trump

Published on
15/06/2026 – 10:09 GMT+2

Crude prices retreated on Monday as US President Donald Trump confirmed a peace agreement with Iran and both sides announced a lifting of their respective blockades of the Strait of Hormuz.

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At the time of writing, the front month contract on US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude was down almost 6% from Friday’s close to roughly $80 per barrel, while Brent crude, the international standard, dropped around 5% to about $83 per barrel.

The specific concessions made by each side are still unclear and there are questions surrounding whether the Prime Minister of Israel will respect the withdrawal of troops from southern Lebanon, which, according to the Prime Minister of Pakistan is included in the deal.

Benjamin Netanyahu has yet to publicly address the US-Iran deal, or the issue of Lebanon, and CNN has reported that the Prime Minister of Israel is seeking an urgent meeting with US President Donald Trump after this week’s G7 summit.

Nonetheless, markets are reacting swiftly to the prospect of the Strait of Hormuz slowly reopening and the potential that the Iran war is closer to ending than reigniting.

The freshly announced peace deal is currently expected to be signed on Friday.

European, Asian and US markets

At the open, European markets also rose on the news that there is meaningful progress in ending the Iran war.

Both the Euro Stoxx 50 and the broader pan-European Stoxx 600 traded over 1% higher at the start of Monday’s session.

The UK’s FTSE 100, Germany’s DAX 30, Italy’s FTSE MIB, Spain’s IBEX 35, the Netherlands’ AEX and Switzerland’s CH20, all traded between 0.5% and 1% higher than their Friday close.

France’s CAC 40 led the pack and rose almost 1.5%.

In the US, S&P500 futures traded over 2% higher and the teach-heavy Nasdaq 100 rose more than 3%.

In other trade dealings on Monday, Asia-Pacific markets jumped overnight with South Korea’s Kospi climbing over 5%, recovering from a 4% drop on Friday, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 also traded roughly 3% higher.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.8%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index jumped about 0.5% and Shangai’s SSE climbed over 1.5%.

WASHINGTON — President Trump said Sunday that the United States and Iran have reached a framework agreement to end the war in the Middle East, a breakthrough in months of negotiations aimed at ending the conflict.

The deal, described by diplomats as a memorandum of understanding, commits Tehran to forgo the development or acquisition of nuclear weapons in exchange for helping reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and the paced release of its assets frozen overseas, upon the signing of the deal Friday in Switzerland.

Trump said he has also authorized “the immediate removal of the United States Naval blockade” on Iranian imports.

“Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!” Trump wrote in a social media post Sunday evening. It was the president’s 80th birthday.

The full details of the agreement have not been released. Many details — including how Tehran would give up, destroy or dilute its fissile material, or whether Iran would continue treating the international strait as its sovereign waters — will continue to be negotiated in the coming days.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Sunday that mediators are planning to hold a series of meetings this week to “lay the foundation for the technical talks and the official signing ceremony.”

“We would like to thank the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran for their commitment to finding a diplomatic solution to the conflict,” Sharif wrote in a post on X.

The Associated Press reported that negotiations on outstanding issues like Iran’s nuclear program would continue over the next 60 days, according to two senior Pakistani officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Vice President JD Vance told Fox News that the White House is “still figuring out the logistics” on whether he or Trump will attend the signing ceremony.

“What we know is that we have a lot of work to do, but a very big win for the American people tonight,” Vance said.”We are just going to keep on working at it, keep on driving energy prices down, keep on ensuring that region of the world is less than a basket case and finally, and most importantly, celebrate, that we can say with confidence Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.”

Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, confirmed the agreement on state television but said Iran would not start implementing it until it was signed on Friday. He said the deal followed over 14 hours of talks in Tehran with a representative from Qatar, another mediator.

Iranian state TV showed a banner asserting: “US was forced to sign an agreement to end the war.”

Iran’s commitment to refrain from pursuing nuclear weapons would simply repeat a vow Iran has made several times before, including in its signing of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its nuclear deal brokered with international powers under the Obama administration over 10 years ago.

Iran has 972 pounds of uranium that is enriched up to 60% purity, a short, technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90%, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Under the 2015 international agreement with Iran abandoned by the first Trump administration, Iran’s uranium enrichment was capped at less than 4%, monitored by IAEA inspectors.

The vagueness of the new agreement, the demand for further negotiations to flesh out its details, and the pacing of sanctions relief for Iran are all likely to draw criticism of the president, who launched his political career in 2015 by attacking President Obama’s newly signed nuclear deal as a historically bad agreement.

That deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, followed two years of painstaking negotiations that were predicated on a similar, yet more detailed framework, called the JCPOA.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a Sunday morning interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that the the difference between the JCPOA and how the Trump administration is handling negotiations is the “threat of military force.”

“The huge difference is we did this from a position of strength,” Hegseth said. “That military might will stay as long as necessary.”

And, as in 2015, Israeli leadership across the political aisle remains deeply skeptical of the agreement, pronouncing they will not be bound by a deal to which they are not a party.

In a phone interview with the New York Times on Sunday afternoon, Trump called Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, a “very difficult guy.”

“To be honest with you, he should be very thankful to us for doing this. Because if Iran had a nuclear weapon, Israel wouldn’t be around for two hours,” Trump said.

Since the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran that started the war Feb. 28, there have been 3,468 confirmed deaths in Iran, according to independent monitors. In addition, 13 U.S. service members have been killed, and the Israeli war with Hezbollah has killed 2,679 in Lebanon as well as 23 Israelis, including eight civilians.

WASHINGTON — President Trump planned to mark his 80th birthday on Sunday with a celebration that once would have seemed unfathomable: a cage-fighting show on the storied South Lawn of the White House.

In the week ahead, some hard realities of the office have threatened to overshadow the ostentatious UFC mixed martial arts extravaganza, where combatants sealed inside a wire-mesh octagon try to punch, kick, chop and pummel each other into submission.

Trump has found himself boxed into an unpopular and costly war he helped start in Iran. An agreement to end the conflict could be close, but the crucial details are still to be negotiated. Meanwhile, about a mile from Trump’s birthday bash, crews pried the president’s name off the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts facade after a judge ruled that renaming it to include Trump was not allowed.

Regardless, the president will walk out of the White House and be surrounded by Cabinet leaders, top administration officials, Republican lawmakers and 4,000-plus spectators screaming themselves hoarse in a temporary arena under “The Claw,” a spaceship-like metal arch fitted with lighting, sound equipment and large screens. Thousands more will be watching on big screens from the nearby Ellipse.

“This event is a one-of-one event, incredible event. I love it,” said UFC chief Dana White, a close friend of Trump, during a Friday night hype session at the Lincoln Memorial where pairs of fighters shoved and scuffled for the cameras under the stoic gaze of Honest Abe’s marble likeness.

Trump has sought to tie Sunday’s event — which features seven fights running past midnight — to larger, months-long celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

But it is much more geared toward feting himself, so much so that the Group of 7 summit for leaders of industrialized nations pushed back their get-together so that the president could attend his cage-match party and then fly straight to France for the meetings.

The weather, though, could put a damper on things. Strong thunderstorms and heavy lightning disrupted Friday’s Lincoln Memorial event, and the forecast for Sunday evening also looked threatening.

“I’m sick and tired of hearing about the weather,” White declared Friday, before conceding that he’d prefer to hold future UFC events inside arenas only.

A very different 80th birthday celebration

When Trump’s predecessor, President Biden, turned 80 in November 2022, he celebrated with a private family brunch at the White House, a reminder of just how much and how quickly things have changed.

Asked about the contrast, White House spokesperson Allison Schuster said that the fight “will be one of the most entertaining nights in American history” and said that the timing was appropriate. “Having this spectacle take place at the people’s house on Flag Day during our nations’ semiquincentennial anniversary is a fitting tribute,” Schuster said in a statement, apparently including a punctuation error in referring to “nation’s.”

When he turned 80, Biden was the oldest president in U.S. history, and was months away from launching a reelection bid that he would ultimately abandon after a disastrous debate against Trump and mutiny among Democrats concerned that voters would perceive him as too old to handle a second term.

Trump has now supplanted Biden as the oldest person to be elected U.S. president. He’s constitutionally barred from running again, yet constantly toys with the notion publicly. That’s despite polls showing rising public skepticism about Trump’s mental and physical health — recalling concerns Biden faced as he turned 80.

A Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted in April found that less than half of U.S. adults think Trump has the mental sharpness or physical health to serve effectively as president.

The White House countered with a lengthy statement from Trump’s former White House physician, Republican Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas, saying that Trump’s “stamina, focus, and strength are exceptional and on display every day. Claims to the contrary are pure fiction.” Jackson added that polling concerns were “being propagated by the same biased, liberal, Trump-hating press that completely ignored the absolute cognitive and physical disaster that was President Biden.”

