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JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — A Missouri judge has allowed new U.S. House districts backed by President Trump to be used in the November elections, rejecting a bid by to put the Republican-friendly districts to a statewide vote of the people.

The ruling Wednesday by Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green is a victory for Republicans seeking to hold onto their slim majority in the U.S. House. But the case is likely to end up in the state Supreme Court.

Missouri’s new districts already were used in the August primaries. On that same day, Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins rejected a petition with thousands of signatures seeking to force a November referendum on the map. Hoskins asserted that Missouri’s Constitution doesn’t allow a referendum on congressional redistricting.

The judge agreed with Hoskins and other Republicans, who joined in defense of the new map.

“The Missouri Constitution does not supply any statement — let alone a clear one — reallocating authority over congressional redistricting away from the General Assembly to a referendum process,” Green wrote in the ruling.

Opponents of the redistricting plan quickly announced an appeal.

“Everyone knows that Cole County is not the final decision here,” said Richard von Glahn, executive director of People Not Politicians, who sued to try to place the new map on the ballot. “After months of delay, we are pleased to be moving forward to the Missouri Supreme Court to enforce our constitutional rights.”

Missouri’s redistricting targeted Democratic congressman

Missouri’s current U.S. House delegation is made up of six Republicans and two Democrats who were elected from districts with boundaries drawn after the 2020 census.

But Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe called the Legislature into a special session on redistricting last year after Trump urged Republican-led states to redraw congressional boundaries to their advantage ahead of the midterms.

Missouri’s revised map is designed to help Republicans defeat Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City. It reassigns portions of Kansas City to two neighboring districts represented by Republicans and stretches the remainder of Cleaver’s 5th Congressional District far eastward into Republican-heavy rural areas. About 59% of its voters are new to the 5th District, according to an Associated Press estimate.

State Sen. Rick Brattin won a Republican primary in the reshaped district in early August. Cleaver was unopposed for the Democratic nomination.

Republicans had argued that the new districts should be used in the November elections even if a voter referendum on the map was allowed to occur at the same time.

Lawsuit highlights dispute about referendum rights

The Missouri Constitution does not specifically say that a referendum can be used to decide congressional redistricting, nor does it forbid it, which is why the issue ended up in court.

Republican Attorney General Catherine Hanaway’s office, which represented the secretary of state in court, argued that congressional redistricting is a legislative duty not subject to referendum without specific constitutional permission.

The attorney general and the Republican Party also argued it was too late to switch district boundaries before the November election. Changing districts after the primary would cause “widespread voter confusion” and an “erosion in confidence in the integrity of the state’s elections,” said John Gore, an attorney for national, congressional and state Republican committees.

The judge agreed, ruling that a district swap after the primary would violate federal law.

It’s been more than 100 years since a Missouri redistricting plan faced a referendum. In 1922, voters rejected a new congressional map passed by the Republican-led Legislature. The legitimacy of that referendum petition was not challenged in court.

Redistricting battle spread to numerous states

Missouri’s mid-decade redistricting effort has been among the most litigated nationally, triggering about a dozen lawsuits over the past year.

The Republican-led state was the second, after Texas, to respond to Trump’s call to redraw congressional districts. Several other states followed. All told, Republicans hope to win as many as 16 additional seats from new House maps enacted in eight states: Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama. Democrats, whose counterattack faced several setbacks, think they could win up to six additional seats from new districts in California and Utah.

It remains to be seen whether the redistricting works as intended for Republicans. The president’s party historically has lost congressional seats in the midterms, and Trump’s poor approval ratings could provide an extra hurdle for Republican candidates.

Lieb writes for the Associated Press. AP journalist Hannah Recht contributed to this report from Washington.

Aug. 20 (UPI) — President Donald Trump has nominated White House aide Dr. Heidi Overton to lead the Food and Drug Administration, drawing anger from Democrats and criticism from a key Republican senator.

Trump announced his nomination of Overton to be the next FDA commissioner on his Truth Social platform Wednesday, calling the deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council “a ROCKSTAR in my administration.”

“She is known to take on the HARDEST issues, and bring me solutions that work best for the Country,” Trump said. “We need her leadership at the FDA now to ensure that the U.S. remains the WORLD LEADER for Scientific Discovery and CURES.”

If confirmed by the Senate, Overton will be tasked with overseeing agency policy concerning drugs, vaccines, tobacco products and much of the food supply, among other responsibilities. Kyle Diamantas, a friend of Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. has been serving as acting FDA commissioner since Marty Makary resigned as head of the agency in May following reported clashes with the Trump administration over its decision to authorize fruit-flavored electronic cigarettes.

“Heidi brings exceptional judgment, professionalism, discipline and an unwavering commitment to the American people,” Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement supporting her nomination to lead the FDA under him.

“I have seen her challenge assumptions, demand excellence and turn bold ideas into meaningful results.”

She has had an increasingly visible presence near the president in recent months and most recently appeared with him earlier this month when he signed an executive order to reduce the number of vaccines recommended for children, which has sparked widespread concern among the medical community.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., called Overton “a woman of deep faith, an accomplished physician and a champion of the America First agenda” as he congratulated her on the nomination.

“I have seen firsthand her ability to navigate complex policy challenges with conviction and clarity,” he said in a social media statement.

“She will serve our country well.”

While Republicans praised Trump’ pick, Sen. Bill Cassidy, a doctor, broke ranks, saying that while he respected her experience as a physician, “I have strong concerns about her nomination,” citing her lack of managerial experience of a large organization, such as the FDA, which is dealing with staffing and morale issues.

“Additionally, Dr. Overton’s active role in last week’s nonsensical vaccine executive order calls into question her commitment to standing up for sound science and protecting children’s health,” he said online.

“That alone is almost disqualifying.”

Cassidy, who represents Louisiana, will play a key roe in her confirmation as chairman of the Senate Health, Education Labor and Pensions Committee a key vote in whether she is confirmed. Republicans can afford to lose only three votes on the Senate floor, as they only hold a 53-seat majority. The two independent senators caucus with the Democrats, who are all expected to all vote against her nomination.

“Heidi Overton is a far-right, anti-abortion extremist who has no business leading the FDA,” Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said in a statement.

“The American people deserve someone who will put science and facts FIRST, not another Trump sycophant who will make it their mission to attack medication abortion.

“I will vote NO.”

Reproductive health organizations also criticized Trump’s pick, pointing to Overton’s celebration of the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, returning oversight of abortion to the states, as a “huge victory” and to her advocacy for what they described as the politicization of government agencies when she worked at the far-right America First Policy Institute think tank.

“Donald Trump is trying to put an anti-abortion extremist in charge of any agency that could seriously undermine reproductive healthcare — including the agency that could roll back access to mifepristone nationwide,” Reproductive Freedom for All President and CEO Mini Timmaraju said in a statement, referring to a prescription oral medication used to terminate an early pregnancy.

“Her nomination is another alarming step in Trump’s plan to weaponize every part of the federal government to restrict abortion nationwide.”

Islamabad, Pakistan – Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the top United States diplomat in Islamabad on Wednesday, hours after US Ambassador to India Sergio Gor described Indian-administered Kashmir as “an important part of India” during his first visit to the territory.

Islamabad rejected the remark and reasserted Kashmir’s status as disputed territory.

The visit by Gor, who also serves as President Donald Trump’s special envoy for South and Central Asia, was the first standalone trip by a serving US ambassador to Indian-administered Kashmir since 2019, and the first since India stripped the territory of its autonomy that year.

His remarks were made publicly, alongside Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, adding to Islamabad’s irritation.

The episode also comes at a delicate moment for Washington’s ties with both South Asian rivals, as Pakistan courts Trump’s administration more closely than it has in years, and as the US tries to balance that relationship against its strategic partnership with India.

So, what exactly did the US ambassador say, why has it caused such offence, and does it change anything? Al Jazeera explains.

What did the US ambassador say?

Sergio Gor, a 38-year-old former Trump aide who was confirmed as US ambassador to India in January, spent two days in Srinagar and Ladakh this week.

After meeting Abdullah in Srinagar, he told reporters he was thrilled to be visiting “an important part of India” for the first time.

He also said Washington was reconsidering its “do not travel” advisory, citing improved security under Abdullah’s administration.

The advisory at the moment places Jammu and Kashmir at a “Do Not Travel” level, citing terrorism and civil unrest, though it exempts the eastern territories of Ladakh and Leh.

Islamabad’s response came the same Wednesday evening. The Foreign Ministry summoned Charge d’Affaires Natalie Baker, who currently heads the US mission in the country.

The ministry lodged what it called a “strong demarche”, rejecting the “characterisation of Indian-administered Kashmir as a ‘part of India’” and reasserting it as an internationally recognised disputed territory awaiting final disposition under United Nations Security Council resolutions.

