Medicare cuts have increased anxiety about affordability. Powell also points to Trump and his family’s business dealings as an example of “the choices that they have made while people on the ground are struggling” and she says that resonates with Republicans.

“Even the ones who aren’t necessarily anti-Trump,” Powell said, “understand the need for checks and balances.”

Some Democrats want a ‘Blue Dot Wave’

Jason Brown and his wife, Ruth Huebner-Brown, caused a sensation in 2024 by spray painting about 50 reused lawn signs with blue dots and distributing them around Omaha’s Dundee neighborhood. The couple has since expanded to professionally produce signs promoting a “Blue Dot Wave.”

Brown said the Republican-controlled Congress has capitulated on “every Trump nominee, every Trump policy, all the way down to putting gilding gold on statues.”

Supporters of Harding have countered with red “Brinker Dot” signs.

“We need to make sure that we keep this country on the track to being even better,” Harding said.

Jack Hosking, the 90-year-old retired former head of a title insurance company, organizes a weekly coffee to discuss political and community issues. He estimated that about 70% of attendees are Trump voters and “maybe even more so lately, because of the crap that the New York mayor started,” referring to Zohran Mamdani’s efforts at pushing the Democratic Party to the left.

Both Powell and Harding have addressed Hosking’s group, though, and he predicted that as much as half will support the Democrat.

“She spoke well enough that, my sense is, a lot of them will cross over,” Hosking said, noting that when it came to campaigning, “Brinker’s not doing much.”

The president seen as a base motivator

The Republican National Committee views Trump as a national asset, betting he can prevent complacency in a year without a presidential race, when enthusiasm for the party in power typically wanes.

The committee rebranded its “Young Guns” program for key candidates to “MAGA Majority” in deference to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement, and many congressional candidates will be at the Dallas convention with Trump.

Others aren’t waiting that long.

Republican Reps. Mike Lawler of New York and Tom Barrett of Michigan, whom Democrats are aiming to unseat, both appeared with Trump during his rallies in their districts. When the president visited Macungie, Pennsylvania, in June, he joined Republican Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, saying, “I’m here for him.”

Trump also traveled to the Wisconsin district of Republican Rep. Derreck Van Orden, as have Cabinet members.

Rep. Juan Ciscomani, facing a reelection fight, appeared with Trump during an April event in Arizona. Two Iowa Republicans in what could be toss-up reelection contests, Reps Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks, both were by Trump’s side when he kicked off his midterm campaign outside Des Moines.

Bacon sometimes defied the White House in his final term. He criticized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and tried to curb Trump’s ability to impose tariffs and was the only House Republican who opposed renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

Mary Jane Truemper, who heads the Nebraska Republican Party, said Powell and the state’s Democrats have moved too far to the left. She called Harding “a steady force” and said the nominee is not as fond of picking high-profile fights the way Bacon sometimes was.

“I think he speaks to the moderate Democrats as well as the Republicans,” said Truemper, who managed Bacon’s reelection campaign in 2018 and also worked for an unsuccessful primary challenger to him.

Even Powell said, “Don Bacon was a good representative of this district, and I think that there are a lot of people drawn to a pragmatic style of leadership in a state like ours.” But that may not be enough this year.

“People are worse off than they were before,” Powell said.

A local race may expose a wider party divide among neighbors

In the Elmwood Park neighborhood, Andy Maxwell, a 58-year-old pediatrician, said he likes to find the middle ground in politics and his community. But he recalled that, after putting up a Biden sign in his yard in 2020, his neighbors erected a Trump one.

“We don’t like all the turmoil part of it,” Maxwell said of politics nationally.

Nearby, 80-year-old Jerard Pearson called Democrats “feckless,” but said of Trump’s base supporters, “I’ve always been curious about this one-third level of crazy out there, a third of the population.” He is also no fan of a neighbor’s large “Harding for Congress” sign.

Truemper said Harding appreciates Trump’s endorsement but Nebraskans like to be wooed “person-to-person, rather than a national entity coming in.”

“Is that going to be the deciding factor?” she asked of Trump. “I don’t know.”

Weissert writes for the Associated Press.

FIFA boss turns up at event after CONCACAF chief Montagliani asked him to reconsider amid the global football body’s governance crisis.

Gianni Infantino has defied a request by one of his FIFA vice presidents to stay away from an Under-14 football event in the Caribbean and instead made a rare public appearance during the global furore over his failed plan to sell future World Cup profits to private investors.

The FIFA president posted photos on his Instagram account on Saturday, showing his meeting with political and football officials from the Dominican Republic on the sidelines of a Caribbean Football Union (CFU) youth tournament in the Punta Cana resort.

On Friday, Infantino had been asked not to go by Victor Montagliani, the Canadian president of the Miami-based Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF), to avoid being a distraction from the football games.

“I believe that considering the governance crisis surrounding FIFA as a result of your controversial FIFA Forward Enterprise proposal, the media will focus on this situation,” Montagliani wrote in an emailed letter seen by The Associated Press news agency, “which will unfortunately significantly take away from the technical nature of the CFU youth competition.”

“As such, I respectfully ask you in the name of football to reconsider your attendance as it will unfortunately undermine the technical nature of this important youth development activity,” Montagliani wrote.

FIFA declined to comment on Montagliani’s request, though it noted that it directly funds regional bodies like the CFU with up to $5m from each four-year World Cup cycle.

Montagliani has aligned with fellow FIFA vice presidents Aleksander Ceferin from European body UEFA and Asian Football Confederation president Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa in seeking to end Infantino’s increasingly executive presidency, now in its 11th year.

They accused Infantino two weeks ago of “deception” in secretly planning over the past year to spin off FIFA’s multibillion-dollar commercial activities to a subsidiary 20 percent owned by investors led by Joshua Kushner, the younger brother of United States President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Infantino withdrew the project on August 1 amid a global backlash by football leaders and fans, and hours after his own chief operating officer published stinging criticism of the proposal and his leadership style in a statement to the AP. The Zurich-based COO, Kevin Lamour, was fired last week.

Caribbean member federations are seen as potential supporters for Infantino to peel away from their CONCACAF leadership. South American body CONMEBOL has backed Infantino as its best path to hosting more games at the 2030 World Cup it wants expanded from 48 teams to 64.

The FIFA leader has not taken questions publicly since the $20bn FFE project was revealed on July 28 by British daily The Times, and on Friday in Punta Cana he evaded a reporter from British broadcaster Sky News.

Asked by Sky reporter James Matthews whether he had betrayed the sport and should resign, Infantino said, “Thank you so much”, and made quips about both men being bald.

Infantino is aiming to be re-elected for a fourth and final term in office through 2031 at the FIFA election congress next March in Rabat, Morocco. FIFA has set a November 18 deadline for would-be candidates to enter the race.

TOPEKA, Kan. — Nancy Kassebaum Baker, a Kansas governor’s daughter who became the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate without following a spouse into office, has died. She was 94.

Kassebaum Baker died Friday of natural causes, according to her son, Bill Kassebaum.