Trump has nonetheless undergone four publicly announced physical examinations this term alone, with White House physician Dr. Sean Barbabella recently declaring him in “excellent health.”

‘Bread and circuses’ — Trump-style

The UFC event is an apt metaphor for Trump’s pugilistic political style. He has also long been a practitioner of political misdirection, purposely presenting people with something other than his presidency to focus on when things aren’t going well.

With the war in Iran grinding on despite weeks of assurances from Trump that its end is nigh, gas prices staying high, renewed concerns about inflation and plummeting job approval ratings for Trump — a White House birthday party unlike anything America has ever seen is definitely a diversion.

“This is all distraction,” said Mike Fontaine, a classics professor at Cornell University, who likened it to the gladiatorial games of Imperial Rome, when combatants brutalized each other for public entertainment meant to bolster rulers’ popularity and quell potential unrest.

“This is a classic strategy,” Fontaine said. “In ancient Rome, the phrase would be ‘bread and circuses.’”

Trump says the UFC is paying for the event, and though its full cost hasn’t been divulged, the National Park Service said in a court filing that $60-plus million and tens of thousands of hours of labor have gone into it, while seven government agencies have “allocated significant resources and manpower.”

UFC also announced Friday that it was adding as an official partner for the event World Liberty Financial to create a $250,000 athlete bonus pool for Sunday night’s winners. The cryptocurrency company is co-owned by the Trump family, founded with the president’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and run by the diplomat’s son Zach. The arrangement further blurs lines between the Trump family’s financial interests and the events and construction projects the president has prioritized and used government resources to pull off, which many critics and political analysts have labeled corrupt.

Still, Fontaine said that when it comes to a personal flair for pageantry, Trump’s second-term tendency to lean into “hardcore masculinity and brute fighting” is marrying the UFC’s blood sport with Trump’s distinctive sense of humor and enduring sense of showmanship.

“President Trump has a once-in-a-generation talent for this stuff,” he said.

Weissert writes for the Associated Press.

Activists rally in Geneva to denounce policies of G7 countries ahead of group’s annual meeting this week in France.

Thousands of protesters have gathered in Geneva ahead of this week’s Group of Seven (G7) summit, which is set to bring together United States President Donald Trump and other world leaders in nearby France.

The demonstration on Sunday was led by the so-called “No-G7” coalition, which is comprised of more than 60 associations and groups, including Palestinian rights advocates, feminist activists and environmentalists.

“We are very afraid of the policy and the politics of Mr Trump and also of the other leaders of the G7, because they are fighting, making war all over the place,” said Francoise Nyffeler, a spokesperson for the coalition.

“The planet is in danger, and we are very scared about it and we want to protest and say that the people of the world are against their policies,” she added.

Swiss and French authorities have deployed thousands of police to provide security for the three-day summit, which begins on Monday in the French resort town of Evian-les-Bains.

Authorities have blocked off roads, banned unauthorised gatherings, and pledged financial support for businesses that could be hit by unrest.

Scores of businesses and shops have boarded up their storefronts with wooden panels as a precaution, leery of upheaval that left a trail of damage in Geneva during a similar summit in Evian in 2003.

Reporting from the protest in Geneva on Sunday, Al Jazeera’s Natacha Butler said demonstrators had denounced the G7 as being “all about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer”.

“They say the club of wealthy nations doesn’t represent the global population; that their policies and decisions have a negative impact on the world in terms of climate, equal rights and poverty,” Butler said.

Questions about the legitimacy of the G7 – which includes the US, Canada, Japan, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom – are not new.

The group of countries previously accounted for 70 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP) – a figure that has shrunk to just 40 percent – while representing one-tenth of the global population.

In a sign that global power dynamics are shifting dramatically, other global groups also are growing. The BRICS countries – which include India, Russia and China – have doubled their bloc’s number of members from five to 11.

While G7 summits regularly draw protests, this year’s event also comes amid global frustration with Trump’s leadership on issues as diverse as tariffs, the US-Israeli war on Iran, and the climate crisis.

Demonstrators had been gathering for days in advance of Sunday’s march in Geneva.

A flotilla of around 20 boats appeared on Lake Geneva off the coast of Evian on Saturday, displaying anti-G7 and pro-Palestinian banners. Some 20 protesters were detained on Friday evening, according to Swiss media reports.

Donald Trump picks Mike Collins over Derek Dooley in race to determine who will face Democrat Jon Ossoff in November midterms.

United States President Donald Trump has made a late endorsement in a Republican run-off for a key US Senate race in Georgia ahead of the US midterm elections.

In a post on his Truth Social account, Trump threw his support behind US Representative Mike Collins over former football coach and political newcomer Derek Dooley.

Collins and Dooley will face off in a Republican run-off race on Tuesday to determine who will challenge incumbent Senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, in the midterm election in November.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump praised Collins for being a staunch supporter of his Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement and a “true friend, fighter, and WARRIOR”.

Ossoff entered office in 2021 as part of a blue wave in Georgia that saw the majority of the state vote for former US President Joe Biden, as well as his fellow Democrat, Senator Raphael Warnock.

Georgia, which had for decades been dominated by Republicans, swung back towards Trump in the 2024 vote. Defeating Ossoff is seen as one of the Republicans’ best chances at claiming a new seat in the 100-member chamber, where they are hoping to hold on to their slim 53-seat majority.

Democrats are hoping to win control of both the House and the Senate in November, which would create a major bulwark against Trump’s agenda during his final two years in office.

Republican divides

Trump’s endorsement pits Collins against Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp, who has supported Dooley.

Kemp has remained generally supportive of Trump, but has faced off with him on several issues, notably Trump’s evidence-less claims that the 2020 election in Georgia was marred by fraud.

Dooley has said he did not vote in 2016 or 2020 when Trump was on the ballot, and has maintained that the election results in Georgia were legitimate.

Collins carried about 40 percent of the vote during Georgia’s Republican primary on May 19, with Dooley taking about 30 percent. Representative Buddy Carter, who did not advance to the run-off, came in a close third.

It remains unclear how big of an impact Trump’s endorsement will have. He made the announcement after early voting had already ended for the run-off.

Trump’s endorsements have seen mixed results in the primary season.

Trump’s decision to back Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was seen as aiding in the MAGA loyalist’s defeat of US Senator John Cornyn in Texas’s primary run-off.

Cornyn had widely been viewed as the strongest Republican candidate to take on Democratic challenger James Talarico in the general election.

In Iowa, Trump’s late endorsement of US Representative Randy Feenstra did not give him the bump needed to defeat fellow Republican Zach Lahn in the gubernatorial primary race.

Beyond the run-off in Georgia, Alabama will also hold several primary run-offs on Tuesday. That includes a Republican race for the solidly red seat of US Senator Tommy Tuberville, who is running for governor.

Oklahoma and the federal district of Washington, DC, will also hold primary votes.

June 12 (UPI) — A federal judge on Friday extended an order to indefinitely block President Donald Trump‘s $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund because she does not trust the administration’s word that it will not attempt to enact it.

The fund was announced last month and meant to compensate people the Trump administration alleged were targeted by the Biden administration, including people who were convicted for their actions during the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.

Judge Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia in her ruling blocked Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, Jr., and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent from taking “any action to create or operate” the fund and that they not proceed with the concept “in any manner, or under any name.”

Brinkema’s ruling builds atop one from Washington, D.C., Judge Richard Leon that they do not believe the administration will not attempt to distribute money in the scheme.

Both judges indicated that they do not believe that the Department of Justice will back off from the plan because no officials from the agency have said they would do so while sworn in and under penalty of perjury.

“When the President of the United States says” that he wants something, referring to Trump, Brinkema said “that’s a pretty good indicator there will be an incentive and motive to make it happen,” CNN reported.

Even with the fund having been on hold for the last week, at least one person already has attempted to file a claim, to which the federal court responded that it is “not accepting applications”

TONOPAH, Nev. — Some years ago, Harry Chahal and his wife were on a trip to Las Vegas when, like countless motorists before and since, they passed through this high desert speck of a town.

Tonopah, built by the mining industry around 1900 and depleted as the gold, silver, lead and mercury waned, is a remote way station about halfway between Reno and Las Vegas. Signs on either side warn — ominously, given the unforgiving expanse ahead — that once you’ve left, the nearest gas station is not for another 100 miles or so.

Harry Chahal opened hometown pizza in 2015 after driving through town and seeing there was no pizza place.

(Mark Z. Barabak / Los Angeles Times)

As he passed through town, Chahal noticed something missing: a pizza parlor.