The statement called Gor’s remarks factually incorrect and said they negated Washington’s longstanding position on the dispute.

It also thanked Trump for his offer – made after India and Pakistan agreed to a ceasefire ending their four-day war last year – to help resolve the Kashmir question, urging Washington to keep its public language consistent with that position.

Why does Kashmir trigger such a reaction?

Kashmir is a Himalayan region claimed by both India and Pakistan since British colonial rule ended in August 1947.

India and Pakistan each administer part of the territory but claim it in full and have fought several wars over it.

A UN Security Council resolution passed in 1949 called for the territory’s final status to be decided by a plebiscite, which has never been held.

In June, European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas signed a joint statement with Pakistan’s foreign minister in Islamabad that bracketed Kashmir alongside the war in Ukraine and called for its resolution “through dialogue and diplomacy”.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs rejected the reference, saying those with no standing in the matter should refrain from commenting on it.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has drawn similar protests from Delhi at least twice after voicing support for Pakistan’s position on Kashmir.

Trump himself triggered a dispute in 2019 when, during a meeting with then-Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, he claimed Prime Minister Narendra Modi had personally asked him to mediate on Kashmir. Modi’s government swiftly denied the account in parliament.

For Pakistan, US language on Kashmir’s disputed status is an important external validation of its effort to internationalise the issue.

For India, meanwhile, any suggestion that Kashmir remains open to outside mediation cuts against the foundation of its position.

What has the US position been, historically?

The US has officially maintained that Kashmir is disputed and its status should be settled between India and Pakistan, taking into consideration the wishes of the Kashmiri people.

American officials have repeated some version of “our policy has not changed” across successive administrations, including in 2019, when a senior US diplomat told Congress that India’s move had not altered Washington’s view of the Line of Control as a “de facto” boundary.

Formally, Washington has avoided recognising sovereignty over the territory for either country.

A major turning point came in 1999, when President Bill Clinton told Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that Pakistani forces would have to withdraw from Kargil in Indian-administered Kashmir, following the fighting there between the two countries in the region.

Analysts widely saw the episode as the beginning of Washington’s tilt towards Delhi.

But after the two countries’ most intense clash in decades last year, Trump claimed credit for the ceasefire and offered to “work with you both” on a Kashmir “solution”.

Pakistan welcomed the offer and nominated Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize. India rejected suggestions of US mediation, saying the ceasefire had been reached through direct military talks.

Jauhar Saleem, Pakistan’s former foreign secretary and president of the Islamabad-based Institute of Regional Studies, told Al Jazeera that Gor’s remark should not be mistaken for a change in US policy.

“US policy on a question as consequential as Jammu and Kashmir cannot be read from an off-the-cuff formulation during a visit by a US ambassador posted in India,” Saleem said. “Any change in policy would be reflected in Washington’s formal statements, State Department language and, in fact, should be at the level of the White House.”

He said such lapses were not new.

“Sometimes ambassadors fall prey to what we call ‘localitis’, and in an attempt to please their hosts can make comments entirely out of line with their country’s stated policy, creating unpleasant situations,” he said. “This is a classic example and has therefore evoked an expected strong demarche from Pakistan’s Foreign Office.”

Saleem said Trump’s repeated offers to mediate between Pakistan and India, “which was not appreciated in New Delhi”, showed that Washington’s position remained unsettled at the top rather than shifting towards India. “I would actually expect a clarification from Washington soon,” he added.

Will it affect Pakistan-US ties?

Saleem, who summoned a US ambassador in Islamabad during his tenure as foreign secretary in late 2022 over what he called “a very objectionable remark” by then-President Joe Biden, said a demarche was not primarily a tool to punish Washington. Biden had described Pakistan as “one of the most dangerous nations in the world”.

“A demarche is not just made to increase the cost of a policy; rather it is made to press a point and ask for an explanation,” the former ambassador told Al Jazeera. “The US response was constructive [then], and will be in this case as well, I believe.”

He said the Pakistan-US relationship was too broad-based for one ambassador’s remark to unsettle it, pointing to Pakistan’s role as a peacemaker between the US and Iran, economic cooperation, counterterrorism, regional security, Afghanistan, defence cooperation, “and of course Pakistan’s relationship with the Trump administration itself”.

Tariq Rashid Khan, a Pakistani former military general and diplomat, described the episode as “issue-specific boundary-setting”.

Islamabad’s protest, he told Al Jazeera, signals that a close strategic partnership with Washington “does not mean acceptance of any position on Kashmir contrary to Pakistan’s stated position”.

“Kashmir remains an unfinished agenda of the 1947 partition, which is why even one sentence can become strategically significant,” he said.

For Saleem, the significance lies less in Gor’s specific words than in what any drift in language could set in motion.

“Jammu and Kashmir is not just a territorial dispute; it is an issue of national identity, legitimacy and security for Pakistan,” he told Al Jazeera. “Neither Pakistan nor India can afford to let the international community’s vocabulary on Kashmir drift even slightly, because both sides believe that language today can become precedent tomorrow.”

Aizaz Chaudhry, a former Pakistani ambassador to the US, told Al Jazeera he believed Gor’s remarks “might be his personal comments”, adding that the US position on the disputed territory is well known.

“Our demarche is only a reminder that the US envoy in Delhi must comply with the US position on the subject. The Kashmir dispute is a longstanding issue that must be resolved for the larger peace and stability of South Asia,” Chaudhry said.

Californians are more concerned about the Trump administration interfering in the state’s midterm elections than they are about voter fraud, noncitizens voting illegally or foreign interference, according to a new poll.

A majority of voters — 61% — identified potential federal interference as a “major concern” heading into November, slightly more than the 59% who cited possible foreign interference as such, according to the poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by The Times.

By comparison, 41% of California voters identified voter fraud and 37% identified noncitizens voting as major concerns, the poll found.

The polling reflects the liberal leanings of the state, where registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, as well as the nation’s hyperpartisan divide on voting issues and vulnerabilities.

That divide has been driven for years by President Trump’s relentless criticism of U.S. elections, particularly in large blue states such as California, and recently by his administration’s attempts to wrest control over voting processes from the states based on unverified claims of widespread fraud and the fierce pushback against those claims from California Democrats and other liberal leaders around the country.

The White House has dismissed concerns about interference and accused Democrats of obstructing its efforts to protect American elections from fraud, including through the proposed SAVE America Act — which would enforce strict new ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements for voters nationwide.

While 80% of Democratic respondents to the poll said potential federal interference in the state’s elections was a major concern, just 28% of Republican respondents identified it as such.

Voter fraud was identified as a major concern by 84% of Republican voters but just 21% of Democratic voters, the poll found. Noncitizens voting illegally also was identified as a major concern by 85% of Republicans but just 12% of Democrats.

Republicans also have substantial concerns about the security of mail ballots and how slowly California counts its vote, while Democrats were far less concerned about those issues, the poll found.

Mark DiCamillo, the poll’s director, said it clearly reflects the partisan divide around election issues and “shows that in this state, federal interference is a big deal — more so than in other places around the country.”

He called that a “big finding” in line with previous polls that found “Californians are very concerned about prioritizing efforts to defend democracy and to protect election systems,” including in the face of threats from Trump — who routinely has focused on the state in his regular attacks on election integrity.

“For 61% of Californians to say that’s a major concern to them in terms of the threats to the election system, I think that’s very newsworthy,” DiCamillo said.

He also noted the particularly stark difference between state Democrats and Republicans on the issue of noncitizens voting.

“Nearly 90% of Democrats say that’s not a concern, whereas 85% of Republicans feel it is,” he said. “Californians have a lot of noncitizens in the state, but Democrats don’t think they’re infecting the voter rolls, so they’re not concerned about it.”

That was striking, DiCamillo said, given how much Trump has pointed to California to claim that noncitizens are voting.

“Obviously, the Democrats are very strongly opposed to the president, what he’s trying to do, and the Republicans are supportive,” DiCamillo said.

Other findings in the poll also support that conclusion.

For instance, while Trump has claimed without evidence that mail ballots are a major source of fraud and their use should be reined in, the poll found that 72% of Californians approve of mail ballots as a primary method for voting in the state — with 58% saying they strongly approve.

California law requires every registered voter in the state to be sent a mail ballot, and more than 80% of voters have used such ballots in recent elections.

Trump also repeatedly has accused California officials of failing to secure state elections against fraud and of cheating as they count later-arriving mail ballots. But the poll found that Californians by greater than a 2-to-1 margin — 65% to 31% — are confident local election officials are accurately and fairly counting ballots. However, the poll did find that more than half of respondents, 53%, had concerns about delays in California’s vote-counting process.

Overall, 64% of respondents were confident in the integrity of the state’s election system, compared to 34% who were not.

Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, downplayed the threats of voter fraud and noncitizens voting in the state, but acknowledged they are real concerns for some voters — which is a problem in itself.

“I see election security as both a matter of actual security and perceived security. And the truth is that we have a great deal of actual security in California elections, but, unfortunately, that security is not being perceived by some voters,” she said. She attributed that in part to the “constant drumbeat that we’ve had now for a decade, coming from the occupant of the White House, that our elections are rigged.”

Alexander said California law requires registering voters to prove and attest to their identity and has multiple verification measures to ensure people casting ballots are who they say they are. She said there are “common sense” reasons why noncitizens do not try to vote — including that it requires them to turn over personal information and could be grounds for criminal charges and deportation, which is “a huge disincentive.”

Alexander also said Trump administration interference in the midterms is a real concern, but so is overhyping the threat to the point it discourages voters from casting ballots.

“Not to dismiss the threats — the threats are real — but the more we talk about them, the more we scare voters,” Alexander said. “I’ve encountered voters who’ve said this to me: ‘What’s the point in voting when they’re just gonna cheat?’ Or, you know: ‘It’s all rigged.’ And that’s part of the play here — is to scare people into thinking that voting doesn’t matter.”

To counter that, Alexander said it is “really important that people be aware that there are threats, but to not let those threats be debilitating or to allow them to dissuade people from wanting to participate.”

The poll surveyed 4,207 registered voters in California from Aug. 3 to 9, online in English and Spanish, and has an estimated margin of error of about 2.5 percentage points in either direction.

SEOUL, Aug. 20 (UPI) — U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he will meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un this year and claimed that Pyongyang currently has 57 “very powerful” nuclear weapons.

Trump made the remarks during a press availability at a new helipad outside the White House, several hours after the United States and South Korea announced they would cut short their ongoing joint military drills in what has been widely seen as an effort by Trump to restart diplomacy with the North.

“Yeah, I will be,” Trump told reporters when asked if he is expecting to meet Kim this year, without offering any further details.

Trump touted his personal relationship with the North Korean leader, saying it is a diplomatic asset and would help in dealing with the nuclear-armed regime.

“I get along with him,” Trump said. “And you know what? The fact that I get along with him, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing.”

“He has 57 very powerful nuclear weapons,” he added, offering an unusually specific public estimate of the North Korean arsenal.

Trump went on to say that the North never should have been allowed to acquire nuclear weapons but claimed that the situation would be manageable under his leadership.

“I know Kim Jong Un very well, and he’s going to be fine,” Trump said. “As long as we have a smart president, he’s going to be fine.”

South Korean Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back on Thursday estimated that the North has a larger arsenal, citing a range of 80 to 120 nuclear weapons during a parliamentary session.

On Sunday, Trump called for the allies’ joint military drills to be “substantially reduced” in a Truth Social post, saying they are expensive and “send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea.

In response, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff on Wednesday announced that the two sides would cut short the ongoing joint military exercise by almost a week and reduce the scale of field training drills.

Late Wednesday, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung expressed “respect” for Trump’s decision to scale back the exercises, saying it reflects “deep deliberation to build peace on the Korean Peninsula, moving beyond hostility and confrontation.”

“We hope that this decision by President Trump will lead to the establishment of a stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula, through the building of trust and the resumption of dialogue between North Korea and the United States,” Lee wrote on X.

North Korea, however, dismissed the decision as “unworthy of comment” and said Pyongyang had “no interest at all” in its significance.

In a commentary published in state-run media, Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, rejected the notion that the reduction represented a goodwill gesture.

“If the U.S. calculates that it can propagate its recent measure as the one of so-called good faith, they will not get desired answer,” she wrote.

Later Thursday, South Korea’s military said Pyongyang fired multiple short-range ballistic missiles toward the East Sea, marking the North’s third missile launch in less than two weeks.

Aug. 19 (UPI) — President Donald Trump declared “economic warfare” against Iran on Wednesday night amid stalled diplomatic efforts to end the war.

Few specifics were offered about what this apparent intensification of Trump’s maximum pressure campaign would look like, but the president said it would be “the MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER TAKEN AGAINST ANY COUNTRY!”

“This will be Economic Warfare and Isolation on an unprecedented scale,” Trump said in his social media statement.

Financial institutions, businesses, airports and government entities accused of providing “any type of lifeline to Iran” will face what Trump called “TREMENDOUS Economic Consequences,” though he did not elaborate further.

“Oil smuggling, swap lines, cash transfers, exchange houses, ship registries, front companies — It all needs to stop NOW,” he said. “You know who you are. This will be an ECONOMIC D-DAY.”

To enforce the plan, Trump called on all U.S. allies to work with Washington to isolate Iran.

“These maniacs are on the ropes, and these HISTORIC MEASURES will cripple them and their ability to project terror worldwide,” he said.

The announcement came hours after Trump told reporters at the White House that there are more sanctions the United States could impose on Iran.

“Well, we have things that we could sanction,” he said. “We have very draconian sanctions and we’ll see what happens.”

Earlier Wednesday, Trump also said formal negotiations with Iran could restart “at some point,” while suggesting there was no urgency to resume talks.

“Right now, I think the situation is so good, but maybe at some point,” he said.

Trump has long relied on economic pressure as a means to coerce Iran. During his first term, after unilaterally withdrawing the United States from an Obama-era multinational accord aimed at preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, Trump launched his maximum pressure campaign of sanctions and other punitive measures against Tehran, failing in its objective to force Iran back to the negotiating table on a new deal. Instead, Iran began gradually reducing its compliance with the nuclear accord.

Trump reinstated that maximum pressure campaign after returning to the White House last year. The Treasury has since folded its sanctions efforts into a campaign it calls Economic Fury, complementing Operation Epic Fury, the U.S. military campaign that began Feb. 28 and ended May 5, though the broader war continues.

Trump has been seeking a phased end to the war, but negotiations have stalled over competing demands concerning the Strait of Hormuz. The United States is seeking to restore freedom of navigation through the important energy route, while Iran is seeking to retain the leverage it gained by restricting passage through the strait.

The longtime publisher of Stars and Stripes, a newspaper focused on the United States military, has resigned amid what he described as disagreements with the Defense Department‘s leadership.

Max D Lederer Jr announced his retirement in a memo to staff on Tuesday, as well as in an interview with Stars and Stripes.

The memo suggested that Lederer clashed with the administration of President Donald Trump over government efforts to seek greater editorial control over the publication, The Associated Press reported.

In the memo, Lederer wrote that it has “become clear that my philosophy of leadership, and my understanding of the value and mission of Stars and Stripes, differ in fundamental ways from the direction the leadership of the Department of Defence has for the organization”.

The announcement comes after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth accused the publication of promoting “woke distractions”.

The Trump administration has also slammed the outlet for bringing attention to poor conditions and declining morale on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, involved in the war on Iran.

Founded in 1861, Stars and Stripes has been an institution in the US military for well over a century.

While the newspaper receives a significant portion of its funding from the US government, it has sought to maintain editorial independence from the various administrations in power.

Critics, however, say the threats to the news outlet have increased in recent years.

During the first Trump presidency, from 2017 to 2021, the Pentagon sought to eliminate funding for the newspaper, though Trump pledged not to cut its budget “under my watch”.

“It will continue to be a wonderful source of information to our Great Military,” he said at the time.

In January, though, Trump’s second-term Defense Department announced that it would seek to bring the paper into greater alignment with the government’s priorities.

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell framed the move as “returning Stars and Stripes to its original mission: reporting for our warfighters”.

The Pentagon also fired Jacqueline Smith, the newspaper’s ombudsman, who was charged with protecting its reporting from political interference. The move prompted outcry about eroding press freedoms, including from Smith herself.

“No one should be surprised that they’re kicking out the one person charged by Congress with protecting Stars and Stripes’ editorial independence,” Smith wrote in a column responding to her termination.

Hegseth has overseen efforts to restrict access to the Pentagon for journalists across the board.

In June, for instance, reporters were banned from the Defense Department’s press office, which was abruptly designated as a classified area.

That same month, a judge paused a policy requiring journalists to have escorts to access the Pentagon, a rule that news agencies warned could violate their First Amendment freedoms.

Other policies have been struck down in the courts, including a set of rules that would have barred journalists from engaging with materials not explicitly authorised by the Pentagon.

Hegseth has also cracked down on policies he considers part of the “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” movement, or DEI.

Dismissing them as evidence of “wokeness” – a vaguely defined concept – Hegseth has argued that DEI hinders military effectiveness.

The Pentagon is currently embroiled in an ongoing war on Iran, which the US launched with Israel on February 28.

The war remains deeply unpopular in the US, and reports have emerged that the military offensive has strained US forces and munition supplies.

