president

In the latest lawsuit against Paramount Skydance, a corporate shareholder has alleged corruption at the highest levels of the company, which is battling to complete its $111-billion takeover of rival Warner Bros. Discovery to create a new media behemoth.

Controlling shareholders Larry Ellison and his son David have presided over a firm that allegedly made “illegal promises and payments to secure regulatory approval,” for the Ellison family’s Paramount purchase last summer, according to the shareholder lawsuit filed this week in Delaware court.

Larry Ellison allegedly discussed with President Trump how Paramount’s pending Warner Bros. acquisition would result in a shake-up at CNN, states the lawsuit filed by Paramount shareholder Paul Robbins.

“The Ellisons [won] the bidding war for Warner Bros. by promising sweeping changes at CNN and other personal benefits to President Trump,” according to the 59-page complaint.

The case was brought on Robbins’ behalf by the nonprofit Public Integrity Project and the advocacy group Freedom of Press Foundation, which has been critical of the Trump’s administration policies toward the media.

The complaint noted that Netflix withdrew from the bidding in February — the same day Co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos met at the White House with then-Atty. General Pam Bondi and another top official.

The lawsuit suggests Netflix dropped out after recognizing the challenges of dealing with the Trump Administration and that Trump always wanted to see the prize go to Paramount because of his close ties to the Ellison family, who have ushered in more favorable news coverage of Trump and the departure of late night comedian Stephen Colbert.

Robbins does not appear to have first-hand accounts supporting his claims, which are based on public documents and media reports about dealings between the Ellisons and Trump. He has owned Paramount stock since 2021, but the lawsuit does not say how many shares he owns.

He could not be reached for comment.

A Paramount spokesperson could not be immediately reached.

Previously, a Paramount spokesperson said: “No commitments from either David or Larry Ellison have been made to any government body, State AG or federal agency regarding the future of CNN or any other news property, other than the goal to deliver truth-based journalism.”

It’s the third lawsuit lobbed at Paramount this week. On Monday, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta led a coalition of 12 Democrat state attorneys general filed a federal antitrust lawsuit seeking to block the Paramount-Warner merger due to concerns about consolidation in movie distribution and cable channels.

The Writers Guild of America added another an antitrust lawsuit against Paramount on Tuesday, alleging the massive merger would result in fewer jobs and lower pay for writers.

Many in Hollywood are opposed to the deal due to fears that another studio consolidation would bring more layoffs, programming cutbacks and a fragile business environment due to the heavy debt burden — nearly $80 billion — that Paramount would have to take on to buy Warner Bros.

The shareholder lawsuit noted that Paramount participated in a raucous event with UFC fighters on the White House lawn in June to celebrate Trump’s 80th birthday and the nation’s 250th anniversary. Paramount has UFC broadcast rights.

The event came two days after Trump’s Justice Department wrapped its regulatory review of Paramount’s Warner Bros. proposal, giving the merger a key green light.

Justice Department investigators reportedly did not have a chance to express potential antitrust concerns when high-level Justice Department officials closed the inquiry — a major win for Paramount and the Ellisons, the lawsuit states.

“There have been some line attorneys in the DOJ that have reviewed this [merger] and have some concerns,” New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James said Tuesday during a virtual town hall with opponents of the merger. “Their analysis of this particular case was ignored by the front office, if you will, at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. [the White House] That’s the front office.”

Ellison’s Skydance Media emerged with its deal to buy Paramount two years ago. Previous controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, was desperate for an exit and Trump was mounting his White House comeback by battling then-President Joe Biden, then Kamala Harris.

Trump declined an invitation to appear on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” then under Redstone control. He became infuriated by an October 2024 interview with Harris on “60 Minutes.”

Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against CBS (he later upped it to $20 billion). After Trump won the election, he had considerable sway over Paramount because it needed his administration’s approval for the sale to the Ellisons.

Paramount agreed to pay Trump $16 million to end his “60 Minutes” lawsuit, allowing the sale to go forward. The Ellisons acquired Paramount in August, then set their sights on Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN.

“The Ellisons proceeded to remake CBS in the President’s image, bought properties he enjoyed, and even hosted events to honor him,” the lawsuit said. “This helped the Ellisons, but it appears to have hurt Paramount and its media outlets.”

In late April, David Ellison hosted an elaborate dinner in Washington to honor the “Trump White House,” according to invitations to the event, “even though President Trump continually insulted journalists at CBS and elsewhere,” the lawsuit said.

On Wednesday, during a confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) blasted acting Atty. General Todd Blanche for his attendance at the dinner while his agency was reviewing the Paramount deal.

Also on Wednesday, the nonprofit news site ProPublica reported Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr has accepted $63,000 in free tickets from CBS in recent years — while Paramount mergers were pending.

Times Staff Writer Ben Wieder contributed to this report.

US President Donald Trump welcomed Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi to the White House. Trump praised the ‘tremendous chemistry’ between him and the PM and said the countries will be announcing a new ‘massive’ oil partnership.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva criticised a proposal by US President Donald Trump to impose charges on goods passing through the Strait of Hormuz, saying such a measure would amount to “piracy.”

Speaking at a public event in São Paulo state on Monday, Lula said “In the past, that would have been considered piracy.”

“The United States is an important country, and I believe it fought piracy for a long time. It cannot act like a pirate today” he added.

Lula’s comments followed Trump’s announcement that the United States would seek to impose a 20 percent tariff on goods transported through the Strait of Hormuz while reimposing a naval blockade on Iran.

According to Trump’s statement, the measure was presented as a response to Iran’s announcement that it intended to close the strategic waterway. He argued that the United States would ensure freedom of navigation through the strait and that commercial shipping benefiting from that protection should contribute to its cost.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote: “The Strait of Hormuz is open, and will remain open, with or without Iran. We will reimpose the blockade on Iran.”

The proposed tariff has drawn international attention because the Strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s most important maritime trade routes, carrying a significant share of global oil and liquefied natural gas exports. Any changes to shipping arrangements or transit costs could have broad implications for international trade and energy markets.

Hungarian parliament passes amendment that would remove President Sulyok, appointed under ex-Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Hungary’s parliament has approved a constitutional amendment to remove President Tamas Sulyok from his largely ceremonial position, the latest move to dismantle the power of figures associated with former Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

The measure, passed on Monday with 139 votes in favour and only six opposing, would immediately bring an end to Sulyok’s term in office and pave the way for parliament to elect a new president.

Hungarians voted out the right-wing nationalist Orban in April, with new Prime Minister Peter Magyar’s Tisza Party winning in a landslide. The election result ended 16 years of power for Orban’s Fidesz party, which had come to dominate many aspects of the country.

Since Magyar’s victory, he has sought to erode that power, including by removing the current president. The constitutional amendment also introduces a series of judicial reforms, creates a body to investigate alleged financial abuses under the previous government, and imposes a 12-year term limit on lawmakers.

Sulyok now has five days to sign the constitutional amendment passed by parliament. Magyar has said that parliament will launch an impeachment procedure against Sulyok if he does not sign it.

The president and other members of Fidesz boycotted Monday’s parliamentary session.

Sweeping away the old order

The parliament elected Sulyok, a former chief of the Constitutional Court of Hungary, in February 2024. He was nominated to replace Katalin Novak, who resigned after pardoning a man convicted of covering up child sexual abuse.

But days after Magyar’s centre-right Tisza Party won a two-thirds parliamentary super-majority in April, the new prime minister declared Sulyok “unworthy to embody the unity of the Hungarian nation” and demanded that he leave office once the new government was formed.

