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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court justices, hearing arguments on school integration, signaled Monday that they are likely to bar the use of race when assigning students to public schools.

Such a ruling could deal a blow to hundreds of school systems across the nation that use racial guidelines to maintain a semblance of classroom integration in cities where neighborhoods are divided along racial lines.

However, it would be a major victory for those who have called for “colorblind” decision-making by public officials.

Monday’s argument also may well mark the emergence of a five-member majority determined to outlaw the official use of race in schools, colleges and public agencies.

“The purpose of the Equal Protection clause is to ensure that people are treated as individuals rather than based on the color of their skin,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts. Jr. said.

Three years ago, the court upheld affirmative action at colleges and universities. But that 5-4 decision depended on now-retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Since then, President Bush’s two appointees — Roberts and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. — have joined the court, and the tenor of Monday’s debate suggested a new majority would frown on race-based affirmative action if the issue were to return.

At issue Monday were the racial-integration guidelines adopted by school boards in Seattle and Louisville, Ky.

Seattle had allowed its students to choose which high school they wanted to attend, but tried to maintain a racial balance within 10 percentage points of the district’s overall enrollment. Before the program was suspended in 2001, 210 white students and 90 minorities were denied their first choice of a high school.

The Louisville schools seek to keep black enrollment between 15% and 50%.

Both policies were challenged by parents of a small number of students, most of them white, who were denied their first-choice school because of their race. Bush administration lawyers joined the cases on the side of the parents.

Officials could not say how many districts use racial guidelines that might be affected by the court’s ruling. But a ruling against such policies could jeopardize many magnet-school programs nationwide that use race as an admissions factor, including the one in Los Angeles Unified School District.

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Outlook for LAUSD

About 54,000 LAUSD students are enrolled in magnet schools, and the district says “openings are determined by the need to maintain a racially balanced enrollment.” The district’s lawyers concede that a high court ruling striking down integration guidelines in Seattle and Louisville would put the Los Angeles program “at risk.”

The justices who spoke during Monday’s argument all agreed racial integration is a laudable goal. But a narrow majority of them — in comments, questions and past decisions — made clear their belief that the Constitution forbids shifting children from one school to another based on race.

Until Monday, civil rights lawyers held out the faint hope that Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, a centrist, might vote to uphold local school integration plans, even though he had regularly opposed race-based affirmative action in the past.

But Kennedy quickly dashed those hopes.

He told a lawyer for the Seattle school board that “outright racial balancing … is patently unconstitutional. And that seems to be what you have here.” Agreeing with Kennedy, Roberts noted that the districts were making decisions on assigning students to schools “based on skin color and not any other factor.”

No students are excluded from school because of their race, responded Michael F. Madden, the school board’s lawyer. They may be assigned to a “different [but] basically a comparable school.”

“How is that different from the ‘separate-but-equal’ argument? … Everyone got a seat in Brown as well,” replied Roberts. “But because they were assigned to those seats on the basis of race, it violated equal protection.”

Roberts was referring to the landmark 1954 decision in Brown vs. Board of Education that rejected the “separate but equal” doctrine and struck down racial segregation.

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‘Segregation is harmful’

Madden disputed the comparison between forced segregation and voluntary integration. “Segregation is harmful” to students, while diversity and integration “have benefits” for black and white children, he said.

But the conservative justices did not seem swayed by the argument that the ends justified the means.

Achieving racial diversity “is certainly an admirable goal,” said Justice Antonin Scalia. But he added, “Even if the objective is OK, you cannot achieve it by any means whatsoever…. I thought one of the absolute restrictions [in the Constitution] is that you cannot judge and classify people on the basis of their race.”

Alito also skeptically questioned the school lawyers, and Justice Clarence Thomas, though he said nothing Monday, has always insisted public officials may not treat individuals differently because of their race.

If there was one hopeful sign Monday for the proponents of the schools’ programs, it came when Kennedy said school officials were free to pursue racial integration as a goal. For example, a school system could locate a new school between a white and black neighborhood so as to achieve diversity, he said. School officials also could use special programs or magnet schools to draw a mix of black and white students, he said.

By contrast, “you’re characterizing each student by reason of the color of his or her skin,” Kennedy told one of the school board lawyers. “That is quite a different means. And it seems to be that should only be, if ever allowed, as a last resort.”

The court’s four liberal justices, sounding frustrated by their colleagues, defended the school integration policies. They wondered how the Supreme Court could reverse course from demanding desegregation in decades past to now, possibly, blocking it.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer noted that, in 1957, federal troops were sent to Little Rock, Ark., to desegregate the schools over the objections of local officials.

“The society was divided. Here we have a society, black and white, who elect school board members who together have voted to have this form of integration,” Breyer said. “Given that change in society, which is a good one, how can the Constitution be interpreted in a way that would require us, the judges, to go in and make them take the children out of the school?”

U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement was unmoved. “I think the answer is that the lesson of history in this area is that racial classifications are not one where we should just let local school board officials do what they think is right,” he said.

The court will issue a ruling in several months on Parents Involved in Community Schools vs. Seattle School District No. 1 and Meredith vs. Jefferson County Board of Education.

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The Trump administration moved again Wednesday to make it harder to gain U.S. citizenship, announcing a slate of changes to the core civics test that immigrants must pass to be naturalized.

The changes would expand the number of questions immigrants need to be prepared to answer, and increase the number of questions they must answer correctly in order to pass.

The changes, announced as pending in the Federal Register, would largely revert the test to a similarly longer and harder version that was introduced in 2020 during President Trump’s first term, but was swiftly rolled back under President Biden in 2021.

The shift follows other Trump administration changes to the process by which U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials determine whether prospective citizens are qualified, including enhanced assessments of their “moral character” and whether they ascribe to any “anti-American” beliefs, and intense checks into their community ties and social media networks.

It also comes amid a broader crackdown on undocumented immigration, and what Trump has said will be the largest “mass deportation” in U.S. history. That effort has been heavily centered in the Los Angeles region, to the consternation of many Democratic leaders and immigration advocacy organizations.

The new naturalization test, like the short-lived 2020 version, would draw from 128 possible questions and require prospective citizens to answer 12 out of 20 questions correctly in order to pass. Under the current test, which dates to 2008, there are 100 possible questions, and prospective citizens must answer six out of 10 correctly.

Trump administration officials said the new test “will better assess an alien’s understanding of U.S. history, government, and English language,” and is part of a “multi-step overhaul” of the citizenship process that will ensure traditional American culture and values are protected.

“We are doing everything in our power to make sure that anyone who is offered the privilege of becoming an American citizen fulfills their obligation to their new country,” Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.

Immigration advocates cast the change as an attempt by the administration to further impede the legal pathway to citizenship for hardworking immigrants already deeply rooted in the U.S. They say it is part of a broader, authoritarian campaign by Trump and his administration to vet potential new citizens and other legal immigrants for conservative ideology and loyalty to him — all while the administration aggressively targets people for deportation based on little more than the color of their skin and the work that they do.

“The Trump administration lauding the privileges of becoming a U.S. citizen — while making it harder to obtain it — rings hollow when you consider that it is also arguing before the Supreme Court that law enforcement can racially profile Latines,” said Jennifer Ibañez Whitlock, senior policy counsel at the National Immigration Law Center. “All this does is make it harder for longtime residents who contribute to this country every day to finally achieve the permanent protections that only U.S. citizenship can offer.”

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled in a case challenging immigration raids in California that immigration agents may stop and detain people they suspect are in the U.S. illegally based on little more than the color of their skin, their speaking Spanish and their working in fields or locations with large immigrant workforces.

Last month, USCIS announced that it was ramping up its vetting of immigrants’ social media activity and looking for “anti-American ideologies or activities,” including “antisemitic ideologies.” That announcement followed months of enforcement against pro-Palestinian student activists and other U.S. visa and green card holders that raised alarms among constitutional scholars and free speech advocates.

Trump administration officials have rejected such concerns, and others about raids sweeping up people without criminal records and racial profiling being used to target them, as part of a misguided effort by liberals and progressives to protect even dangerous, undocumented immigrants for political reasons.

In announcing the latest change to the naturalization test, Homeland Security said it would make the test more difficult, and in the process ensure that “only those who are truly committed to the American way of life are admitted as citizens.”

The department also lauded its recent moves to more deeply vet prospective citizens, saying the new process “includes reinstating neighborhood interviews of potential new citizens, considering whether aliens have made positive contributions to their communities, determining good moral character, and verifying they have never unlawfully registered to vote or unlawfully attempted to vote in an American election.”

In rolling back the first Trump administration’s test — which is very similar to the newly proposed one — USCIS officials under the Biden administration said that it “may inadvertently create potential barriers to the naturalization process.”

By contrast, the agency under Biden said the 2008 test — the one Trump is now replacing again — was “thoroughly developed over a multi-year period with the input of more than 150 organizations, which included English as a second language experts, educators, and historians, and was piloted before its implementation.”

We now have an estimated price tag for California’s special election and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s presidential rollout: $282.6 million.

The Nov. 4 vote involves Proposition 50, which would gerrymander the state to boost Democratic chances of winning as many as five added House seats in the 2026 midterm election. The intent is to partially compensate for Republican gerrymanders in Texas and other states.

The ballot measure has already done wonders to boost Newsom’s early standing in the 2028 presidential contest — emphasis on the word early. After alienating many in his party by playing footsie with the likes of Steve Bannon and the late Charlie Kirk, Newsom has set hearts aflutter among those yearning for Democrats to “fight back against Trump,” to cite what has become the party’s chief animating principle and cri de cœur.

One could ask whether the not-insignificant cost of the special election is the best use of taxpayer dollars, or if the sum would be better spent, as veteran GOP strategist Ken Khachigian suggested in a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece, “on firefighters, police officers, schoolteachers and road repairs.”

Newsom, in full barricade-manning mode, has said protecting our precious democracy is “priceless.”

The chairman of California’s Democratic Party, Rusty Hicks, placed a more concrete price tag on the virtues of Proposition 50, suggesting to the Bay Area News Group that money spent on the special election would be offset — and then some — by the billions California would otherwise lose under President Trump’s hostile regime.

There is, however, an added, if intangible, cost to Proposition 50: Effectively disenfranchising millions of conservative and Republican-leaning Californians, who already feel as though they’re ignored and politically impotent.

Under the Democratic gerrymander, the already-meager Republican House contingent — nine of 52 California House members — could be cut practically in half. Starting in January 2027, the state’s entire Republican delegation could fit in a Jeep Wagoneer, with plenty of room to spare.

This in a state where Trump received over 6 million votes in 2024.

The cost of California’s special election is estimated at $282.6 million. The campaign is effectively a roll out for a Newsom presidential bid.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

The would-be autocrat issuing diktats from the Oval Office may be odious to many. But making people feel as though their vote is irrelevant, their voice is muzzled and they have no stake in our political system because elections are essentially meaningless — at least as far as which party prevails — is not a recipe for a contented and engaged citizenry, or a healthy democracy.

We already have a chief executive who has repeatedly demonstrated that he sees himself as the president of red America, of those who support him unequivocally, with everyone else regarded as evil or subversive. We’ve seen how well that’s worked out.

Is the solution electing a governor for blue California, who — if not openly scorning the state’s millions of Republicans — is willing to render them politically powerless?

Proponents of Proposition 50 say the measure is needed to offset Republican gerrymanders in Texas and other states.

(Hon Wing Chiu/For The Times)

All seven of the major Democrats running to succeed Newsom support Proposition 50. (The two leading Republican — and underdog — candidates, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and conservative commentator Steve Hilton, are opposed, which is no surprise.)

Your friendly columnist put the question to those seven Democrats. What do they say to Republican voters who already feel disregarded and politically unrepresented? As governor, is there a place for them in your vision of California?

Most, as you’d expect, vowed to be a governor for all: Red, blue, independent, libertarian, vegetarian.

Former Rep. Katie Porter noted she served a purple Orange County district and won support from voters of all stripes “because they knew I wouldn’t hesitate to stand up for anyone — no matter to what party they belong — who makes life harder for California families.” She said in a text message she’d bring “that same tenacity, grit and courage” to Sacramento.

Toni Atkins, a former Assembly speaker and state Senate leader, texted that she’s “made it a priority to listen to every Californian — Democrat, Republican, and Independent.” Assailing Republicans in Congress, she described Proposition 50 as “a way to fight back now” while eventually reverting to the independent redistricting commission that drew up the current congressional lines.

Xavier Becerra, the state’s former attorney general and a member of Joe Biden’s cabinet, said he would work to see that all Californians, regardless of party, benefit from his leadership on healthcare, housing and making the state more affordable. Doing that, he texted, requires fighting Trump and “Republican extremists” seeking to rig the midterm elections.

Betty Yee, the former state controller, just finished a campaign swing through rural California, where, she said, voters asked similar questions along the lines of what about us? Those vast reaches beyond the state’s blue coastal enclaves have long been a hotbed of resentment toward California’s ruling Democratic establishment.

Yee said she urged voters there to “look at your representation now.” The Republican-run Congress, she noted, has approved budget cuts that threaten to shut down rural hospitals and gut badly needed social safety-net programs. “How is that representing your interest?” she asked.

Tony Thurmond, the state schools superintendent, said much the same.

“One of the reasons that I support this measure is because California Republicans in Congress who voted for the ‘big, beautiful bill’ voted for a bill that they knew was going to throw millions of people off of health insurance,” Thurmond said. “And that’s troubling, and I actually think that this is a way to counter that action and to make changes in Congress.”

Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and businessman Stephen Cloobeck ignored the question about Republican sentiments and assailed Trump.

Villaraigosa called Proposition 50 “a temporary … direct response to MAGA’s election rigging efforts in Texas.” Cloobeck texted, “This is not the way it should be, but democracy and California are under attack, and there is no way in hell I’m not going to FIGHT.”

There’s a certain presumption and paternalism to the notion that California Democrats know what’s best for California Republicans.