Stars and Stripes was one of two military publications to report on flagging morale and suicide attempts by US service members on board the USS Abraham Lincoln, one of the aircraft carriers participating in the war.

The USS Lincoln has broken the US Navy record for the length of its deployment without a port stop. It left port in November and was sent off the coast of Venezuela before being redirected to the region near Iran.

Trump and his allies have lashed out at critical reporting about the war, with the president suggesting that journalists who highlight the troubles faced by the military are traitors who want to see their country fail.

WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice is defending its prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey, saying “there is no serious dispute” that a social media post of seashells he made last year could be understood as a threat against President Trump.

Prosecutors also called into question Comey’s account that he had found the seashells in the numerical arrangement of “86 47” while walking on a beach in North Carolina and suggested that his May 2025 post on Instagram was an effort to generate attention for a forthcoming novel about a social media personality whose words inspire his fans to attack his foes.

The arguments in motions late Tuesday represent the government’s most detailed explanation of its indictment and were filed in response to wide-ranging defense efforts to dismiss the case on grounds including that it constitutes a vindictive prosecution and that Comey’s post did not amount to a true threat. Comey’s lawyers contend that investigators in the case misled judges, submitted documents containing false statements, withheld key facts and repeatedly came up empty in their efforts to prove that Comey intended a physical threat or knew that the number 86 could suggest violence.

The entry for “86” from Merriam-Webster, the dictionary used by the Associated Press, says its meaning is “to throw out,” “to get rid of” or “to refuse service to.” Trump, a Republican, is the 47th president.

The Justice Department maintains that the post constituted a real threat

Federal prosecutors maintain that the photo of the seashells, which Comey said he found on the beach, constituted a threat against Trump. Comey deleted the post shortly after he put it up, saying he did not know that anyone interpreted the numbers as a call to violence. His lawyers have said that the slogan has long meant to “get rid of” or “eject” and has been featured on thousands of items sold online and is regularly displayed at protests.

But the department sought in its filings to place the post against the backdrop of assassination plots or attempts against Trump in the months before and after Comey’s post. Prosecutors say that two minutes before the post was made, Comey’s wife texted him a screenshot of a definition of “86” that said “to get rid of or refuse service.”

“There is no serious dispute that an objective viewer of Comey’s post could read it to mean ‘Kill President Trump,’” prosecutors wrote.

The photo was posted days before Comey was set to release a novel he wrote titled “FDR Drive,” in which a prosecutor pursues a far-right social media personality who has called out his adversaries by name and inspired violence against them by his fans, the department said.

After the Instagram post provoked an outcry, according to the government’s filings, Comey’s publishing agent observed in a text message to him that he had “gone viral.” Comey responded that that was “not my intention, but I’ll be OK if it sells books.” The agent replied, ”Music to an agent’s ears.”

Prosecutors also asserted there was “reason to doubt” Comey’s account of having come upon the seashells while on a walk, saying they were located four miles “down from the beach from beachfront property where Comey was staying, in an area separated from the ocean by a sand dune.” They said there was “no evidence that anyone else arranged, photographed, or even saw the shells.”

Comey has called the case vindictive, but prosecutors deny that

Comey’s lawyers have called the indictment, which was filed months after an earlier and unrelated case against him was dismissed, part of a Trump retribution campaign targeting one of the president’s vocal critics. Trump fired Comey as head of the FBI in 2017 as Comey was overseeing an investigation into potential ties between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia. Trump since then has called for him and other perceived adversaries to be jailed.

But the Justice Department denied allegations of vindictiveness, saying the decision to indict Comey was made by the U.S. attorney in the area and did not stem from a directive from the president or the attorney general.

To bolster their claims that Comey was unjustly targeted, the defense team argued that investigators struggled to develop compelling evidence from witnesses that Comey had intended the post as a threat, but they concealed that from federal magistrates as they applied for warrants to search digital accounts associated with Comey and his wife.

For instance, defense lawyers have said, the FBI searched an internal database of information about open and closed investigations for any indication of an association between Comey and the term “86” but found inconclusive results. An FBI agent also requested a review of the FBI file for the case against reputed mobster John Gambino, which Comey worked on as a young prosecutor, but found no references to the term “86.”

Investigators also interviewed a key government cooperator in the case, Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, who said he did not recall ever discussing the term “86” with Comey or hearing it in connection with the trial.

The latest filings made clear that the administration was standing behind the premise of the case.

“No Government theory was disproved at that time, or now. No intentionally false omission exists, much less one made with reckless disregard for the truth,” prosecutors wrote. “The evidence still supports that Defendant acted at least recklessly by consciously disregarding a substantial risk that his coded message of “8647” that he sent to his 200,000 or so Instagram followers, and the millions of secondary social media users who would view this as threatening violence against the President of the United States.”

Tucker writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump played White House tour guide on Wednesday, showing off the helipad he is building on the lawn before leaning over to autograph a piece of it and bragging about the ballroom he’s rushing to complete despite legal challenges.

Trump gushed for several uninterrupted minutes about granite being laid and said the chopper landing area would leave visiting foreign leaders “very impressed” — including Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is coming next month.

At times, he sounded almost like a construction manager, singing the praises of granite over asphalt in painstaking detail and noting for reporters he brought out for the show that the stone could withstand 35,000 pounds per square inch of pressure.

“That’s stone that, if you took a hammer and you started hammering right now — all day long — you wouldn’t see a mark on it, literally, that’s the kind of power it is,” Trump said, at times straining to be heard over the thrum of ongoing work behind him.

The president also revealed for the first time that he has replaced the walkway from the White House’s diplomatic entrance along with a portion of the asphalt driveway around the South Lawn with white granite.

“One thing I know how to do is build,” he said, asserting that asphalt is “not appropriate for a great house, or a great place like the White House.” He said that, had he instead merely used “really powerful concrete,” it would have supported ”just a tiny fraction of that in terms of strength.”

Trump relishes being the builder-in-chief

The president is called upon to fill many roles as president, but embraces none with as much zeal as managing various building projects to mold the White House and large swatches of Washington in his own image, seeming happiest recalling his days as a real estate developer.

Trump also likes to show off his handiwork and having the White House press pool on hand at all times gives him a readymade audience. Last year, he made an appearance on the roof of the briefing room to survey a future work site, and earlier this summer, he took reporters for a closer look at the ballroom construction site.

It suggests Trump remains focused on such projects, even as his war in Iran nears the six-month mark, his approval ratings sink with just 2 1/2 months to go before critical midterm elections, and as voters are increasingly worried about a weakening economy.

Trump drove home just how important the construction projects are to him, calling the work “very exciting.”

“This will be here long after we’re gone,” Trump said of the projects. “No matter what happens with the world.”

But whether it will endure after he leaves office remains to be seen. Trump once suggested that his refurbishing of the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool would last a century, only for the paint to fade and its liner to peel away in chunks just days after it was laid.

Trump again says his ballroom will have security value

The president has increasingly insisted that the $400 million ballroom will add security to the White House and include things like anti-drone technology. His administration even unsuccessfully sought $1 billion in congressional funding to make military improvements to the structure.

“This will be the greatest military complex slash ballroom anywhere in the world,” he said.

Trump also scoffed at court orders seeking to block its construction without congressional approval, saying work is continuing regardless and predicting that the Supreme Court will eventually side with him and allow the project to be completed.

The president found time to talk again about one of his favorite subjects of late — grass — and praised at length Scotts-Miracle Gro. The company’s former CEO is a Trump supporter, and it donated $1 million to repair the grass on the White House lawn after it was damaged by Trump’s UFC fight marking his 80th birthday in June and by the helipad construction.

At one point on Wednesday, Trump signed the back of one of the granite stones that was marked “Donald Trump 45-47 president” for the occasion. Its front is shaped like an eagle and will be laid into the helipad’s presidential seal once work is completed.

“I thought this would be a little different kind of a news conference,” the president said. “We were going to sign this privately and just put it in. I said, ‘This is something I think the press should see,’ and I hope you liked it.”

Trump had some of the construction workers sign the granite, too, and joked about leaving it upside-down so that his signature would be visible for future generations.

“Nice job, fellas,” he told the workers. “Does anybody know the word media?”

Trump also confirmed Wednesday that he’d delayed ongoing work on the helipad to ensure the project could be regraded to lay flatter.

He said that the granite used “has a million-year life” and predicted that it “will never break. It will never leak. It will never do anything” — which would mark a departure from the problem-plagued Reflecting Pool project.

“Nature is stronger than what the human can produce,” Trump said of the granite. “It’s really pretty amazing.”

Weissert and Binkley write for the Associated Press. AP writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report.

Dr. Heidi Overton, a top White House aide, has been picked to lead the Food and Drug Administration, President Trump announced Wednesday.