In June, after the deadline to resign had passed, Magyar branded the president a “puppet” of Orban and promised to strip him and other holdovers from office by constitutional means. Weeks later, he unveiled a reform programme, dubbed “Operation Cleansing Fire”, which seeks to install a new constitution, purge state institutions and establish an anticorruption office.

While the presidency is a largely symbolic post, it is empowered to approve laws and can refer them to the Constitutional Court for review, raising fears that Sulyok might use his presidential powers to stymie Tisza’s ambitious reform agenda.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, the prominent Republican from South Carolina who served in the Senate for more than two decades, died after suffering an aortic dissection, his office said Sunday.

Graham died unexpectedly Saturday night, his office announced, shortly after he had returned to Washington after a trip to Ukraine.

In a statement, his spokesperson said a preliminary report from the medical examiner for the District of Columbia found that the 71-year-old senator died of aortic dissection due to arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease. With aortic dissection, a tear occurs in the wall of the aorta.

According to the Mayo Clinic, aortic dissection is not very common, and its symptoms may be mistakenly attributed to other health conditions. It usually affects men in their 60s and 70s. If the blood from the dissection travels outside the artery, the condition is often fatal.

A former military lawyer who reached the rank of colonel in the Air Force, Graham ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2016. Initially a cutting, vocal critic of then-candidate Donald Trump during the election, Graham became one of the president’s staunchest allies after Trump’s election.

“Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the greatest people and Senators I have ever known, is dead!” Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth, on Sunday. “He was always working, and was a true American Patriot.”

Graham was known as a C student in high school, and was the first member of his family to attend college. His mother died while he attended the University of South Carolina, and his father died of a heart attack during Graham’s first semester of law school.

He served as a judge advocate in the Air Force, eventually becoming the chief prosecutor for the Air Force in Europe.

He was first elected to serve as senator for South Carolina in November 2002.

In a social media post on X, Vice President JD Vance described Graham as one of the most powerful lawmakers, and recalled an incident where he and Graham got into a shouting match over a funding bill for the war in Ukraine.

Later the same day, he wrote in the post, Graham was advocating for rail legislation that Vance supported.

“That was Lindsey Graham,” he wrote. “He fought like hell for the things he believed in, and he was just as willing to go to bat for you when it counted.”

Graham had been scheduled to appear on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday to discuss his trip to Ukraine. Instead, President Trump appeared in his stead, where he said the senator had been “like a member of the family.”

Trump called into several Sunday news programs to discuss Graham’s death, and said he had spoken to Graham on Saturday evening.

Trump told CNN’s Jake Tapper that the South Carolina senator had said he was “tired.”

A Democratic senator alleges that whistleblowers have detailed several problems stemming from rushed or improper reconstruction of the Kennedy Center, adding a new layer to the travails of the arts complex after President Trump tried to seize control of it and its name.

Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island said in a release Saturday that he had received a whistleblower disclosure from the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit whistleblower protection group, alleging that “the Center rushed a series of renovations driven by the President’s aesthetic whims and his desire to star in a series of televised events in December.”

“The Center’s subservience to the President’s desires and its corner-cutting contracting practices have resulted in steel columns that are rusting through fresh paint, a reflecting pool that may have to be torn out and rebuilt, and a brand-new bathroom floor torn out over an offending tile color,” Whitehouse said. “This is waste, and it treats a national memorial to President Kennedy as if it were a private renovation project.”

Whitehouse released a letter he wrote to the Kennedy Center’s executive director, Matt Floca, seeking answers by July 23. He said the whistleblower report included “firsthand accounts of multiple former Center project managers, supported by contemporaneous documents and photographs.” He also included an 83-page appendix full of internal center documents, emails and photos of apparently shoddy construction.

The allegations in the letter include that the center rushed work before it was authorized by Congress because it wanted it to be complete for Trump to accept the so-called FIFA Peace Prize that the soccer federation awarded him.

In doing so, the letter alleges, the center didn’t follow required contracting guidelines and wasted money replacing a bathroom because the president didn’t like the color and inking no-bid contracts. One $8-million contract to replace the concert hall’s floor went to a firm with no experience in concert halls, Whitehouse contended.

The Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump seized control of the arts and culture venue named for President Kennedy at the beginning of his second term. Trump ousted the center’s leadership and replaced it with a Board of Trustees that named him chairman and added his name to the building.

Democrats sued to remove it, and a federal judge ruled that Trump’s name must come off the venue, noting that only Congress has authority to rename it. Trump also tried to close the center for two years, only to be ordered by the court to keep it open.

Many artists have boycotted the venue in protest of the president’s actions.

Riccardi writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Shortly before President Trump ended a ceasefire with Iran this week, Israeli officials presented his team with intelligence indicating Tehran was hatching new plots to kill him.

It was not the first such warning. U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies have tracked evidence for years of Iranian efforts to target the president, with signals only increasing since the start of the war.

Their desire to target Trump and his top aides began six years ago, just outside Baghdad International Airport, when the president ordered a drone strike that killed Iran’s most powerful general. The assassination of Qassem Suleimani brought the two countries to the brink of war.

Yet even as full-scale war was averted, top Iranian officials vowed revenge for the strike, authorizing attempts on the lives not just of the president, but of his secretary of State and national security advisor, among others, even after they had left office.

Now, calls for revenge have reached a sharper pitch in Tehran, after a joint U.S.-Israeli operation killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at the start of the war in February.

At Khamenei’s funeral ceremonies this week, red flags of vengeance flew throughout the capital as protesters explicitly called on their government to “kill Trump.” His son, Mojtaba, the new supreme leader, was absent from the commemorations, fearing assassination himself.

Mourners hold an anti-President Trump banner at the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosque during mass funeral prayers for Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his family in Tehran on Sunday.

(Morteza Nikoubazl / NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The prospect of foreign assassination plots targeting U.S. leaders puts the United States in dangerous new territory, where its embrace of political killings could ultimately place its own officials at unprecedented risk. And experts fear the existential threat of assassination has pushed peace further out of reach: When both sides believe their survival is at stake, the trust required for diplomacy becomes far harder to achieve.

Israeli news organizations have reported that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, cited Iranian attempts to kill Trump in recent years as part of his case to go to war in the first place.

A U.S. official told The Times that a range of serious threats exist against the president, including from Iran, but that Israel’s intelligence pointed to a more specific plot. The official did not provide further details. Israeli officials did not respond to requests for comment.

Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has said in recent months that the government sees vengeance against U.S. officials as “its legitimate duty and right,” and “will fulfill this great responsibility and duty with all its might.”

“The Suleimani killing accelerated a lifting of restraints on foreign assassinations — and the taboo on targeting and killing foreign leaders, with U.S. military assets, has been more or less lifted,” said Matt Dallek, a political professor at George Washington University.

“If the United States sets the example of how to conduct international relations, and it is using assassination of foreign leaders as a political weapon, it’s only logical that other countries will be more inclined to also engage in assassinations,” Dallek added. “It does seem likely that Trump will have a bigger target on his back.”

Returning from a NATO summit in Turkey on Wednesday, Trump was forced to switch back to an old model of Air Force One — equipped with specialized defensive technologies — from a new plane given as a gift by Qatar, after the Secret Service warned of potential threats to the aircraft from Iran.

“They want to take out the U.S. leader — me,” Trump told reporters aboard the plane. “I’m on whatever list. I saw this morning I’m on every single one of their lists. And so far, I guess I’ve been a bit lucky, but maybe that doesn’t last very long.”

The threat has remained on his mind in the days since. In an interview with the New York Post, Trump told the reporter, “I hope you’ll miss me,” adding that he has “been on their list for a long time.” And in a subsequent social media post Friday night, he warned of a catastrophic response he instructed the administration to pursue in the event Tehran succeeds.