But as Thurmond noted, “They have a right to vote it down. We’re putting it in front of the voters and giving them a chance to exercise their viewpoints, democratically.”

Every Californian who casts a ballot can decide what best suits them.

As they should.

WASHINGTON — FBI Director Kash Patel touted his leadership of the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency at a congressional hearing likely to be dominated by questions about the investigation into Charlie Kirk’s killing and the recent firings of senior FBI officials who have accused Patel of illegal political retribution.

The appearance Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee represents the first oversight hearing of Patel’s young but tumultuous tenure and provides a high-stakes platform for him to try to reassure skeptical Democrats that he is the right person for the job at a time of internal upheaval and mounting concerns about political violence inside the United States.

Patel rattled off a series of what he said were accomplishments of his first months on the job, including his efforts to fight violent crime and protect children. Nodding to criticism from Democrats, he closed his remarks by saying: “If you want to criticize my 16 years of service, please bring it on.”

Patel returned to the committee for the first time since his confirmation hearing in January, when he asserted that he would not pursue retribution as director. He’ll face questions Tuesday about whether he did exactly that when the FBI last month fired five agents and senior officials in a purge that current and former officials say weakened morale and contributed to unease inside the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency.

Three of those officials sued last week in a federal complaint that says Patel knew the firings were likely illegal but carried them out anyway to protect his job. One of the officials helped oversee investigations into the Jan. 6 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, and another clashed with Justice Department leadership while serving as acting director in the early days of President Donald Trump’s administration. The FBI has declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Republican lawmakers, who make up the majority in the committee, are expected to show solidarity for Patel, a close ally of Trump, and are likely to praise the director for his focus on violent crime and illegal immigration.

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the committee’s Republican chairman, signaled his support for Patel at the outset of the hearing, praising the director for having “begun the important work of returning the FBI to its law enforcement mission.”

“It’s well understood that your predecessor left you an FBI infected with politics,” Grassley stated.

The panel’s top Democrat, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, described Patel as “arguably the most partisan FBI director ever.”

“Director Patel has already inflicted untold damage on the FBI, putting our national security and public safety at risk,” Durbin said.

Republicans are also likely to try to elicit from Patel fresh details about the investigation into Kirk’s assassination at a Utah college campus last week, which authorities have said was carried out by a 22-year-old man who had grown more political in recent years and had ascribed to a “leftist ideology.”

Patel drew scrutiny when, hours after Kirk’s killing, he posted on social media that “the subject” was in custody even though the shooting suspect remained on the loose and was not arrested until he turned himself in late the following night.

Patel has not explained that post but has pointed to his decision to authorize the release of photographs of the suspect, Tyler Robinson, while he was on the run as a key development that helped facilitate an arrest. A Fox News Channel journalist reported Saturday that Trump had told her that Patel and the FBI have “done a great job.”

Robinson is due to make his first court appearance in Utah. It’s unclear whether he has an attorney, and his family has declined to comment.

Another line of questioning for Patel may involve Democratic concerns that he is politicizing the FBI through politically charged investigations, including into longstanding Trump grievances. Agents and prosecutors, for instance, have been seeking interviews and information as they reexamine aspects of the years-old FBI investigation into potential coordination between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Patel has repeatedly said his predecessors at the FBI and Justice Department who investigated and prosecuted Trump were the ones who weaponized the institutions.

Tucker writes for the Associated Press.

NEW YORK — Matthew Dowd’s firing has opened a floodgate.

The MSNBC political analyst, who lost his job shortly after on-air comments about slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, was the first of many figures to face consequences Thursday for public statements or actions about the shooting.

Raw feelings about the killing have ignited a campaign to shame — and worse. Several conservative activists sought to identify social media users whose posts about Kirk they viewed as offensive or celebratory. Right-wing influencer Laura Loomer said she would try to ruin the professional aspirations of anyone who celebrated Kirk’s death.

MSNBC said Dowd is no longer with the network after his comments, shortly after the shooting, in which he said that “hateful words” can lead to “hateful actions.” Both MSNBC President Rebecca Kutler and Dowd apologized for the remarks, which Kutler called “inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable.”

Dowd said he didn’t intend for his comments to blame Kirk for the attack, as some may have construed them. Still, it brought an abrupt interruption to his work as a television commentator, which the former aide to President George W. Bush has done for nearly two decades.

The moves to curb certain public commentary after Kirk’s death are particularly notable, as his admirers had lauded him as a champion of free speech.

Actions spread across country

A Florida reporter was suspended for a question posed to a congressman. A comic book writer lost her job because of social media posts, as did educators in Mississippi and Tennessee. “CBS Mornings” host Nate Burleson was attacked for a question he asked. An Arizona sports reporter and a Carolina Panthers public relations official lost their jobs.

An anonymously registered website pledged to “Expose Charlie’s Murderers” and asked people to offer tips about people who were “supporting political violence online.”

The site published a running list Thursday of targeted posts, along with the names, locations and employers of people who posted them. While some posts contained incendiary language, others didn’t appear to celebrate the shooting or glorify violence. There were several similar efforts, including one by activist Scott Presler, who asked his followers about teachers purported to have celebrated Kirk’s killing and posted findings on X.

A staff member at the University of Mississippi was fired after sharing “insensitive comments” about Kirk’s death, according to the school’s chancellor, Glenn Boyce. The university did not identify the employee or immediately respond to questions from the Associated Press.

The president of Middle Tennessee State University said he’d fired a staffer who offered “callous and inappropriate comments on social media” about Kirk’s shooting. President Sidney A. McPhee did not identify the staff member but said the person “worked in a position of trust with our students.”

It wasn’t clear if it was the same person, but an X post by Tennessee GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn identified an assistant dean of students at MTSU who posted online that she had “ZERO sympathy” after the shooting. Blackburn said the person should be ashamed and fired.

A warning to teachers in Florida

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ education commissioner warned the state’s teachers that making “disgusting” statements about Kirk’s killing could draw sanctions, including the suspension or revocation of teaching licenses. Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas said in a memo to school district superintendents that he’d been made aware of “despicable” comments on social media.

“I will be conducting an investigation of every educator who engages in this vile, sanctionable behavior,” Kamoutsas said in the memo, which he also posted on X on Thursday. “Govern yourselves accordingly.”

The rush to police commentary appeared to have little precedent in other recent examples of political violence, such as the 2022 home-invasion hammer attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; or the shooting deaths in June of Minnesota House Democratic leader Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark.

DC Comics announced that it was ditching a new “Red Hood” series, a Batman spinoff, after one issue had been published and two more were in the works. The comics’ writer, Gretchen Felker-Martin, had published comments about Kirk’s shooting online that DC called offensive.

“Posts or public comments that can be viewed as promoting hostility or violence are inconsistent with DC’s standards of conduct,” the comics publisher said.

Loomer, an informal advisor to President Trump whose pressure campaigns have resulted in several firings in his administration, attacked the entertainment website TMZ for what she called a “disgusting” livestream in which employees could be heard laughing and cheering seconds before Kirk’s death was announced. TMZ said the noise had nothing to do with the Kirk story — the staff members were crowded around a computer watching a car chase — but apologized for the bad timing and how it looked to viewers.

A writer for the Arizona media company PHNX Sports was fired after conservative activists called attention to a series of online posts that attacked Kirk’s positions on guns and Gaza and called him evil.

The NFL’s Carolina Panthers distanced themselves from an employee who posted comments about Kirk and a photo referencing Wu-Tang Clan’s song “Protect Ya Neck.” Kirk was shot in the neck. Football communications coordinator Charlie Rock was fired, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who spoke under condition of anonymity because the team typically doesn’t announce firings.

Rock’s name has been removed from the team’s website. He did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

CBS News anchor under attack

Burleson, a former NFL star turned anchor for CBS News’ morning show, was attacked online for asking former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on the air Thursday whether this was a moment for the Republican Party to reflect on political violence. His co-anchor, Gayle King, immediately tried to soften the question by interjecting, “I’d say both parties.”

Another former NFL player, Jay Feely, running for Congress in Arizona, said the question was offensive. “Charlie Kirk was assassinated in front of his family and you ask if Republicans need to tone down their rhetoric?” he said. (Kirk’s family was not present at the shooting.) Some conservative media stars also weighed in, with talk show host Erick Erickson calling for Burleson to be fired and Clay Travis calling him a ”moron.”

A reporter for the Floridapolitics.com news site was suspended for texting a Florida congressman a question about gun control immediately after Kirk’s shooting. Peter Schorsch, Floridapolitics.com publisher, said he was concerned that reporter A.G. Gancarski was trying to provoke a source rather than initiate a serious policy discussion. Utah law allows people to carry guns on college campuses; Kirk was slain on the campus of Utah Valley University in Orem.

U.S. Rep. Randy Fine, a Florida Republican, texted back that he had learned of Kirk’s shooting only 23 minutes earlier and was repulsed to get the question when people should be praying for Kirk’s safety. Schorsch said he agreed that the timing was inappropriate, and didn’t want any of his staff members to be put in danger by anyone angry about it.

“I think everybody today should be asking questions about a wide range of policies,” Schorsch said in an interview Thursday. “But when a house is on fire, I don’t think you should ask questions about a person’s insurance policy. You put out the fire first.”

He said Gancarski was a good reporter who made a mistake. He’ll be back on the job after a few days out. Gancarski, reached by phone, declined comment.

The feminist website Jezebel removed a post headlined “We Paid Some Etsy Witches to Curse Charlie Kirk” that was published Monday, two days before Kirk’s death. “The piece was intended as satire and made it absolutely clear that we wished no physical harm. We stand by every word,” Jezebel said in an editor’s note.

“We may republish at a later date, but out of compassion for the victim’s family, we want to make clear that we prioritize an end to violence over anyone wanting to read about Etsy witches,” Jezebel said, in a reference to the online storefront.

Bauder and Swenson write for the Associated Press. AP journalists Sophie Bates, Kate Payne, Steve Reed and Nicholas Riccardi contributed to this report.

OREM, Utah — Authorities said Thursday they have fresh leads in their massive manhunt for a college-age shooter who killed influential right-wing activist Charlie Kirk with a single bullet as he spoke at a Utah college campus.

No suspects were in custody Thursday, more than 20 hours after the shooting, and officials have yet to identify the gunman. However, Robert Bohls, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Salt Lake City office, said that investigators recovered the weapon they believe was used to kill Kirk — a high-powered bolt-action rifle they found in a wooded area near the campus — as well as the suspect’s footprints and palm prints.

“We are and will continue to work nonstop until we find the person that has committed this heinous crime, and find out why they did it,” Bohls said.

A close ally of President Trump who founded the conservative youth group Turning Point USA, Kirk was killed Wednesday by a single shot fired from the rooftop of a nearby building as he addressed a question about mass shootings at a Utah Valley University campus in Orem.

Investigators are tracking a suspect who appeared to be college age and blended in on campus, Beau Mason, commissioner of the Utah Department of Public Safety, told reporters Thursday morning. They have scoured dozens of feeds from campus security cameras and collected footwear impressions, a palm print and forearm imprints for analysis.

Video of the crowd captured by an attendee shows a lone figure in black dashing across the rooftop of the Losee Center, a building about 150 yards from where Kirk was speaking.

Mason said investigators “are confident in our abilities to track” the shooter and had “good video footage” that they were not ready to release.

“We are working through some technologies and some ways to identify this individual,” he said.

After scouring camera security footage, investigators believe the shooter arrived on campus at about 11:52 am and moved through the stairwells, up to the roof, across the roof to the shooting location, Mason said.

“We were able to track his movements as he moved to the other side of the building, jumped off of the building and fled off of the campus and into a neighborhood,” Mason said. “Our investigators worked through those neighborhoods, contacting anybody they can, with doorbell cameras, witnesses, and have thoroughly worked through those communities trying to identify any leads.”

Bohls said investigators recovered a high-powered, bolt-action rifle in a wooded area where the shooter had fled. A law enforcement source told The Times a Mauser 30-06 was recovered by investigators. Investigators have not said whether the rifle had been traced to an owner.

The Utah Department of Public Safety said Wednesday night its State Crime Lab is working “multiple active crime scenes” — from the site where Kirk was shot to the locations he and the suspect traveled — with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Utah County Attorney’s office, the Utah County Sheriff’s office, and the local police departments.

Hope for a speedy capture of the suspect faded Wednesday night after the F.B.I. released the man its director, Kash Patel, had said was a subject of the investigation. After thanking local and state authorities for taking into custody “the subject for the horrific shooting,” Patel announced that the man had been released after an interrogation by law enforcement.

“Our investigation continues,” Patel said.

Another man who was taken into custody a few hours earlier was later released after being booked by Utah Valley University police on suspicion of obstruction of justice.

Speaking at the Pentagon Thursday at an event commemorating the Sept. 11 attacks, President Trump said he would posthumously award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Kirk.

“Charlie was a giant of his generation, a champion of liberty and an inspiration to millions and millions of people,” Trump said.

The shooter is believed to have fired about 20 minutes after Kirk began speaking Wednesday on a grassy campus courtyard under a white canopy emblazoned with the slogan “PROVE ME WRONG.” The event, attended by about 3,000 people, was the first stop on Kirk’s American Comeback Tour of U.S. campuses.

Some experts who have seen videos believe that the assailant probably had experience with firearms, given the precision with which the single shot was fired from a considerable distance.

Videos shared on social media show Kirk sitting on a chair, taking questions in front of a large crowd of people.

“Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?” an audience member asks.

“Counting or not counting gang violence?” Kirk responds.

Almost immediately, a shot rings out. Kirk falls back, blood gushing his neck. Video show people screaming and fleeing from the event.

The killing — the latest incident in a spate of violent attacks targeting American politicians on the left and the right — led to swift condemnation of political violence from both sides of the ideological divide. But it also led to a blame game.