“She loved Kansas. She loved people from Kansas and representing Kansas for 18 years in the U.S. Senate,” he told the Associated Press. “She was an independent-minded Republican who was willing to stand up for what she thought was right, even if that meant going against the party.”

She was elected to the Senate in 1978 and served three terms. Her modest demeanor endeared her to voters of all political stripes, though she shared the moderate, progressive Republican politics of her father, Gov. Alf Landon, the unsuccessful 1936 GOP nominee for president. Even after leaving the Senate early in 1997, she continued taking on public service roles.

She married former Sen. Howard Baker, a Tennessee Republican, in 1996. He died in 2014.

Kassebaum Baker was widely admired among Kansans generally. She could work with Senate colleagues of all political philosophies, and a 1996 health insurance law bore her name, along with that of liberal Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. “Ted” Kennedy.

Part of a dwindling GOP bloc

Her election to the Senate brought her immediate national attention. When she announced her retirement, she was among eight women senators and the only one to chair a Senate committee, the Labor and Human Resources panel.

She was also in a dwindling bloc of moderate to liberal Republicans, having supported, for example, a ban on assault weapons championed by President Clinton.

Yet she never polarized Kansas conservatives as some GOP moderates did. She connected with voters because she never seemed caught up in the trappings of power, and when she retired, she acknowledged, “I’d rather cuddle up and do needlepoint all day.”

She was born on July 29, 1932, as her father, an oilman from Independence, was running for the first of his two terms as Kansas governor. She earned a political science degree from the University of Kansas and a master’s degree in diplomatic history from the University of Michigan in the mid-1950s.

She was a radio station executive, spent a year in the 1970s on the staff of Sen. James Pearson (R-Kan.) and served on the school board in the Wichita suburb of Maize. She had four children with her first husband, Phil Kassebaum, including Bill, who served a term in the Kansas House of Representatives. The marriage ended in divorce in 1979.

A moderate who sought sensible solutions

When Kassebaum Baker decided to run for the Senate, she figured that “a woman with a background different from a man might be appealing” to people growing weary of politics. Pundits at the time estimated a Senate race would require the then-huge-for-Kansas sum of $1 million. In the first quarter of 1978, she spent less than $12,000 on her campaign, and saw herself “at the bottom of the totem pole.”

But nine candidates crowded the primary field, including three state senators and a prominent Wichita businessman. Kassebaum Baker won the GOP nomination with less than 31% of the vote.

Running as Nancy Landon Kassebaum, she won almost 54% of the vote that November against former two-term Democratic congressman Bill Roy.

Her moderate politics quickly came to the fore, when only months later, she refused to endorse an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to require a balanced budget.

“We should be wary of the seemingly simple solution,” she said.

Her father, who would die at age 100 in 1987, still cast a long political shadow during her first years in office. Though Landon overwhelmingly lost the 1936 presidential race to Democratic incumbent Franklin D. Roosevelt, he later became an elder statesman for the Republican Party. A lecture series named for him at Kansas State University attracted presidents and foreign leaders.

Kassebaum Baker became even more popular in her time. She won reelection in 1984 with 76% of the vote and in 1990 with 74%.

But she frustrated conservative activists, despite her popularity. She said her vote in favor of the assault weapons ban inspired the angriest mail of her career.

A public servant to the end

She’d contemplated not seeking a third term, but Republican leaders had prevailed upon her to run one more time. In 1996, when she decided not to seek reelection, she said she would return to a ranch and 90-year-old farmhouse in Kansas’ scenic Flint Hills and babysit her grandchildren — she had seven, as well as two great-grandchildren.

When there briefly was talk of naming a new highway in Topeka after her, she said, “Oh, goodness. Absolutely not — no.”

She and Baker kept their romance low-key, and speculation about a possible marriage didn’t emerge until mid-1996, in a Washington Post story. They married that December.

It was the first time a man and a woman who had both served in the Senate had wed. Baker was elected to three terms, serving from 1967 to 1985 before becoming President Reagan’s chief of staff. His first wife, Joy, had died in 1993 after a long battle with cancer.

After the marriage, public service still beckoned, including as a member of a bipartisan commission on campaign finance reform under Clinton and on a British commission in Africa in 2004-05.

President George W. Bush named her husband ambassador to Japan in 2001, and she went with him for the four-year posting. Baker said she became an important figure in the Asian nation.

Before she left for Tokyo, she told a reporter she saw her stint in Japan as an adventure, but added, “All I can say is, I will miss the Kansas prairie.”

Not a fan of Trump

Later in life, Kassebaum Baker broke with the Republican Party as it became more conservative, endorsing Democratic candidates for Kansas governor and U.S. senator, including Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly both times — even though Kelly’s 2022 GOP opponent, then-state Atty. Gen. Derek Schmidt, had worked on her Senate staff.

In 2021, she supported the impeachment of President Trump for incitement of insurrection for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol that sought to keep him in power after he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden.

“This just has gone too far,” she told Kansas City’s KMBC.

Hanna writes for the Associated Press.

Dodgers president Stan Kasten wants to make it clear that majority owner Mark Walter will not sell the team.

Following Walter’s decision to sell his majority stake in the Lakers, questions about his majority ownership of the Dodgers were raised amid his company’s financial difficulties, which include a federal probe of his businesses. But Kasten said it will have no effect on Walter’s majority ownership of the Dodgers.

“The Dodgers are not being sold,” Kasten said. “They’re not going to be sold. They’re not for sale. There’s no process that has been started to sell [the franchise]. Period. … I just wanted this to be clear because this question keeps coming up. I understand the questions; I do. The Lakers thing was what we call sui generis, one of those one-of-a-kind things. Really has nothing to do with what’s happening with [the Dodgers] or the other teams.

“I wanted you to hear it definitively: We are not selling the Dodgers. We are continuing with our plans going forward, like we always have had them. This comes from Mark. He’s gung-ho about continuing to try to win, again, including next year, subject to whatever next year’s climate looks like.”

Kasten added that he doesn’t expect the Dodgers’ operations to be interrupted, describing the franchise as “very stable, well-managed, and [with] very solid ownership.”

“I know nothing involving the Dodgers is part of the investigation,” Kasten said. “I’m promising you, when it’s over, you’re going to realize [things] are being mischaracterized. You don’t have to trust me, but I’m telling you.”

When Kasten was asked about reports Walter is trying to sell his stake in English Premier League team Chelsea FC and tried to cash out of lucrative TV deals with Charter Communications, he said they were mischaracterized.

“Those things don’t go together for a bunch of reasons I’m not going to get into today,” Kasten said.

Kasten took a similar tone when asked about reports of Walter having to repay insurance companies.

“I’m not in that part of the investigation,” Kasten said. “Things are going on behind the scenes, obviously, in connection with that. I’m not privy to all of them, don’t need to know, don’t want to know. But one thing we are all certain about: the sports portfolio is going to remain intact.”

Walter has additional ownership stakes in the Sparks, the Cadillac Formula One team, the Professional Women’s Hockey League and the Billie Jean King Cup tennis event.