Pizza is not generally associated with Punjab, India, where Chahal — given name Harvarinderjit — is originally from. But he learned how to make pizza, and how much customers loved gobbling it up, while working at different gas station mini-marts around rural Nevada.

In that absence, Chahal saw opportunity.

He and his wife, Ravinder, moved to Tonopah and in 2015 opened Hometown Pizza in a vacant building on U.S. Route 95, which runs through the heart of town. Ten years later, they bought the Dream Inn Motel, a 39-room operation just up the road.

Views of the 47th president, from the ground up

Lately, Chahal has been sprucing up the motor inn: new cabinets, new furniture, fresh paint every few months. The reason is President Trump.

Tonopah and the surrounding desert, stretching farther than the eye can reckon, is verging on a boom, owing to vast reserves of lithium, boron and other sought-after materials and a Trump administration promise to turn the U.S., in the words of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, into “a mineral powerhouse once again.”

Chahal, 40, is a repeat Trump voter and even though he has issues with some of what the president has done — he’s not happy about the war with Iran and inflation has taken a decent-sized bite out of his pizza business — he feels his faith in Republicans in general and Trump in particular have paid off.

A registered nonpartisan, Chahal is fairly apolitical. “I vote for Republicans because they’re better for business,” he said as a lunch-time crowd of locals and folks passing through tucked into the $11.99 pizza-and-salad buffet. Here’s proof: In the last year, Chahal said, he’s seen motel occupancy increase significantly, from around 15 rooms rented each night to 25 or more.

Those fresh touches to the Dream Inn are Chahal’s investment in the future and a belief that, with Trump in office, even better times lie ahead.

Tonopah was built as a mining town around 1900. It’s fortunes have waxed and mostly waned.

(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

::

For much of its being, Tonopah relied on metal, minerals and other valuables scooped from the earth. Today, government is the largest employer.

But mining continues to hold fast to the town’s imagination.

A headframe — that’s the tower built directly over an underground mine shaft — is part of Tonopah’s logo. Mining-related sculptures, including statues of Jim and Belle Butler, who staked the first claim in the 20th century silver rush, dot the main thoroughfare. The high school’s athletes are called the “Muckers,” after those who shovel ore into underground rail cars.

The Tonopah Historic Mining Park is a big tourist attraction, along with the Clown Motel and other lodging establishments supposedly haunted by the ghosts of dead miners and other paranormal phenomena. (Chahal says there are no apparitions at the Dream Inn.)

The Clown Motel, which draws visitors from around the world, is said to be haunted by the ghosts of dead miners.

(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

Lately, however, mining is becoming more than just a part of nostalgic lore. It’s poised to again be a major boon to the local economy and the town’s 3,000 residents.

Plans are underway for a new lithium and boron mine at Rhyolite Ridge, approximately 30 miles southwest of Tonopah, in Nevada’s Silver Peak Range. (Lithium, most of which is now imported, is a vital ingredient in the batteries that store solar energy and power electric vehicles; boron is used, among other things, for bulletproof armor and vests.)

About 27 miles to the south of Tonopah, near the town of Goldfield, a new gold mine is set to open in 2028.

Joe Westerlund, Tonopah’s town manager, said fresh development and the prospect of hundreds of new, good-paying jobs are much welcomed. The median income here is about $37,000 annually, less than half the state average. The hospital in town closed in 2015. Venture off U.S. 95 and the rolling hills are flecked with weathered miner’s cottages and tumbledown homes no longer fit for habitation.

(A three-bedroom, two-bath home in a comfy subdivision on the north end of town can be had for around $250,000, but don’t hurry over to buy; inventory is low and could grow even leaner if demand for housing increases.)

The Tonopah Historic Mining Park is a big local tourist attraction.

(Mark Z. Barabak / Los Angeles Times)

While some of the groundwork for the mining resurgence was laid during the Biden administration, Trump is credited with fostering a much friendlier regulatory environment, which promises even more opportunities for extraction.

“As soon as he got into office, things started loosening up. We had 15 drill rigs,” said Westerlund, who has lived in Tonopah since 1972. “I had never seen that before in my life.”

There are, of course, environmental concerns — about pollution, water supply, native habitat — but those worries haven’t gained much of a toehold. Nye County, which is home to Tonopah, isn’t exactly tree-hugger country — and not just because most of the land is scrub-filled desert. Trump carried Nye County all three times he ran, with landslide support ranging from 68% to 70%.

“This is a pro-Trump town,” Westerlund said, “and I feel like his policies are doing good for the town.”

Chahal stands ready to cash in, knowing firsthand what economic good times feel like.

The Mizpah hotel, opened in 1908, offers the plushest accommodations in town.

(Chris Erskine / Los Angeles Times)

When he moved here in 2014, he and his wife were forced to stay in a motel for six months because workers finishing up a $1 billion solar energy project were taking up most of the living space. That’s the kind of extended-stay guest he’s after, not the tourists bedding at the Mizpah Hotel, the plushest resort in town, with its cut-glass chandeliers, Victorian furnishings and photo gallery of celebrities who’ve stayed the night.

“If I can rent 25 rooms a night, maybe 15 can be for the long term” of several weeks at a time, Chahal said. He’s done the math — $82 a night for a queen bed, single occupancy; $89 for a king — and likes how it pencils out.

::

Chahal came to the U.S. in 2006, after marrying Ravinder, who grew up in the Sacramento area. She had family in Punjab and was a regular visitor to India. The two met when they were 10 years old. Chahal became an American citizen in 2020.

Politically, Indian Americans lean heavily toward the Democratic Party. But in the tiny Nevada communities where the couple lived — Lovelock, Battle Mountain and Ely before Tonopah — there was little or no Indian American presence. So Chahal wasn’t acculturated into the party the way many others have been. Rather, he embraced the GOP gospel of lower taxes and less regulation.

Working seven days a week, Chahal has little time these days for politics, beyond voting. He isn’t particularly ideological or, for that matter, worshipful of Trump.

“Every coin has a head and a tail,” he said, flipping his wrist as though tossing a quarter in the air. He sees two sides to the president. “Maybe you’re angry for some things,” Chahal said. “Maybe you agree with some things.”

He supports the notion of tariffs as a way of bringing manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. He also laments that the pizza boxes he uses, which are made in China, once cost him 30 cents and now run almost 67 cents apiece.

He backs Trump’s promise to round up and deport violent criminals who are in the country illegally. But he’s also mindful of the important role immigrants play, especially in areas like farming and construction, in sustaining the U.S. economy.

Chahal criticized the heavy-handed enforcement that resulted in the killing of two protesters in Minnesota. But he blamed their deaths on overzealous ICE agents, not Trump.

Living in a town greatly shaped by outside forces — the fluctuation of commodity prices, the changing of presidential administrations, the shifting priorities emanating from Washington — Chahal is familiar with vicissitudes and the business cycles of boom and bust.

Not everything Trump has done has helped the mining industry.

His tariffs and inflation have greatly increased construction costs. Cuts to the federal workforce have slowed the oversight and approval processes. His hostility toward green energy has dampened the market for electric vehicles and made solar energy considerably less attractive.

But based on the talk around town, Chahal believes a more prosperous future is in the offing. He certainly hopes so, and he’s counting on the president to deliver.

If the Constitution allowed for a third term, Chahal said, he wouldn’t hesitate voting for Trump again.

Israel has bombed the southern suburbs of Beirut, saying it targeted Hezbollah ‘infrastructure’ in response to cross-border fire. The strikes come as Israel continues to violate a supposed ceasefire with incursions and daily bombardment in southern Lebanon. Trump has said a deal to end the war on Iran will be signed on Sunday.

WASHINGTON — One by one, the burly mixed martial arts fighters made their entrance past the solemn, hulking marble statue of America’s 16th president and jogged down the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to roars from thousands of fans drawn to the unusual sporting weekend marking the nation’s 250th anniversary and President Trump’s 80th birthday.

The news conference Friday night featured the fighters who are preparing to face off Sunday in the Octagon built outside the White House. But it was also a chance to see the UFC fans who have thronged to Washington and endured lightning, humidity and bugs.

Tracy Philbeck and his son Levi drove from Charlotte, N.C., with a group of friends to support their favorite fighter, American Justin Gaethje, in the upcoming lightweight title bout against Georgian Ilia Topuria.

“You will hear an eagle screaming when Justin Gaethje wins,” the elder Philbeck said with a chuckle.

David Halstead journeyed from Albany, Australia, to watch the sport he has loved for a decade. Halstead said Trump, who regularly attends the fights, “put UFC on the map.”

The UFC has said it spent $60 million on this weekend’s festivities, and the president has billed his birthday fete as “the greatest show on Earth.”

Not everyone agrees.