As a medical doctor and deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council who has worked on several of Trump’s second-term health initiatives, Overton has become a trusted figure in the administration and a champion of the president’s goals.

Yet any new FDA commissioner will have to balance a raft of competing priorities, between Trump’s fixations, the anti-regulatory interests of traditional Republicans and the anti-corporate posture of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Those challenges dogged the tenure of the previous FDA head, Dr. Marty Makary, who resigned in May, leaving behind unfinished projects including work on ultraprocessed foods, antidepressants and COVID-19 shots.

Referring to a “Dr. Heidi” in a Truth Social post, Trump called Overton a smart and respected “rockstar” who would deliver on his priorities of faster cures, innovation, lower drug prices and more wins for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement.

Swenson writes for the Associated Press.

Aug. 19 (UPI) — President Donald Trump is expected to nominate Dr. Heidi Overton, a White House policy aide, to lead the Food and Drug Administration.

The decision was reported by the Washington Post, The New York Times and Politico, all citing anonymous sources. Overton is an aide at the White House’s Domestic Policy Council and will be tapped to be the next FDA commissioner, sources say.

Overton will replace Marty Makary, who left the position in May, and the Senate will have to confirm her to the position.

The FDA commissioner is one of the most powerful jobs in U.S. health care. The FDA oversees drugs, vaccines, tobacco products, the bulk of the food supply and more. The position has remained open longer than expected as some have turned it down over fears of administration interference, the Post reported.

The position has been run by acting FDA Commissioner Kyle Diamantas, a friend of Donald Trump Jr., and a former partner at the law firm Jones Day.

Overton is board-certified in public health and general preventive medicine and was a general surgery resident at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where she also earned a doctorate in clinical investigation. She worked at the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank. She has also written articles calling abortion “corrosive” to women. She called abortion pills “far more dangerous to women” and has called for more controls on the pills.

In September, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Overton and Calley Means worked on a Make America Healthy Again strategy report calling for more review of chemicals in food and an increase in oversight over pharmaceutical advertisements, The Times reported.

Makary left the position in May because he disagreed with the administration’s policy of allowing tobacco and e-cigarette companies to sell flavored vapes. The White House had been pressuring Makary to allow the vapes, but he disagreed, citing their appeal to teens and young adults.

The FDA approved mango and blueberry vapes just after Trump had lunch with tobacco executives, The Times reported.

While she is a doctor and has been present for many FDA announcements at the White House, she hasn’t run a large agency before. The FDA has thousands of employees and shapes food safety and pharmaceutical policies.

SEOUL, Aug. 19 (UPI) — South Korea and the United States will significantly scale down their ongoing Ulchi Freedom Shield joint military exercise, Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Wednesday, cutting it short by almost a week following an order by U.S. President Donald Trump.

“South Korea and the United States have agreed to make partial adjustments to the exercise period and scale at the suggestion of the U.S. side,” the JCS said in a statement.

“First, it was decided to adjust the duration of this UFS exercise to run from the 17th to the 21st,” the statement said. “Second, it was decided to conduct the combined field maneuver training on a reduced scale.”

The allies are discussing specific details of the field training reduction, the JCS added.

Ulchi Freedom Shield began Monday and was originally scheduled to run through Aug. 27.

The move comes after Trump called for the drills to be “substantially reduced” in a Truth Social post Sunday, saying they are expensive and “send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea.

South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said Wednesday morning that Seoul was not given advance notice of Trump’s directive.

“Neither our government nor officials within the U.S. government had any prior knowledge of what President Trump revealed on Truth Social,” Cho said at a parliamentary hearing. “Consequently, we were not notified beforehand.”

In his Sunday post, Trump said Pyongyang “has been unthreatening and respectful” while he has been in the White House.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump touted his personal relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, saying Kim had “always treated me with great respect.”

“I understand him. He understands me,” Trump said, adding that Kim had responded to his requests for talks but providing no further details.

The Wall Street Journal, citing U.S. officials, reported Tuesday that Trump is pushing aides to arrange a meeting with Kim as soon as this fall, although no official planning is underway. Trump has privately discussed holding talks during his next trip to Asia, which could come in November when world leaders gather for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen, China.

North Korea, meanwhile, has not publicly responded to Trump’s overture. In a commentary published earlier Wednesday, before Seoul announced the reduction, the state-run Korean Central News Agency criticized Ulchi Freedom Shield as “frantic exercises” pushing the Korean Peninsula to the “threshold of a war.”

The commentary threatened that Pyongyang would continue exercising its “right to self-defence” to counter what it called military threats from the allies.

North Korea frequently condemns U.S.-South Korean military drills as rehearsals for an invasion.

Trump similarly called for suspending or scaling back the exercises in his first term, when he pursued direct diplomacy with Kim that included summits in Singapore and Hanoi and a brief meeting at the DMZ.

After the 2018 Singapore summit, Trump surprised observers by announcing that the United States would halt what he called “provocative” joint military exercises with South Korea. That year’s Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise was canceled, while several subsequent drills were reduced in scale.

WASHINGTON — The only remaining U.S. aircraft carrier patrolling the Pacific departed Asia through Singapore last week en route to the Middle East, marking the latest step in a steady drawdown of American military assets across the region.

An armada of naval forces, alongside a constellation of air-defense and missile capabilities, has been removed from a theater the Trump administration said just last year would be the battleground of the coming century.

And now, President Trump’s surprise decision this week to curtail military exercises with South Korea has further fueled anxiety across Asia, where Washington’s closest allies fear violent consequences from a vacuum of American power.

Trump said his decision to withdraw U.S. participation from the annual military drills was de-escalatory, claiming they would needlessly provoke North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong Un, with whom he has recently been in touch.

But he also blamed Seoul for its decision to not take part in his war with Iran.

“I said, ‘Would you like to give us a little hand?’ ” Trump told reporters. “He said, ‘No thanks,’ and I said, ‘Wait a minute — we have 39,000 soldiers over there, guarding you from Kim Jong Un, your next-door neighbor, and you’re not going to help us.’ ”

“That’s strange,” Trump added. “We can’t go around and protect all of these countries, especially when they’re not there to help us.”

South Korea’s president, Lee Jae Myung, responded to Trump’s last-minute decision to pull back from the drills with a degree of alarm.

“From now on, we must prepare measures with even the worst-case scenario in mind,” Lee said, “on the premise that the Middle East situation may be prolonged.”

It was the latest jolt to South Korea’s confidence in an alliance that has formed a cornerstone of Washington’s defense strategy in Asia since the end of World War II.

The Pentagon has kept its THAAD missile-defense batteries on the Korean peninsula. But in March, it moved some of the system’s radars and forward-positioned interceptors toward the Middle East, as the Iran war strained U.S. missile-defense stocks. Analysts estimate the conflict has consumed more than 40% of the Pentagon’s THAAD interceptor inventory.

The diversion was accompanied by the redeployment of dozens of combat and dry-cargo ships, mine countermeasure vessels, and guided-missile destroyers out of the region, ahead of the departure of the strike group centered on the nuclear-powered USS George Washington, which is now on its way to the Middle East.

Other U.S. allies in the region reacted swiftly to Trump’s pullback from the Korean exercises.

The Australian government said it remained “deeply concerned” with North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, while Japan’s defense minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, warned of historic stakes.

“As Japan faces the most severe and complicated security environment in the post-war era, the cooperation among Japan, the United States and South Korea is critical to the peace and stability of the region,” Koizumi said in a statement.

And Beijing has been quick to capitalize on the vacuum.

China’s Foreign Ministry mocked that the United States “has become addicted to quitting groups and scrapping treaties,” while its military began installing permanent infrastructure in Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone within days of the George Washington’s departure.

“The current international landscape has once again proven that only by ensuring the effective operation of the multilateral system can we prevent the spread of the law of the jungle,” said Mao Ning, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, “and keep the international order from being dominated by the logic that ‘might makes right and force represents justice.’”

Speaking with journalists in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump said that his communication with Kim was “making things safer” in the region.

He did not offer details on their conversations.

“Kim Jong Un has always treated me with great respect,” Trump said, confirming that the North Korean leader had replied to his overtures.

“I understand him,” Trump added. “He understands me.”

Though I don’t regularly attend Mass, I fondly remember the two years in high school when I prepared for the sacrament of Communion.

In the basement of St. Boniface Church in Anaheim on weekday afternoons and weekend mornings in the mid-1990s, my sister, about 20 other teenagers and I learned about the tenets of our faith.

We were inculcated with the importance of charity, love toward all, good works and humility, and urged to carry those virtues into adulthood. I didn’t agree with everything our lay teachers espoused — why abortion should be outlawed, why necking was bad, why only men could become priests — but I learned enough important moral lessons that I still proudly call myself Catholic.