After President Trump celebrated Kirk as a “patriot who devoted his life to the cause of open debate” and “martyr for truth and freedom,” he said in an evening video broadcast from the Oval Office that “‘radical left” rhetoric was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today.”

Trump — who did not mention recent acts of political violence against Democratic lawmakers — called for a crackdown on leftwing groups.

Even as the House of Representatives observed a moment of silence for Kirk Wednesday when he was still in critical condition, the floor descended into chaos when some Democrats pushed back on a Republican legislator’s request that someone lead the group in prayer.

Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna, a former conservative influencer and close friend of Kirk, pointed angrily at Democrats. “You all caused this,” she shouted.

Kirk, 31, was one of the Republican Party’s most influential power brokers.

The founder of the influential conservative youth organization Turning Point USA, Kirk had a vast online reach: 1.6 million followers on Rumble, 3.8 million subscribers on YouTube, 5.2 million followers on X and 7.3 million followers on TikTok.

During the 2024 election, he rallied his online followers to support Trump, prompting conservative podcast host Megyn Kelly to say: “It’s not an understatement to say that this man is responsible for helping the Republicans win back the White House and the U.S. Senate.”

Just after Trump was elected for a second time to the presidency in November, Kirk frequently posted to social media from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, where he had firsthand influence over which MAGA loyalists Trump named to his Cabinet.

Kirk was known for melding his conservative politics, nationalism and evangelical faith, casting the current political climate as a state of spiritual warfare between a righteous right wing and so-called godless liberals.

At a Turning Point event on the Salt Lake City campus of Awaken Church in 2023, he said that gun violence was worth the price of upholding the right to bear arms.

“I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the 2nd Amendment to protect our other God-given rights,” he said. “That is a prudent deal. It is rational.”

Kirk also previously declared that God was on the side of American conservatives and that there was “no separation of church and state.” In a speech to Trump supporters in Georgia last year, he said that “the Democrat Party supports everything that God hates” and that “there is a spiritual battle happening all around us.”

The Italian journalist who — for some reason — excluded Ayo Edebiri in a question about Hollywood and the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements has spoken out about the now-viral interview.

Federica Polidoro posted a statement Monday on Instagram defending her work, saying that she has been subject to “violent language, personal attacks, and cyberbullying” following the “question that, for some reason, was not well received by some members of the public.”

“Rather than focusing on the thoughtful responses of Ayo Edebiri, Julia Roberts, and Andrew Garfield, the discussion continues solely on how I should have phrased the question,” Polidoro wrote.

The exchange in question occurred at a press event with Edebiri, Roberts and Garfield at the Venice Film Festival, where their film “After the Hunt,” directed by Luca Guadagnino, made its world premiere. In a video that has been shared widely, Polidoro is heard asking Roberts and Garfield what they thought was “lost during the politically correct era” and what people can expect from Hollywood now that “the #MeToo movement and Black Lives Matters are done.”

After Roberts asks the journalist to clarify who the question is directed to, Polidoro reiterates that her question is for Roberts and Garfield. As the actors share a look, Edebiri raises her hand to respond instead.

“I know that that’s not for me and I don’t know if it’s purposeful that it’s not for me — but I am curious — but I don’t think it’s done,” the star of “The Bear” says. “I don’t think it’s done at all.”

“I think maybe hashtags might not be used as much,” she continues, “but I do think that there’s work being done by activists, by people, every day, that’s beautiful, important work that’s not finished. That’s really, really, really active for a reason. Because this world is really charged. And that work isn’t finished at all. Maybe there’s not mainstream coverage in the way that there might have been, daily headlines in the way that it might have been, eight or so years ago, but I don’t think it means that the work is done. That’s what I would say.”

“The movements are still absolutely alive,” Garfield says in agreement. “Just maybe not as labeled or covered or magnified as much in this present moment.”

In her statement, Polidoro pushed back against accusations of racism, saying she has “interviewed people of every background and ethnicity” over the course of her 20-year career.

“My own family is multi-ethnic, matriarchal, and feminist, with a significant history of immigration,” wrote Polidoro, who in her Instagram bio mentions being a Golden Globes voter and awards season analyst. “In my view, the real racists are those who see racism everywhere and seek to muzzle journalism, limiting freedom of analysis, critical thinking, and the plurality of perspectives.”

Polidoro’s statement also said, “Censoring or delegitimizing questions considered ‘uncomfortable’ does not fall within the practice of democracy. … Journalism’s role is to ask questions, even on delicate topics, with respect and responsibility.”

In this podcast, Motley Fool analyst Tim Beyers and contributors Travis Hoium and Lou Whiteman discuss:

• AI capex trends.
• Housing price declines.
• KPop Demon Hunters and other Netflix content.

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool’s free podcasts, check out our podcast center. When you’re ready to invest, check out this top 10 list of stocks to buy.

A full transcript is below.

This podcast was recorded on August 29, 2025.

Travis Hoium: Could AI spending reach $1 trillion by 2030? Motley Fool Money starts now. Welcome to Motley Fool Money. I’m Travis Hoium, joined by Lou Whiteman and Tim Beyers. We’re going to talk today about housing. We’re going to have Lou and Tim cut some of their favorite stocks from a mini portfolio. But let’s start with artificial intelligence. Morgan Stanley recently said that they expect global Data Center spending to increase from $307 billion in 2024 to 920 billion in 2030. Data Center CapEx is driving companies like NVIDIA, Amazon, Alphabet. But they’re not making enough cash to make that investment themselves. Tim, when you see these huge projections, what do you hear, and do we actually have enough cash flow from these companies to spend almost $1 trillion per year on CapEx?

Tim Beyers: We do, and we don’t. Let’s start with the we do. They are committing quarter over quarter, Travis, and these are multiple companies, somewhere between $50 and $100 million every single quarter. That’s extraordinary. I’m sorry. I said million. I meant billion. This is just a few orders of bag which is bigger. This is extraordinary amounts of money. On the one hand, yes, but on the other, this is a market that is completely out of sync. The buildout of hardware is so extreme that the infrastructure to support all that hardware just isn’t in place yet. I know you’ve covered energy quite a bit over the years, Travis, and I don’t see how you don’t get to a point where there is a little bit of slowdown in the hardware buildout, and then you do some catch-up around energy infrastructure, around environmental infrastructure, around city planning, urban planning. How do you get all of this done in a way that actually creates sustainable growth? That doesn’t seem to be part of these projections, and I think that’s one of the flaws.

Travis Hoium: It does seem like the numbers are just we’re going to keep increasing this. Going from the ChatGPT moment, that was in late 2022, to where we are today, there has been a massive amount of growth in AI spending in spending on things like NVIDIA’s chips. But we’re still learning what these business models are too. We talk a lot about chips, but there’s more to it than this, than just spending money on these power-hungry chips. What else are they going to be spending money on?

Lou Whiteman: With all respect to Morgan Stanley, I do think that it’s smart research. But humans, we are terrible at recognizing cycles, recognizing pendulums for being pendulums. I feel like some of this is just taking what we’re doing today and assuming it into the future, and not considering a swing back. We’ll see about the actual number, but we’re going to spend a lot of money. I do think that at some point, Tim mentioned energy, we’re going to have to spend money on ways to be smarter about energy consumption or building out energy, so that’s part of it. I do think we’ve seen all of this hiring, this poaching, maybe a shift from building up this hardware to getting the brains that know how to use it. I wouldn’t be surprised if, at some point, just instead of just pure hardware and all this data center spending, that even if we still spend a significant amount of money, the spending gets spread out in ways that we’re just not seeing right now at the initial buildup.

Travis Hoium: Tim, the way that you’re talking about this reminds me a lot of the late 1990s and the telecom buildout. There was a dual bubble. We talk about the dotcom bubble. That was a dotcom stock bubble, but there was also a telecom bubble, which is basically these companies spending incredible amounts of money to build out the fiber that we still use today. Google bought up a bunch of that dark fiber. That’s one of the reasons that they have as good infrastructure as they have. What you’re saying reminds me a little bit about, you know what? The numbers are just going up so fast. Demand is going up so quick, and we hear this from every AI-related company that we’re just going to keep building and keep building at some point, there has to be a business model behind it. There has to be return on investment. If we’re talking about $1 trillion of investment, you’ve got to have some profits coming from that. Most of these companies aren’t profitable. Is that a good analogy for thinking about it, or is there a big difference in this buildout versus that telecom buildout?

Tim Beyers: You would hope there’s a difference. I don’t know that there’s a difference, and I think there is a genuine fight over the right economic model for AI, particularly any commercial AI. I think you have two ways to fight the portal fight. What I mean by the portal fight is, I think we are getting to a point where the next interface for computing is likely to be a chat interface. It’s likely to be some kind of, hey, ChatGPT, do this thing for me, or search for this thing, or whatever it is. Some chat interface. Now you’re going to have ChatGPT anthropic, companies like that that are native to the business of building up a chat portal. That’s their primary economic engine, and they want to build things that make that chat engine economically viable. Then you have a competing idea, which is the search model, the traditional web model, and then putting on top of that a chat portal, and that is Alphabet. That is Microsoft. That’s even Apple with Siri. Those two ideas are going to compete. There’s going to be a real fight to figure out who wins in that model. There’s going to be lots of trial and error here, Travis, between is it all going to be driven by advertising? Is it going to be driven by data access? Is it going to be driven by new tools to make different kinds of software that run from a chat interface? But those different types of companies converging to fight a battle to win the portal War, I think, is something we’re still in the infant stages of seeing that. It’s barely started. But that’s a big piece of this story that we aren’t talking about yet, but I promise you in the next 18 months, we’re going to be talking about it.

Travis Hoium: I saw somebody compare the moment that we’re in in artificial intelligence to the Motorola Razor moments. That really stuck with me. That was my favorite phone, I think 2005. But that was obsolete two years later.

Lou Whiteman: I love that phone. But this is such an important part of the AI conversation for us as investors to have because, Travis, to your point a lot of fortunes were lost on that infrastructure buildup, but it was still value adding over time. All of this money is being spent. I think it is adding value. There is a there there. This isn’t just crazy spending, but if history is a guide, that does not translate to every one of these investments will be a winner. As Tim says, there will be a period of figuring out who’s the winners, who’s the losers. I think there could be a lot of winners that aren’t spending the money, just using AI. Just to use one example, MongoDB was up 30% post earnings today on a huge surge of customers attributed to AI. There are going to be a ton of winners. They’re going to be losers, and we’re just so early. If nothing else, you just don’t put all your eggs in one basket here as an investor.

Tim Beyers: Can I add something there, Travis? Just quickly. One of the things that’s common about that. Now, we can’t be sure that MongoDB is going to be a durable winner here. But one of the things that’s true at least today about that MongoDB result is that they sit in one of the categories that historically, over time, you were likening it back to the dotcom bubble, the telecom bubble, the things that did endure from those periods, at least over time, it took some time to wash away all of the excess. But the companies that didn’t go away had real picks and shovels that they could rely on and build upon for the revolution to come. MongoDB is in that space. They’re not the only ones. If we’re an investor that’s looking to profit from the time that we’re in and the excess that we’re in, please, for the love of God, don’t just look at NVIDIA. Look for the picks and shovels. MongoDB might be one. We can’t say for sure that they will be, but they might be one. Any company that is in successful data management is one to at least consider.

Travis Hoium: One of the problems with the telecom buildout was the debt that those companies ended up taking on that increased their risk of their business. Right now, we have Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta generating almost $500 billion in operating cash flow. They’re spending about 365 on CapEx. That’s a projection for this year. They’re using almost all of their operating cash flow on CapEx, in other words. Are we going to get to a point where they’re going to be going into debt to build out more AI solutions?

Tim Beyers: They might, but they certainly have the cash flow to service that debt. You could see it. I’ll make a reckless prediction on this, Travis, you won’t see that. You will see a relentless focus on efficiency first because there is a software side of the AI equation that we haven’t figured out yet. Right now, most of these models are very dumb. They use a lot of tokens. They just burn through all kinds of energy. Almost indiscriminately, that can’t last. There is real engineering work that is happening and will continue to happen to make models, tools far more efficient. I expect, Travis, that you’re going to see a lot of focus on that at the labs at AWS and Google Cloud Platform, and at Microsoft. I just don’t see how they get around that because ultimately, those companies want to see more software built. If you want to build more software, you need better tools, and there just is no way to get around the need for clever, efficient software engineering. That’s just common.

Travis Hoium: Lou, what’s the big picture here?

Lou Whiteman: The big picture I’m watching, we’re talking about all this spending, and, arguably, AI spending is keeping the whole economy afloat right now. I think that’s a little bit of hyperbole, but not too much. The economist, venture capitalist, nature hiker, Paul Hodorowski, great guy. He put out something last month that was really interesting. AI spending is about 1.2% of GDP. That’s higher than it was back in the telecom boom, higher than the Internet. You have to go back to the 1880s, Travis, with railroads to find a time when one sector had that large of a role. At a time when we’re talking about Tara, so the consumer looks pressured, is AI spending just the only thing keeping us afloat? If so, and some of these pressures do build or what could that mean? I can’t answer those questions, but it’s just a broader investor. Those are the things that I don’t know that keep me up at night, but those are the things I’m really watching.

Travis Hoium: We could talk about this all day, and I’m sure this will be a continuing topic, but we do need to take a quick break. When we come back, we’re going to talk about housing prices and the trends that we’re seeing there. You’re listening to Motley Fool Money.

Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. We got a reading from the Case-Shiller Index this week for July. This measures the value of home prices throughout the country, and there’s regions all over the country. Housing is always a regional dynamic. But we are seeing declines in home prices, especially in some of the hotter areas like Florida. Housing is the biggest asset for most Americans. Tim, what should we take away from the potential that home values are going down, not a lot, but at least a little bit throughout the country?