The Public Integrity Project described the event as a “private, commercial, corrupt use of our most sacred national monuments for private gain” in a lawsuit the watchdog group filed to try to stop it from happening on federal land. A federal judge ruled Friday that the White House was allowed to go ahead.

About 1 in 10 U.S. adults consider themselves mixed martial arts fans, according to Ipsos Sports polling conducted in February and March. That survey suggests MMA fans tend to be male and nonwhite. They are more likely to identify as Republicans than Democrats.

“One misconception is that everyone who watches UFC is a Trump supporter, but that’s not the case,” said Ricardo Rodriguez, 24, explaining that he loves the physicality of the sport. “People also expect a knockout every time.”

Ellie Louizes, who practices Muay Thai, or Thai kickboxing, and jujitsu martial arts, drove from Daytona Beach, Fla., with her boyfriend, Jacob Purvis.

Female fans of MMA are the minority. But Louizes said she knows a lot of women who get into watching the sport through their male partners. She said “female fighters are often way more aggressive” than the men.

Fans brushed off criticism

The fans at the Lincoln Memorial brushed off criticism about the bouts being held at the White House — on federal grounds owned not by its occupant, but by the American people.

Holding fights at the “people’s house,” Tracy Philbeck said, “goes back to the days of Teddy Roosevelt.”

President Theodore Roosevelt regularly held sparring sessions at the White House, though they were not formal, public prizefights. He was an enthusiastic amateur boxer who had boxed at Harvard and continued the sport throughout much of his life.

Boxing fans also make up a large part of the UFC’s fan base.

At a UFC-sponsored community event this week at the District of Columbia’s Midtown Youth Academy, the boxing gym’s executive director was helping out with a visit from UFC fighter Randy Brown, who sparred with more than a dozen local teenagers and preteens.

Gloria Lee said meeting the fighter was a big deal for kids at her gym. “It’s just been a thrilling week, and I was about to fall out when he came in the door!” she said.

Asked about her personal UFC fandom, Lee said she had not watched it much. But by the end of Brown’s visit, she got into the ring with the professional fighter and threw some slugs of her own.

Hussein writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Linley Sanders contributed to this report.

June 13 (UPI) — President Donald Trump and Pakistan have said that a memorandum of understanding extending the cease-fire between the United States and Iran will be virtually signed Sunday, though Iran has not confirmed the meeting.

Trump posted on Truth Social at 12:45 p.m. EDT Saturday: “The Deal is scheduled to get signed tomorrow, and immediately after it is signed, the Hormuz Strait is OPEN TO ALL.”

He also posted a screenshot of a Saturday morning tweet by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif: “We are closer to a peace deal than ever before. With finalization expected in the next 24 hours, Pakistan is preparing for the electronic signing of the peace deal immediately after, followed by technical level talks next week.”

The Pakistani foreign minister confirmed that the signing was set for Sunday, Axios reported.

But Iran said there were no talks planned for Sunday. Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said there were no plans for an Iranian negotiating team to travel to Geneva or elsewhere in the next day or two, according to IRIB, Iran’s state broadcaster, The New York Times reported. While Iran could also sign electronically, it’s unclear if the signing event will happen.

One of the main reasons the signing will be virtual is that Vice President JD Vance, who has been negotiating the peace deal, wouldn’t be able to go to the signings and be back in the United States before Trump leaves for the G7 summit in France Monday, Axios said.

Also, Sunday is the president’s 80th birthday and the day of the UFC fight on the White House lawn.

United States President Donald Trump has said an initial agreement to end the US-Israeli war with Iran is “scheduled to get signed tomorrow”.

But that announcement, made on Trump’s Truth Social account on Saturday, contradicts an earlier statement by Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei.

In remarks carried by Iran’s IRNA news agency, Baghaei said a memorandum of understanding would not be signed on Sunday and that negotiators are not planning to travel immediately to Geneva, Switzerland, in preparation for such an event.

According to Baghaei, a signing could happen “in the coming days”.

Hours later, Trump wrote, “The Deal is scheduled to get signed tomorrow, and immediately after it is signed, the Hormuz Strait is OPEN TO ALL.” Sunday marks Trump’s 80th birthday.

In recent days, Iran and the US have repeatedly contradicted each other when describing the details of the anticipated agreement, even as both sides have broadly signalled that a deal was closer than ever before.

Still, no terms have been officially released, with US and Iranian officials on Friday stressing that the agreement had not been finalised.

Beyond opening the Strait of Hormuz, Trump said in Saturday’s post that the agreement would be a “A WALL TO NO NUCLEAR WEAPON!” and that “no money would exchange hands”.

Trump also maintained that “at the appropriate time, when all is calm, we will go in and get the Nuclear Dust”, referring to Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium.

But speaking on Iran’s Press TV on Friday, Iranian ⁠⁠Foreign ⁠⁠Minister Abbas Araghchi said the initial memorandum of understanding would only be a launch point for negotiations about the future of Iran’s nuclear programme.

He added that the signing would result in an immediate pause in fighting, but that Iran and Oman would continue to administer the Strait of Hormuz.

The issue of lifting foreign sanctions against Iran and unfreezing the country’s assets would be discussed following the signing of the memorandum of understanding, Araghchi said.

From threats to diplomacy

The latest flurry of diplomacy came after the US and Iran traded strikes for two days this week, threatening to end a pause in fighting that has persisted since April 8.

The US and Israel launched the war on Iran on February 28, amid ongoing indirect talks on the future of Iran’s nuclear programme.

The US and Israel had also launched a 12-day war on Iran in 2025, during another round of nuclear talks.

Iranian officials have said that deep distrust towards the US has slowed the progress towards creating a lasting agreement to bring the current war to an end.

Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly pledged to reach a deal that would surpass the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), struck under his Democratic rival, former President Barack Obama.

That agreement, from which Trump unilaterally withdrew in 2018, saw Tehran agree to limit its nuclear programme and allow for international inspections in exchange for sanctions relief.

For years, Iran has maintained that it is building a nuclear programme for civilian use only and is not seeking a nuclear weapon.

In his post on Truth Social, Trump again pledged that any deal reached would be more stringent than the JCPOA.

“Our relationship with Iran is a much different and better one than previous Administrations have had,” he said.

“Hopefully, this process will all work out quickly, easily, and smoothly,” he added.

“If it doesn’t, we have the ultimate alternative, hopefully never to be used again!” he wrote, without elaborating on what his threat meant.

A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to restore signs related to topics such as climate change, slavery and Indigenous and LGBTQ+ history that were removed under an executive order to purge language at national parks that allegedly cast America in a negative light.

The order has prompted the removal of mentions of President Washington’s slaves at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, signs regarding climate threats at Fort Sumter in South Carolina and a pride flag at the Stonewall National Monument in New York City, according to the lawsuit challenging the action.

In California, language related to the internment of Japanese Americans at the Manzanar National Historic Site, as well as the history of Indigenous people in Death Valley and Muir Woods came under scrutiny.

A preliminary injunction was issued Friday by U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley in Boston, who sided with a coalition of conservation and historical groups and ordered all language removed under the order to be reinstated before the Fourth of July. Earlier this year, another federal judge ordered the signage related to Washington’s slaves restored.

In Friday’s injunction, Kelley accused the Trump administration of seeking “to rewrite the Nation’s history with a white-out pen,” and said that national parks play an important role in telling the multifaceted history of America, including “the good, the bad, and the ugly.”

“Because Defendants deemed it important to strip the parks of these undeniable truths in anticipation of the 250th Anniversary of our great Nation,” she wrote, “it is equally important that our shared history be honestly told and fully restored by the 250th Anniversary to properly honor the remarkable achievements of the United States.”

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of the Interior dismissed the ruling as the work of a “liberal activist judge.”

“The Department will look at our appeal options while we celebrate UFC Freedom 250 on the South Lawn of the White House this weekend in honor of our nation’s 250th with the greatest president in the history of our country — President Donald J. Trump,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

Trump initially signed the executive order in March 2025, arguing that a revisionist movement is seeking to undermine American history by replacing objective fact with a distorted, ideologically driven narrative.

“Under this historical revision, our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed,” the order stated.

Under the order, more than 430 sites under the purview of the National Park Service were told to review language on monuments, memorials, statues and markers to ensure they didn’t disparage Americans past or present, with a close eye on language added during former President Biden’s administration. QR codes were also added at sites encouraging visitors to report any signs they believed violated the order.

In February, a coalition including the National Parks Conservation Assn., American Assn. for State and Local History, Assn. of National Park Rangers and Union of Concerned Scientists filed a lawsuit in federal court in Boston alleging that the order was erasing American history and science.