“I can tell you from the guy running the team, knowing how the business runs and what it can support in terms of revenues and expenses — the Dodgers aren’t going anywhere,” Kasten said. “I feel that very strongly, and Mark feels even stronger than I do. I’m 74. I don’t know how long I’m going to be running it, but Mark, I think, is going to be running it a lot longer.

“I think Mark has done an extraordinary job as an owner, and all he’s ever cared about is providing the best experience in order to make us more money, to make this project successful,” Kasten added. “I think so far it has been; I expect that to continue far into the future.”

Omani and Iranian foreign ministers hold a call as Washington prepares economic sanctions amid ongoing shipping disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has called for an end to the months-long war with the United States, stating that Tehran holds a position of strength as diplomatic talks remain stalled.

“It is better that we bring the war to an end now as we are in a position of power and dignity,” Pezeshkian said in a meeting with doctors on Friday. “The whole world acknowledges our victory and emphasises that America has attacked our schools, hospitals and infrastructure in violation of all regulations and is hated around the world.”

Pezeshkian – whose authority as president is ultimately subordinate to Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei – also defended the June memorandum of understanding agreed with Washington against hardline domestic critics in parliament, who accused his administration of giving concessions to the US.

“They cannot find even a single clause in this agreement that indicates capitulation. All the commitments concern the other side,” he said.

However, days after the memorandum of understanding expired, Iran’s military leadership has warned that the country remains ready to strike back against any new threats.

“With preparedness across land, sea, air, air defence and cyberspace, Iran’s armed forces will respond to the enemy’s new threats with crushing, punishing and devastating responses,” Major-General Ali Abdollahi, chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, was quoted as saying by Iranian media.

Strait of Hormuz

Meanwhile, Omani and Iranian foreign ministers discussed in a phone call on Friday ways to create suitable conditions for resuming dialogue and negotiations, as well as developments affecting navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, according to Oman’s state news agency.

Tehran continues to keep the key waterway partially shut while Washington persists with a naval counterblockade. Reports in US media indicate the US navy has been organising and protecting secret convoys of tankers through the southern sector of the strait, enabling between five and 10 million barrels a day of oil to be exported.

In Washington, President Donald Trump expressed scepticism over Tehran’s willingness to negotiate, telling reporters when asked if US military options with Iran were limited: “It just means that we’re seeing what happens.”

“We have total control of that entire region having to do with the Strait of Hormuz, and that means well into it, the land areas. So, they would love to make a deal, but they’re not ready to make the right deal, in my opinion,” Trump added.

He has also warned of economic consequences against any country that provides “any type of lifeline to Iran”.

The comments came as US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned that Washington would “collapse” the Iranian government with a sanctions campaign.

Bessent will hold a news conference at the Department of the Treasury on Monday, where he is expected to outline planned sanctions against Iran, marking a shift by the Trump administration towards economic rather than military pressure as the war nears the six-month mark.

Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has already condemned the US plan, accusing Washington of “economic terrorism” and stating that “the instigators of these sanctions are deserving of trial and punishment”.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Lin Jian also criticised the US measures, stating that “sanctions and pressure will not help resolve the issue” and urging all parties to “take responsible measures and resolve the problem through political and diplomatic means”.

For the first time since becoming vice president of the United States, JD Vance has returned to his hometown of Middletown, Ohio, with a goal of rallying Republican voters ahead of November’s pivotal midterm elections.

Vance delivered Friday’s speech at a symbolic location: the steel plant where his late grandfather once worked.

He used the appearance to tout a $1bn investment from the steel manufacturer Cleveland-Cliffs that was supported by $500m in government awards.

That funding, he said, illustrated his party’s commitment to the manufacturing sector and reinvigorating the US economy overall.

“I’m not saying it’s going to be easy – or it’s all going to happen overnight – but in just 18 months, we have seen an explosion of rebuilding in the American heartland,” Vance said, crediting the growth to policies under President Donald Trump.

Vance’s speech comes at a critical time for the Republican Party and Trump in particular.

November’s midterm races will decide whether Republicans are able to maintain control over both chambers of Congress. Should their hold on the legislature slip, Democrats could stymie Trump’s policy priorities for the last two years of his presidency — or even impeach him, as Trump himself has suggested.

Polls have shown that the state of the economy remains the top issue ahead of the midterms.

But how voters perceive each party’s ability to address economic strain has shifted. Before the start of Trump’s second term, the Pew Research Center found that voters were more likely to favour Republican policies on the economy.

In July, however, the dynamic had switched: Thirty-seven percent of those surveyed backed the Democratic approach to the economy, compared with 36 percent for Republicans.

Another poll this month from the news agency Reuters and the firm Ipsos likewise found slightly more respondents siding with the Democrats on economic policy than Republicans, upending a longtime trend that stretched back to 2017.

Trump, for his part, has publicly appeared to dismiss cost-of-living issues as a partisan invention, calling questions of affordability a “hoax” and a “con job” engineered by Democrats.

At Friday’s speech, Vance took a different approach, trying to assuage concerns about the administration’s handling of the economy.

“We got a lot of work to do, but we’re making progress on all the things that matter the most,” Vance said, citing efforts to make homeownership more affordable.

The speech is part of an intensifying campaign under Trump to boost the prospects of Republican candidates ahead of the midterms, with the president and other top officials holding rallies for their party’s candidates.

Ohio, part of a historic manufacturing region known as the Rust Belt, has become increasingly conservative since Trump’s first White House victory in 2016.

But amid rising dissatisfaction with Republican leadership, Democrats see a chance to win back the state’s governor’s office, as well as the US Senate seat left vacant when Vance became vice president.

Whoever wins the special election in November will serve the remainder of Vance’s Senate term, which would have ended in January 2029.

The Republican nominee in the race, Senator Jon Husted, joined Vance on stage at the Middletown rally on Friday. Husted was appointed to fill Vance’s Senate seat until a special election could be held.

Vance, for his part, dedicated part of his speech to attacking Husted’s Democratic rival, former Senator Sherrod Brown, who lost his re-election race to Republican Bernie Moreno two years ago.

He accused Brown of being among the politicians “who pretend to be friends of the workers in this facility”, while instead advancing their own priorities.

“It’s hard to understand what these modern Democrats actually stand for,” Vance said, characterising the party as having strayed from its ideals.

He pointed to Brown’s record of siding with the policies of former Democratic President Joe Biden, who defeated Trump in the 2020 presidential race.

“[Brown] was a man who claimed to represent this state but never once raised his voice against Joe Biden’s border crisis or against the inflation that was brought on by Joe Biden underinvesting and trying to destroy American industry,” Vance said.

The vice president also singled out Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed, repeating a false claim that the Democratic Senate candidate called for “Sharia law” in the US.

“I’d love to go back in time and tell my papaw that there’s a man who claims to stand for working people, who says not only should we have Sharia law, but if you criticise it, you are a white supremacist,” Vance said about El-Sayed.

Trump’s approval rating currently sits at 33 percent, according to Reuters-Ipsos polling from this month.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is weighing President Trump’s claim that his new White House ballroom is urgently needed to protect him, his staff and guests from attacks by drones, terrorists and snipers.