“1000 Missiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he wrote, “with thousands of more to immediately follow, should the Iranian Government act on its threat, pronounced in many corners of the Globe, to assassinate, or attempt to assassinate, the sitting President of the United States of America, in this case, ME!”

The United States had a decades-old prohibition against assassinating foreign leaders before Trump’s presidency, codified in an executive order signed by President Ford in 1976 over concerns of a CIA plot to kill Fidel Castro.

The policy was only strengthened further by subsequent administrations, fearing a new international standard for targeted killings could result in unintended consequences in the halls of Washington.

Other administrations have been accused of targeting foreign leaders before. Under the Obama administration, an international coalition targeting the Libyan regime of Moammar Kadafi during the country’s 2011 civil war struck his fleeing convoy, leading to his capture and killing by rebel fighters.

But experts say Trump’s explicit targeting of Suleimani and Khamenei — and his public celebration of their deaths — marks a new paradigm.

“Through words and actions, President Trump has done more to normalize political violence than any other U.S. president, certainly in modern times,” said Robert Pape, a professor at the University of Chicago and author of “Our Own Worst Enemies: America in the Age of Violent Populism.”

“On the international front alone, the president routinely brags about killing Iranian leaders and seizing the leader of Venezuela, among others,” he added, “to the point that assassination is becoming the new normal in international politics.”

Reporting from Sacramento — California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday pardoned seven former felons, including two Cambodian refugees the Trump administration wants to deport, in his first acts of clemency since the Democrat took office in January.

Newsom adopted a policy of his predecessor, former Gov. Jerry Brown, to use his state constitutional authority to issue pardons to shield immigrants targeted by federal immigration officials.

The pardons are an unmistakable rebuke to President Trump, whose fiery anti-immigrant rhetoric and demands for a giant wall along the U.S.-Mexico border have been central to the escalating political feud between Newsom and the White House.

Newsom took another shot at Trump just hours before announcing the pardons while speaking to members of the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Assn., a national nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy organization based in Sacramento. Newsom compared Trump to the anti-immigrant “demagogues” in San Francisco who championed the federal Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 — the nation’s first immigration ban on a specific group of people.

“I’m constantly trying to understand the moment we’re living in, the xenophobia, the nativism that marks the populism of this moment,” Newsom said. “Any of us who are students of history know that it’s not without precedent. It’s not novel. It’s hardly new. It’s very familiar.”

Trump restricts asylum further but faces legal and financial limits »

One of the Cambodian refugees pardoned by Newsom, Hay Hov of Oakland, was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in March. He has since been released.

Hov, a naturalized citizen who arrived in the United States in 1985 as a legal refugee when he was 6, was convicted of solicitation to commit murder and participation in a criminal street gang in 2001, when he was 21, according to the Newsom administration.

The other refugee, Kang Hen of San Francisco, like Hov, fled to the Bay Area with his family to escape the Cambodian genocide in the 1980s. Hen was convicted of grand theft in 1994 when he was 18. Hen, who has a 4-year-old son and a partner with kidney and heart problems, was taken into custody by ICE in April.

Both Hov and Hen are being processed for deportation to Cambodia. The pardons do not automatically end a deportation effort but remove the underlying criminal offense that triggered the federal removal actions.

The pardons come as the federal government continues a crackdown on the Cambodian community that began in 2017 when Trump forced Cambodia to agree to take back more deportees. Many of the Cambodians facing deportation were refugees from the brutal Khmer Rouge regime that killed thousands, and came to the United States legally as children. They have few memories or ties to the country. But because they committed crimes, even if convicted decades ago, they can be deported.

In the 2016 fiscal year, ICE reported removing 74 Cambodians. In 2017, 29 Cambodians were removed. In 2018, that number has jumped to 110 thus far.

ICE reported that, as of March 26, there were 1,784 non-detained Cambodians nationals in the United States with a final order of removal. Of those, 1,294 had criminal records.

All seven of the people Newsom pardoned on Monday had completed their prison sentences.

“By granting these pardons to people who are transforming their lives, the Governor is seeking to remove barriers to employment and public service, restore civic rights and responsibilities and prevent unjust collateral consequences of conviction,” the governor’s office said in a statement released Monday afternoon.

The other five people pardoned committed offenses that varied from selling or possessing drugs to forgery.

Brown granted a historic 1,332 pardons and 283 commutations during his last two terms as governor. However, the California Supreme Court rejected 10 grants of clemency issued by Brown, the first time the high court has blocked a pardon or commutation in more than 50 years.

The court did not issue an explanation for the action. Under the California Constitution, the governor cannot grant a pardon or commute a sentence of anyone convicted of two separate felonies without the approval of the state Supreme Court.

None of the people whom Newsom pardoned on Monday had multiple felonies, according to a governor’s office spokesperson.

phil.willon@latimes.com

Twitter: @philwillon

England captain Harry Kane says he once played golf with United States President Donald Trump, describing the experience as “surreal”.

The striker will lead England for their World Cup quarter-final against Norway in Miami on Saturday (22:00 BST) and, in the build-up to that game, revealed he had played golf with Trump in Florida 18 months ago.

“I played alright to be honest,” said Bayern Munich striker Kane.

“He invited me to play when I was down in Palm Beach. So yeah, when the president invites you somewhere…

“It was a pretty surreal experience just to meet him and obviously play golf with him.

“His golf is pretty good, to be honest with you. I hope I can play golf as good as him when I’m his age, that’s for sure. A unique experience, but I was just grateful that he invited me to play.”

The US is co-hosting the 2026 World Cup along with Canada and Mexico, and Kane’s comments followed Trump, 80, saying the pair had played together.

“I think Kane is a great player,” said Trump after Kane, who has six goals and one assist for England at the World Cup, helped the Three Lions beat Mexico 3-2 in the last 16.

“I played golf with him and I like him a lot. He’s a good golfer too. He’s really great.”

WASHINGTON — Crews are again draining the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool as President Trump’s problem-plagued efforts to revamp the waterway pushes well past his initial goal of having it ready by July 4 to mark the nation’s 250th birthday.

The president at first suggested his renovations would last a century. But within weeks of the project originally reaching completion last month, the water was beset by an algae bloom and pieces of the new coating appeared to be peeling off the bottom.

Trump has blamed the peeling on vandals, though critics allege it’s from shoddy repair work.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, whose agency oversees the National Park Service, told conservative podcaster Katie Miller in an interview released earlier this week that the new round of draining was planned. He also said that the water might still contain debris from an extensive Independence Day fireworks display over the National Mall.

“Drain the water, clean up the fireworks stuff,” Burgum told Miller, who is the wife of deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller. “Repair the vandalism that was done. Fill it back up again.”

The work on the Reflecting Pool is just one of a number of projects Trump has spearheaded across the nation’s capital. Most prominently, he demolished the White House’s East Wing to build a $400-million ballroom and plans to build a towering arch between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.

He initially announced his intentions to beautify the Reflecting Pool this spring, saying he wanted it completed before the nation’s 250th birthday celebrations.

Water was drained and Trump directed that the bottom be painted what he called “American flag blue.” In May, the president posted on his social media site of the pool: “The goal is to have it done, at this higher level, prior to July 4th — We are ahead of schedule!”

But problems began quickly after the initial work was finished. Trump blamed vandals, and court documents later showed that the National Park Service reported to the U.S. Park Police a June 9 incident in which a sharp knife or razor cut the pool’s new liner.

On Thursday, former Olympic canoe racer David Hearn pleaded not guilty in D.C. Superior Court to deliberately damaging the Reflecting Pool. Hearn has said he reached inside the pool to examine the peeled sealant and let go of a chunk when he was told to by a park worker.