“National parks serve as living classrooms for our country, where science and history come to life for visitors,” Alan Spears, senior director of cultural resources at the parks conservation association, said in a February statement. “As Americans, we deserve national parks that tell stories of our country’s triumphs and heartbreaks alike. We can handle the truth.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The curtain started to come down for President Trump at the Kennedy Center on Saturday.

After a day of legal maneuvers and thunderstorms, workers began the process in the early morning hours of removing the letters spelling out Trump’s name from the facade of the performing arts venue. They were a few hours past a court-ordered deadline and did their work shrouded by a tarp, much to the frustration of onlookers who had gathered for hours hoping to witness a dramatic moment symbolizing the limits of Trump’s power.

As the sun rose over Washington, the tarp remained in place, leaving it impossible to determine whether all the letters had been removed. Shortly after midnight, the Kennedy Center asked a judge to extend the deadline until noon Eastern time, citing the storms for delaying the work. The court agreed to that request Saturday morning.

The removal of Trump’s name closes one of the more unusual chapters in the history of the Kennedy Center, which began construction in 1964 and was dedicated to the memory of the slain president, John F. Kennedy. At what is typically one of the few relatively nonpartisan spaces in Washington, Trump has exerted unprecedented executive influence over the congressionally created venue during his second term.

Though he rarely discussed the Kennedy Center during his 2024 campaign, Trump moved quickly to oust the institution’s leadership when he returned to office in January 2025 and replaced it with a board of trustees that named him chairman. It rebranded the venue the “Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts” and his name was quickly added to the building’s exterior, though an official name change would require an act of Congress.

While the removal of his name marks a setback for Trump, he is moving forward with other plans to reshape the physical landscape of the nation’s capital in ways that have few modern parallels.

He demolished the East Wing of the White House and is building a controversial ballroom in its place. He remodeled the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and plans extensive renovations of a golf course in East Potomac Park, moves that could significantly reduce the public’s access to running and biking paths. He is also moving forward with a triumphal arch that would sit near Arlington National Cemetery across the Potomac River in Virginia.

Indeed, as Trump’s name is being removed from the Kennedy Center, the South Lawn of the White House has been transformed into a venue for a UFC match intended to celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence but also coinciding with Trump’s birthday on Sunday.

Back at the Kennedy Center, there are many questions about the institution’s future. The same May court decision that ordered Trump’s name to be removed from the building also blocked a planned two-year closure for renovations that was set to begin next month.

The Kennedy Center’s calendar for the weeks ahead include performances of “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” and “Bluey’s Big Play.” Comedian Bill Maher is to be awarded the Mark Twain Award for American Humor during a ceremony on June 28.

But little is scheduled for the stages beyond that and, after the Kennedy Center substantially reduced staff, it is unclear how quickly it could build out a robust performance list. Trump, angered by the court’s order to remove his name, has said he would turn the Kennedy Center over to Congress and has suggested it might simply shutter because of public safety concerns.

In its unsuccessful appeal Friday seeking a pause on the order removing Trump’s name, the Kennedy Center’s leadership argued, in terms similar to the president’s use of language and framing of the argument, that the lower court was interfering with needed renovations.

“The District Court is not allowing us to close in order to properly fix up and repair the Building, including potentially life threatening structural damage like beams and parking garage ceilings that are rusted, and in serious danger of falling onto people below,” according to the appeal. “Indeed, total collapse!”

The institution also suggested that the president’s name could return to the building if the Kennedy Center later wins its appeal.

If the court denied the venue’s request for a pause, the Kennedy Center argued that it would “be forced to squander time and money — by both removing the signage and then potentially returning it after appeal.”

Sloan writes for the Associated Press.

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

Los Angeles voters have finally gotten some closure on the outstanding contests in the June 2 primary election, with City Councilmember Nithya Raman qualifying for the runoff against Mayor Karen Bass, and Measure ER, the countywide sales tax hike, prevailing after a week of ballot counting.

With nearly all the votes counted, Angelenos are now getting a more granular understanding of the strongholds built up by each of the top three mayoral candidates.

Districts that went big for Bass, Raman and Pratt

Early on in the vote-counting process, it looked like Raman might not win her Hollywood Hills-based district, which stretches from Silver Lake to Reseda. In the end, she pulled out a first-place finish, securing nearly 34% of the vote compared to Bass’ 31%, according to Paul Mitchell, vice president of the voter data firm Political Data Inc, who aggregated county precinct data into council districts. Spencer Pratt, the former reality TV personality, trailed at 27%.

Still, Raman’s strongest support came from three districts on the eastern end of the city.

Mitchell’s analysis showed Raman with 45% of the vote in Council District 13, which includes all or parts of Echo Park, Hollywood and Atwater Village. She got nearly 40% in Council District 1, which takes in parts of Highland Park, Mt. Washington and Angeleno Heights. And she scored nearly 38% of the vote in Council District 14, which includes downtown, Boyle Heights and El Sereno.

Those districts are represented by Hugo Soto–Martínez, Eunisses Hernandez and Ysabel Jurado, respectively — all members of Democratic Socialists of America, who all endorsed Bass instead of Raman, a DSA member herself. Raman placed first in all three.

Bass found her greatest strength in the three districts that cover South L.A., coming in first in all three. Her best performance was in District 8, represented by Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, where she led with nearly 62% of the vote.

The mayor received 45% of the vote in Council District 10, which stretches from Koreatown to the Crenshaw Corridor, and 42% in Council District 9, which stretches from the southern edge of downtown south to 95th Street.

Pratt performed the strongest in the west San Fernando Valley. He was the top vote-getter in District 12, which is represented by Councilmember John Lee and includes Chatsworth, Granada Hills and Porter Ranch. In that district, he received 39% of the vote, Mitchell’s assessment showed.

Pratt got nearly 37% of the vote in District 3, which is represented by Councilmember Bob Blumenfield and includes Woodland Hills, Warner Center and Canoga Park.

Pratt also led the pack in the 5th District, which takes up much of the Westside and is represented by Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky. He had 30.7% of the vote, compared to Raman’s 30.6%, according to Mitchell’s analysis.

Nithya Raman attacks the L.A. ‘political machine’

It was one of tougher attacks of the mayoral primary: Raman accused Bass of engaging in “pay to play” — making decisions that benefited certain interest groups, who then spent big on her reeelection.

At her first post-election press conference Wednesday, Raman revisited that line of attack, criticizing Bass over her push to upgrade the city’s Convention Center. That $2.6 billion project was approved in the middle of the city’s financial crisis, when the council was contemplating major job cuts, Raman said.

“Downtown business groups then spent over a million dollars supporting her in her reelection. Meanwhile, the city went back to voters asking them to pay more to fix their streetlights. That is the political machine at work,” she said.

Pay to play was a potent issue in the 2005 election, when Mayor James Hahn was defeated by Councilmember Antonio Villaraigosa. At the time, federal agencies had opened corruption investigations into decisions at the city’s harbor and airports, as well as the Department of Water and Power. That year, the phrase “pay to play” was synonymous with criminal wrongdoing.

In a video acknowledging his primary defeat, Pratt said he got into the mayor’s race to “expose this corrupt machine.”

Raman stopped short of such a framing.

“It’s not corruption,” Raman told reporters at Vista Hermosa Park. “But it is evidence that the system, and how it works, particularly the influence of money in politics, has led to some very broken priorities here in the city.”

Last year, policy analysts warned the Convention Center project would be a financial drag from the moment it opens, consuming more than $100 million per year throughout the 2030s. Business groups and labor organizations pushed back, saying the project would help revitalize downtown while creating much needed construction jobs.

The Central City Assn., a downtown-based business group that supported the Convention Center upgrade, spent about $1.6 million on efforts to reelect Bass.

“Nithya Raman doesn’t think we need more jobs or visitors to our hotels and restaurants that produce the tax revenues downtown generates for the entire city, so it’s hard to support her,” said Central City Assn. President and Chief Executive Officer Nella McOsker in a statement.

Bass spokesperson Alex Stack also pushed back on Raman’s criticism, saying the mayor has been with “every group and industry to deliver results for Angelenos.”

“Nithya Raman can’t get anything done and then attacks the same groups she sought to endorse her campaign,” he said.

Pratt trailed Trump among L.A. voters

As a mayoral candidate, Pratt was dogged by questions about whether he was MAGA — shorthand for the movement that first powered President Trump into office in 2016. The Republican had received fulsome praise from Trump-aligned figures, including podcast host Joe Rogan and Greg Gutfield of Fox News.

Pratt downplayed his GOP ties. Still, there’s one area where he definitely had some similarity with Trump: His performance with L.A. voters.

Trump and Pratt both picked up roughly one out of every four votes in L.A. during their respective campaigns.

Pratt, former star of MTV’s “The Hills,” had 25.5% of the vote in L.A., according to results posted Friday. In November 2024, Trump did a little better, receiving 26.5%, county election results show.