On Friday, with a lower-court order about to go into effect halting construction on the controversial project, Chief Justice John G. Roberts decided that the court needed more time. He issued a temporary order pausing the case and allowing construction to continue while the justices decide on a pending legal challenge.

Last week, Trump’s lawyers described the East Wing ballroom as an “integrated military complex” that is “vitally required by national security.” They argued that a judge’s order blocking further construction threatened the safety of the president and must be overturned. They also said the project is nearly two-thirds completed.

At issue is whether the president acting on his own may build a huge new ballroom complex that is expected to dwarf the historic Executive Mansion.

It is a confrontation over the boundaries of executive power at a moment when Trump has repeatedly tested the ability of courts, Congress and independent institutions to constrain his agenda.

Trump bulldozed the historic East Wing before the courts had resolved whether the administration had the authority to proceed, leaving opponents to argue the project could become effectively irreversible before judicial review was complete.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation sued in December and argued that the president had overstepped his authority.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon agreed and ordered a stop to the above-ground construction — that is, on the ballroom. He said the work on the underground bunker may proceed.

The U.S. court of appeals affirmed his order by a 2-1 vote on Aug. 7 but put the decision on hold until Friday. Roberts’ order did not explain the reason for the delay, or how soon the court might rule.

In a fast-track appeal to the Supreme Court, Trump administration lawyers sought to refocus the case as one about national security and the president’s safety.

“Given the current unprecedented levels of danger … every day the President does not have access to the vital security features of the military complex presents unacceptable risk,” Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer said Wednesday in his final brief to the court.

Construction continues on the White House East Wing ballroom on Aug. 20.

(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)

The Constitution and federal law say new buildings may not be erected on public property in the District of Columbia “without the express authority of Congress.”

But acting on his own, Trump ordered the East Wing of the White House torn down in October and work began on a new and much larger building to replace it.

He said the new ballroom could provide safe and secure seating for 1,000 dinner guests. He did not ask Congress to weigh in or approve the massive project.

In defense, Trump administration lawyers pointed to an annual appropriation from Congress that funds “the care, maintenance, repair, alteration, refurnishing” and other such improvements at the White House.

They also said private donations would pay most of the $400-million cost of the new ballroom. One estimate placed the cost of the ballroom and the bunker at $600 million, with taxpayers covering half, the Washington Post reported.

The president, his family and White House employees would have secure underground space, Sauer said, while a “totally secure ballroom space” would provide a new level of protection for guests and foreign dignitaries.

Otherwise, they would be seated outside in tents on the lawn, Trump said, which was neither appealing nor safe.

President Trump speaks to the media as the construction of a new helipad on the South Lawn of the White House continues on Aug. 19.

(Alex Wong / Getty Images)

His solicitor general also argued it was too late to stop the project.

“A 250-person crew is working 20 hours a day, seven days a week to keep the project ahead of schedule and under budget,” he wrote on Aug. 13. “Today, the project is 65% complete in its entirety, and moving quickly toward total completion.”

Trump’s signature construction project has fueled accusations from his political opponents that he is abusing his power to build a lavish space for entertaining guests as ordinary Americans struggle with affordability.

In April, Republicans in Congress sought to put federal money behind the project, despite Trump’s earlier insistence that private donors would pay for the ballroom.

The effort never became law, faced with bipartisan opposition to a bill that would tie them to the unpopular project, leaving the administration to proceed with a privately financed effort whose legal authority was already being challenged in court.

The Society for the Rule of Law and a group of former White House lawyers warned the court against accepting Trump’s broad claims of power.

“Under the executive’s view, the President could bulldoze the entire White House and replace it with a new building of his own design, including a skyscraper. No other President has asserted such transformative power,” they wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief.

“The invocation of national security is not a magic incantation that suspends the rule of law,” they added.

The biggest hurdle facing the challengers may be the issue of standing.

The court’s conservatives are often skeptical of lawsuits if it is not clear the plaintiffs have or will suffer a distinct injury that goes beyond their opposition to a government policy.

In this case, the National Trust said its historians and preservationists will be disturbed to walk by the White House grounds if there is a massive new structure that is not in keeping with the historic Executive Mansion.

Construction continues on the East Wing ballroom at the White House on Aug. 10, 2026, in Washington, D.C.

(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)

“The subjective displeasure of an offended observer does not amount to a concrete injury,” Sauer said.

The D.C. Circuit judges were also split on the threshold issue of standing.

Judges Patricia Millett, an Obama appointee, and Bradley Garcia, a Biden appointee, ruled the suit may proceed because the plaintiffs suffered injuries to their “aesthetic, cultural and historical interests.”

Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, dissented and said the preservationists walking by the White House would not suffer the kind of concrete injury that gives them standing.

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is allowing the White House to continue construction on President Trump’s $400 million ballroom project for now.

Roberts signed a temporary order on Friday allowing work to continue while the court considers an emergency appeal from the Trump administration.

Lower courts had ordered a halt to the project, finding that it must have congressional approval. That ruling was set to take effect on Friday. Roberts signed the order because he oversees appeals of Washington-based cases.

The case comes before the nation’s highest court as Trump, a Republican, exercises unparalleled assertions of presidential power and increasingly seeks to mold the capital in his own image.

The Trump administration has scored a series of victories on the high court’s emergency docket, though the justices have ruled against some of the president’s signature policies after fuller review.

The administration has argued that the president has total authority to renovate the White House and other federal buildings as he sees fit and that the ballroom project must be completed due to national security concerns.

When Trump first announced the plans for a new ballroom, he did not emphasize national security. He said the project would be funded by private donations, including from himself.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation argues that Trump has no unilateral authority to undertake the work, which has included demolishing the East Wing. Lawyers for the preservation group accused the White House of trying to “outrun the courts” by accelerating construction.

The Trump administration says 65% of work has already been completed on the planned 90,000-square-foot (8,400-square-meter) ballroom, where the East Wing stood before the president ordered its demolition. Crews are working 20 hours a day, seven days a week on the project, where about $200 million in private donations has been spent or committed, Justice Department attorneys said in court documents.

A district court judge ordered a stop to aboveground construction of the planned ballroom in April in a ruling that was suspended before being upheld by an appeals court panel. The order from U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington allows belowground work on bunkers and military installations to continue. Leon was nominated by President George W. Bush, a Republican.

Two appeals-court judges appointed by Democratic presidents found the project was for Congress to decide and “not a matter for Executive self-help.” A third judge, appointed by Trump, found that the preservationist group that challenged the project had no legal right to sue.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer picked up on that argument, calling the decision halting the work “extraordinary and unlawful.” He said the completion of the project was “vitally required by national security.”

Whitehurst and Kunzelman write for the Associated Press.

Fifa’s chief operating officer Kevin Lamour has been sacked by the governing body, less than three weeks after he strongly criticised its president Gianni Infantino’s aborted plan to sell stakes in competitions to private investors, BBC Sport has been told.

In a statement, a Fifa spokesperson would only confirm that “the working relationship between Fifa and Kevin Lamour as Chief Operating Officer has ended on 17 August 2026.