Tim Beyers: It’s healthy. I look at this, Travis, and to me, it feels like a very healthy reset because we badly need more supply in this country. We just don’t have enough, and we haven’t had enough homes for quite a long period of time. When you inject supply into the market, you may see a little bit of pressure on pricing. Pricing comes down a little bit if demand just keeps going, unrelenting, then prices go way up. As supply comes into the market, prices go down a little bit. This feels like exactly what we need right now. I’m very happy to see it. Now, what I’d be looking for is what homes are we talking about here? Are we getting more planned communities? Are we getting more urban housing? I, in particular, think a bit of urban investment is probably the right thing.

Tim Beyers: Because that has economic knock on effects, not that I don’t, like, hey, I live in a suburb. Suburban investment is great, but urban investment where there’s a lot of businesses, there’s a lot of concentrated economic activity. If you get some of this housing influx, new supply, Travis, then I think you may have some knock on effects that are very good for the US economy and very good for consumer facing businesses. I’m hopeful here, but I might be a little bit naive.

Travis Hoium: What do you think, Lou?

Lou Whiteman: I think healthy is a good word. I don’t want to read too much into this. I think this is a sign of just things are getting back to normal. We had a huge price shock. Housing slowed dramatically as we saw rates go up and just we weren’t ready for it. I think what we’re seeing in this data is buyers and sellers returning to the market. A lot of that added supply are just people who have been sitting on their home and are just now saying, we just have to suck it up and sell.

Tim Beyers: That’s because housing is a very sticky thing. If you buy a house and the interest rate goes up, you go, I could double my mortgage payment by moving to a similar home, but that doesn’t make any sense. It is a strange business.

Lou Whiteman: Well, here’s the thing, too, that is interesting, I think, because there’s a lot of macro headwinds that are new supply. Homebuilders are under a lot of pressure in a lot of different ways now between labor, raw materials, all that. I said if we’re just finally adjusting to the rate hikes, there’s a lot of talk now of rates coming back down. I don’t know. The conventional wisdom is that with juice sales, but does that set unrealistic expectations? Does that actually slow sales temporarily? Because we’re just getting used to the status quo, we’re changing again. Look, whatever the Fed does, I think everything going on in the world, all signs are the longer term rates and the mortgages are tied to the 10 year. I don’t know if a Fed rate cut really moves the 10 year and moves the mortgage rate the way, in Econ 101, we were told. If those headlines are there and people aren’t seeing the mortgage adjustment, I have no confidence that this continues. I think there could be another different shock right around the corner, and then we’ll have to adjust to that.

Travis Hoium: For perspective on the 10 year, the 10-year yield has not changed basically since election day. It’s basically flat. I think there has been two rate cuts and another one rumored for September. The other thing I want to bring in here, and this comes down to some of the unemployment numbers that we’ve seen recently, and the Fed talked about this in their Jackson Hole speeches that part of the issue with the headline number, the number of jobs added or not added in the recent revisions, was that there’s just fewer people in the labor market. That could help housing prices, but that’s the other side of the supply and demand. Tim, is that a piece of it that there’s just fewer buyers in the market than there used to be, partly because of less immigration?

Tim Beyers: That could be. I don’t know, but I think Lou made an important point, so I want to double underline it here. This is very complicated. There are a lot of moving parts. The unemployment numbers are going to be important here. We have continued to see layoffs, Travis. I think the thing that I don’t want and I hope I’m not just taking out of context what you were saying here, Lou. But the way I think about it is that if there’s artificial stimulus that comes in at the wrong time, just when we’re seeing a healthy sign come into the market, if you muck with that with more artificial stimulus, let’s say, a poorly timed rate cut, you start to lose some of the benefits you would get by seeing the market return to health. I want the market to just be healthy.

Lou Whiteman: Bottom line is, as an investor, housing looks like even a bigger long term trend to me than AI, but it scares me right now. I don’t know how soon that comes.

Travis Hoium: Well, next up, we’re going to get to a few stocks that we like or maybe don’t like in our game called Cut Down Day, you’re listening to Motley Fool Money.

Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. The NFL has just completed. It’s cutdown day. Roster has gotten down to 53 players. Today’s game that we’re going to play is a little bit similar. I’m going to give Lou and Tim three stock portfolios, just three stocks in the portfolio. We’re going to hopefully get through all four of these. They’re going to have to cut one of their favorite stocks or Foolish favorite stocks. Put on your best Dick for Mal hat and shed some tears for some of the stocks that you probably love. The first portfolio is Foolish favorites. Tim, I want to start with you because I know that you have a long history with a lot of these companies. Netflix, Amazon, and NVIDIA, if you own all three and you’d have to cut one from your portfolio, which one gets the boot?

Tim Beyers: It’s going to be very unpopular.

Travis Hoium: Oh, no.

Tim Beyers: It’s going to be NVIDIA. NVIDIA has got to go. I’m sorry, NVIDIA. I’m sorry, Jensens. The reason NVIDIA’s got to go is because this is a business that is highly cyclical. It has been an absolute stone cold winner, and it could continue to be a stone cold winner. But for me, one of the ways that I practice portfolio management, Travis, is I don’t want to sell everything off of a stock. But let’s say, in this particular case, I’m selling, 75% of my NVIDIA, and I’m redeploying some of that capital. If I have to sell all of it, I will, because what I want to do is always keep moving forward. In a portfolio, sometimes you let go of those darlings in order to keep building and moving forward. In this case, you know what? You’ve been great NVIDIA, but your time has come. Got to give a rookie a shot.

Travis Hoium: All right, Lou. Which one Netflix, Amazon or NVIDIA?

Lou Whiteman: I think Tim has the right answer here. But just to have fun, I do want to give a shout to cutting Amazon. Again, I’m glad we don’t actually have to do these. But look, Amazon, their AI performance to date, hasn’t matched the Cloud. We’re not seeing the same, oh, my gosh, growth we’ve seen elsewhere. I think Microsoft and even Google has a better portal to the customer in a lot of ways, which I don’t know. Also, you do have a fantastic retail business, but it’s a retail business. The divorce with UPS means they weren’t giving their easy deliveries to UPS guys. They were giving the ones that were hard for the internal, so I think there’s going to be some cost pressure on the internal logistics. Look, great company, but I do think they could come under pressure in a bunch of different ways up ahead.

Travis Hoium: But Netflix is the stock that you both want to keep. I think that’s interesting, given Netflix is actually losing time spent to YouTube. Why is that one, Tim, the one that is the winner out of these three?

Tim Beyers: Because I think it’s a two horse race between Netflix and YouTube.

Travis Hoium: You don’t think Disney stands a chance? I say that because sports is really the only uncaptured territory in streaming.

Tim Beyers: You know what? Guess what Netflix just did. They wrote a new deal, and this time, they picked off two things from Major League Baseball that are events that are going to capture a global audience. They’re going to have the world baseball classic between the US and Japan, and they’re going to have the home run derby. For the all star weekend. They’re going to under commit on capital and get in, the likely outcome is you’re going to get some rabid fans who are going to show up for just these things, and they don’t have to overcommit on a giant contract to be the exclusive home of Major League Baseball. They’re very smart about this, Travis. They are really good users of capital. I’ll just remind everybody, this is still the only global TV network that across the world has a direct relationship with every single one of its subscribers. It’s the only one.

Lou Whiteman: I just add, of these three, and again, this is a best of show. These are all, top companies. Netflix, to me, feels the most stable in their most important market in terms of volatility.

Tim Beyers: The cash flows would support that, by the way.

Travis Hoium: I guess there’s no real argument for me I guess Netflix would probably be Number 1 for me, as well. Let’s do Portfolio Number 2. That is the Hidden Gems. These have all been phenomenal performers in Hidden Gems. Tesla, Shopify, and Meta Platforms, formerly Facebook. I still think they should change their name back to Facebook or maybe just call themselves Instagram. Lou, which one of these three would you cut from your portfolio?

Lou Whiteman: Again, this is hard. I have to go with Tesla just on the core business here, because, sometimes I feel like I like Tesla’s automotive business more than Elon Musk.

Travis Hoium: It still don’t have a roadster.

Lou Whiteman: No. Honestly, they just need someone from Detroit to come in and just Detroitify it just a tiny bit. But there are questions about that business. There is still a great long term future story to be had with automotives and out so I don’t want to be too hard on it, but I look at Shopify. I look at them just beginning to conquer all worlds, and I see a lot of potential from there. Meta, Zuck, I love you. I can’t quite always figure out what Zuckerberg’s doing, but it works, and they have a case printing machine, which I am just going to bend the knee and be in awe of. Tesla, to me, is the one that I think I can ask the most questions about. Again, in a best to show, were really fascinating companies, they’re the one that I lean to.

Travis Hoium: What about you, Tim?

Tim Beyers: I’ll give you one number, and this will describe why I’m saying what I’m about to say. Nine, Mark Zuckerberg is giving out nine figure packages to AI engineers. No thank you. You’re out. As soon as you start going to $100 million packages to try to get to AI super intelligence, when there’s still so much we don’t know, no thanks. None of this makes very much sense to me. Now, to be fair, they generate a ton of cash. It’s not like they can’t do it. They can do it. But they are going to dilute investors on the way to this. I think this smacks of more desperation than strategy. See you.

Travis Hoium: Do you have the same criticism for Alphabet? Because Alphabet bought Character.AI basically to reacquire one person, the person who invented the [inaudible] this is not unique in Silicon Valley. Especially today.

Tim Beyers: A hundred percent, Travis. You could level this criticism at lots of different companies at lots of different times. Especially the Silicon Valley companies. Alphabet absolutely deserves criticism for that. There’s no question. Now, would I rather have Alphabet than I would Meta? Yes, I would. Because I feel like the data advantage that Alphabet has is extraordinary. It is also global. It is significant, and you can build a lot once you have, so much search data, so much geographic data. They just have a massive data mote that I think they can build off of. But, no, they do not escape criticism. I think it’s a fair point, Travis.

Travis Hoium: The spending spree will probably continue at least as long as the market is giving these multiples for anybody that has some AI story. Let’s go to our Rule Breaker stocks. This is three popular and very high performing Rule Breakers.

Travis Hoium: MercadoLibre, Intuitive Surgical, and Chipotle. Tim, out of those three, which one gets cut?

Tim Beyers: Really hurts me to say this. This is very painful. I have to say Chipotle, which just kills me because I love a Chipotle burrito. But at this moment in time, I think that Chipotle is still figuring out the next phase of its growth, and I’ll be back when you figure out the next phase of your growth. I’ll be back. But robot surgery is only going to grow more important over time. Mercado Libre they’ve barely tapped the opportunity they have across Latin America. Chipotle burritos are amazing. I will continue to eat them, and I will be back when Chipotle figures out their next phase.

Travis Hoium: If you want to hear a painful story about Chipotle, I sold my shares in 2008. That is painful. That was a mistake selling, which anybody who’s invested for a long time, your worst mistakes are usually your sales, not the stocks that you necessarily miss. Lou, Mercado Libre, Intuitive Surgical or Chipotle, who gets got from your portfolio?

Lou Whiteman: I really wanted to find something else, but Tim’s right on this one. Just to underline a couple more things. Mercado Libre, in some ways, is a consumer business, but not in the same way. They’re just, by the nature of the industry, there’s so much more choice. It’s so much hard to fuel growth in a restaurant business versus the other two. The other two, it’s not as simple as just keep doing what you’re doing, and the business will come, but especially on Intuitive, it feels that way. Like Tim said, Wall Street pays for growth. Wall Street does not pay for just, hey, you’re a good performer. Just continue what you’re doing. I think they may be able to answer the question. It’s almost a running joke. It’s like the Apple car and breakfast at Chipotle. Maybe they’ll get there. Maybe it’ll happen, but I do think that their path forward from here is harder than the other two.

Tim Beyers: Having said that, Travis, like super quickly, if the Chipotlanes take off across that network, look out. If volumes across each unit, like if Chipotle materially increases the volume, they can do per store by virtue of those drive-through Chipotlanes, look out, man. There could be some real winds there, but we’re not seeing that yet.

Travis Hoium: Yeah, that’s basically the only way that I use Chipotle today. I don’t want to get the kids out of the car. We’re going through that Chipotle lane, and everybody’s going to have their food finished by the time we get home. Final group of stocks, I love them all, but they all make me a little nervous for one reason or another. Exxon, Palantir and Arrow Virment Lou, which one of those three is cut today?

Lou Whiteman: I’m going to invert the game here and say the one that I’m not going to cut is Exxon.

Tim Beyers: The price doesn’t make you nervous.

Lou Whiteman: Valuation all over the place here, but just Exxon’s ability. I’m an owner of this one, and I keep saying, oh, they can’t do it again, and yet they do. I’m going to give the benefit of the doubt, given their ability, not just to add new customers, but they have done such a great job of continuously just layering on new products from tasers to body cams to software to now drones and cameras. You got to pick someone. I believe in them to continue. Arrow Virment, I think, could have a really tough time over the next few years, but I love the long-term potential, so I’m not going to cut them. Palantir, I love the technology. But I’m an old school government guy, and all of these companies have government ties. Palantir is still over 50% government. I know the way government allocation works. There is no way you can justify that valuation of the government, so they have to really just grow that commercial like nobody’s business. I think they have it in them, but I am guessing. Just like Netflix, just like Amazon, this really looks like a company where both things can be true. It’s a big long-term winner, and there’s massive drops along the way. I’m going to say goodbye to Palantir here.

Travis Hoium: Tim.

Tim Beyers: Same. I’m not sure. I can’t say it better than that. I will only add that we should consider, in my opinion, Palantir a deeply cyclical business, and it trades like it’s not a cyclical business. And that, I think, should make investors nervous.

Travis Hoium: Well, some very interesting picks from all of you and some great insights on at least why we should be thinking about valuation and growth for some of these companies. Next up, we are going to get to stocks on our radar. You’re listening to Motley Fool Money.

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Travis Hoium: Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. As always, people on the program may have interests in the stocks they talk about, and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don’t buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows Motley Fool editorial standards, and it’s not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. To see our full advertising disclosure, please check out our show notes. We do need to touch on the hottest movie of the week. That is KPOp Demon Hunters, Lou, and Tim. Did either of you see this, Lou?