Trump had 369,319 votes in L.A. two years ago, compared to 976,781 for then-Vice President Kamala Harris. By Friday, Pratt had 217,638 votes, compared to 247,242 for Raman and 292,115 for Bass.

It might not be fair to compare Pratt and Trump, given that there were key differences between the elections. Pratt was competing in a primary campaign, while Trump was in a general election. The candidate pool was different as well.

Trump was running in a six-way contest where Harris was his main rival. Pratt, on the other hand, was in a race featuring 13 other candidates.

Although two-thirds of those candidates were complete unknowns, four of Pratt’s rivals ran serious campaigns, amassing endorsements and spending significant amounts of money.

State of play

— TRUMP VS. LAHSA: The Trump Administration moved Thursday to block the embattled Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority from receiving federal funds, saying the agency was badly managed and engaged in fraud. Elected officials across the city denounced the move, while nonprofit groups also voiced alarm. “This is intended to create chaos,” said Jerry Jones, the head of the Greater LA Coalition on Homelessness, which represents groups that serve the region’s unhoused.

— PAYOUT PROBE: Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman said Wednesday that he believes four out of every five claims in the largest sex abuse settlement in U.S. history — one that resulted in a $4 billion payout by Los Angeles County— may be fake. Hochman has asked a judge to pause the sex abuse payments while he continues his criminal investigation into the plaintiffs, lawyers and therapists involved in filing the claims.

— GET READY TO RUMBLE: The showdown between Bass and Raman is going to get ugly, political experts said this week, in part because they agree on a number of big-picture political issues. Both will need to court at least some of the disaffected voters who picked Pratt in the primary.

— A SCATHING SENDOFF: As we mentioned higher up, Pratt released a video Friday that was both an acknowledgment of his primary election defeat and a vitriolic screed against Bass and Raman, his former rivals. Pratt called them “morons,” “commie animals” and “corrupt communists,” and made clear he intends to ramp up his attacks in the coming months. “I don’t have campaign laws hamstringing me now. It’s war,” he said.

— WOOING LATINOS: Bass carried far more Latino-majority neighborhoods than her rivals in last week’s primary, a Times analysis found. She carried 35 Latino-majority neighborhoods, including Boyle Heights, Pacoima and Historic South-Central. That was a 46% increase from 2022, when she won 24 Latino-majority neighborhoods in her primary against Rick Caruso and Kevin de León, the analysis found.

— EKING OUT A WIN: The countywide sales tax hike known as Measure ER prevailed this week, with late-arriving ballots pushing the number of ‘yes’ votes just above 50%. “It’s a lifesaver to carry us through the storm we’re all in,” said County Supervisor Holly Mitchell, who led the push among her colleagues to get the measure on the ballot.

— AN EXPENSIVE FEE-FA: Bass was set to attend the U.S. opening game of the World Cup Friday at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood after being invited by FIFA, her office said. Still, Bass wasn’t exempt from the high ticket prices she criticized earlier this year. She paid $2,735 out of pocket for her ticket, a spokesperson said. On a related note, the mayor announced more than 100 “Kick it in the Park” events where Angelenos can watch World Cup games for free.

— MORE OF THE SAME: In a break with recent history, every council member who ran for reelection this year won their race. “People see what we’re doing, and they want us to keep fighting for them,” said Councilmember Tim McOsker, who won nearly three out of every four votes in his San Pedro-to-Watts district.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to address homelessness went to the area around 54th Street and Western Avenue, in the South L.A. district represented by Harris-Dawson.
• On the docket next week: The City Council meets Wednesday to take up a sprawling package of charter reform proposals, including a move to ranked-choice voting and a larger number of council members. Will the council send those ideas to voters or punt them for another two years? Stay tuned!

Stay in touch

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

Reporting from Washington — Most of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ supporters in California say they expect that come November, Hillary Clinton will be elected president — and, by and large, they’re OK with that.

While both Democratic camps prepare for a final battle in the state’s June 7 primary, the latest USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times statewide poll found that just over half of Sanders’ supporters said they expected Clinton to be the next president. About a third of Sanders’ backers said they expected the Vermont senator to emerge the winner, and 12% said they thought Donald Trump would prevail.

Close to 8 in 10 Sanders supporters said in the survey that they would vote for Clinton in a race against Trump, although many said they would do so reluctantly.

Those findings show the reality underlying the still-heated rhetoric of the Democratic primaries: By contrast with the civil war that divides Republicans, Democrats in the country’s largest state have begun to coalesce behind their front-runner.

In the primary race, Clinton holds a modest lead over Sanders, 45% to 37%, among all Democrats and independent voters eligible to vote. Her lead is slightly larger, 47% to 36%, among those most likely to vote. Either way, that’s a significant problem for Sanders.

The poll was conducted before Sanders’ sweep of three Western states — Alaska, Hawaii and Washington — on Saturday, but those victories don’t change the electoral math much. Sanders would need not just a win in California, but something close to a landslide to overcome Clinton’s large lead in delegates before the party’s nominating convention in July.

Something else hasn’t changed: If there’s one blemish in the picture for Clinton, it’s the persistently high percentage of voters who have an unfavorable image of her, 45% in the new poll.

Clinton’s image in heavily Democratic California is more positive than it is in more Republican parts of the country; 52% of the state’s surveyed voters see her favorably. She fares far better than Trump, her most likely opponent in November, who is viewed negatively by almost three-fourths of California voters.

A Democratic voter at a Washington state caucus on Saturday. In the California primary race, Hillary Clinton holds a modest lead over Bernie Sanders, 45% to 37%, among all Democrats and independent voters eligible to vote.

(Elaine Thompson / Associated Press)

But her image with the public lags significantly behind other leading Democrats. That includes President Obama, whose popularity has risen, both statewide and nationally, in recent weeks. He is now seen favorably by 65% of the state’s voters, the highest level since early in his tenure. Gov. Jerry Brown is viewed favorably by 57%. Both men are viewed negatively by about one-third of voters.

The large share of voters who have a negative view of her does not put Clinton in danger of losing California in a general election: She would defeat any of the Republican candidates handily in the state, which has formed the cornerstone of Democratic victories nationally ever since her husband’s win in 1992. Against Trump, in particular, Clinton would win overwhelmingly, the poll indicated, carrying the state 59% to 28%.

But the negative impressions of so many Californians point toward the deeper problem she faces in the country and also to the likely tone of the fall campaign. A Clinton-Trump race, more than any other in recent decades, would feature two candidates who would start the campaign with large parts of the electorate deeply disenchanted with them. Given that, each side is likely to try to focus voters’ attention on the other’s flaws.

“Clinton’s challenge is not one of persuasion, it’s one of motivation,” said Dan Schnur, director of USC’s Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics. “She’s not going to get Sanders supporters to fall in love with her,” he added, but “the other way to motivate your base is to frighten them about the alternative. Against Donald Trump, that should be very doable.”

That’s certainly the case for Gretta Whalen, a 32-year-old freelance writer and communications consultant from Los Angeles, who leans toward Sanders. Clinton, she said, “has been around for so long, and we know so much about her, and not all of it is positive.” Sanders, by contrast, seems attractive, and his ideas feel new, even if “some of them are very pie in the sky and would be very difficult to get the rest of the country on board with.”

But, she added, as she paused from feeding her newborn son, the contest is different “now that we’re looking at a likely race against Donald Trump.” She and her friends, most of whom back Sanders, “are all so shocked that we’re in this place where Donald Trump is a serious contender for president,” she said. Compared with past elections, this campaign “feels a little more surreal.”

“I was much more excited about Bernie” earlier in the campaign season, she added. “We love him as a candidate. We also recognize that he’s not the most realistic winner.”

Just under 1 in 4 voters in the state have a negative image of both of the likely contestants. That group would hold its nose and side with Clinton over Trump, 38% to 23%, with a significant share of them saying they would not vote at all, the poll found.

Sercan Ersoy, a 33-year-old substitute teacher in Oakland, has much more negative feelings about Clinton than does Whalen. A former member of the Green Party who changed his registration in order to vote for Sanders in the primary, Ersoy feels Clinton is “too much of a war hawk” in addition to having too many ties to Wall Street. “I don’t want to vote for her,” he said.

But “if you ask me in late October,” he added, “and there’s a real possibility of a President Trump, I might say, ‘OK. I’ll vote for Hillary.’”

This USC/L.A. Times poll was conducted March 16-23 by telephone, both cellphone and landline, among 1,503 registered voters in California, including 832 Democrats and non-party voters eligible to take part in the June primary. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points for the full sample and 3.7 percentage points for the Democratic primary sample. It was conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, a Democratic polling firm, and the Republican company American Viewpoint.