“Fifa thanks Kevin for his two years of service and wishes him the best of luck for the future.”

Fifa’s staff were informed of the news in an email by its secretary general Mattias Grafstrom on Monday evening, who told them the organisation and Lamour had “agreed to part ways”.

Last month, Lamour described the controversial Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE) plans as “the project of one person”, and said “the time has now come for football political leaders to ask themselves the right questions and make the right decisions”.

He added Fifa’s own administration was “deceived” about the now abandoned project.

“Our mission – the mission of the hundreds of passionate, dedicated, and exemplary Fifa employees – is to serve football”, he added.

“A president must bring people together, unite them, and inspire them. Today, we are experiencing the opposite.”

Lamour acknowledged he had a duty of loyalty to his employer but also to “certain values” and supporting his colleagues.

“If that means I lose my job, then so be it,” he added. “I will understand and respect that decision. At least I’ll sleep well tonight.”

Lamour joined Fifa in November 2024, having previously served as deputy general secretary at Uefa, and was two layers of management below Infantino.

Earlier this month, Infantino received the backing of senior executives in a meeting in Morocco, but BBC Sport was told Lamour was not invited.

Lamour has been approached for comment.

In a letter sent to members of Fifa’s Council, and seen by BBC Sport, Grafstrom wrote: “I would like to provide you with an important update regarding a change within the Fifa Administration.

“Following recent discussions, Fifa and our Chief Operating Officer, Kevin Lamour have agreed to part ways. This decision was made after careful consideration and with great respect for Kevin, both personally and professionally… I felt it was important that I personally provide you this update and I would like to express my gratitude to Kevin for these contributions and for his work and commitment on behalf of Fifa on a daily basis. I wish Kevin all the best for the future.”

WASHINGTON — Approaching six months of war with Iran after predicting a six-week campaign, President Trump has few options before him to bring the conflict to a close. But some experts believe a new strategy emerging from his administration could avert a more consequential defeat.

The president has repeatedly flirted with broadening the assault, hoping yet another round of bombardment might force Iran to yield. Yet he has ultimately resisted, once again stepping back this month from options to expand strikes across Iran’s critical infrastructure and leadership. And he has refrained since the beginning of the war from ordering a ground operation that would expose U.S. troops to direct attack, faced with dwindling U.S. munitions stockpiles and an entrenched Iranian government willing to retaliate.

The result has been a U.S. campaign that has failed to achieve any of Trump’s stated war aims — of regime change in Tehran, the elimination of Iran’s ballistic missile and naval capabilities, and the end of its nuclear program — but has also avoided the costs of uncontrolled escalation, experts said.

In remarks Friday, Trump said the United States was still in the process of “defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated.”

“We have the blockade. No ships get through,” he said. “They still have missiles, but not a lot. They still have drones, but just a fraction of what they had. But their manufacturing is largely gone.

“We’re winning big with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he added. “Nobody has any idea how successful we are — they don’t want to write it. But they know. You know who knows how well we’re doing? Iran.”

In an interview published last week, Trump explained his decision not to proceed with expanded strikes, telling Axios, “we are low-keying it.”

“We are only semi-negotiating with them,” he said. “We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money.”

It is a shift from an instinctual posture to one of restraint uncharacteristic of a president who launched the war in February after consulting a mere handful of people, including Israel’s prime minister and fewer than a dozen of his closest aides.

The current approach — an economic choke hold on Iran — is being led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who was not involved in Trump’s prewar deliberations.

“The options are escalating militarily, conceding Iranian victory through a phony negotiation, or continuing the economic pressure we have in place. The president’s problem is that he can’t simply choose — the ayatollah gets a vote,” said Elliott Abrams, a veteran diplomat who served under Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush, as well as under Trump in his first term.

“Trump has to choose now between sticking to the blockade and the risks it brings — including high oil prices and a loss in the midterm elections — or accepting defeat by Iran and the risks that brings,” he added, “to our friends and allies and to his own reputation.”

White House officials are betting the risks to Tehran, from soaring inflation and a shortage of goods, are greater than the political costs Trump will incur at the ballot box in November during the midterm elections, with oil prices holding stable under $100 a barrel since mid-July.

“We have the ability to accept costs because our resources are great. Iran does not, because theirs are few,” said Barry Posen, a political science professor at MIT.

And while restraint may not end the conflict on Trump’s preferred terms, it could prevent the kind of open-ended escalation that pulled the United States deeper into costly quagmires in Vietnam and Iraq, said Michael O’Hanlon, director of research in the Brookings Institution’s foreign policy program.

“He has resisted that temptation so far,” O’Hanlon said. “In this regard, he is showing greater humanity and greater thoughtfulness than either of those two American presidents during the Vietnam War. And he has avoided the mistakes of George W. Bush in launching big ground wars without adequate planning or preparation.

“It’s troubling, and far from victory,” O’Hanlon added, “but also far from quagmire or defeat.”

Trump’s reluctance to escalate has so far averted a high U.S. casualty count in the war. According to the Pentagon’s Defense Casualty Analysis System, 18 U.S. service members have been killed and hundreds have been wounded since the start of operations against Iran.

But his reticence to deploy additional U.S. troops within striking distance of Tehran — and the need to protect those already stationed across the region — has forced the administration to rely on long-range weapons systems that cost tens of millions of dollars and require complex international supply chains to produce, leading to critical shortages of drones, missiles and defense systems as the conflict continues longer than planned.

“Even limited operations, such as the air wars over Kosovo and Libya, dragged on much longer than policymakers expected, and the U.S. ran short of critical precision guided weapons,” said Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security. “What really differentiates the current situation with Iran is that Tehran can hold U.S. forces in the region at risk with its long-range missiles and drones.”

Karoline Leavitt, the president’s outgoing White House press secretary, said the United States has “more than enough firepower” to carry out any operation the president wishes to order.

But Defense officials acknowledged to The Times that a protracted campaign, and the risk of an escalation that prompts Iran to expand its targeting of U.S. assets and allies in the region, could further stretch weapons systems to dangerously low levels.

A “low-key” campaign will mitigate the threat of dwindling supplies and high casualties, without necessarily providing Trump with a path to victory, said Stephen Biddle, a professor of international and public policy at Columbia University.

“The issue with Iran isn’t how long the war has lasted, though it’s already lasted longer than the Trump administration apparently expected,” Biddle said. “The issue is how we’ll get out of it with our interests intact. The administration has no viable plan for doing that, and none is immediately obvious.”

WASHINGTON — It is among the most famous phrases in presidential history: “The buck stops here.” Except with President Trump, it almost never does.

Concerns about a weak economy and still-high inflation? His predecessor, President Biden, saddled him with that, he says, even though the Democrat has been out of office for 18-plus months and despite Trump once promising an immediate turnaround.

The problem-plagued revamp of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool? That was marred by vandalism, the president insists, even though the office of a prosecutor he put in the job has said the damage was due to shoddy workmanship.