Confirmation is meant to bring recipients closer to God and “imprints on the soul an indelible spiritual mark,” according to the Vatican’s official guide to its doctrine. What especially stayed with my classmates and me was, well, us.

We were white, Filipino, Vietnamese and Latino, children of working-class parents and equals in the eyes of God. Church fairs were as likely to serve pancit and spring rolls as hamburgers and tacos. When we finally received confirmation at a special Mass at St. Boniface attended by then-Bishop Norman McFarland, we exemplified not just the future of the church but also the promise of a better tomorrow for the United States.

Our parish lived and practiced American Catholicism’s long tradition of welcoming the stranger, the outcast, the refugee — following the example and words of the Gospel we read every Sunday. But even as we committed ourselves to the path of Christ, politicians in California waged a war against illegal immigrants and anything that suggested diversity — a xenophobia that would culminate decades later with President Trump’s election.

Trump is a walking manifestation of the seven deadly sins, to the point that he has depicted himself as Jesus and a pope on social media. Nevertheless, a majority of Catholics — thankfully no one in my immediate family — voted for him in each of his three presidential elections, with support topping out at 55% in 2024, per the Pew Research Center.

Catholics were a key constituency in every sector Trump needed for his historic victory against Kamala Harris. Swing states with old-line communities like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Boom states like Nevada and Florida. And especially Latinos, who voted for Trump in numbers never before seen for a Republican presidential candidate. Latino Catholics went even harder for Trump: The Public Religion Research Institute found their support for him increased by 17 percentage points from 2016 to 2024, even as his white Catholic support dropped from 64% to 59%.

Issues from abortion to the economy to transgender rights spurred Catholics to side with Trump, but his hard-line stance against immigration was especially popular. As immigrant Catholics were being demonized, echoing previous eras of American history, too many Catholics sided with the demonizers.

Maria Marin and her husband, Martin Marin, pose with a cardboard cutout of Pope Leo XIV during the Archdiocese of Chicago’s celebration of Leo at Rate Field on June 14, 2025.

(Pat Nabong/Chicago Sun-Times via Associated Press)

A June 2024 survey by Georgetown’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, which tracks American Catholic life, showed that 43% of respondents supported lower levels of immigration. A month into Trump’s second term, 41% of American Catholics thought that increased immigration in recent years had changed the U.S. “for the worse,” compared with 33% who felt it made life better, according to a Pew Research Center poll.

In the lead-up to the 2024 election, I argued about the dignity of Venezuelan and Salvadoran migrants with people from my parents’ native ranchos in Mexico, who came to this country without papers and are regular churchgoers. I sighed in disappointment as former confirmation classmates whose refugee parents fled tyrannical rulers, just like the Holy Family, posted approvingly on social media about Trump’s vow to build a bigger, nastier border wall.

Catholics have frequently exemplified the best and worst tendencies of American society. We’ve been brutal conquistadors and the huddled masses yearning to be free, trailblazing politicians and the millions who stood silently during our church’s sex abuse scandals. Trump’s support among Catholics represented a new low. But by some miracle of God, more and more of those supporters are finally seeing him for who he is.

On Aug. 12 — the feast day of Jane Frances de Chantal, the patron saint of forgotten people — the Public Religion Research Institute released a survey showing that 62% of Catholics think unfavorably of Trump, while 57% oppose his handling of immigration, both legal and illegal. If this repentance transforms into votes against MAGA in the midterms, the rest of Trump’s presidency is doomed.

The poll offers no insight into why Catholic support for Trump has cratered. The easy explanation would be the president’s enmity toward Pope Leo XIV, who has preached a gospel of kindness toward the undocumented and spoken out against the quagmire in Iran. When the Trump administration invited the native-born Chicagoan to visit the U.S. for America’s 250th anniversary, Leo instead decided to spend his Fourth of July on Lampedusa, the Ellis Island of the Mediterranean.

But the poll noted that Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, had higher favorability ratings among American Catholics during the same time in their respective reigns — 90% to Leo’s 75%.

Trump’s popularity is also collapsing among Americans as a whole. Only about a third support him, according to an a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll — the poorest showing of his second term, matching the lowest numbers of his first term. But for Catholics, it’s not just high prices, the Iran War and Trump’s drift toward despotism that makes him so onerous.

The Catholics in his government, from Supreme Court justices to Cabinet members to Vice President JD Vance, are acting as a rubber stamp for an imperious ruler, instead of imitations of Christ. Trump’s immigration sweeps are hitting American Catholicism so hard that bishops have allowed the faithful to stay home instead of attending Mass.

What reason is there left for good Catholics to support Trump? If ever a group needed to break away from him, it’s us.

What’s been especially galling about Trump’s second term, from a Catholic perspective, is his gleeful cruelty.

Proverbs 21:13 states, “Whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered.” Conservatives who have criticized Pope Leo for taking on Trump over his nastiness toward the meek don’t get that his motive isn’t political — this has been standard Vatican doctrine going back to his namesake, Leo XIII. In an influential 1891 encyclical urging the world to stand by the working class, Leo XIII pointed out that sacrificing oneself “for the benefit of others, is man’s surest antidote against the insolence of the world and immoderate love of self.”

Is there any statement more contrary to MAGA than that?

Cardinals Robert McElroy, Christophe Pierre and Joseph Tobin and Archbishop Bernard Hebda speak to reporters after a Mass in solidarity with migrants at the Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas on Feb. 27, 2026, in St. Paul, Minn.

(Mark Vancleave/Associated Press)

The Catholics who supported Trump may have forgotten Leo XIII’s words as they repeatedly voted for him. But that’s the beauty of our faith. We can admit our errors and seek to right them through another sacrament — confession.

“Through such an admission man looks squarely at the sins he is guilty of,” reads the catechism of the Catholic Church. That way, people can “take responsibility” for their faults and reconcile with God “in order to make a new future possible.” And the way to do that is by “doing something more to make amends for the sin.”

Catholics are supposed to confess our sins privately. But we must repent of Trump publicly and loudly at the ballot box this November and urge others to follow.

We helped usher in Trump. We must now lead in exorcising him from American society once and for all.

Aug. 18 (UPI) — President Donald Trump late Tuesday announced a three-day pause on imposing 50% tariffs on Canada less than two hours before they were to go into effect, saying a trade deal has been made.

The tariffs were to go into effect at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, but were delayed by Trump’s announcement on social media issued about 90 minutes before the deadline.

No specifics on what the deal entailed were offered, though Trump said the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline project, revoked by former President Joe Biden over climate change concerns, “may be awoke from the grave!”

The deal remains to be finalized, he said.

While congratulating Trump, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer added that the deal includes “comprehensive access for all American goods,” economic security commitments, digital trade alignment and other provisions protecting the U.S. market.

Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada has yet to comment.

Greer had been leading negotiations with Canadian representatives ahead of the deadline. He said last week that the negotiators were reviewing options and that he expects Canada to drop certain measures it had already taken in response to the U.S. tariffs, The New York Times reported.

“If a country retaliates against us, we’re obviously not going to tolerate that,” Greer told reporters Friday. “We’ll take action. My sense is the Canadians want to have a more conciliatory approach, but we’ll see.”

Trump signed orders in July to impose 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods, including cement and hockey sticks, representing about 2% of the entire trade between the United States and Canada, starting Wednesday.

“President Trump is taking action to hold Canada accountable for its continued discrimination against and unreasonable and unequal treatment of U.S. commerce that has burdened and disadvantaged hard-working Americans,” the White House said in a statement at the time.

On Aug. 5, he called Canada “nasty” in a Las Vegas speech.

“Canada’s nasty. They are. They’re nasty,” Trump said. “I love the people, but they’re nasty. Nasty leadership.”

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Trump spoke on the phone Monday, a Carney spokeswoman said. She didn’t give any details.

Canadian negotiators also want to ease the tariffs already imposed on Ottawa industries. There are tariffs of up to 50% on steel, aluminum and autos. Some tariffs also affect Canadian softwood lumber.

Canadian lumber manufacturing CEO John Brink told CTV that tariffs have devastated the lumber industry. He said, “most of the lumber industry in Canada is paying up to 45.16% in tariffs and duties combined. So the effect has been devastating.”

Brink said about half of British Columbia’s lumber manufacturing capacity has shut down.

“There used to be 800 secondary manufacturers in British Columbia alone. We are now down to about 50. Not all due to tariffs and duties, but due to a combination of [factors],” Brink added.

“I think the big question for the United States is: Are they even interested in securing an agreement, a deal, some kind of operational détente, or is Trump’s real objective just to flex? Is it just to demonstrate he’s in control? In which case, we’re chasing a phantom deal,” CTV News political commentator Scott Reid said.

He added that the deadline will be “the most important, most significant and most treacherous of Mark Carney’s political career.”