Lou Whiteman: I didn’t know about it till you asked. [LAUGHTER]

Travis Hoium: Apparently not the target demographic for this movie. But what’s unique about this and what I think is interesting for our investment discussion is, this is a movie made by Sony that ended up on Netflix and became just an absolute hit. I can’t avoid it with my kids. We have not watched it, but it pops up every single time we open up Netflix, and now it ended up in theaters, and it’s been a smash hit in theaters. I had no idea it was coming, except for multiple parents brought it up over the weekend. Are you seeing KPOp Demon Hunters? Tim, is this one is this a new model for the industry? And two, I think it’s interesting that no one saw this coming, including Netflix. It seems like they’re throwing content at the wall, and they don’t know what’s gonna hit. But every once in a while, they hit KPOp Demon Hunters or Squid Game. Is that the strategy for them?

Tim Beyers: Well, it is. The strategy for Netflix is to build a long tail. The longer the tail is, the more opportunity you have to get unexpected hits. And the thing that really makes Netflix sing and what drives that cash flow is you have a hit that goes across multiple territories. Netflix is not. They are the opposite of the max strategy, where you’re going to invest in a very big franchise name, and you’re going to have to put a lot of money behind that franchise name, and then you hope that it delivers just huge returns. Netflix does the exact opposite of that. Lots of seeds, and then something grows into just this giant, beautiful flower that you just can’t help but admire it. We’ve seen this over and over and over again. The Queen’s Gambit did this, Squid Game did this. Wednesday did this. There are some others that are multi-territory hits that are on a smaller scale. Well, I’ll recommend it to you, Travis, Department Q. Great. There’s little things like that. It is a deliberate strategy. It’s going to keep happening. It’s one of the reasons why we should believe in.

Travis Hoium: Lou, do theaters matter and does the order matter theaters first or streaming first?

Lou Whiteman: I don’t think the order matters anymore. I think we’ve evolved to a point where it’s a very different experience. One is more of a communal, and one is more just kind of at home. I think that the same property can work depending on what you’re trying to accomplish. It depends on the group, but more and more, I don’t think it matters. It’s just you put your assets in the ways where it generates money, and it all works out in the end.

Travis Hoium: We’re going to end with stocks on our radar, and I’m going to play the role of Dan Boyd today. Tim, what are you bringing to us for our radar stocks?

Tim Beyers: I’m bringing you Warby Parker. The glasses maker that originally made for selling glasses online, you could get a big package in the mail. You could try on several sets. You use your computer camera to check the fit and check your prescription. They have since moved dramatically from that, Travis. Now they have just under 300 stores across the country. Those stores are highly profitable. Over the trailing 12 months, even when you strip out the stock-based compensation, they’re still generating free cash flow. This is a business that’s getting more and more efficient over time. I’ll give you one stat on this to highlight that. In the most recent quarter, revenue up 13.9%, operating expenses up 3.3%. This is a business that’s getting better and better and better, and I think it’s one for the future. Look out. We’re seeing clearly with Warby Parker.

Travis Hoium: Lou, what are you bringing to radar stocks today?

Lou Whiteman: I’m watching CSX, the Railroad and only watching. The stocks are about 10% down this week, it seems, because no one wants to buy them. CSX’s primary rival, Norfolk Southern. They are going to be acquired by Union Pacific. That puts CSX in a really tough position. And conventional wisdom is that they would get bought by Burlington Northern. However, Berkshire Hathaway, and this does sound like a soap opera, I know. But Berkshire Hathaway, which owns Burlington Northern, Warren Buffett says, no, thank you. I don’t want to buy another railroad. Canadian Pacific said no, too. This is a mass guy, and the market’s reaction to sell off CSX, makes sense. But this story is far from over. For one, we don’t even know if that deal will get through. It’s possible regulators will carve out rules that make it interesting for everyone. I’m not ready to jump in here, but I feel like there might be an opportunity if the market overreacts to their seemingly getting left at the altar. So one to watch.

Travis Hoium: As much as I like these transportation stocks, Lou, Warby Parker, I think is interesting. The deal with Target, we’ll see if that gives them a little bit more legs, a little bit more growth. I think it’s interesting that these DTC companies making these retail partnerships. I don’t know if they all win, but if they can, they can get a little bit more exposure; it could be a big win for them. For Lou Whiteman and Tim Beyers, thanks for joining me today and our production magician Bart Shannon and the entire Motley Fool team, I am Travis Hoium. Thanks for listening to Motley Fool Money. We’ll see you tomorrow.

Cardi B will only address pregnancy rumors on her own time. She made that abundantly clear with a pen and scathing words — both directed to one brash and curious man.

The Grammy-winning rapper was seen on camera hurling a pen at the man in the press pool as she left an Alhambra courthouse during the lunch break of her civil assault trial. According to footage shared by ABC7 and TMZ, the man speaks up from the press pool asking Cardi B about her relationships with ex-husband Offset and boyfriend Stefon Diggs.

“Insiders are claiming that Offset is publicly bragging about getting you pregnant for the fourth time,” he says. “Do you foresee any paternity issues with Stefon Diggs?”

As he poses the question, Cardi walks over to another individual holding a pen and waiting for her autograph. She takes the pen from his hand and throws it in the direction of the inquirer. “Stop disrespecting me,” she fires back, before her team surrounds her.

“Don’t disrespect me,” she adds.

Cardi B shares three young children with Offset. They married in 2017 and went their separate ways in 2024. They were previously headed for divorce in 2020, but seemingly made amends. She went official with NFL star Diggs earlier this year. It’s unclear how exactly the pregnancy rumors began.

After the heated exchange on Tuesday, the man tells Cardi B, “I still love you even though you just threw some stuff at me.”

She did not share the same feelings.

“I don’t care. You’re disrespectful, don’t do that. Do you see women asking those types of questions to me?” Cardi B said as she walked to her SUV. “Why do you feel, as a man, you get to ask me those types of questions? Act like you have some manners. And your mama taught you, respect women.”

She imparted a final message to the press from the vehicle: “You’re not going to see me out today, and you can thank him. I’m not playing around. I was very nice. I was very kind.”

The 32-year-old “Bodak Yellow” and “WAP” hip-hop star prevailed Tuesday in a civil lawsuit brought against her by a Beverly Hills security guard after two days of testimony. Emani Ellis sued Cardi B for $24 million, accusing her of assault, battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress in the aftermath of a confrontation in a hallway outside of an obstetrician’s office. Ellis claimed that the rapper scratched her with a long nail extension, leaving a facial scar.

Cardi B was found not liable on all counts by jurors after less than an hour of deliberations.

“I swear to God, I will say it on my deathbed, I did not touch that woman,” Cardi B said outside the courthouse following the conclusion of the trial. She added that she had missed her kids’ first day of school because of the civil trial.

“I want to thank my lawyers,” she said. “I want to thank the jurors, I want to thank the judge, and I want to thank the respectful press.”

Times staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has approved sending up to 600 military lawyers to the Justice Department to serve as temporary immigration judges, according to a memo reviewed by the Associated Press.

The military will begin sending groups of 150 attorneys — both military and civilians — to the Justice Department “as soon as practicable,” and the armed services should have the first round of people identified by next week, according to the Aug. 27 memo.

The effort comes as the Trump administration is cracking down on illegal immigration by ramping up arrests and deportations. And immigration courts already are dealing with a massive backlog of roughly 3.5 million cases that has ballooned in recent years.

At the same time, more than 100 immigration judges have been fired or left voluntarily after taking deferred resignations offered by the Trump administration, their union says. In the most recent round of terminations, the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers said in July that at least 17 immigration judges had been fired “without cause” in courts across the country.

That has left about 600 immigration judges, union figures show, meaning the Pentagon move would double their ranks.

The Justice Department, which oversees the immigration courts, requested the assistance from the Defense Department, according to the memo sent by the Pentagon’s executive secretary to his Justice Department counterpart. The military lawyers’ duties as immigration judges will initially last no more than 179 days but can be renewed, it said.

A Justice Department spokesperson referred questions about the plan to the Defense Department, where officials directed questions to the White House.

A White House official said Tuesday that the administration is looking at a variety of options to help resolve the significant backlog of immigration cases, including hiring additional immigration judges. The official said the matter should be “a priority that everyone — including those waiting for adjudication — can rally around.”

The memo stressed that sending the additional attorneys is contingent on availability and that mobilizing reserve officers may be necessary. Plus, the document said the Justice Department would be responsible for ensuring that anyone sent from the Pentagon does not violate the federal prohibition on using the military as domestic law enforcement, known as the Posse Comitatus Act.

The administration faced a setback on its efforts to use the military in unique ways to combat illegal immigration and crime, with a court ruling Tuesday that it “willfully” violated federal law by sending National Guard troops to Los Angeles in early June.

Cases in immigration court can take years to weave their way to a final determination, with judges and lawyers frequently scheduling final hearings on the merits of a case more than a year out.

Toropin writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Will Weissert, Rebecca Santana and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

SACRAMENTO — U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) on Wednesday brushed aside questions about whether he might jump into California’s 2026 governor’s race, but declined to rule out the idea.

Padilla instead said he was wholly focused on promoting the special election in November when voters will be asked to redraw California’s congressional districts to counter efforts by President Trump and other GOP leaders to keep Republicans in control of Congress.

“I’m focused and I’d encourage everybody to focus on this Nov. 4 special election,” Padilla said during an interview at a political summit in Sacramento sponsored by Politico.

The 52-year-old added that the effort to redraw congressional districts, championed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in response to similar efforts in GOP-led states, is not solely about the arcane process known as redistricting.

“My Republican colleagues and especially the White House know how unpopular and damaging what they’re doing is, from gutting Medicare, nutrition assistance programs, really all these other areas of budget cuts to underwrite tax breaks for billionaires,” Padilla said. “So their only hope of staying in power beyond next November is to rig the system.”

In recent days, Padilla’s name has emerged as a possible candidate to replace Newsom, who cannot run for another term. The field is unsettled, with independent polling conducted after former Vice President Kamala Harris opted not to run for governor showing large numbers of voters are undecided and with no clear front-runner.

Padilla pointed to his more than quarter-century history of serving Californians at every level of government when asked what might be appealing about the job.

“I love California, right?” he said. “And I’ve had the privilege and the honor of serving in so many different capacities.”

In 1999, the then-26-year-old was elected to Los Angeles City Council. At the time, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology grad still lived with his parents — a Mexican-born housekeeper and a short-order cook — in Pacoima.

Padilla continued his steady climb through the state’s political ranks in the decades that followed, serving in the state Senate and as California secretary of state. Newsom appointed him to fill Harris’ Senate seat in 2020, making him the first Latino to represent California in the Senate, and Padilla was elected to fill a full term in 2022. His current Senate term doesn’t end until 2029, meaning he wouldn’t have to risk his seat to run for governor.

WASHINGTON — Public schools reopened Monday in the nation’s tense capital with parents on edge over the presence in their midst of thousands of National Guard troops — some now armed — and large scatterings of federal law enforcement officers carrying out President Trump’s orders to make the District of Columbia a safer place.

Even as Trump started talking about other cities and again touted a drop in crime that he attributed to his extraordinary effort to take over policing in Washington, D.C., the district’s mayor was lamenting the effect of Trump’s actions on children.

“Parents are anxious. We’ve heard from a lot of them,” Mayor Muriel Bowser said at a news conference, noting that some might keep their children out of school because of immigration concerns.

“Any attempt to target children is heartless, is mean, is uncalled for and it only hurts us,” she said. “I would just call for everybody to leave our kids alone.”

Rumors of police activity abound

As schools opened across the capital city, parental social media groups and listservs were buzzing with reports and rumors of checkpoints and arrests.

The week began with some patrolling National Guard units now carrying firearms. The change stemmed from a directive issued late last week by his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Armed National Guard troops from Ohio, South Carolina and Tennessee were seen around the city Monday. But not every patrol appears to be carrying weapons. An Associated Press photographer said the roughly 30 troops he saw on the National Mall on Monday morning were unarmed.

Armed Guard members in Washington will be operating under long-standing rules for the use of military force inside the U.S., the military task force overseeing all the troops deployed to D.C. said Monday. Those rules, broadly, say that while troops can use force, they should do so only “in response to an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm” and “only as a last resort.”

The task force has directed questions on why the change was necessary to Hegseth’s office. Those officials have declined to answer those questions. Speaking in the Oval Office on Monday, Hegseth said that it was common sense to arm them because it meant they were “capable of defending themselves and others.”

Among their duties is picking up trash, the task force said, though it’s unclear how much time they will spend doing that.

Bowser reiterated her opposition to the National Guard’s presence. “I don’t believe that troops should be policing American cities,” she said.

Trump is considering expanding the deployments to other Democratic-led cities, including Baltimore, Chicago and New York, saying the situations in those cities require federal action. In Washington, his administration says more than 1,000 people have been arrested since Aug. 7, including 86 on Sunday.

“We took hundreds of guns away from young kids, who were throwing them around like it was candy. We apprehended scores of illegal aliens. We seized dozens of illegal firearms. There have been zero murders,” Trump said Monday.

Some other cities bristle at the possibility of military on the streets

The possibility of the military patrolling streets of Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city, prompted immediate backlash, confusion and a trail of sarcastic social media posts.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a first-term Democrat, has called it unconstitutional and threatened legal action. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker deemed it a distraction and unnecessary as crime rates in Chicago are down, as they are nationwide.

Pritzker, often mentioned as a presidential contender, posted an Instagram video Monday of his 6 a.m. walk along a Lake Michigan path filled with runners and walkers.

“I don’t know who in Washington thinks that Chicago is some sort of hellhole, but you may need to look inward,” he said, mocking Trump’s term describing Washington.