The increasingly unpopular war in Iran that has kept oil prices high, Trump’s approval rating low and sent shock waves through the global economy? Actually, this was Trump making up for timid earlier presidents who, he argues, squandered nearly 50 years of opportunities to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Pithy slogans aside, all modern presidents shift responsibility onto others to some degree, frequently blaming the White House occupant who preceded them or Congress — or both. But Trump has taken it to a new level, essentially embracing a de facto political strategy of being in charge of everything but responsible for nothing when things go badly.

“Taking responsibility being a characteristic of presidential leadership — or any kind of leadership — is absolutely true,” said Nicole Anslover, a history professor at Florida Atlantic University and author of “Harry S. Truman: The Coming of the Cold War.”

Trump’s tendency to point fingers at others is increasingly in the spotlight in the run-up to November’s midterm elections, when Republicans are trying to retain control of Congress. His unwillingness to accept blame sometimes leads him to deny that there are problems at all, and could leave GOP leaders in tight races with little reassurance for voters that their concerns are being addressed.

The White House counters that Trump is working to correct long-festering challenges, not simply throwing up his hands and ignoring them.

The president is “rightfully addressing the failures of his predecessors while taking action to deliver big wins for the American people,” spokesperson Taylor Rogers said, pointing to a series of policies that she said Republicans can run on, including tax cuts, efforts to lower prescription drug prices, cracking down on immigration and the U.S.-Mexico border, increasing domestic energy production and a strong stock market.

A pattern dating to Trump’s first term

Truman famously kept a “the buck stops here” sign on his desk as president. That came from “pass the buck,” which, according to Truman’s presidential library, dates to frontier times, when poker players would pass a buckhorn handle knife to the person whose turn it was to deal the cards.

“The president, whoever he is, has to decide,” Truman said during his farewell address in 1953. “He can’t pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That’s his job.”

The understanding of the phrase has broadened over the years to include taking responsibility for the outcome of tough decisions. Trump used to espouse similar beliefs, saying back in 2013 that in running a business, “Whatever happens, you’re responsible. If it doesn’t happen, you’re responsible.”

Accepting the 2016 presidential nomination, Trump said, “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.” But as president, he has often suggested that the solution and blame rest elsewhere.

“The buck stops with everybody,” Trump said in 2019, during a lengthy government shutdown. In 2020, on the same day he declared the COVID-19 pandemic a national emergency, he said, “I don’t take responsibility at all” for a lack of coronavirus testing.

Anslover said Truman took full responsibility for dropping atomic bombs on Japan even though he was not informed that the U.S. was developing such weapons until his predecessor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, died.

President Kennedy saw his approval ratings rise after he acknowledged he was to blame for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. President Reagan said he was sorry for any involvement he may have had in the Iran-Contra scandal even while saying he wasn’t sure he was to blame. “The buck stops here with me,” he said then.

At his final news conference in early 2009, President George W. Bush listed a series of mistakes he had made, including failing to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. His successor, President Obama, said, “I screwed up,” after his nominee for health chief, Tom Daschle, withdrew because of unpaid back taxes.

Presidents before Trump “really usually take accountability,” Anslover said.

‘We inherited a total catastrophe,’ Trump says

The president acknowledged in a recent Punchbowl interview that voters are angry, but he said they are not mad at him but at congressional Republicans.

Trump believes his party can hold its congressional majorities after November, but he was clear that if Republicans lose, it won’t be his fault — echoing his comments before the 2018 midterms that he would not accept blame if his party lost control of the House, which it did.

Trump’s approval rating on the economy, once seen as among his strongest issues, has fallen throughout his time in office, from 40% in March 2025 to 32% in July, according to Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research polling. About 6 in 10 U.S. adults say Trump’s economic policies have made economic conditions worse, according to Pew Research Center polling.

“The public certainly expects the president to be concerned about, and focused on, making life more affordable,” Republican pollster Frank Luntz said.

Trump instead points to Biden, under whom inflation hit a four-decade peak of 9.1% in 2022 as the pandemic was still roiling the world economy, before declining to 2.7% by November 2024. Last month, pressured by the Iran war, it was 3.4%.

“When we took office, we inherited a total catastrophe,” Trump said at a recent rally, later adding, “I inherited those high prices, just so you understand.”

Andrew Bates, a Democratic strategist and former Biden White House spokesperson, noted that Trump no longer mentions his campaign promise to “immediately end inflation” on Day One.

“He may not remember having made those promises, but swing voters sure as hell do,” Bates said.

Iran and the Reflecting Pool

The president has characterized the Iran war as “a little excursion” or “detour.” To play down how long it has lasted, he frequently notes that U.S. wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan dragged on for years, though the Iran conflict — which he initially said would be over in four or five weeks — is now in its sixth month with no clear end in sight.

Trump has sought to shift blame to the past on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, falsely suggesting that Biden and Obama spent “hundreds of millions of dollars” trying unsuccessfully to fix it.

But Trump’s main defense claim has been vandalism. And so far at least four cases alleging that, including the most prominent case against an Olympic canoeist, have been dropped due to a lack of evidence.

Anslover said that, after more than a decade in politics, Trump has proved he is not afraid to violate norms of presidential comportment. Lots of his core supporters do not seem bothered.

“For many Americans, it has either been a shift in how they view the presidency, or, like with so many things, they just feel empowered to say, ‘These are my priorities. My priority is not the facts,’” she said.

Weissert writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Amelia Thomson DeVeaux contributed to this report.

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s David Zahniser, with an assist from Noah Goldberg, giving you the latest on city and county government.

It was a move this week that drew immediate blowback: Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson pulled Councilmember Nithya Raman off of her position as chair of the city’s housing and homelessness committee, just as Raman enters the homestretch in her campaign to unseat Mayor Karen Bass.

Raman quickly suggested that she was being punished for challenging Bass, a Harris-Dawson ally. On a video titled “Bass’ Ally Removed Me as Chair,” she portrayed the move as retribution for saying City Controller Kenneth Mejia should audit the mayor’s homeless programs.

“Mayor Bass and her allies are protecting what we all know is a deeply broken status quo, one that is not serving any person here in the city of Los Angeles,” she said.

For months, many at City Hall had expected Raman to make a stink if she was yanked from her post, transforming herself into a martyr. So what exactly was Harris-Dawson thinking?

In an interview Friday, Harris-Dawson said the removal of Raman as committee chair was simply one piece in a larger effort to make the council’s committees work better — and not punishment at all.

“If I were trying to punish her, I would have moved her off [her post] the day after she filed to run for mayor” back in February, he said.

Harris-Dawson said he split Raman’s committee into two — one focused on housing, the other on homelessness — because the two subjects were simply too big for a single committee to handle effectively. He said he and Raman had talked extensively about that idea, disagreeing on whether the two topics should have been combined.

The homelessness committee needs someone who can focus their undivided attention on the ongoing crises surrounding homeless services — including the Trump administration’s effort to strip hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding, Harris-Dawson said.

“We’ve got to be able to move, and move in the most efficient manner possible,” he said.