The poll found the race between Clinton and Sanders dividing along lines that have become familiar during nearly two months of primaries: Sanders overwhelmingly wins voters younger than 30; Clinton does better with older voters. She leads among women by 11 percentage points, among men by 5 points.

Clinton leads narrowly among white voters but has a much larger edge among blacks and Latinos. In a surprise, given her family’s long-standing popularity with Asian voters, Clinton appears to be trailing Sanders with that group, although his edge, 43% to 35%, is within the poll’s margin of error for such a subgroup.

Clinton’s lead among minority voters is “much more muted” than her edge in previous contests in Texas and across the South, said pollster Anna Greenberg. That’s largely a result of a generational divide, with Sanders leading among younger Latinos, much as he does among young white voters. The other minority groups are too small to allow a detailed breakdown by age.

The other significant division in the primary is by party. California’s Democratic primary is open to registered Democrats as well as voters who decline to state a party. Clinton leads Sanders by 14 percentage points among registered Democrats; Sanders leads by 9 percentage points among the nonpartisan voters — again a pattern seen repeatedly in other states.

Among Sanders voters, 80% polled said they would vote for Clinton in November, although the share saying they would do so “reluctantly,” 45%, outnumbers those who would do so “enthusiastically,” 35%.

About 1 in 8 Democratic primary voters surveyed said they would refuse to vote for Clinton if she is the nominee. That’s half the level of rejection that Trump faces among Republican primary voters.

Among the Democratic primary voters most resistant to backing her in the fall are white men 65 and older, according to the poll. By contrast, only 4% of people who identified themselves as students said they would refuse to vote for Clinton — another indication that Sanders’ core supporters are unlikely to reject her candidacy.

By 72% to 21%, Democratic primary voters said in the survey that they are excited about the prospect of voting for the first female president.

Sanders has centered his campaign around the belief that the U.S. economy is unfairly rigged by Wall Street and big corporations. Not surprisingly, a large majority of his voters share that view.

The poll asked people if they thought that in today’s economy “everyone has a fair chance to get ahead in the long run if they work hard” or if “it’s mainly just a few people at the top who have a chance to get ahead.” By more than 2 to 1, Sanders’ voters said that only those at the top could get ahead.

Clinton’s supporters were more evenly divided, with 52% saying that everyone had a fair chance and 42% saying that only those at the top could get ahead. That reflected, in part, the feelings of Latinos, who are more likely than other Americans to say that hard work still pays off in the long run.

Those who backed Clinton were also more likely than Sanders’ backers to say that “when it comes to good jobs for American workers, our best years are ahead of us.” More than 6 in 10 of Clinton’s voters agreed with that statement, compared with just under half of Sanders’.

Neither group of Democratic voters was as pessimistic as Trump’s supporters, however. A majority of them said that when it comes to good jobs, “America’s best years are behind us.”

david.lauter@latimes.com

For more on Campaign 2016, follow @davidlauter

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ALSO:

Trump leads Republican primary field

California’s June primary just became crucial in the race for the White House

Full coverage of the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll

Full poll results and detailed crosstabs

Updates on California politics

Live coverage from the campaign trail

First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli — President Trump’s loyalist federal prosecutor in Los Angeles — has not been shy in recent days about his intention to ferret out voter fraud in California’s primary election and criminally charge those responsible.

He has announced that his office “has multiple election fraud investigations underway” in coordination with the FBI, urged Californians on social media to submit evidence of “potential election fraud” directly to his office, and said flatly he “will be charging some people” with election fraud — just as soon as California certifies its vote count and his office “can prove some of the allegations.”

Essayli’s public callouts and promises are highly unusual and in direct conflict with Justice Department guidance on ballot fraud investigations at the federal level, which states federal prosecutors should not publicly pursue such claims amid of vote counting.

The Justice Manual — which regulates the actions of federal prosecutors nationwide — says the department “should not engage in overt criminal investigative measures in matters involving alleged ballot fraud until the election in question has been concluded, its results certified, and all recounts and election contests concluded,” in part because doing so “runs the risk of chilling legitimate voting and campaign activities and of interjecting the investigation itself into ongoing campaigns and the adjudication of any ensuing election contest.”

Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesman for Essayli’s office, said neither Essayli nor the office had any comment.

Essayli has repeatedly acknowledged in other interviews that he has no evidence of widespread fraud that could sway the results of races, and he even shot down one prominent online conspiracy that falsely alleged Democratic cheating in the Los Angeles mayoral race.

But he has also pointed to more isolated instances of fraud as potentially indicative of bigger problems. He added that there’s no proof such rampant fraud isn’t occurring, partly because of resistance from California to a federal audit of its voter rolls.

Essayli’s remarks are part of a much wider battle to frame fraud in California as pivotal or not, in which Republicans cite individual instances of alleged fraud as evidence of some grand scheme by Democrats to steal the election from them, and Democrats — along with many elections experts — say there is no evidence that isolated crimes reflect fraud on a scale large enough to impact election outcomes.

His remarks have added fuel to baseless claims from Trump and other influential conservative voices that California’s elections have been poorly compromised by coordinated Democratic “cheating.” They have made Essayli one of the most prominent Trump administration figures in the nationwide debate around election integrity — which election experts expect to intensify ahead of November’s midterms.

A public campaign

Essayli has made his case in recent days on various alternative and right-wing news programs and podcasts, arguing that California’s slow process for counting votes had undermined public trust and needs to be audited.

On One America News Network, Essayli said his office has been “sounding the alarm on California’s election system” because it’s ripe for fraud.

“We believe that it has major vulnerabilities. We believe California does not have sufficient safeguards to make sure only eligible U.S. citizens are voting in elections in California, and that is why we’ve been demanding an audit of the California voter rolls,” he said.

On NewsNation with Chris Cuomo, Essayli said he doesn’t “care what the outcome of the election is,” but wants voters “to have confidence in the systems, and that the laws are being followed.”

“I guarantee you, when we do bring cases, we will have plenty of evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, in a court of law — that is how we work,” he said.

On the podcast of conservative commentator Glenn Beck, Essayli said he was “prohibited from discussing ongoing investigations,” but that “election fraud is not a theory” but “a real thing” — noting his office recently secured a guilty plea from a woman who paid homeless people to register to vote.

He said California is “a fraudster’s paradise,” accused the state Legislature of “going out of their way to make it as easy as possible for people to commit fraud,” and repeated oft-cited complaints about California’s voter ID policies being lax, its universal mail ballot policies sending ballots to the wrong places, its ballot collection policies allowing “harvesting” and its voter rolls being “dirty,” or filled with ineligible voters.

Essayli said all of that makes his job “incredibly difficult,” because “California has removed the paper trail, they’ve removed the chain of custody, they’ve removed any meaningful way for us to basically have a forensic audit of where a ballot came from,” but that he will nonetheless be bringing election fraud charges in the next “one to two months.”

State and local elections officials in California have defended the state’s policies as facilitating voting by as many eligible voters as possible, which they say is more important than a quick count. They’ve said there are robust procedures in place to ensure ballots are cast fairly and counted accurately, and to identify any problems and audit the results.

Elections experts say instances of fraud do exist, both in California and everywhere else in the country, but that robust efforts in past years to investigate and identify widespread fraud that could sway an election — including by Trump and his lawyers but also outside organizations — have always failed.

Essayli’s efforts have drawn sharp criticism from elections experts, leading Democrats and former prosecutors in the office.

Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor who studies elections and was a senior policy adviser on democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House, said what Essayli is doing — throwing out unspecified claims of fraud amid an ongoing election and before he has built a case — is “absolutely nuts” and “not a thing that real prosecutors do.”

Before the current administration, the “mantra” of federal prosecutors, he said, was that “you only hold a press conference about a not-yet-concluded investigation when the public is already aware of a large crime,” such as a mass shooting. “Absent that, you wait for the facts to come in, and you see whether there has been a legal violation, and then and only then do you issue a press release — usually hand in hand with an indictment or a conviction.”

In an election, Levitt said the standard is even higher, and “the ethos of a federal prosecutor should be to never become the story, and to never make the prosecutorial job itself an impact in the election you are investigating.”

In an MS NOW interview, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a former federal prosecutor in the L.A. office, blasted Essayli as wildly searching for fraud to please Trump — despite it and other efforts to please Trump, including on immigration, causing an exodus of experienced career prosecutors from the office.

Schiff said Essayli was “basically making a plea to the public: ‘Please send me evidence. I’m asserting there’s fraud. We don’t have evidence of it, but please send me something. I need to make the boss happy.’”

Another former prosecutor in the office, who requested anonymity to avoid retaliation, said Essayli is pursuing alleged election fraud cases as hard as he is only because “Trump told him to,” and he’s “constantly auditioning for a bigger D.C. job in case he gets kicked out of his current one.”