His attorneys and other Trump administration critics have derided the case as an abuse of prosecutorial power and maintain he is being scapegoated for the poor job done fixing up the Reflecting Pool.

At least three other people have been charged in the same court with misdemeanors for allegedly removing pieces of paint from the Reflecting Pool, according to online court records. All three pleaded not guilty during their initial court appearances Wednesday.

The pool was closed for the Independence Day celebration, which featured what Trump said was the largest fireworks display in the world. The president had said that the pool would have to be drained anew as part of the new round of repairs.

Burgum has also said that the Trump administration won’t seek bids for the new rounds of repairs. He told CNN’s “State of the Union” last weekend: “We’ll use the same company because they did a fantastic job.”

Ohio-based Green Water Solutions, also known as Greenwater Services, was given a $1.7-million contract to install a water-purification system in the Reflecting Pool, while Virginia-based Atlantic Industrial Coatings was awarded $14.7 million to repaint and waterproof the pool’s concrete floor.

Democratic senators and House members are investigating the pool project, including seeking answers about how much taxpayer funding is involved.

Weissert writes for the Associated Press.

President Trump has ousted members of a bipartisan federal election commission that resisted his efforts to require would-be voters to document their U.S. citizenship before registering.

The White House on Friday confirmed the executive action against members of the Election Assistance Commission, which distributes federal grants to states, oversees the testing of voting systems and maintains the national voter registration forms.

It’s the latest move in the Republican president’s effort to expand White House influence over how U.S. elections are conducted and comes after a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that gave the president new personnel authority to fire members of independent agency boards.

“The President, and head of the Executive Branch, reserves the right to remove individuals that may not be totally aligned with the important task of securing America’s elections and ensuring every legal vote is counted. The Slaughter decision gives the President precedence to do so,” said a White House statement to AP.

The president removed the commission’s two Democratic members, Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland. The panel’s Republican member, Christy McCormick resigned. Former Republican commissioner Donald Palmer already had left his post voluntarily earlier this year.

The changes were first reported by VoteBeat, a news outlet that covers elections and voting across the U.S.

While the White House statement did not offer a specific reason for Trump’s action, the commission has previously declined to change the national voter registration form to require documentation of an applicant’s U.S. citizenship, as Trump’s urged in a sweeping March 2025 executive order on U.S. elections. A federal judge blocked the order, ruling it exceeds the president’s authority since the U.S. Constitution grants authority over elections management and oversight to Congress and the states. The administration has indicated it will appeal.

It was not clear whether Trump planned to nominate new members immediately or leave the positions vacant — a move that, months ahead of midterm elections, could prevent the agency from distributing new grants to state or local elections offices and, at the least, complicate its role in overseeing testing and certification of voting systems around the country.

“The Administration from the start has been working across all agencies and local partners to safeguard elections from fraud and abuse, and investing in a strong infrastructure to sustain that mission especially in the midterm elections,” the White House said.

Congress created the four-member commission as part of the Help America Vote Act, a bipartisan law signed by Republican President George W. Bush in 2002. The act requires the commission to include two Democrats and two Republicans, nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Hicks and McCormick were appointed by President Barack Obama. Trump appointed Hovland during his first presidency.

According to VoteBeat, Hicks and Hovland were notified of their removal by an email signed by Morgan DeWitt Snow, the deputy director of presidential personnel in the Executive Office of the President.

Barrow writes for the Associated Press.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A South Florida airport officially changed its name Thursday to the President Donald J. Trump International Airport.

Signs for the Palm Beach International Airport have been removed as new signage goes up.

“Because an entire airport transformation doesn’t happen overnight, you’ll notice a combination of both our classic look and our new brand elements coexisting while traveling through the terminal over the next several weeks,” airport officials said in a Facebook post.

“Trump Force One,” a Boeing 757 owned by the Trump Organization, was the first plane to arrive at the airport under its new name, shortly after 5 a.m. The president’s son, Eric Trump, was one of the passengers. The Trump family regularly uses the West Palm Beach airport when they visit President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in nearby Palm Beach. A stretch of road from the airport to Trump’s estate was renamed Donald J. Trump Boulevard earlier this year.

“There is no person who has done more for Florida and our country, and no one more deserving of this incredible honor,” Eric Trump posted on X. “As a son, and someone who flies out of this airport nearly every day, I will forever be proud to see the initials ‘DJT’ on my boarding pass.”

Although the name change took effect Thursday, the three-letter airport code will change from PBI to DJT on Aug. 18.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation earlier this year that made the name change possible. Changing the airport’s name is expected to cost as much as $5.5 million for new signs, branding and other updates.

Keegan Collett, who was departing the airport Thursday morning on his way to Cincinnati, said he was surprised to see the new name. He said he doesn’t think Trump deserves to have an airport named after him but isn’t necessarily bothered by it.

“At the end of the day, it’s just the name of an airport,” Collett said. “There’s bigger things. I feel like it’s just more of a distraction. Why even worry about it?”

In Dandridge, Tenn., Thursday morning, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, U.S. Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty and Rep. Tim Burchett attended a ceremony to rename the I-40 Bridge in East Tennessee to the Donald J. Trump Bridge.

Bessent said ahead of the ceremony that “no one is more deserving” of the honor than Trump.

Trump received 82% of the vote in Jefferson County, where Dandridge is located, in the 2024 election.

Caracas, July 8, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodríguez held a meeting with a military and diplomatic delegation from Israel on Tuesday.

The talks represented the first official engagement between Caracas and Tel Aviv since former President Hugo Chávez severed diplomatic relations in 2009.

According to Venezuelan state media reports, Rodríguez alongside Public Works Vice President Juan José Ramírez and Transport Minister Francisco Garcés sat down with Israeli officials to discuss plans for the removal of over 1 million tons of rubble from La Guaira state in the wake of June 24’s double earthquake.

For its part, the IDF indicated that its engineering personnel delivered a “national rehabilitation” plan to the Venezuelan government. Photos published on social media showed Brigadier General Elad Edri, chief of staff of the IDF Home Front Command, presenting a slide show titled “Project for the Reconstruction of the Future” with Venezuelan and Israeli flags. 

The Israeli Foreign Ministry added that, at Rodríguez’s request, its delegation will stay in the Caribbean nation for two additional weeks to “begin implementing the reconstruction plan prepared by Israeli experts.”

Uniformed Israeli soldiers have toured multiple affected areas in Caracas and La Guaira, reportedly conducting inspections on damaged infrastructure. It has held multiple meetings with Venezuelan authorities, including a previous one with Ramírez in the Vicepresidency of Public Works. In a press conference last week, Rodríguez expressed her appreciation for the arrival of the “highly trained and professional” Israeli team.

It is not presently known whether the Israeli evaluations are being coordinated with similar assessments from specialized Venezuelan brigades.

“We are here primarily to assist in a natural disaster,” diplomat Yoed Magen said in a social media video. “Whenever we come to a country to advise or provide assistance, a relationship is formed and it can lead to a faster rapprochement.”

Former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez cut ties with Tel Aviv in 2009, fiercely denouncing Operation Cast Lead as “genocide” and voicing solidarity with the Palestinian people.

President Nicolás Maduro maintained his predecessor’s position excoriating Israeli military occupation and war crimes in Gaza and Lebanon, as well as the June 2025 Twelve-Day War against Iran. The Maduro government publicly endorsed South Africa’s activation of the Genocide Convention against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2024.

The mission has drawn backlash from the Chavista grassroots.

“[Israel] is a rogue nation. Its rulers are committing a genocide against the native people of Palestine and now they supposedly help Venezuela rescue [earthquake] victims and rebuild La Guaira,” Hindu Anderi, spokesperson for the Platform of Solidarity with the Palestinian cause, wrote on social media.