Others raised questions about where patrols might go and what role they might play. By square mileage, Chicago is more than three times the size of Washington, and neighborhoods with historically high crime are spread far apart.

Former Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, who also worked for the New York Police Department, wondered what the National Guard would do in terms of fighting street violence. He said if there was clear communication, they could help with certain tasks, like perimeter patrol in high-crime neighborhoods, but only as part of a wider plan and in partnership with police.

National Guard troops were used in Chicago to help with the Democratic National Convention last summer and during the 2012 NATO Summit.

Overall, violent crime in Chicago dropped significantly in the first half of 2025, representing the steepest decline in over a decade, according to police data. Shootings and homicides were down more than 30% in the first half of the year compared with the same time last year, and total violent crime dropped by over 22%.

Still, some neighborhoods, including Austin on the city’s West Side, where the Rev. Ira Acree is a pastor, experience persistent high crime.

Acree said he’s received numerous calls from congregants upset about the possible deployment. He said if Trump was serious about crime prevention, he would boost funding for anti-violence initiatives.

“This is a joke,” Acree said. “This move is not about reducing violence. This is reckless leadership and political grandstanding. It’s no secret that our city is on the president’s hit list.”

In June, roughly 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines were sent to Los Angeles to deal with protests over the administration’s immigration crackdown. California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, and other local elected officials objected.

Sherman, Khalil and Tareen write for the Associated Press. Tareen reported from Chicago. AP writers Konstantin Toropin and Will Weissert contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — This year’s most far-reaching immigration case is likely to decide if immigration agents in Los Angeles are free to stop, question and arrest Latinos they suspect are here illegally.

President Trump promised the “largest mass deportation operation” in American history, and he chose to begin aggressive street sweeps in Los Angeles in early June.

The Greater Los Angeles area is “ground zero for the effects of the border crisis,” his lawyers told the Supreme Court this month. “Nearly 2 million illegal aliens — out of an area population of 20 million — are there unlawfully, encouraged by sanctuary-city policies and local officials’ avowed aim to thwart federal enforcement efforts.”

The “vast majority of illegal aliens in the [Central] District [of California] come from Mexico or Central America and many only speak Spanish,” they added.

Their fast-track appeal urged the justices to confirm that immigration agents have “reasonable suspicion” to stop and question Latinos who work in businesses or occupations that draw many undocumented workers.

No one questions that U.S. immigration agents may arrest migrants with criminal records or a final order of removal. But Trump administration lawyers say agents also have the authority to stop and question — and sometimes handcuff and arrest — otherwise law-abiding Latinos who have lived and worked here for years.

They could do so based not on evidence that the particular person lacks legal status but on the assumption that they look and work like others who are here illegally.

“Reasonable suspicion is a low bar — well below probable cause,” administration lawyers said. “Apparent ethnicity can be a factor supporting reasonable suspicion,” they added, noting that this standard assumes “lawful stops of innocent people may occur.”

If the court rules for Trump, it “could be enormously consequential” in Los Angeles and nationwide, said UCLA law professor Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law & Policy. “The government would read this as giving immigration enforcement agents a license to interrogate and detain people without individualized suspicion. It would likely set a pattern that could be used in other parts of the country.”

In their response to the appeal, immigrant rights advocates said the court should not “bless a regime that could ensnare in an immigration dragnet the millions of people … who are U.S. citizens or otherwise legally entitled to be in this country and are Latino, speak Spanish” and work in construction, food services or agriculture and can be seen at bus stops, car washes or retail parking lots.

The case now before the high court began June 18 when Pedro Vasquez Perdomo and two other Pasadena residents were arrested at a bus stop where they were waiting to be picked up for a job. They said heavily armed men wearing masks grabbed them, handcuffed them and put them in a car and drove to a detention center.

If “felt like a kidnapping,” Vasquez Perdomo said.

The plaintiffs include people who were handcuffed, arrested and taken to holding facilities even though they were U.S. citizens.

They joined a lawsuit with unions and immigrants rights groups as well as others who said they were confronted with masked agents who shouted commands and, in some instances, pushed them to the ground.

However, the suit quickly focused not on the aggressive and sometimes violent manner of the detentions, but on the legality of the stops.

U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong said the detentions appeared to violate the 4th Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures.

It is “illegal to conduct roving patrols which identify people based on race alone, aggressively question them, and then detain them without a warrant, without their consent, and without reasonable suspicion that they are without status,” she said on July 11.

The crucial phrase is “reasonable suspicion.”

For decades, the Supreme Court has said police officers and federal agents may stop and briefly question persons if they see something that gives them reason to suspect a violation of the law. This is why, for example, an officer may pull over a motorist whose car has swerved on the highway.

But it was not clear that U.S. immigration agents can claim they have reasonable suspicion to stop and question persons based on their appearance if they are sitting at a bus stop in Pasadena, working at a car wash or standing with others outside a Home Depot.

Frimpong did not forbid agents from stopping and questioning persons who may be here illegally, but she put limits on their authority.

She said agents may not stop persons based “solely” on four factors: their race or apparent ethnicity, the fact they speak Spanish, the type of work they do, or their location such as a day labor pickup site or a car wash.

On Aug. 1, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to lift the judge’s temporary restraining order. The four factors “describe only a broad profile that does not supply the reasonable suspicion to justify a detentive stop,” the judges said by a 3-0 vote.

The district judge’s order applies in the Central District of California, which includes Los Angeles and Orange counties as well as Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo.

The 9th Circuit said those seven counties have an estimated population of 19,233,598, of whom 47% or 9,096,334 identify as “Hispanic or Latino.”

Like Frimpong, the three appellate judges were Democratic appointees.

A week later, Trump administration lawyers sent an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court in Noem vs. Perdomo. They said the judge’s order was impeding the president’s effort to enforce the immigration laws.

They urged the court to set aside the judge’s order and to clear the way for agents to make stops if they suspect the person may be in the country illegally.

Agents do not need evidence of a legal violation, they said. Moreover, the demographics of Los Angeles alone supplies them with reasonable suspicion.

“All of this reflects common sense: the reasonable-suspicion threshold is low, and the number of people who are illegally present and subject to detention and removal under the immigration laws in the (the seven-county area of Southern California) is extraordinarily high,” wrote Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer. “The high prevalence of illegal aliens should enable agents to stop a relatively broad range of individuals.”

He said the government is not “extolling racial profiling,” but “apparent ethnicity can be relevant to reasonable suspicion, especially in immigration enforcement.”

In the past, the court has said police can make stops based on the “totality of the circumstances” or the full picture. That should help the administration because agents can point to the large number of undocumented workers at certain businesses.

But past decisions have also said officers need some reason to suspect a specific individual may be violating the law.

The Supreme Court could act at any time, but it may also be several weeks before an order is issued. The decision may come with little or no explanation.

In recent weeks, the court’s conservatives have regularly sided with Trump and against federal district judges who have stood in his way. The terse decisions have been often followed by an angry and lengthy dissent from the three liberals.

Immigration rights advocates said the court should not uphold “an extraordinarily expansive dragnet, placing millions of law-abiding people at imminent risk of detention by federal agents.”

They said the daily patrols “have cast a pall over the district, where millions meet the government’s broad demographic profile and therefore reasonably fear that they may be caught up in the government’s dragnet, and perhaps spirited away from their families on a long-term basis, any time they venture outside their own homes.”

Most California voters strongly disapprove of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies and believe that raids in the state have unfairly targeted Latinos, according to a new poll.

The findings, released Sunday, reflected striking emotional reactions to immigration enforcement. When voters were asked to describe their feelings about news reports or videos of immigration raids, 64% chose rage or sadness “because what is happening is unfair.”

Among Democrats, 91% felt enraged or sad. Conversely, 65% of Republicans felt hopeful, “like justice is finally being served.”

Such divisions were consistent across 11 questions about the administration’s overall immigration strategy and specific aspects of the way enforcement is playing out in the state, with divisions along partisan lines. The UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll was conducted for the Los Angeles Times.

Democrats almost unanimously oppose President Trump’s tactics on immigration, the poll showed. Most Republicans support the president, though they are not as united as Democrats in their approval.

“It was essential to show the strength of feelings because Democrats are strongly on the negative side of each of these policies,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Berkeley IGS Poll. “That struck me. I don’t usually see that kind of extreme fervor on a poll response.”

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The poll found that 69% of respondents disapprove of the way immigration enforcement is being carried out in the state.

Among Democrats, 95% disapprove, as well as 72% of voters with no party preference or others not affiliated with the two major parties, whereas 79% of Republicans approve.

The poll was completed online in English and Spanish from Aug. 11-17 by 4,950 registered voters in California.

A question that showed the least unified support among Republican voters asked respondents whether they agree or disagree that federal agents should be required to show clear identification when carrying out their work. The question comes as immigration agents have carried out raids using face coverings, unmarked cars and while wearing casual clothing.

Some 50% of Republicans agreed that agents should have to identify themselves, while 92% of Democrats agreed.

G. Cristina Mora, IGS co-director and a sociology professor at UC Berkeley who studies race and immigration, helped develop the poll questions. She said the poll shows that Republican voters are much more nuanced than Democrats. They also split on questions about due process, birthright citizenship and immigration enforcement in sensitive locations.

“Republicans are much more fractured in their thinking about immigration across the state,” Mora said.

Mora said she developed the question about agent identification in response to the recent bill led by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) that would require immigration officers to display their agency and name or badge number during public-facing enforcement actions, similar to police and other local law enforcement.

Padilla also spearheaded a letter last month to Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons seeking information about the agency’s policies regarding the identification of agents while on duty. ICE has justified the tactics by stating that agents are at risk of doxxing and have faced increased assault on the job.

“The public has a right to know which officials are exercising police power, and anonymous enforcement undermines both constitutional norms and democratic oversight,” Padilla and 13 other Democrats wrote in the letter.

Another poll question that garnered mixed support of Republicans asked respondents to agree or disagree with the statement, “ICE agents should expand immigration enforcement into schools, hospitals, parks and other public locations.”

Among Republicans, 53% agreed with that statement, though fewer than 1 in 3 agree strongly. Meanwhile, 94% of Democrats disagreed.

Shortly after Trump took office, his administration rescinded a 2011 memo that restricted immigration agents from making arrests in sensitive locations, such as churches, schools and hospitals. Since then, agents have been filmed entering locations that were previously considered off limits, putting immigrant communities on edge.

Schools in Los Angeles reopened this month with “safe zones” in heavily Latino neighborhoods and changed bus routes with less exposure to immigration agents. An 18-year-old high school senior, Benjamin Marcelo Guerrero-Cruz, was walking his family’s dog in Van Nuys when he was taken into federal immigration custody.

Mora said the varied responses illustrate how California Republicans view the Trump administration’s immigration tactics with “degrees of acceptability.” They might feel strongly that immigrants with violent criminal histories should be deported, she said, but the takeover of MacArthur Park, when a convoy of immigration agents in armored vehicles descended there in a show of force, or the enforcement actions outside of public schools “might have been a step too far.”

Mike Madrid, a GOP political consultant who wrote a book about how Latinos have transformed democracy, said the split among Republicans is consistent with national polling. The trend is problematic for Trump, he said, because it means he is losing big swaths of his base.

“This is becoming viewed as overreach more than it is immigration control,” he said. “The idea sets a frame for it, but the actual implementation is widely unpopular.”

Republicans were largely united in response to other questions. Asked about the Trump administration’s proposal to do away with birthright citizenship — which confers citizenship to all children born in the U.S. regardless of their parent’s legal status — 67% of GOP respondents approved, and most of them strongly approved. By contrast, 92% of Democrats disapproved, and as did seven in 10 respondents overall.

Mora said she was surprised by the fact that Latinos didn’t stand out as substantially more opposed to Trump’s actions than voters of other racial and ethnic groups. For example, 69% of Latino voters said ICE raids have unfairly targeted Latinos, just five percentage points higher than the 64% of white non-Latino voters who agreed.

“You would imagine Latinos would be through the roof here, but they’re not,” Mora said. She said this reminded her of research around the tendency for Latinos to individualize their experiences instead of seeing them as racially unjust.

Broadly, 72% of Latinos disagree with the way the Trump administration is enforcing immigration laws in California, while 25% approve and 3% have no strong opinion.

Among Latino voter subgroups, older men and third-generation (or beyond) women are the more likely to support the way immigration enforcement is being handled in California, with 38% of Latino men over age 40 in agreement compared to 11% of Latinas ages 18-39, although among both groups majorities disapprove.

Madrid said that’s consistent with national polling showing a decrease in support for Republicans among Latinos after record gains in the last presidential election. The question, he said, is whether Trump’s approval ratings among Latinos could regress substantially enough to flip control of Congress in the midterms.

“We’re not there yet,” he said.

The first call to prayer in Malumfashi, northwestern Nigeria, was barely finished when gunmen stormed the Unguwan Mantau area. It was around 5 a.m. on Aug. 19, and the small mosque was full of worshippers, old and young men, all bowed in devotion, when the attack happened.  

It was a moment chosen for maximum shock and helplessness: none of the victims expected to be killed while praying for peace.

Mallam Umar Aramma, a local Qur’anic teacher and a survivor of the attack, says he remembers the silence before the gunshots and then people started running to save their lives.

“Many were instantly killed by gunshots,” he told HumAngle. “Others were rushed to the hospital with wounds, and some died there.”

Local officials first put the toll at 13. Within 48 hours, the figure rose to about 29 as more bodies were recovered from the mosque and nearby hamlets torched in the same raid. 

Since the terrorist attack was reported, grief has mixed with an old debate across northwestern Nigeria, particularly on social media: whether to negotiate with the terrorists who have turned vast rural stretches into locations to be raided. 

The federal government has quietly encouraged some Islamic clerics to explore channels with some commanders. Sheikh Musa Asadussunnah, one of the peace talk proponents, hasn’t explicitly mentioned this in his speeches, but sources confirmed to HumAngle that he has federal backing. 