Councilmember Nithya Raman attends a city council meeting at City Hall in downtown Los Angeles on August 14, 2026.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

As part of the reshuffling, Harris-Dawson picked Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who represents Skid Row, to lead the now renamed homelessness and health committee. Jurado will also sit on the new three-member housing committee, which will be chaired by Councilmember Imelda Padilla.

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, fresh off his reelection victory, will head up the council’s economic development committee, replacing Councilmember Curren Price, who leaves at the end of the year.

Even Councilmember Monica Rodriguez landed a spot in charge of the committee that deals with parks, a pet issue of hers. Harris-Dawson stripped Rodriguez of her committee seats last year, after she criticized his leadership.

The new assignments could give Harris-Dawson a base of support the next time there’s a vote on his presidency. Harris-Dawson dismissed the idea that there was any connection, calling such speculation “completely inaccurate.”

The committee assignments take effect next month.

Raman will continue serving on the five-member homelessness committee, just not as its chair. She will head the council committee dealing with immigration and civil rights. She even broadened her portfolio in some ways, securing a seat on the public safety committee, which deals with police and fire responses.

“If you’re on a committee, you definitely can get things done, and you don’t have to be the chair,” Harris-Dawson said.

Raman offered a different take, telling reporters on Friday that a committee chair simply has more authority, setting the agenda.

“You also have some more power in trying to get the departments to reply — although even my best efforts to get the departments to reply to report-backs didn’t work,” she said.

Not happy with the homeless count

The hot potato that is homelessness now heads to Jurado, at a critical time for the city and her district.

Jurado’s district, which takes in downtown and parts of the Eastside, saw a 23% increase in unsheltered homelessness, according to this year’s homeless count. On top of that, The Times recently reported that the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which runs the count, failed to tally hundreds of residents at a Skid Row shelter in 2024 and 2025, skewing this year’s citywide numbers.

Jurado voiced frustration over those issues, saying city officials shouldn’t have to spend time and money verifying data that “should have been accurate from the start.”

She isn’t the only one voicing displeasure.

Harris-Dawson questioned the accuracy of the count in his own South L.A. district, where LAHSA reported a 127% increase in unsheltered homelessness.

Harris-Dawson thinks the big increase may stem from a single census tract south of Manchester Avenue between Normandie and Van Ness avenues. In that area, LAHSA said it found 277 unsheltered homeless people.

Last year, the agency counted 19, Harris-Dawson said.

“A jump of this magnitude in a single corridor strongly suggests a data collection or processing error rather than an actual change on the ground,” according to a motion signed this week by Harris-Dawson that calls for an explanation.

LAHSA officials didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Sherman Oaks Smackdown, Part II

It was the most personal of the mayoral debates staged last spring: Bass and Raman going mano a mano in front of an audience at the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn.

During that 90-minute back-and-forth, the two took shots at each other over homelessness, police hiring and their respective leadership styles, among other things.

Now, with the Nov. 3 runoff approaching, Bass and Raman are set for a Valley rematch on Wednesday, which will again feature Fox11’s Phil Shuman, as well as a panel of representatives from Sherman Oaks community groups.

Reservations have been filling up for in-person attendance. The event will also be live streamed on www.soha914.com and aired on LAist 89.3, organizers said.

State of play

— HITTING HUD: In a scathing order, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from taking control of federal funding for homelessness programs across L.A. County. In his preliminary injunction, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter said the Department of Housing and Urban Development acted arbitrarily and capriciously when it suspended LAHSA from managing federal funds.

— LOATHING LAHSA: Federal officials also denounced LAHSA as corrupt and incompetent during an appearance at the Dream Center, a faith-based residential treatment center. LAHSA pushed back, saying the federal government has failed to provide evidence of graft or abuse.

— RETURN ENGAGEMENT: The mayor’s Inside Safe homelessness program is spending more and more time going back to the same locations. Data reviewed by The Times showed that, in the fourth quarter of 2025, four out of every five Inside Safe operations were carried out in places already visited by its outreach teams. The repopulation problem has been especially pronounced along the 110 Freeway in South L.A.

— WAREHOUSE WOES: City leaders have accused Lineage, whose warehouse in Boyle Heights was destroyed by fire, of blowing past the city’s 45-day deadline for removing millions of pounds of rotting food from its property. Lineage reported Friday that the task was 94% done. Bass wants the city’s lawyers to take Lineage to court and impose penalties.

— RISKY BUSINESS: A divided City Council finalized an agreement aimed at controlling the city’s costs during the 2028 Summer Olympic Games, amid complaints that the event poses a major financial risk.

— TRAIN IN VAIN: Despite months of test runs, the Automated People Mover train is facing new uncertainty, with a bond rating downgrade and a legal battle between the city and the contractor.

— ZEROING IN: City Controller Kenneth Mejia told The Times he’s planning to use his auditing authority to examine spending by LA28, the privately run committee that is staging the Games.

— BUMMER NUMBERS: Euthanasia rates for cats and kittens are up in a big way in L.A. this year, according to the city’s latest stats.

— LICENSE TO CARRY: The federal government and the county’s Sheriff’s Department have reached a settlement over what prosecutors alleged was a pattern of delaying applications for permits to carry concealed firearms. The Sheriff’s Department has cut its waiting times and now complies with statutory deadlines, officials said.

— END OF THE PARTY: A mansion in Encino, located in the western end of Raman’s district, has become a massive party house, drawing a neighborhood outcry.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature homeless program went to the area around Bessemer Street and Cedros Avenue in Van Nuys, an area represented by Padilla.
• On the docket next week: As we mentioned earlier, Bass and Raman go head to head in Sherman Oaks on Wednesday. Tune in!

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@latimes.com. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

The US has not confirmed the revocation, which comes amid crackdown on Mexican politicians with alleged ties to cartels.

The son of former Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has accused the United States of revoking his visa in a politically motivated manoeuvre.

Andres Manuel Lopez Beltran made the allegation late on Thursday in a public letter addressed to US President Donald Trump and posted on social media.

He accused US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his deputy, Christopher Landau, of ordering the visa revocation.

“There is no reason whatsoever to justify such an arrogant action,” Lopez Beltran wrote to Trump. “It is worth emphasising that these officials have no evidence against me regarding any immoral or criminal act.”

The US State Department has not publicly responded to his claim.

His letter comes as part of a trend of visa revocations from the US. Several Mexican officials, across the political spectrum, have had their visas cancelled, as part of what the Trump administration characterises as a broad crackdown on individuals linked to drug cartels.

Who is Lopez Beltran?

The 39-year-old Lopez Beltran is a prominent politician in Mexico, having recently stepped down from the leadership of the left-wing Morena party.

His father founded the party in 2011 and went on to govern Mexico as its president from 2018 to 2024.

Currently, another Morena politician, Claudia Sheinbaum, holds the presidency, and Morena boasts decisive majorities in both chambers of Mexico’s Congress.

Lopez Beltran is expected to run for a seat in the Chamber of Deputies next year.

For much of his father’s presidency, Lopez Beltran stayed out of party politics, instead focusing on his chocolate business.

However, he was elected Morena’s secretary of organisation in September 2024, just weeks before his father left office.