Greer has said he expects Canada to make concessions if a deal goes through. But not everyone in the Great White North wants that.

“Canadians elected Mark Carney to both stand up to Trump while also trying to negotiate a deal, or negotiate down the tariffs, and I don’t think those are mutually exclusive, but it is a narrow path for sure,” said Brian Clow, a former senior official in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau‘s government, The Times reported.

If no deal is made, expect the trade war to escalate, Clow said.

“If the U.S. decides to proceed with imposing these new tariffs tomorrow, Canada, although this current government has eased back on retaliation, will have to respond in some way,” he said.

Former senior White House trade adviser Kelly Ann Shaw told CTV that negotiations look “promising” for Canada.

“I’ve been involved in a number of international trade negotiations and other negotiations throughout my career, and the hardest issues always get resolved at the very last moment,” Shaw told CTV Tuesday.

“So I don’t expect any sort of announcement until later today, possibly as late as midnight,” Shaw said. “But the fact the two parties are still at the table, I take as a good sign.”

Trump has long used tariffs as a mechanism for both punishment and negotiation, and during his second term, he attempted to impose sweeping tariffs, including against Canada, but they were thrown out by the U.S. Supreme Court in February.

The tariffs paused late Tuesday were to join the 10% import duty on many Canadian goods, as well as previously imposed tariffs ranging from 10% to 50% on products, such as steel, aluminum, copper, automobiles and softwood lumber.

Canada responded by imposing a temporary 25% tariff on certain wood cabinets and vanities, as well as a 25% tariff on U.S. vehicles, as well as selected steel and aluminum products, among others.

BREAKINGBREAKING,

Trump announces pause on 50 percent duty on Canadian exports shortly before midnight deadline.

The United States and Canada have reached a deal to avert steep tariffs on billions of dollars of Canadian goods, US President Donald Trump has announced.

Trump made the announcement shortly before the expiry of a midnight deadline for imposing a 50 percent duty on a wide range of Canadian exports, including electronics, industrial machinery, furniture, and dairy products.

“I have paused the 50% Tariffs against Canada, that were scheduled to kick in tomorrow morning for a three day period, based on the fact that Canada and the U.S.A., subject to the finalization of documents, have a DEAL!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

“The great Keystone XL Pipeline, long ago killed by Sleepy Joe Biden, may be awoken from the grave!”

More to follow…

Lawmakers in the United States have renewed calls for answers about conditions on board the USS Abraham Lincoln, suggesting that reports emerging from the aircraft carrier may belie a troubling pattern.

In at least three separate appeals, Democrats called for more information about how the Navy prepared for the vessel’s record-breaking deployment.

The aircraft carrier has been involved in military operations against Venezuela as well as the US-Israel war on Iran since it departed from San Diego, California, in November.

The ship has yet to dock for a port call in the time since. Having spent more than 260 days at sea, it has broken the US Navy’s record for the longest deployment without a stop.

Reports have emerged in recent weeks about crew members attempting to jump overboard amid shortages of food and other supplies.

On Tuesday, US Representative Pat Ryan published a letter sent to acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao and signed by 22 members of Congress.

It noted that the lengthy deployments “have become a pattern in the Administration’s handling of its war against Iran”.

The war, which began on February 28, shows no sign of ending. Ryan pointed out that the USS Gerald Ford had also broken records for the length of its deployment as part of the Iran war, and it, too, was the subject of worrying reports about strain on sailors’ health. The ship returned to the US in April.

“The reported conditions on the Lincoln, following so soon after the reported conditions on the Ford, leave Congress and the public concerned that the Department is not adapting quickly enough to the conditions,” Ryan wrote in his letter, dated August 14.

He also questioned whether US Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees military operations in the Middle East, was “taking the appropriate steps to mitigate the continued challenges in our fleet”.

A delegation of California lawmakers, including Senators Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, has also sent a letter to the Pentagon calling for an inquiry.

Separately, a group of Democratic senators addressed another letter, dated August 15, to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, demanding answers and calling for accountability.

“This is a symptom of poor planning by both you and the President and exacerbated by the deeply unsound decision to start a war with Iran,” that letter said.

“Open-ended deployments driven by an open-ended war have real consequences for our servicemembers, and we are seeing those consequences now.”

The appeals for more information come as the USS Lincoln prepares to navigate home.

Cao revealed last week that the USS Lincoln would soon return to the US. The announcement coincided with reports that the USS George Washington has been rerouted from the Pacific Ocean to replace its fellow aircraft carrier.

But the USS Washington’s departure leaves no aircraft carrier in the Western Pacific, long portrayed as a region of strategic interest for the US as it seeks to check China’s territorial ambitions.

President Donald Trump and his defence officials, meanwhile, have argued that reports about the USS Lincoln’s conditions have been overblown.

Hegseth, for instance, has called the reports of conditions “completely misrepresented”. Trump last week also said the vessel had not been deployed “nearly long enough”.

On Monday, the president brushed aside questions about the USS Lincoln’s conditions as part of a “CNN fake report”.

Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of US Central Command, has also released a statement on social media this week, saying he has visited the USS Lincoln in recent days and found the crew “awe-inspiring”.

“This doesn’t mean that all is perfect,” he wrote. “Find any of the nearly 4 million Navy veterans in America today and they will likely tell you that service at sea for long periods isn’t for everyone.”

But he applauded the USS Lincoln’s leadership for having made “mental health and crew resilience” a priority.

Unlike Democrats, members of Trump’s Republican Party have largely not responded to the reports of mental health strain and supply shortages on the USS Lincoln.

However, Representative Don Bacon voiced concern during an interview on CBS News’s Face the Nation programme on Sunday.

“We should have oversight,” he said.

US Agriculture Department says rescinding the 2001 rule will help reduce wildfire risk and return control to local managers.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has filed a proposal to rescind the entirety of the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which prohibits road construction and logging on nearly 45 million acres (18 million hectares) of national forest land.

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins submitted the proposal on Tuesday, saying it will mitigate wildfire risk by returning authority to local forest managers, who “know the land best”.

“For too long, outdated restrictions have kept tens of millions of forested acres off-limits to the very treatments that improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk to our communities,” Rollins said in a statement. “It’s time to turn the page on the failed roadless rule and return our forests to health and productivity.”

The Trump administration and Republican lawmakers say building roads in these areas would make it easier for firefighters to access the land if a wildfire breaks out.

“For 25 years, the heavy thumb of Washington, D.C., has hindered Montana’s ability to properly manage wildfire risk and road development on nearly 60 percent of Forest Service land across the Treasure State,” Republican Governor Greg Gianforte of Montana said in a statement.

While the areas are referred to as “roadless”, there are thousands of miles of existing roads within the lands with federal, state, and county ownership. About half of these lands are within 1 mile (1.6km) of a road, and 31 percent are within 0.5 miles (800 metres) of a road, according to the National Forest Service.

The USDA clarified that it is not forcing timber cutting or road construction.

But environmental groups say rescinding the conservation rule will open the door to developments that will increase the risk of wildfire. Fires are four times more likely to start near roads than in roadless forests, according to research from The Wilderness Society.

“Roadless forests are where wildlife live,” Taylor McKinnon, southwest director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “They’re home to jaguars, Mexican spotted owls, and ocelots, some of the most iconic animals on the continent. Plowing roads into their habitat will bring human-caused wildfires and disturbances that they don’t need and can’t afford.”

The US is experiencing one of its worst wildfire years in the last decade, with 7.3 million acres (3 million hectares) burned in about 49,000 fires through August 17, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

More than 95 percent of the affected areas would be in 10 states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.

In early August, the state of Washington fought a highly destructive wildfire that burned more than 8,000 acres (3,200 hectares) and forced approximately 65,000 people to evacuate.

Last month, the Trump administration finalised rollbacks of two regulations affecting the Endangered Species Act. One change requires officials to weigh economic and national security considerations when determining whether an area should be designated as “critical habitat”.

The public will have until September 21 to comment on the proposed Roadless Rule.

Yes. The US South Korea relationship has not broken down under Donald Trump, but it has become more transactional, cost focused and strategically uncertain. The latest decision to scale back joint military exercises highlights a broader evolution in which Washington increasingly expects Seoul to shoulder more of the alliance burden while seeking greater flexibility for US forces across the region.

From deterrence to deal making

Trump’s approach to South Korea has been shaped heavily by his personal diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. His first term moved rapidly from threats of “fire and fury” to unprecedented summits with Kim, followed by the suspension or redesign of major US South Korean military exercises.

Although the Hanoi summit collapsed without a denuclearisation agreement, Trump has continued to emphasise his relationship with Kim. His latest instruction to reduce joint exercises therefore carries significance beyond cost savings. It signals that Washington may once again be willing to modify elements of its alliance posture in pursuit of diplomatic space with Pyongyang.