Earlier this month, the cleric delegation said their talks with the Zamfara warlord Bello Turji secured the release of 32 captives and a symbolic surrender of weapons. The accounts vary on the details and on the federal government’s role, but the message of engagement was clear. 

Opinions have already been divided since the beginning of the engagement. However, the recent attack in Katsina has hardened many hearts against the idea of a peace deal.

For many, failed peace deals are not a distant history. In 2019 and early 2020, former Governor Aminu Bello Masari of Katsina State convened a series of accords with local terror leaders that included public ceremonies, photoshoots, promises of amnesty, and assurances that attacks would cease. 

However, within months, the deals unravelled. 

By June 2020, Masari publicly expressed his disappointment, accusing the gunmen of betraying the terms and resuming raids. “We’ve pulled out,” he said, adding that negotiations had failed to bring “lasting peace.” And the violence continued. 

Zamfara, the epicentre of the northwest conflict, had the same experience. Governor Bello Matawalle’s 2019 amnesty and disarmament plan led to a temporary partial peace. Reports showed that the terror kingpins paused in some villages while expanding operations elsewhere or engaging in rivalry for space control. 

By 2021, major attacks had reappeared; by 2023–2024, researchers tracking the conflict concluded the amnesty had failed in its central objective. Armed groups had diversified revenue streams, deepened cross-border logistics, and used the money to buy arms. 

The pattern persists at the micro level. Recently in Adabka, Zamfara, HumAngle reported that villagers bought peace for nearly three years by funnelling payments to terrorists in a ransom-for-peace arrangement that collapsed this month with fresh abductions and killings. 

The failure of such peace arrangements shows the bigger problem: They are unenforceable, unclear, and can always change due to the next grievance, the next terror group, and the next terror leader in charge. 

But out of desperation, people, at a community level, still do them. 

In recent weeks, since the beginning of the rainy season, some Katsina villages have seen the return of a localised peace deal. Community leaders in Jibia, Danmusa, Batsari, and Safana have explored or entered quiet pacts aimed at protecting farms and markets during the rainy season. 

Even state officials, while insisting they are not negotiating, have acknowledged meetings with ‘repentant terrorists’ to enable access to farmlands. In Safana, local leaders announced a peace accord just days before the Uguwan Mantau massacre. 

Why do peace deals fail? 

Several reports have explained why these agreements keep failing. First, there is no single chain of command. The northwestern insurgency is a patchwork of gangs and entrepreneurial warlords who shift alliances and territorial footprints with the rains, the market for cattle, the gold mining sites, and security pressure. 

Research has shown that a peace deal with one group creates economic and tactical incentives for others to attack. Conflict monitors warned as far back as 2020 that “partial peace” in one state often displaced violence into a neighbour. That remains true today. 

Another problem is that the agreements lack credible enforcement. The Federal Government has not and cannot offer a strong stance large enough to bind dozens of decentralised terror commanders in the region. 

When deals hinge on payments, safe corridors, or promises of non-prosecution, they risk rewarding coercion. When they hinge on community levies, they entrench protection rackets. When they hinge on the word of a single prominent warlord, they fall with his next strategic calculation.

Moreover, the deals often ignore the cross-border economies that keep the war profitable. Arms and motorcycles ride the same trails as cattle. Without plugging the border routes and illicit markets, de-escalation in one cluster is merely an intermission, not an ending. 

Research mapping the terror economy across 2023–2024 shows how quickly groups adapt to bans and roadblocks by shifting to new corridors and taxing new commodities. 

To many Katsina residents, these are not abstract critiques. They are recent history, lived twice. Liman Garba, a young man who lost his father in one of the terror attacks in Katsina, said any peace pact with terrorists will be meaningless as they continue to target civilians. 

“People like us, whose father was killed right inside our home, and our mother and younger siblings were taken away after our father was murdered, we had to pay ₦10 million before our relatives were released. How can anyone say there should be reconciliation when you see the very person who caused your father to leave this world, and who also made you lose millions of naira?” he said.

Masari’s collapse of talks in 2020 is always in any conversation about peace with terrorists. People remember the promises, the ceremonies, and the resumed killings. Aramma, the Qur’anic teacher, told HumAngle that they no longer want any empty promises or failed peace dialogue; they want the state to stop the killings. “We prayed for protection,” he said, “and they met us at prayer.” 

The clerical involvement

The federal government’s openness to clerical intermediaries is understandable. Clerics can go where officials cannot, and carry moral authority in a region where politicians are rarely trusted. Their recent shuttle diplomacy with Turji may have saved lives; 32 people are home because someone talked instead of shooting. 

But the same week those headlines broke, Unguwan Mantau buried its dead. And across the northwest, countless families still pay “farming fees” to armed men so they can plant maize and millet. Tasiu Saeed, another resident of Zamfara, explained the contradiction.

“Reconciliation is a good thing. But to be honest, there is a big problem, because there has been no progress with reconciliation, since the terrorists do not stop killing people, even while talks are ongoing. They are traitors, so the government should focus on fighting them instead,” he said. 

Does that mean talks are futile? Zainab Nasir, a youth leader in Kano, thinks otherwise. She explained that the answer may lie in redefining what “talks” are for. 

According to her, any dialogue with terrorists “can only be meaningful if it is pursued with sincerity, strategy, and accountability.” She explained that the talks “should not be seen as a reward for violence, but as a pathway to lasting stability where both the dignity of the affected victims and the future of offenders are secured.”

However, the record suggests that peace talks are not, on their own, a path to lasting stability. When they are sold as such, they sour public trust. But when they are paired with transparent benchmarks, regional coordination, and blocking revenue streams, they can be a tactical component for lasting peace. 

Back in Unguwan Mantau, Aramma said, since the attack, fear has engulfed people, and men no longer attend mosques in full. “Some do, many others don’t”. The fear is that while you may go there to pray for peace, you may be engulfed in the fire of violence. Aramma said they feel defenceless.

“The police came, took some report and left us asking ‘where is safe to pray?’”

Against this backdrop, the federal government’s symbolic outreach through clerics sits uneasily with public sentiment in the wake of Unguwan Mantau. “People are not rejecting peace,” Tasiu said, “they are demanding a strategy that can outlast a photoshoot.”

As Matthew Stafford got to the podium on Thursday, he joked that he was sure reporters wanted to ask him questions about the paper cut he suffered.

The Rams star quarterback then fielded inquiries about the subject that clouds all conversation about the Rams: The back injury that sidelined Stafford until this week.

Stafford practiced for the fourth day in a row, another small milestone for the 17th-year pro and a team aiming to make a Super Bowl run.

“The good thing is I feel pretty good,” said Stafford, who practiced for the fourth day in a row. “The last couple days out there practicing, I was able to do even more than I thought I was going to be able to do the first day, and then I’ve just been trying to stack days.

“Backs are sometimes interesting things. It’s not cut and dry, what’s what and how you’re going to feel. So I’m really appreciative of our team, our head coach and everybody taking a day-to-day approach with me and doing everything they can to try and help me out.

“I have a feeling of responsibility to our team to do what’s right by them and I’m trying to do that as best as I can day in and day out.”

Stafford, 37, declined to discuss specifics of his injury, which coach Sean McVay has described as an aggravated disc that required at least one epidural injection.

Stafford said there was not a particular offseason incident that caused the condition, which apparently flared while training between the time the Rams returned from Maui in June and the start of training camp in late July.

“It wasn’t like one thing where I knew right away,” he said. “Just kind of something that crept up on me a little bit.”

Stafford said he had done “everything under the sun” to be able to return to the field.

Asked if he expected to be ready for the Sept. 7 opener against the Houston Texans, he said, “I’m not going to answer questions like that. … It’s probably a day-to-day thing. I’m just doing everything I can to try and be out there for the next practice.”

Rams coach Sean McVay, left, talks with quarterback Matthew Stafford, right, during training camp in Woodland Hills on Thursday.

(Gary Klein / Los Angeles Times)

Stafford’s return to the field began on Monday, two days after he did not go through a scheduled individual throwing session. Stafford recovered well enough from Monday’s workout to practice again on Tuesday. He participated in a team jogthrough on Wednesday, and then went through a full practice on Thursday.

Throughout the week, he looked sharp and showed no discernible signs of discomfort or limitations.

“I’ve seen a guy that’s gotten better and better,” McVay said. “He looks like the stud that we know.”

Stafford’s availability will be paramount for a team aiming to return to the Super Bowl for the first time since the 2021-22 season, when Stafford led the Rams to a victory in Super Bowl LVI at SoFi Stadium.

During the offseason, the Rams adjusted Stafford’s contract — he will carry a salary-cap number of $47.5 million this season, according to Overthecap.com — because they believe that with the addition of star receiver Davante Adams and a rising defense, they have a shot at another title.

During training camp and joint practices with the Dallas Cowboys and New Orleans Saints, veteran Jimmy Garoppolo took first-team snaps in place of Stafford. Third-year pro Stetson Bennett also made major strides during training camp and two preseason starts.

Yet Stafford’s availability and performance will dictate whether the Rams can improve their performance from last season, when they advanced to the NFC divisional round before losing to the eventual Super Bowl-champion Philadelphia Eagles.

So the Rams and Stafford must manage the back issue.

The Rams play their final preseason game at Cleveland on Saturday, but Stafford — and perhaps other veterans — will not travel, McVay said.

Stafford sounded as if managing this back issue will be nothing new for a quarterback who played through numerous injuries during 12 seasons with the Detroit Lions and four with the Rams.

“There’s soreness all over the place, every time I wake up,” he joked. “It’s something that I’ll manage like I do a million other things throughout the year.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom filed a request Sunday seeking records from the Trump administration to explain why a phalanx of Border Patrol agents showed up outside a news conference held by leading California Democrats last week.

Newsom filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security asking for “all documents and records” related to the Aug. 14 Border Patrol operation in downtown Los Angeles, which took place outside the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo. At the news conference, Newsom announced a campaign to seek voter approval to redraw California’s congressional maps to boost Democrats’ chances of retaking the House and stymieing Trump’s agenda in the 2026 midterm elections.

“Trump’s use of the military and federal law enforcement to try to intimidate his political opponents is yet another dangerous step towards authoritarianism,” Newsom posted Sunday on X. “This is an attempt to advance a playbook from the despots he admires in Russia and North Korea.”

Newsom announced at the press event the “Election Rigging Response Act” — which would scrap independently drawn congressional maps in favor of those sketched by Democratic strategists in an attempt to counter moves by Republicans in Texas and other GOP-led states to gerrymander their own districts to favor Republicans in the 2026 midterms. Meanwhile, dozens of armed federal agents massed in the adjacent streets wearing masks, helmets and camouflage.

Newsom and other leading Democrats, including L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, dismissed the Border Patrol action as an intimidation tactic. In response to questions from The Times on Sunday, Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said the agents were “focused on enforcing the law, not on [Newsom].”

McLaughlin said two people were arrested during the Little Tokyo operation. One was a drug trafficker, according to McLaughlin, who said the other was a member of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang that has been a focus of the Trump administration’s efforts to use the Alien Enemies Act to speed up deportation efforts.

She did not respond to questions about how many agents were deployed or what specific agencies were involved in the Aug. 14 operation. Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino, who has been leading the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration operations in California, was at the scene and briefly spoke to reporters.

McLaughlin did not name either person arrested or respond to a request for further information or evidence of links between the arrests and the Venezuelan gang.

“Under President Trump and [Department of Homeland Security] Secretary [Kristi] Noem, if you break the law, you will face the consequences,” she wrote in an e-mailed statement. “Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Thursday, witnesses at the scene identified one of the men arrested as Angel, a delivery worker who was carrying strawberries when he was captured.

“He was just doing his normal delivery to the courthouse,” said the man’s colleague, Carlos Franco. “It’s pretty sad, because I’ve got to go to work tomorrow, and Angel isn’t going to be there.”

In the FOIA request, Newsom’s legal affairs secretary, David Sapp, called the Border Patrol deployment an “attempt to intimidate the people of California from defending a fair electoral process.”

In addition to documents related to the planning of the raid, the FOIA request also seeks “any records referencing Governor Newsom or the rally that was scheduled to occur” and communications between federal law enforcement officials and Fox News, which allowed the Trump-friendly media outlet to embed a reporter with Border Patrol that day.

Trump’s increased use of the military and federal law enforcement against his political rivals has drawn growing concern in recent months. The president deployed the National Guard and U.S. Marines to quell protests against immigration raids in Los Angeles earlier this year. Just last week, Trump sent swarms of federal law enforcement officials to Washington, D.C., to combat what he sees as out-of-control crime, despite the fact that most crime statistics show violence in the nation’s capital is at a 30-year low.

Although Newsom demanded an answer by early September, the federal government is notoriously slow in responding to FOIA requests and will often delay responses for years. A spokesman for Newsom did not immediately respond to questions on Sunday about what, if any, other legal steps the governor was prepared to take.

Voters would have to approve Newsom’s plan to redraw the congressional maps in a special election in November. The new maps, drawn by Democratic strategists and lawmakers behind closed doors instead of the independent commission that voters previously chose, would concentrate Republican voters in a few deep-red pockets of the state and eliminate an Inland Empire district long held by the GOP.

In total, Democrats would likely pick up five seats in California in the midterms under the redrawn maps, possibly countering or outpacing Republican efforts to tilt their map red in Texas. Other states have already begun to consider redrawing their maps along more partisan lines in response to growing anxieties over the fight to control the House of Representatives in 2026.

Times staff writer Seema Mehta contributed to this report.

ANCHORAGE — President Trump made his expectations clear entering a summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday: “I won’t be happy if I walk away without some form of a ceasefire,” he said aboard Air Force One.

Yet he did, ending his meeting with the Russian leader with curt remarks, taking no questions from the press and offering no sense of a breakthrough toward peace in Ukraine.