Venezuelan officials have reported 3,685 people killed in the earthquake as of July 7, more than 16,000 injured, and over 15,000 displaced families. A total of 190 buildings have collapsed, with hundreds more suffering various levels of damage.

The Venezuelan government has radically shifted its foreign policy after the January 3 US military strikes and kidnapping of Maduro. Apart from reestablishing diplomatic relations with Washington, Caracas has distanced itself from historic allies. During the recent US-Israel war against Iran, Caracas did not express support for Tehran, instead offering public backing for US Gulf allies such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

The diplomatic rapprochement with the Trump administration has seen US forces hold military exercises in Caracas and conduct an extrajudicial execution in southeast Bolívar State.

Following the recent earthquakes, Washington expanded its footprint in the Caribbean nation, with 900 military personnel reportedly on the ground in Venezuela. After conducting repair works, US forces are currently running logistics and aid operations at La Guaira port and the Simón Bolívar International Airport.

Edited by Lucas Koerner in Caracas.

WASHINGTON — President Trump reshaped this year’s U.S. Senate map by sidelining some Republican incumbents and promoting loyalists to replace them. Now the question is whether he’ll put his money where his mouth is.

With four months to go until November’s elections, it’s still unclear how much MAGA Inc., the country’s largest political war chest, with $382 million in the bank as of last month, plans to spend on key races.

The silence has persisted even as Senate Republican leaders have urged Trump’s team, both privately and publicly, to pick up the tab for the president’s decisions.

Front and center is Texas, where Trump successfully endorsed fiery conservative Ken Paxton over Sen. John Cornyn, a choice that some Republicans grumble has turned a safe election into a toss-up that will drain resources away from other battlegrounds. Democratic nominee James Talarico, a state lawmaker, has made Paxton’s history of corruption allegations a central target of his campaign.

“The president picked Paxton, and he’s got $350 million,” Cornyn recently told Semafor. “I think he can spend his money.”

Another challenge has emerged in North Carolina, where Sen. Thom Tillis declined to run for reelection after feuding with Trump last year over healthcare spending.

Trump backed Michael Whatley, his former handpicked chair of the Republican National Committee, to run instead, and Democrats hope to flip the seat with former Gov. Roy Cooper.

Some in Republican campaign leadership are expecting MAGA Inc. to pitch in for Whatley in North Carolina, where the several metro media markets can be pricey.

Republicans will likely be able to count on generous support from well-funded official party committees, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this week should be allowed to make unlimited direct contributions to candidates’ campaigns.

But even that sum falls short of what Trump has stockpiled in MAGA Inc. Even though the president is constitutionally barred from running again, he began raising money shortly after winning a second term, and he’s regularly held fundraisers at his resort properties where tickets cost $1 million per person.

James Blair, the former White House political director who left his government job to coordinate the president’s midterm efforts, was evasive in an interview with Sean Spicer, a former Republican spokesman who hosts a podcast.

“The president is going to expend substantial resources to win the midterms,” said Blair. “He cares deeply about the party winning.”

As a super PAC, MAGA Inc. can raise unlimited money from individuals and corporations. However, it is barred from coordinating with individual campaigns or national Republican committees, which adds to the sense of mystery surrounding its plans.

It’s been more than two months since Blair, along with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, pollster Tony Fabrizio and political advisor Chris LaCivita huddled at Washington’s Waldorf Astoria to discuss MAGA Inc.’s strategy.

The huddle was focused on assembling teams of vendors, such as advertisers, canvassing providers and digital media company leaders who had worked with the Trump team in key states during previous elections and who would be dispatched once plans were in place.

The president has spent much of the year waging a war of retribution against Republicans who have crossed him. He viewed Cornyn as insufficiently loyal, held a grudge against Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana for voting to convict him in an impeachment trial and assailed Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky as the “worst Republican Congressman in history.”

All of them lost their primaries to Trump-backed challengers.

Cornyn’s loss weighs heavily on Senate Republicans, who suggest that Paxton could cost the party an extra $100 million to defend the seat.

Senate Leadership Fund, the principal super PAC aligned with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, is still expected to spend money on advertising in Texas, but not to play a central role given its obligations elsewhere.

Democrats must net four seats to take the majority, and they see Alaska, Maine, North Carolina and Ohio as their best opportunities. The Senate Leadership Fund has already committed to spending $342 million across these four states, plus Iowa, Georgia, Michigan and New Hampshire.

When Paxton came to Washington after winning the nomination May 26, he had a cordial meeting with Thune focused on moving forward together, according to people with knowledge of the conversation who were not authorized to speak publicly.

Later that day, Thune suggested that Trump should be putting up money for a candidate whom Senate Republicans hadn’t asked for.

“We will do what we need to do to make sure the state stays red,” Thune told reporters. “But I’m certainly hopeful the president and the resources he can bring to bear will be engaged.”

“It’s going to be an expensive race,” he added.

Beaumont writes for the Associated Press. Associated Press White House correspondent Seung Min Kim contributed from Washington. Beaumont reported from Des Moines.

WASHINGTON  — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. led a fractured Supreme Court this year that both expanded a president’s power to run the government and dealt major defeats to President Trump.

In Trump’s second year back in the White House, Roberts and the court punctured his claim to have power with no limits.

The justices struck down his worldwide tariffs, ruling these import taxes are a matter for Congress, not the president.

They also threw out his executive order that would end the principle of birthright citizenship. The Constitution wrote this promise into law, Roberts said, and the president may not change it.

The court also ruled in December that the president did not have the power to put National Guard troops on the streets of Chicago.

The three decisions came over fierce dissents from conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. and with Neil M. Gorsuch in two of them.

The three liberal justices dissented angrily when the court ruled the administration may end Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and Syrians.

They did the same when the court ruled the president may replace the top appointees of semi-independent agencies.

But they joined Roberts in a 5-4 ruling that affirmed the independence of the Federal Reserve and blocked Trump’s move to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook.

Trump has won on most immigration fronts because Roberts and the conservatives believe Congress put the enforcement power in the hands of the administration. They point to the law authorizing temporary protection which says there shall be “no judicial review” of the decision to end the protection.

Roberts is a solid conservative who also tries to keep the court on a middle course. It’s an approach that rarely wins plaudits from the right and almost never from the left.

This year the chief justice prevailed with different coalitions.

This week, the court ruled by a 5-4 vote against the Republican National Committee and upheld state laws that allow for counting late-arriving mail ballots. Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined with Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Barrett also joined the chief justice in the rulings on tariffs and birthright citizenship.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. speaks to the Georgetown Law School graduating class in 2025.

(Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press)

This week, the court also limited the power of police to use cellphone data to look for crime suspects. This too came on a 5-4 vote when Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh joined Roberts and the three liberals.

Harvard law professor Richard Lazarus, who has been a friend of Roberts’ since their time in law school, said the chief justice “is clearly working very hard” to put together majorities.

“It is not easy to formally preside over a court in which five of its members (Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch on the right and Justices Sotomayor and Jackson on the left) deride the kind of efforts at moderation that is the chief’s preferred signature and harshly condemn him when he strays from their own views.”

Washington attorney Roman Martinez, a former clerk for Roberts, said the court is “clearly right of center” but the decision on tariffs was the most important of the year.

“It is a huge deal for the court to say ‘no’ to the president on his major policy initiative,” he said.

Stanford law professor Michael McConnell agreed. “It’s hard to claim the court is in Trump’s pocket when he lost the major cases,” he said.

Trump responded to the tariff defeat by calling the justices in the majority a “disgrace to our nation” and “disloyal to the Constitution.”