The strategic environment, however, is very different from 2018. North Korea has expanded its nuclear and missile capabilities and strengthened military cooperation with Russia. Reducing exercises therefore creates a more complicated calculation for Seoul: diplomatic engagement with Pyongyang may reduce tensions temporarily, but weaker military preparedness could also increase the risks associated with North Korea’s growing capabilities.

The alliance is becoming more transactional

The clearest transformation under Trump is arguably the growing emphasis on burden sharing.

Trump has repeatedly questioned the cost of maintaining roughly 28,500 US troops in South Korea and has pushed Seoul to contribute more to its own defence. The existing cost sharing agreement requires South Korea to contribute about 1.52 trillion won this year toward the upkeep of US forces.

For Washington, the argument is straightforward: South Korea is wealthy enough to assume a greater share of the financial and military burden. For Seoul, however, the US military presence remains central to deterring North Korea.

This creates a fundamental tension. The alliance is still strategically valuable to both sides, but Trump increasingly approaches it through a cost benefit framework rather than solely through traditional alliance commitments.

Defence cooperation is expanding even as exercises face pressure

The apparent contradiction is important. Trump is seeking to reduce certain military exercises while South Korea itself is increasing defence spending.

President Lee Jae Myung has pledged a larger security role and increased defence spending, while continuing to insist that Washington’s security commitment remains firm. Seoul has also sought greater strategic autonomy, including greater latitude over nuclear fuel technology and faster progress toward transferring wartime operational control.

This suggests that the alliance may be evolving rather than simply weakening.

South Korea appears to be preparing to assume greater responsibility for its own defence, while Washington wants the alliance to become more flexible and potentially address security challenges beyond the Korean Peninsula.

That latter objective is particularly sensitive for Seoul. The United States increasingly views its Asian alliances through the broader strategic competition with China, while South Korea remains primarily focused on the immediate threat from North Korea.

Trade has become inseparable from security

Under Trump, economic relations have also become an increasingly important component of the alliance.

Washington’s tariff pressure has pushed Seoul toward major investment commitments in the United States, including the $350 billion investment pledge associated with tariff relief. South Korean companies have already invested heavily in US semiconductors, batteries, electric vehicles and shipbuilding.

But disagreements over how the investment should be structured have exposed the limits of Trump’s transactional approach. Seoul has warned that demands for large upfront cash commitments could place pressure on its economy.

The detention of hundreds of South Korean workers during an immigration raid at a Hyundai LG battery project in Georgia further demonstrated how economic and political tensions can spill directly into the strategic relationship.

The result is an alliance in which security guarantees, trade concessions, investment and troop costs increasingly form one interconnected negotiation.

The deeper problem is strategic uncertainty

The central challenge for Seoul is not simply whether Trump wants fewer exercises. It is whether Washington’s definition of the alliance is changing.

For decades, the US South Korea alliance rested on a relatively clear bargain: Washington provided extended deterrence and military forces, while Seoul contributed financially and militarily to maintaining the security architecture.

Trump’s approach introduces more conditionality into that bargain.

If military exercises can be reduced because they are considered too expensive or diplomatically inconvenient, Seoul has to consider how predictable the US commitment remains. At the same time, Washington expects South Korea to spend more, invest more and potentially assume greater responsibility.

This could ultimately produce a stronger South Korean military, but it could also create greater uncertainty about the role of the United States.

What this means for China and the Indo Pacific

The evolution of the alliance also has implications far beyond the Korean Peninsula.

Washington wants greater flexibility for US forces stationed in South Korea to respond to regional contingencies, particularly those involving China. Seoul, however, has historically been reluctant to become directly involved in a confrontation over Taiwan.

That creates a structural divergence in strategic priorities.

For Washington, South Korea is increasingly part of a broader Indo Pacific security network. For Seoul, the primary purpose of the alliance remains deterrence against North Korea.

Trump’s transactional approach therefore forces South Korea to navigate between two competing imperatives: maintaining the American security umbrella while avoiding excessive strategic dependence on Washington’s wider confrontation with Beijing.

The alliance has changed, but it has not collapsed

Trump has not dismantled the US South Korea alliance. Instead, he is redefining its terms.

Military exercises are being reconsidered, defence burden sharing remains contentious, trade and investment have become bargaining instruments, and Washington increasingly expects Seoul to assume greater responsibility for regional security.

For South Korea, this creates both a risk and an opportunity. Greater defence spending and military autonomy could make Seoul less dependent on American forces. But if Washington simultaneously reduces visible commitments while demanding greater financial and strategic contributions, Seoul could find itself paying more for an alliance that feels less predictable.

The most important question, therefore, is not whether Trump is weakening the alliance. It is whether he is transforming it from a traditional security partnership into a transactional strategic bargain.

If that transformation continues, the US South Korea alliance could survive Trump, but it may emerge fundamentally different from the alliance Washington and Seoul built over the past seven decades.

With information from Reuters.

WASHINGTON — A federal district judge said Tuesday that paint tests on a 19th-century historic landmark building next to the White House can go ahead, advancing President Trump’s plans to add a new coat of white paint to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, for now.

Trump has suggested the massive building be painted as part of his push to remake and beautify the nation’s capital. Planners said the paint job would cost at least $7.5 million.

The proposal to paint the building has alarmed preservationists, architects, historians and others who argue that granite is not meant to be painted and that paint would trap moisture and degrade the stone.

U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich said plaintiffs in an ongoing case had not shown that minimal tests planned for the historic building would cause irreparable harm if those tests go ahead.

The plaintiffs, which include cultural preservationist groups, had sought a restraining order and a temporary injunction to stop the Trump administration from conducting tests and other preparatory work.

At issue was whether that work would get ahead of a larger question before the court over whether the General Services Administration could delegate its authority for such a project to the Executive Office.

“The plaintiffs’ motion rises and falls on irreparable harm,” Friedrich said from the bench. The test areas would include about 8 square feet of the building’s massive exterior and several panels that can’t be seen by the public, she said.

Friedrich said that while she was allowing that test to move ahead, she would not hesitate to step in and rule if the administration moved beyond the limited testing. She asked the parties to provide a status report by next Tuesday and ordered regular reports following that.

Gregory Werkheiser, a lawyer with Cultural Heritage Partners and one of the plaintiffs, said that while he and others challenging the painting plan were disappointed, “the reasons we brought this case are untouched by today’s decision.”

The larger issue, he said, is whether “the president has taken power illegally from the GSA and put it in his office in terms of this project and the implications of that. If that holds true for historic properties around the country, that could be devastating.”

Fields writes for the Associated Press.

ABC went to court Tuesday in an attempt to halt the Federal Communications Commission’s early review of its TV licenses, claiming the move is an attack on the broadcast outlet’s right to free speech.

The Disney-owned network asked a U.S. District Court to issue a temporary restraining order to stop the FCC’s action. The agency says it is investigating ABC stations over whether the company’s diversity and inclusion policies are in violation of federal anti-discrimination laws.

But the suit alleges that the FCC is retaliating against ABC due to President Trump’s dissatisfaction with the network’s coverage of his administration. Trump has frequently threatened to have TV station licenses pulled when he believes he is treated unfairly on news and talk programs.

In late December, Trump posted on X that “If Network NEWSCASTS, and their Late Night Shows are almost 100% negative to President Donald J. Trump, MAGA, and the Republican Party, shouldn’t their very valuable Broadcast Licenses be terminated? I say YES!”

The suit claims the FCC “has not been shy about openly coercing ABC into changing its programming,” citing comments made last fall by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr about late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s remarks about the president.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said. “These companies can find ways….to take action…on Kimmel or there is going to be additional work for the FCC.”

Shortly after Carr made those remarks, two large TV station ownership groups had their ABC affiliates pull Kimmel off the air for a week after conservative blowback over the host’s comments regarding the shooting death of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

The licenses for eight ABC-owned TV stations, including KABC in Los Angeles, were originally scheduled for renewal between 2028 and 2031. The suit said the current review is “extraordinarily early” and “that timing underscores the Commission’s true purpose: coercing and retaliating against a network that refuses to bow to the Administration’s demands.”

Trump recently called for ABC’s TV licenses to be revoked after the network did not carry his July 16 prime-time Oval Office address on election fraud. Carr said the network’s decision would be taken under consideration in the license review process.

Broadcast outlets have long had the option to determine whether to carry a presidential address. ABC presented Trump’s speech on its news streaming platform, as did NBC.

Carr has also questioned whether “The View” should be classified as a news program, which is exempt from the equal-time rule for political candidates who appear as guests.

ABC has asked the FCC to rule on the status of “The View,” which received an exemption from the rarely enforced equal time provision in 2002.

ABC has maintained that “The View” books politicians based on newsworthiness and not partisanship.