It was an immediate success for Putin, who was greeted on the tarmac of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson with applause and smiles from the American president, offered a ride in his iconic vehicle. After years in isolation over his repeated invasions of Ukraine, facing an indictment from the International Criminal Court over war crimes, a red carpet awaited Putin on U.S. soil.

Both men referenced “agreements” in statements to reporters. But Trump implied the question that matters most — whether Russia is prepared to implement a ceasefire — remains unresolved.

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“We had an extremely productive meeting, and many points were agreed to. There are just a very few that are left,” Trump said. “Some are not that significant. One is probably the most significant, but we have a very good chance of getting there.”

In a follow-up interview on Fox News, Trump said the meeting went well. “But we’ll see,” he said. “You know, you have to get a deal.”

Trump’s failure to secure a ceasefire from Putin surprised few analysts, who have seen him pressing Russian advantages on the battlefield and offering no indication he plans to relent.

The question is whether Putin will be able to sustain Trump’s goodwill when the war continues grinding on. On Friday alone, hours before the summit began, Russian forces struck a civilian market in the Ukrainian city of Sumy.

The Russian delegation left immediately after the press availability, providing no comments to the press corps on how the meetings went behind closed doors. And after sitting down with Fox, Trump promptly left Anchorage for Washington. The White House issued no statements, readouts or fact sheets on the summit. Administration officials fell silent.

“Putin is going to have to give Trump some kind of concession so that he is not completely embarrassed,” said Darren Kew, dean of the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego, “probably a pledge of a ceasefire very soon — one of Trump’s key demands — followed by a promise to meet the Ukrainians for talks this fall.”

“Both serve Putin’s goals of delay and appeasing Trump, while allowing more time for Russian battlefield victories,” Kew added, “since ceasefires can easily be broken, and peace talks can drag on for years.”

In brief remarks of his own, Putin said that points of agreement reached with Trump would likely face opposition across Europe, including from Ukraine itself, warning continental allies not to “torpedo nascent progress” in follow-up talks with the White House.

“I would like to hope that the agreement that we have reached together will help us bring us close to that goal, and will pave the path toward peace in Ukraine,” Putin said. “We expect that Kyiv and European capitals will perceive that constructively, and that they won’t throw a wrench in the works.”

It was an acknowledgment that whatever terms agreed upon bilaterally between Putin and Trump’s team are almost certainly unacceptable to Ukraine, a party to the conflict that has lost hundreds of thousands of lives fighting Russia’s invasion since February 2022.

Trump told Fox that a Russian takeover of Ukrainian lands was discussed and “agreed upon,” pending Ukrainian approval — an unlikely prospect given vocal opposition from Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and provisions in the Ukrainian Constitution that prohibit the concession of territory.

“Those are points that we negotiated, and those are points that we largely have agreed upon, actually. I think we’ve agreed on a lot,” Trump said. “I think we’re pretty close to a deal. Now, look. Ukraine has to agree to it. Maybe they’ll say no.”

Europe and Ukraine have argued that conceding land to Putin is not enough. After invading Crimea in 2014, and successfully holding it, Putin came back for more territory in the eastern Donbas — only to launch a full-scale invasion of the country in 2022.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said this week that its war aims remain unchanged.

“We’re convinced that in order to make the settlement last in the long-term, we need to eliminate all the primary roots, the primary causes of that conflict,” Putin said, “to consider all legitimate concerns of Russia, and to reinstate a just balance of security in Europe, and in the world on the whole.”

“The root causes of the conflict,” he added, “must be resolved.”

WASHINGTON — The director of the agency that produces the nation’s jobs and inflation data is typically a mild-mannered technocrat, often with extensive experience in statistical agencies, with little public profile.

But like so much in President Trump’s second administration, this time is different.

Trump has selected E.J. Antoni, chief economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, to be the next commissioner at the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. Antoni’s nomination was quickly met with a cascade of criticism from other economists, from across the political spectrum.

His selection threatens to bring a new level of politicization to what for decades has been a nonpartisan agency widely accepted as a producer of reliable measures of the nation’s economic health. Although many former Labor Department officials say it is unlikely Antoni will be able to distort or alter the data, particularly in the short run, he could change the currently dry-as-dust way it is presented.

Antoni was nominated by Trump after the BLS released a jobs report Aug. 1 that showed that hiring had weakened in July and was much lower in May and June than the agency had previously reported. Trump, without evidence, charged that the data had been “rigged” for political reasons and fired the then-BLS chair, Erika McEntarfer, much to the dismay of many within the agency.

Antoni has been a vocal critic of the government’s jobs data in frequent appearances on podcasts and cable TV. His partisan commentary is unusual for someone who may end up leading the BLS.

For instance, on Aug. 4 — a week before he was nominated — Antoni said in an interview on Fox News Digital that the Labor Department should stop publishing the monthly jobs reports until its data collection processes improve, and rely on quarterly data based on actual employment filings with state unemployment offices.

The monthly employment reports are probably the closest-watched economic data on Wall Street, and can frequently cause swings in stock prices.

When asked at Tuesday’s White House briefing whether the jobs report would continue to be released, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the administration hoped it would be.

“I believe that is the plan and that’s the hope,” Leavitt said.

Leavitt also defended Antoni’s nomination, calling him an “economic expert” who has testified before Congress and adding that “the president trusts him to lead this important department.”

Yet Antoni’s TV and podcast appearances have created more of a portrait of a conservative ideologue than a careful economist who considers trade-offs and prioritizes getting the math correct.

“There’s just nothing in his writing or his resume to suggest that he’s qualified for the position, besides that he is always manipulating the data to favor Trump in some way,” said Brian Albrecht, chief economist at the International Center for Law and Economics.

Antoni wrongly claimed in the last year of Biden’s presidency that the economy had been in recession since 2022; called on the entire Federal Reserve board to be fired for not earning a profit on its Treasury securities holdings; and posted a chart on social media that conflated timelines to suggest inflation was headed to 15%.

His argument that the U.S. was in a recession rested on a vastly exaggerated measure of housing inflation, based on newly purchased home prices, to artificially make the nation’s gross domestic product appear smaller than it was.

“This is actually maybe the worst Antoni content I’ve seen yet,” Alan Cole of the center-right Tax Foundation said on social media, referring to his recession claim.

On a 2024 podcast, Antoni wanted to sunset Social Security payments for workers paying into the system, saying that “you’ll need a generation of people who pay Social Security taxes but never actually receive any of those benefits.” As head of the BLS, Antoni would oversee the release of the consumer price index by which Social Security payments are adjusted for inflation.

Many economists share, to some degree, Antoni’s concerns that the government’s jobs data have flaws and are threatened by trends such as declining response rates to its surveys. The drop has made the jobs figures more volatile, though not necessarily less accurate over time.

“The stock market moves clearly based on these job numbers, and so people with skin in the game think it’s telling them something about the future of their investments,” Albrecht said. “Could it be improved? Absolutely.”

Katharine Abraham, an economist at the University of Maryland who was BLS commissioner under President Clinton, said updating the jobs report’s methods would require at least some initial investment.

The government could use more modern data sources, she said, such as figures from payroll processing companies, and fill in gaps with surveys.

“There’s an inconsistency between saying you want higher response rates and you want to spend less money,” she said, referring to the administration’s proposals to cut BLS funding.

Still, Abraham and other former BLS commissioners don’t think Antoni, if confirmed, would be able to alter the figures. But he could push for changes in the monthly news release and seek to portray the numbers in a more positive light.

William Beach, who was appointed BLS commissioner by Trump in his first term and also served under Biden, said he is confident that BLS procedures are strong enough to prevent political meddling. He said he didn’t see the figures himself until two days before publication when he served as commissioner.

“The commissioner does not affect the numbers,’’ Beach said. “They don’t collect the data. They don’t massage the data. They don’t organize it.”

Regarding the odds of rigging the numbers, Beach said, “I wouldn’t put it at complete zero, but I’d put it pretty close to zero.’’

It took about six months after McEntarfer was nominated in July 2023 for her to be approved. Antoni will probably face stiff opposition from Democrats, but that may not be enough to derail his appointment.

Sen. Patty Murray, a senior Democrat from Washington, on Tuesday slammed Antoni as “an unqualified right-wing extremist” and demanded that the Republican chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, hold a confirmation hearing for him.

Rugaber and Boak write for the Associated Press. AP writers Paul Wiseman and Stephen Groves contributed to this report.

It’s been a dramatic couple of weeks in the wide world of sports rights, as media companies locked down a slew of deals that remake the way that fans watch their favorite athletic competitions.

On Monday came a big one: David Ellison, the new owner of Paramount, came into the ring punching hard with a $7.7-billion deal for the streaming and TV rights to UFC matches. In the seven-year pact with UFC owner TKO Group Holdings, the Ellison-led Paramount will pay an average of $1.1 billion annually — about twice what Walt Disney Co. was paying to air the mixed martial arts league on ESPN.

It’s a signal that Ellison is willing to spend big bucks on content that he and his fresh executive team think will make Paramount+ a more formidable competitor to Netflix, Amazon’s Prime Video, HBO Max and others. Paramount+ will have the rights to stream 13 marquee “numbered” UFC events and 30 fight nights, while certain numbered events will be simulcast on the company’s broadcast network, CBS.

Now those sightings of the tech scion-turned Hollywood mogul speaking with President Trump at UFC fights make even more sense, as do Ellison and Paramount’s recent peripheral dealings with superagent Ari Emanuel, TKO’s executive chair. In a key part of the deal, UFC will move away from showcasing fights through its pay-per-view model, which should dramatically increase the reach of a sport with strong appeal among young men.

The deal is also the latest sign that the streaming wars are far from over, at least when it comes to sports broadcasts. Last week, the NFL inked a deal to take a 10% stake in ESPN as part of a complex arrangement that will give Bob Iger-led Disney control of the NFL cable properties, including the NFL Network and the linear RedZone channel. The ESPN stake is estimated to be worth more than $2 billion.

This highly anticipated blockbuster deal further aligns the financial interests of the most powerful TV sports brand with what is by far the nation’s most popular sports league, which accounts for the vast majority of most-watched programs every year. The agreement is part of Iger and ESPN chair Jimmy Pitaro’s strategy to bulk up the content offering available through the network’s upcoming stand-alone streaming service, which will cost $30 a month when it launches later this month.

Separately, ESPN is staying in business with TKO, having agreed to pay $1.6 billion over five years to stream WWE events including WrestleMania, Royal Rumble and SummerSlam. Analysts say that should ease some of the pain of losing UFC to Ellison and Paramount. The WWE events are moving to ESPN’s service from their current streaming home, NBCUniversal’s Peacock. Disney’s fees will be nearly twice those of NBCUniversal.

Disney will use the new ESPN service to make its wider streaming offering more attractive, bundling it with Disney+ and Hulu.

All this is happening amid a broader overhauling of the sports media landscape in the streaming age that has made life more confusing for fans as fewer people subscribe to all-in-one cable and satellite TV bundles.

NFL games, for example, run on a broad array of streaming services, including Paramount+, Prime Video (for Thursday night games), and, in the case of Christmas Day matchups, Netflix. The league, which has significant leverage, is widely expected to exercise its option to renegotiate media rights deals starting in 2029.

Apple is expected to win the rights to Formula One racing telecasts, adding to its sports portfolio that includes MLB games and Major League Soccer. The NBA last year got itself a big pay bump, securing media rights deals with NBCUniversal, Amazon and Disney worth $77 billion over 11 years.

As these shifts take place, the media industry is about to go through a major test: How many people are willing to pay for a lot of — but not all — the sports content they want to watch, and what will they be willing to fork over?

The entertainment and media companies say they are aiming these services at cord-cutters and cord-nevers, people who don’t pay for a more-or-less traditional package of TV channels but still want to watch sports.

The question is whether such people actually exist.

Despite its branding power and its significant share of sports rights, ESPN’s direct-to-consumer app will have limited appeal. Many analysts estimate that the offering will attract 2 million subscribers in the short term.

For most of the kind of dedicated sports fans who might be interested in streaming ESPN, a digital bundle such as YouTube TV ($83 a month) probably makes more sense than cobbling together individual brands.

Recognizing the limitations, the media companies are taking another stab at consolidating their sports streaming offerings at a discount. On Monday, Disney and Fox Corp. said they would offer a bundle of the ESPN streamer and the new Fox One — which includes live sports, news and entertainment — for $40 a month. On its own, Fox One will be priced at $20 a month.

A previous attempt at a more inclusive offering — a proposed joint venture called Venu Sports from Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery — was abandoned after a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction against the media giants in an antitrust lawsuit from FuboTV. The saga ended up with Disney making a deal to take a 70% stake in Fubo and merge it with its Hulu Live TV service.

But the question for all services and mini-bundles remains the same: Who are they really for?

Stuff we wrote

Number of the week

Filmmaker Zach Cregger won the weekend with his acclaimed new horror movie “Weapons,” which topped expectations with $43.5 million in ticket sales through Sunday in the U.S. and Canada.

Cregger’s follow-up to his surprise hit “Barbarian” is the latest win for Warner Bros., marking six successful openings in a row (after “A Minecraft Movie,” “Sinners,” “Final Destination Bloodlines,” “F1 the Movie” and “Superman”). Not bad, considering the studio’s leaders were rumored to be on the chopping block earlier this year.

Doing solid business was Disney’s “Freakier Friday,” a body-swap comedy sequel reuniting Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan more than 20 years after the first one, itself a remake of a 1976 movie. The new installment opened with $28.6 million domestically.

After this and “The Naked Gun,” I’m certainly not going to declare that Hollywood big-screen comedies are back, but the genre is not completely lost either, as long as there’s intellectual property attached.

Finally …

Watch: Marc Maron has a new HBO stand-up special, “Panicked.” As always, it’s funny, acerbic, insightful and sometimes deep.

Listen: On Aug. 14, the estate of Woody Guthrie will release a collection of home recordings, including a version of “This Land Is Your Land” and his take on “Deportee.” Absolutely fascinating.