They “sicken me,” he said of Justices Barrett and Gorsuch, his two appointees who joined Roberts in the 6-3 majority.

Trump went to the court in April to hear his top attorney defend his executive order on birthright citizenship. He left after an hour of mostly skeptical questions.

On the term’s last day, Roberts issued a clear and eloquent 26-page opinion setting out America’s history of according citizenship to children who were born in this country, without regard to their parents.

This view came from England “and crossed the Atlantic with the colonists — and was adopted with little fanfare after the Revolution,” he wrote. “Nothing is better settled,” Justice Joseph Story wrote in 1830.

But it was unsettled by the fight over slavery.

“In the odious decision of Dred Scott v. Sandford, this Court imposed the Southern States’ beliefs onto the Nation” and decreed Blacks could not become citizens, Roberts wrote.

Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass were among the many who condemned the court’s decision, he said.

“It took more than a decade — and the addition of names such as Antietam, Gettysburg, and Chancellorsville to our national canon — but Douglass’s vision of ‘our common humanity’ would be fulfilled,” he wrote.

The Reconstruction Congress wrote this rule into the 14th Amendment and said “All persons born” here are citizens by birth.

The principle of birthright citizenship had been upheld by the Supreme Court in 1898, the chief justice wrote, and it had gone unchallenged until Trump returned to the White House last year.

But Thomas filed a 91-page dissent arguing that immigrants must be “domiciled” here before their children may become citizens.

Alito filed a separate 39-page opinion branding the Roberts opinion a “serious mistake.”

On that note, the court adjourned for its summer recess.

WASHINGTON — President Trump has spent months waging an unusually aggressive campaign to reshape how states run elections, leveraging federal agencies in ways no previous president has attempted.

He has pushed the Department of Homeland Security to compile a list of citizens in each state to help determine voter eligibility. He is seeking to give the Postal Service a role in deciding who can receive mail ballots. He has threatened to withhold federal funding from states unless they phase out electronic voting machines. And he is pressuring Republican lawmakers to overhaul voting laws, claiming without evidence that elections are being rigged.

The efforts have run into resistance in court and within his own party. They have also left postal workers and local election officials bracing for an election cycle marked by deepening doubts about election integrity, and uncertainty about how the federal government may challenge the post-election results.

“It’s an unprecedented power grab to reshape how our elections work so that he and his allies can maintain and expand power,” said Eric Kashdan, director of federal advocacy at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan government ethics organization.

The White House defends the effort as fulfilling a campaign promise, and argues the administration is “lawfully enacting the agenda President Trump was elected to enact.”

One of Trump’s defining efforts to assert some federal control over state elections has been his insistence on passing the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to provide proof of citizenship when they register, require Americans to show identification when casting a ballot and require states to send voter data to the Department of Homeland Security.

His relentless push for the measure has prompted him to derail a bipartisan housing bill and threaten to forgo signing any piece of legislation unless the voting measure is approved. He says he considers the matter a “national emergency.” Despite the pressure campaign, Senate Republican leaders maintain there is not enough support to pass the measure.

The political stakes ahead of the midterms have been laid out more bluntly by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), whose chamber has approved the SAVE America Act. Last month, Johnson warned conservatives gathered at the Faith & Freedom Coalition that if Democrats win back control of the House, they will “go after the president’s family, the Cabinet, his donors, friends,” and supporters.

“I run the protection program,” Johnson said. “I will take care of you.”

Setbacks in court

The administration’s ambitions have hit numerous snags in court in the last month, with judges reaffirming in many cases that the Constitution gives states — not the federal government — primary authority over elections.

In one case, U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, who was appointed by President Biden, went further.

She said a federal immigration database the Department of Homeland Security was compiling to determine voter eligibility violated privacy laws. She added that the database has resulted in states actively removing U.S. citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information.

“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 wrote. “This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”

James Percival, the general counsel for Homeland Security, said the ruling was the latest example of “how hard the Left will fight to stop us from solving problems they insist do not exist.”

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority this week also dealt a blow to the GOP and upheld state laws that allow for counting mail ballots that are postmarked by election day but arrive late.

The decision left Trump fuming. He said it was a “a little bit surprising” to see the court’s decision, claiming without evidence that the result will inevitably give “people more time to vote illegally.”

Democrats, in turn, saw the ruling as a necessary check on the Trump administration’s efforts.

“While we continue to see unprecedented efforts to interfere with elections from the Trump administration, it is a relief to see federal courts make clear that these attacks on mail and absentee voting are clearly illegal and unconstitutional,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Los Angeles) said in a statement after the ruling.

Trump is still eyeing changes to voting by mail. In March, he issued an executive order that seeks to limit who can receive mail ballots. Under the proposed rule, the Postal Service would not deliver mail ballots to states that don’t turn over sensitive voter data to the federal government, Postmaster General David Steiner told a Senate panel last month.

The admission drew immediate condemnation from Democratic lawmakers. They argued the regulation is an illegal attempt to coerce states into handing over their voter rolls.

“Please push back on being a pawn in this authoritarian playbook,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) told Steiner. “The Postal Service is one of the most important institutions in our country. Don’t taint it with the obsession of this one man.”

A day after that back-and-forth, U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani, who was nominated by President Obama, blocked those plans — at least for now.

“The Constitution does not grant the President any specific powers over elections,” the judge wrote, while adding that the Postal Service does not have the legal authority to determine who can vote by mail and how.

The White House said Wednesday that the administration remains confident the executive order will be in place by the November election.

Taken together, the administration’s efforts are unprecedented, UCLA law professor Rick Hasen said. That’s because the Constitution puts control over elections in the hands of the states and grants Congress the ability to pass laws, he said.

“The president really only has authority through federal statutes that have already been passed,” Hasen said. “It’s not surprising that many courts have struck down or stopped him from doing things to try to interfere with how elections are being run.”

Postal workers waiting for clarity

The legal setback for the Postal Service proposed rule was welcome news to the union representing postal workers.

“We believe that what we’re being asked to do is in violation of the oath that we took,” said Jonathan Smith, the president of the American Postal Workers Union, which represents more than 200,000 postal workers.

Following the ruling, the union called on the agency to abandon the rule, arguing it “will crush mailers’ trust in the Postal Service” and undermine “one of the most important functions the Postal Service and postal workers perform in service of the United States and its remarkable democracy.”

In several states, the union has run ads promoting mail voting as safe and a needed option for Americans. The ads were planned before Trump signed his executive order in March seeking to limit who can receive mail ballots, Smith said.

Now, the ads are taking a different meaning. Smith argued that “sometimes God works in mysterious ways.”

“The ad was then and is now intended as a piece to educate America about how good vote by mail is, how much it has been working out,” Smith said. “It’s an educational piece, not a response to the White House.”

Ahead of the election, Smith said postal workers are waiting for clarity on how their duties may change. But right now, he says, there isn’t much.

Orange County Registrar Bob Page said his office is monitoring any changes to existing federal and state election laws to ensure any changes, if needed, are implemented without disruptions. But he acknowledged the timing crunch could create some hurdles the closer the election gets.

“In many ways, any change to how California voters cast their ballots made between now and election day would create a challenge and may even be disruptive,” Page said.

He said many counties have ordered outgoing and return ballot envelopes for the election to ensure envelopes for more than 23 million California voters are ready to use by the Oct. 5 mailing deadline. Any change to how ballots should be prepared or mailed could present an issue.

“Our office has received calls from voters asking about potential changes to vote-by-mail procedures usually tied to media coverage about proposed changes,” he said. “We inform these voters that our procedures have not changed because the law has not changed and that we will mail their 2026 General Election ballots by Oct. 5.”