In his letter, Lopez Beltran called the revocation “a ⁠⁠crude and perverse act”, saying US officials target Mexican politicians by falsely labelling them as “communists”, “threats to US security” or “narco-terrorists”.

Sheinbaum reacts to letter

On Friday, Sheinbaum said she was unaware of any investigations by Mexican prosecutors into Lopez Beltran.

“This amounts to interference ⁠⁠in Mexican politics,” Sheinbaum said at her morning news briefing. “I see no other reason for it.”

Sheinbaum has also walked a careful line in responding to the Trump administration’s hardline approach to cartels and cross-border crime, pledging to cooperate.

But she has also said she would protect Mexico’s sovereignty from any foreign interference, and while she has welcomed collaboration with US intelligence, she has reportedly declined Trump’s offers of US military action on Mexican soil.

Last month, she also rejected a statement by the head of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) that her government has ties to organised crime, a frequent Trump talking point.

In April, she decried the US’s decision to charge Sinaloa Governor Ruben Rocha, another Morena party official, with drug trafficking and weapons-related offences.

She has argued that the indictment lacks evidence and that such investigations should be left to Mexican prosecutors.

The Trump administration has accused Rocha’s campaign of having worked with the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, the criminal organisation it considers a “foreign terrorist organisation”.

Rocha announced in May that he would take a temporary leave of absence from his position as governor to defend himself from the charges.

Baka’s confirmation is the latest repudiation of Viktor Orban’s legacy by Hungary’s new leaders

Hungary’s parliament has confirmed Andras Baka, a former Supreme Court chief and critic of former Prime Minister Viktor Orban, as the country’s next president.

The National Assembly voted in a secret ballot on Tuesday to confirm him as president with 140 votes in favour, six opposing and no abstentions.

He had been nominated on Saturday by the Tisza party, which holds a constitutional majority of more than two-thirds of parliament. During the nomination, Tisza lawmakers said Baka’s experience would represent “a significant asset” as the party lays “the foundations for Hungary’s new constitutional order”.

Opposition party Fidesz – which dominated Hungary’s politics until a landslide electoral defeat in April – boycotted the vote. They accuse Tisza of using authoritarian tactics to reshape the country’s political system, a charge the party denies.

Baka, 73, served two terms as a judge on the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg before being elected head of Hungary’s Supreme Court in 2009. He was removed two years later after publicly criticising Orban’s government reforms, which he said threatened judicial independence. He will assume office on August 19.

Baka replaces ex-President Tamas Sulyok, an Orban appointee who weeks ago was ousted from the role by constitutional amendment, part of Tisza’s wide-reaching campaign to dismantle the political power structures built by Orban during his 16 years in power.

Tisza has also used its majority to reform the media, establish an anticorruption task force and impose an eight-year term limit on prime ministership, effectively barring Orban’s return to the office.

While Hungary’s presidency carries mostly ceremonial powers, with limited authority to veto or refer legislation, Baka’s is appointment is seen by many as the latest repudiation of Orban’s legacy.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she is freezing her eggs as she decides her next political moves ahead of the 2028 presidential election campaign.

“This is a choice that I am making to feel more in control of my life,” Ocasio-Cortez, 36, said on Instagram about her decision regarding her reproductive options.

The New York congresswoman, a leading figure of Democrats’ progressive left flank, did not say explicitly whether she plans to have children. She said in her social media posts that she was taking a “political risk” in talking so personally about her potential family plans.

She said later on ABC “This Week” on Sunday that she has not ruled out running for president or for the U.S. Senate seat held by Democrats’ floor leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, in 2028. She explained that she wants to normalize conversations about what women face in their professional and personal lives, while also highlighting the policies of President Donald Trump’s administration.

“In this political environment, where this administration is denying reproductive care to women across the country, from abortion rights to the ability to carry out a healthy pregnancy, I think it’s important for us as leaders to have these conversations,” she said.

Trump’s administration opposes abortion rights, and the Republican president’s first-term appointees to the Supreme Court provided the margins in the 2022 ruling that struck down the Roe v. Wade decision that had established a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy.

Separately, however, Trump in 2025 signed an executive order designed to lower the costs of in vitro fertilization.

Ocasio-Cortez sponsored a Democratic bill in 2022, when the party controlled the House, to codify abortion rights into federal law after the Supreme Court’s abortion decision.

As part of her weekend announcement, Ocasio-Cortez noted that women — in politics and other fields — face different standards and scrutiny about their family status.

“Men run for office, or frankly they interview for jobs, and people don’t think in the back of their minds, ‘OK, this guy’s running for office, how old is he? Oh, well, is he going to want to start a family?’” she said.

Barrow writes for the Associated Press.

Aug. 8 (UPI) — The U.S. Department of State announced Friday that the United States intends to give $1 billion to the new government of Colombia, which is now in the control of Abelardo de la Espriella, the right-wing candidate backed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

In a press release, the State Department said the government sent a delegation led by now-confirmed Attorney General Todd Blanche to Colombia to attend the inauguration of de la Espriella in Cali, Colombia, on Friday.

“The delegation demonstrates U.S. commitment to reinvigorating the U.S.-Colombia relationship and deepening of our shared security and economic partnership,” the press release from the office of the State Department’s spokesperson said. “As a cornerstone of this renewed partnership, the United States, working with Congress, intends to announce $1 billion in assistance as part of a security package to support President de la Espriella’s administration in achieving our shared goals.”

The goals center around de la Espriella’s promise of an “all-out war” on drug cartels.

De la Espriella, 48, is a lawyer and businessman and has worked to gain a reputation as a maverick outsider who plans to battle crime with an “iron fist,” the BBC reported. He promised to crack down on armed groups, shrink the government by up to 40% and rejuvenate the oil and gas sector.

“I have come to close a long chapter of national resignation and, together with the people, embark on the most profound transformation ⁠of our destiny,” De La Espriella said at the Pichincha Battalion military base in Cali, Colombia, Friday.

“I send a firm message to the Colombian people: The time has come to restore order, authority and freedom,” De La Espriella said. He pledged to crush armed insurgents, rebuild Colombia and defend democracy “by reason or by force.”

The new president comes to power during a time of deep political polarization in the country. He defeated leftist Sen. Iván Cepeda in a runoff election by 250,000 votes out of more than 26 million cast.

De la Espriella said he is bringing “the age of the Tiger,” when the state would be forceful and decisive against crime. His self-chosen nickname is “El Tigre.”

“There will not be a single place in our territory where criminals can feel safe,” he said.

He vowed to “definitively eradicate the scourge of illicit crops,” saying he would use aerial herbicides that did not harm human health or the environment to destroy coca, the plant used to make cocaine. In one of his first acts as president, Colombia would join Trump’s Shield of the Americas program, he said.

His campaign is very different from his predecessor Gustavo Petro. Pedro pushed for a “total peace” strategy to end an ongoing fight between guerrilla groups, the state and cartels.

Sadly, the program failed, critics have alleged. Membership of armed groups has expanded in recent years.

De la Espriella is a citizen of the United States as well as Colombia. He lived and worked in Miami for many years and became a U.S. citizen in 2023.