L.A. County prepares for possible voting changes

In Los Angeles County, election officials are also in a battle to bring clarity to the process as the administration ushers in a series of proposed changes to the election.

Dean Logan, the head of the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder/county clerk’s office, said his office is fighting to contain a wave of election misinformation, including some that is amplified by the White House.

“It’s not something that we’ve seen happen before, and certainly not at the level we’ve seen,” Logan said.

Rather than respond to every claim, Logan says his office picks its battles, intervening only when a falsehood appears likely to reach a wide audience. Even then, the office tries to avoid engagement with whoever is spreading it.

If the administration imposes a new rule closer to the election, Logan said his office is ready to follow the law.

“It’s really been about finding this balance of staying alert and prepared for the possibility [of change] but also not getting sucked into the political distraction,” he said.

Last month, Trump claimed without evidence that Democrats have cheated to win California’s primary elections, and boasted about federal prosecutors in Los Angeles investigating the matter.

Trump has also continued to claim Democrats are trying to rig or cheat in the upcoming election, remarks that have faced rebukes from members of his own party.

“I think it is ironic that we control the House, Senate, Supreme Court and the White House and we are yelling election fraud. I mean, we won all the damn elections,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) told reporters last month.

At the national level, Senate Democrats have said they plan to send election observers to polling places on behalf of Congress in reaction to Trump’s efforts.

“We are not waiting for chaos to arrive,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said last month. “We are preparing now.”

Times staff writer Justine McDaniel contributed to this report from Washington.

Ethics experts sounded the alarm Wednesday after new financial disclosure reports revealed that President Trump’s income ballooned to $2.2 billion in 2025, with $1.4 billion coming from various new cryptocurrency-related businesses.

“It’s bribery. It’s graft. It’s exploitation of public power for private financial gain,” said Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University and an expert in government ethics. “Trump has — with the acquiescence of a somnolent, GOP-controlled Congress and the active assistance of John Roberts’ Supreme Court — transformed the presidency into a massive corruption racket.”

Trump reported income of over $600 million in 2024. But after he entered the White House in 2025, he reported that his income had soared to more than $2.2 billion.

The 2025 annual disclosure report filed with the Office of Government Ethics shows that Trump ramped up his real estate business in countries across the globe, particularly in the Middle East, at a time when his government was negotiating over vital issues of military aid and economic tariffs. The president also expanded his dealings in the relatively new realm of cryptocurrency.

According to the 927-page report, Trump made $635 million in royalties from Celebration Coins and more than $500 million from his World Liberty Financial crypto firm. He drew in millions from a raft of Trump-branded merchandise including God Bless the USA Bibles and sneakers depicting him with his hand raised in a fist. He also brought in $10.4 million from a property in the United Arab Emirates and $9 million from a property in Saudi Arabia.

Noah Bookbinder, an ethics expert and former president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a nonprofit watchdog group in Washington, described Trump’s business dealings while in the White House as “entirely unprecedented, certainly in modern history, but I think by most ways of measuring, in all of American history.”

“This is corruption,” Bookbinder said. “You have a president who has been quite transparently using the presidency in ways that benefit his business interests and intertwining the presidency and business interests.”

But the president and the White House brushed aside ethics concerns about the money Trump is making.

Trump told reporters Wednesday that he made a lot of money before he came to the White House, he had “big institutions” run his money, and that he had benefited, like every other American, as the stock market went up.

“We’re all profiting,” he said. “I’m profiting because I have a lot of money and a lot of cash.”

In a statement, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said: “Neither the President nor his family has ever engaged — or will ever engage — in conflicts of interest. … All actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people.”

Although the report does not show exactly how much Trump is earning — it provides details of revenue, rather than profit — the scale of the president’s cryptocurrency dealings elevated ethics watchdogs’ long-standing concerns.

Jordan Libowitz, a vice president at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, said the most concerning detail of the new report is the hundreds of millions of dollars coming in from various crypto ventures partnered with companies that the American public knows little about.

“At a time when his own administration itself is setting regulation for these types of companies,” Libowitz said, “there’s just this massive opportunity for corruption when foreign governments and foreign nationals can pour tens of millions of dollars into the president’s pocket.”

As a real estate mogul, Trump has long invested in hotels, condominiums and golf courses. But cryptocurrency, Libowitz said, offers vastly more potential for corruption.

“There’s only so many hotel rooms you can book, so many rounds of golf, but there’s no limit with crypto,” Libowitz said. “You can just buy his meme coin and he gets a cut, so you kind of take out the middleman, but also the cap or the amount of money you can funnel to the president.”

Libowitz said it was also problematic for Trump to expand his real estate empire in foreign countries, particularly the Middle East.

“Now it seems that almost all his new developments are in foreign countries, and that opens up, if you’re building this giant resort, you’re going to need help from the local government, whether it’s tax breaks or utility issues, or building a road, or speeding up permits,” Libowitz said. “These are ways that foreign governments can do favors for the American president.”

In the half a century before Trump was elected, ethics experts say, presidents from Nixon to Obama publicly released their tax returns, sold properties or put the proceeds in a blind trust managed by someone they did not know.

“They weren’t doing it because they legally had to, but because they thought it was the right thing to do,” Libowitz said.

Ever since Trump was first elected in 2016 and opted to not sell his businesses or put them in blind trusts, ethics experts have urged Congress to impose more aggressive financial oversight over money in politics.

“Congress needs to update the law, and basically, mandate blind trusts and sale of assets and disclosure of tax returns,” Libowitz said.

Noting that the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause explicitly states that the president cannot accept things of value from foreign or domestic governments, ethics experts say Trump is flouting the law and Congress has chosen to not enforce it.

Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota and former White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, said Congress needed to close loopholes that exempt presidents from federal conflict of interest laws as well as enforce the Foreign Emoluments Clause.

“Nobody holding a position of trust with the United States government can accept emoluments, profits and benefits from foreign governments, and that is flatly prohibited under the United States Constitution,” Painter said. “Now, if the United Arab Emirates put money into Liberty Financial, as I understand they did … and then Trump makes money off Liberty Financial, that’s a Foreign Emoluments Clause problem.”

Congress, he said, should empower an independent prosecutor to investigate such conflicts.

“The problem with the Foreign Emoluments Clause is how do we enforce it?” Painter said. “The founders and head of the Congress enforced it by impeaching anybody who took a bunch of foreign government money, but I guess that system’s not working. That’s a serious problem.”

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court on Monday gave President Trump new power to fire the heads of most independent agencies created by Congress — but not the Federal Reserve.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. announced two opinions, one of which bolstered the president’s power as the chief executive and a second which said this authority did not extend to the Federal Reserve board.

The first was a 6-3 decision that had the support of five conservatives, while the second had a 5-4 majority that included the three liberals.

Roberts, a former White House lawyer, has long been skeptical of independent agencies whose officials may wield regulatory power in conflict with the views of the president.

Since the 1880s, however, Congress has at times created independent agencies led by a bipartisan board of experts. In 1935, a unanimous Supreme Court had upheld these multi-member boards and commissions.

But Roberts and the court overturned that precedent and declared it conflicts with the executive power of the president.

“Our Constitution creates three branches, but only one President,” he wrote. “To discharg[e] the duties of his trust, the President must have the assistance of officers he can trust. … Subordinates who exercise the President’s power are subject to removal by him. Then, and only then, can they remain accountable to the President, and the President to the people.”

The decision upholds Trump’s firing of Rebecca Slaughter, one of two Democratic appointees on the five-member Federal Trade Commission.

The Supreme Court upheld President Trump’s firing of Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic appointee to the Federal Trade Commission.

(Graeme Sloan / Bloomberg / Getty Images)

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that the ruling “distorts the structure of government to fit the majority’s theory of unitary, total executive control. The result is a President who emerges with far greater power than ever before. It is a power, however, that neither the People, nor Congress, nor the Constitution bestowed upon him.”

Under what has been dubbed the “unitary executive” theory, the court’s conservatives believe the president’s executive power in Article II of the Constitution overrides Congress’power in Article I to write the laws and structure the government.

The departments and agencies of the federal government exist only because Congress created them by law.

But in the second opinion, the court blocked Trump’s bid to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook, an appointee of President Biden.

Roberts said the central bank dates back to the nation’s founding, and Congress created the Federal Reserve Board in line with “our Nation’s tradition of central banking protected from political interference.”

Trump tried to fire Lisa Cook in a social media post, he said.

But “the Federal Reserve’s Governors do not serve at the President’s pleasure — they instead serve staggered 14-year terms, and may be removed only ‘for cause’,” he wrote.

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh cast a crucial vote to support the Fed’s independence. He said he joined the majority because it “confirms the longstanding historical practice and understanding that the Federal Reserve is an independent agency whose Governors enjoy for-cause removal protection consistent with Article II of the Constitution.”

The court did not finally decide on Cook’s case, except to say she deserved due process of law. She could not be fired without a hearing and evidence, the court said.

The setback for independent agencies came as no surprise, however.

Even prior to Trump’s election, Roberts has insisted agency officials must be accountable and under the control of the president.

Last year, the justices blocked lower court rulings that would have reinstated agency officials who were fired by Trump.

For most of American history, however, it had been understood that Congress had the power to structure the government and to create semi-independent agencies to carry out specific tasks like regulating railroad rates or the money supply.

These agencies and commissions were led by a bipartisan board of experts who were appointed with a fixed term. They could be fired only for cause, not because of a political disagreement with the president.

The Supreme Court upheld these multi-member commissions in 1935 on the grounds their work was more legislative and judicial than simply enforcing the law.

But the court’s current conservative majority has contended these commissions and boards wield executive authority and are therefore, subject to direct control by the president.

In creating such bodies, Congress often was responding to the problems of a new era.

The Interstate Commerce Commission was created in 1887 to regulate railroad rates. The FTC, the focus of the court case, was created in 1914 to investigate corporate monopolies.

The year before, the Federal Reserve Board was established to supervise banks, prevent panics and regulate the money supply.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Congress created the Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate the stock market and the National Labor Relations Board to resolve labor disputes.

Decades later, Congress focused on safety. The National Transportation Safety Board was created to investigate aviation accidents, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission investigates products that may pose a danger. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission protects the public from nuclear hazards.

Typically, Congress gave the appointees, a mix of Republicans and Democrats, a fixed term and said they could be removed only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”

Slaughter was first appointed by Trump to a Democratic seat and was reappointed by Biden in 2023 for a seven-year term.

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.

South Korea’s dismal World Cup first-round exit has prompted fury at home, and calls for a complete overhaul at the top have not been silenced by coach Hong Myung-bo’s resignation.

South Korea, World Cup semifinalists as cohosts in 2002, limped out of the tournament after failing to squeeze into the knockout rounds as one of the top eight third-place finishers.

They had the last 32 within their reach only to suffer a shock 1-0 loss to lower-ranked South Africa.

Their early exit prompted coach Hong to quit on Sunday and cast doubt over the international future of captain Son Heung-min.

It also earned the team a rebuke from the country’s president, Lee Jae Myung, who pointed the finger at “incompetent people” and apologised to the nation.

The president’s comments reflect public anger that has reached a boiling point after years of simmering discontent with South Korean football chiefs.

Former captain Park Ji-sung said, “We may have expected this outcome years ago.

“We have to look back and ask ourselves why things have come to this,” the former Manchester United player said after the team’s elimination was confirmed.

“Even after spending a decade learning how to prepare for the World Cup and develop Korean football, we have forgotten those lessons once again.”

South Korea was expected to emerge from Group A that included cohosts Mexico, South Africa and Czechia.

They started with a 2-1 win over the Czechs but lost 1-0 to Mexico before bowing out against South Africa.

The team were expected to arrive home on Tuesday morning, but local media reported that the Korea Football Association (KFA) were not planning to organise an event to welcome them back.

In 2014, angry fans pelted the team with Korean candies – seen as a deeply offensive insult – when they returned from the World Cup in Brazil, where they went out in the group stage during Hong’s first spell as coach.

‘Message to change’

Hong has been a lightning rod for criticism since he returned to the job in July 2024, five months after his predecessor, German World Cup-winner Jurgen Klinsmann, was axed.

The KFA came under fire for the process that led to Hong’s reappointment, with questions asked over its transparency and fairness.

Hong, who was regularly booed by fans, did himself no favours at the World Cup by dropping star player Son for the South Africa game, in which South Korea needed only a point to progress.

Hong admitted afterwards that he was struggling to understand what had gone wrong, as the nation nervously waited for results in other games to decide their fate.

Lee Chun-soo, a member of the 2002 World Cup team, said he “felt pathetic and frustrated rooting for Uzbekistan” against the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the hope that the result would send South Korea through.

“This is a message to change,” Lee said on his YouTube channel. “Everyone should be ready to step down.”

South Korean fans reserved a sizeable chunk of their anger for KFA President Chung Mong-gyu.

Chung said before the World Cup that he would quit after the tournament, blaming his “lack of virtue” following fierce criticism of his 13-year tenure.

The 65-year-old, who is in his fourth term as KFA president, came under fire for trying to pardon former players who were banned for life for match-fixing.

Chung and Hong might not be the only ones to bow out, with captain Son yet to comment on his future.

The skipper, who turns 34 next month, had previously hinted at retiring from international football.

Former captain Park said South Korea needed to learn from the past.

“It’s unfortunate that this kind of cycle keeps repeating,” he said.

“We must dream of and shape a better future, and move forward step by step so that we don’t repeat these mistakes.”

Vucic is under ⁠pressure after months ⁠of antigovernment protests.

Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic says he will step down within “weeks”.

Vucic announced his plan to resign on Saturday, paving the way for early presidential and parliamentary ‌elections.

This follows months of youth-led protests that shook his term as president.

“I will be president for only a couple of weeks, ⁠and then I will ⁠resign,” Vucic told his supporters ⁠at a pro-government rally ⁠in ⁠the capital, Belgrade.

“We will win more convincingly than ever before,” he said, telling the crowd he will help his right-wing Serbian Progressive Party at the upcoming elections and that this was probably the last time he would address them as Serbia’s president.

Vucic did not specify exactly when he would resign or when an election – for Parliament or for a new president – would be held.

The president’s second and ‌last mandate was set to expire in mid-2027.

Vucic has gradually tightened his grip on power since his populist party took over the Serbian government 14 years ago.

The news of his resignation comes against the backdrop of months of student-led mass antigovernment protests that have rattled the country.

Tens of thousands of people have been rallying across Serbia since November 2024, when the Novi Sad rail station disaster killed 16 people and sparked mass anger at the government.

Hundreds of people were detained and Serbia’s police were accused of excessive force and arbitrary arrests by the European Union. The protests eventually led to the resignation of then-Prime Minister Milos Vucevic in January 2025.

Vucic, who has dominated Serbian politics for over a decade, has repeatedly called protesters “foreign agents”, accusing them of “fuelling divisions” and seeking to overthrow the government.

In response to Vucic’s rally, students are set to hold their own gathering on Sunday in Kraljevo, central Serbia, also promoting national unity while renewing calls for early elections.