Essayli is not the U.S. attorney for Los Angeles — only the “first assistant” — because he has been unable to win confirmation from the U.S. Senate and has only remained in charge through a legal loophole.

Investigations in the works

It’s unclear what specific issues or incidents Essayli’s office is investigating.

Essayli has said his investigations so far lean toward individuals rather than networks, and he told the California Post that he would be investigating a report that thousands of people were registered to vote at homeless shelters with far fewer beds.

His office also looked into false claims that an election night ballot update in Los Angeles County include no votes for Spencer Pratt, the Republican candidate. He said his office “reviewed official county records” and determined the claim was false.

“My office will continue monitoring the election counting process and will follow the evidence wherever it leads,” he said.

One person involved in investigating the latter case was Assistant U.S. Atty. Robert Renner, who joined the office in March after previously serving as deputy general counsel for the Center for Individual Rights, a nonprofit Washington, D.C., law firm where he worked on lawsuits focused on conservative free-speech issues, according to his LinkedIn page.

A worker carries ballots at the Los Angeles County Ballot Processing Center.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

Renner, who referred questions to the office spokesperson, visited an L.A. County ballot processing center as part of the investigation, where he questioned election officials about the ballot update, according to a law enforcement source with knowledge of the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

Election officials have said their numbers were always correct and that the discrepancy was based on a one-minute lag in vote updates for Pratt by The Associated Press, which also confirmed the lag.

Renner also grilled election officials about whether or not post office officials had backdated postmarks on mail ballots sent after election day so they could still be counted, the source said.

Essayli’s elevation to the top prosecutor position in L.A. was part of a broader push by the Trump administration to fill key Justice Department roles with people loyal to the president and open to his election skepticism. Earlier this year, a Times investigation detailed how disgraced ex-L.A. County prosecutor Eric Neff was named “acting chief” of the Justice Department’s voting section.

Neff led a bungled election integrity case at the L.A. County district attorney’s office that was thrown out after an internal review revealed it hinged on the word of “Stop The Steal” activists who had pushed Trump’s discredited theory that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged.”

It was one of two election integrity cases Neff tried in his entire career before being elevated to the voting chief post by Asst. Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon, another proud Trump loyalist from California.

Michael Sanchez, a spokesperson for Dean Logan, head of the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, said the office has not received any formal document requests or investigation notices from Essayli’s office, only “routine questions about operations.”

What will come of Essayli’s investigations is also unclear. He will have to prove whatever allegations he makes in court — which he has repeatedly appeared to begrudge in recent interviews.

“Instead of putting the burden on the system to reassure the people [that] only legal citizens are voting, one person one vote is the law of the land, and the burden on the system to assure us that there’s integrity and we can believe in it,” he complained to Beck, “they’ve flipped it and now it’s on us to prove every allegation of fraud.”

President Donald Trump has posted a video of a ‘swift and lethal’ US strike he claims has killed the leader of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang. Trump said Venezuela helped the US with the strike on Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores.

WASHINGTON — President Trump said Friday that a “swift and lethal kinetic” U.S. strike has killed Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, whom he called “the infamous leader” of the Tren de Aragua gang.

Tren de Aragua has been labeled by the United States as a terrorist organization. Guerrero Flores was charged in a New York federal court with racketeering conspiracy and other crimes, including lending support to terrorists in crimes that stretched more than a decade, authorities announced in December.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on X that the strike occurred earlier in the week on a Tren de Aragua compound in Venezuela.

U.S. Atty. Jay Clayton alleged at the time that the gang is responsible for countless acts of violence, extortion and drug trafficking in North America, South America and Europe. Trump nominated Clayton on Thursday to be director of national intelligence.

The U.S. State Department had offered rewards of up to $5 million for information leading to Guerrero Flores’ arrest.

In a post on his social media site, Trump wrote, “Tren de Aragua terrorists no longer have safe haven in Venezuela or anywhere else and, under my leadership, we will find these vicious murderers and drug lords anytime, anyplace, and send them to the depths of hell where they belong.” Trump’s post referred to Guerrero Flores by his alias, Niño Guerrero.

Hegseth said, “The operation underscores the shared U.S. and Venezuelan commitment to take the fight to narco-terrorists and deny them any safe haven in our hemisphere.”

Venezuela’s ministry of communications did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the operation.

Trump has taken a series of extraordinary actions against the gang, including a series of strikes on small boats his administration has accused of smuggling drugs to the U.S.. At least 207 people have been killed in boat strikes by the U.S. military in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea since the Trump administration began the campaign in early September.

Independent investigations, by the Associated Press and others, have raised questions about the boat passengers’ alleged connection to drug trafficking. And, in any case, many legal experts say the boat attacks amount to extrajudicial killings in violation of international law.

Trump and administration officials have consistently blamed Tren de Aragua for being at the root of the violence and illicit drug dealing that plague some U.S. cities. The president spent months repeating the claim — contradicted by a declassified U.S. intelligence assessment — that Tren de Aragua had operated under Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s control. The U.S. invaded Venezuela and seized Maduro in January to face U.S. drug charges.

Tren de Aragua originated more than a decade ago at an infamously lawless prison in Venezuela’s central state of Aragua. The gang has expanded in recent years as millions of Venezuelans migrated to other Latin American countries or the U.S. in search of better living conditions.

Guerrero Flores returned to the prison in Aragua on murder and other convictions in 2013, when Venezuela’s crisis began and corruption, mismanagement and a drop in crude prices wrecked the oil-dependent economy. Guerrero Flores and a few other inmates saw a profitable opportunity as the government neglected prisons.

They assumed control and administration of the prison, establishing a system that controlled the entire inmate population through force and extortion. Over time, they transformed the lockup into a sort of city that included a zoo, baseball field, casino and restaurants. Guerrero Flores had his own lavish suite.

The size of the gang is unclear. Countries with large populations of Venezuelan migrants, including Peru and Colombia, have accused the group of being behind a spree of violence in the region. Still, unlike other criminal organizations from Colombia, Brazil and Central America, Tren de Aragua has no large-scale involvement in smuggling cocaine across international borders, according to InSight Crime, a think tank that tracks crime across Latin America.

In Venezuela, gang leaders have long been known to participate in various illegal activities, including illicit gold mining.

Weissert writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Regina Garcia Cano in Mexico City contributed to this report.

By June 2026, the cracks inside the GOP weren’t hidden anymore. On May 19, the Senate voted 50–47 to push forward a bipartisan war powers resolution that would limit President Donald Trump’s ability to keep military ops going against Iran. Four Republican senators crossed the aisle and voted with Democrats. Then on June 3, the House went even further with a 215–208 vote—four House Republicans joined Democrats in a pretty blunt pushback against Trump’s leadership.

At first it looked like just another fight over war powers and Congress doing its job. But it feels like something bigger: the start of a real tug-of-war over what the Republican Party is going to be once Trump isn’t the center of everything.

For almost ten years now, Republican politics has been all about Trump. You rose if you stood with him, and you got sidelined if you didn’t. Loyalty often counted more than old-school conservative ideas, passing bills, or sticking to principles. But every party eventually has to answer the tough question that personality-driven movements hate: what happens when the big guy starts looking more like a problem than a winner? That question is getting harder for Republicans to dodge.

Trump didn’t just take over the party in 2016 — he remade it. The old Republican worldview of strong alliances, free trade, and steady leadership shifted toward a more populist, Trump-centered style.

It worked for a while. He won elections, fired up voters who felt ignored, and built a super-loyal base. As long as the wins kept coming, most Republicans went along. Parties get tested in the tough times, though — not the good ones. And the Iran conflict is turning into exactly that kind of test.

A lot of Republicans who backed Trump’s rise never thought they’d end up defending another big Middle East war. Trump made “no more endless wars” one of his best lines—slamming both parties for the messes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now the fighting with Iran has dragged on for months. Costs are adding up, gas prices sting at the pump, and nobody’s really clear on what “winning” would even mean. That’s created real quiet discomfort inside the party. The senators and reps who voted to rein in Trump’s war powers weren’t just talking procedure. They were signaling that blind loyalty isn’t automatic anymore.

Parties talk a lot about ideology, but when things get serious, survival often wins out. Some Republicans are starting to put distance between themselves and Trump — not because they hate everything he stands for, but because they don’t want their own careers sinking with one person. There’s a real difference between backing conservative policies and handing the whole party over to a single leader. More of them seem to be waking up to that.

What’s interesting is that the pushback is coming from inside the tent. Democrats opposing Trump is old news. When Republicans do it, it hits different. Senators like Rand Paul, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Bill Cassidy broke ranks on the Senate vote. In the House, guys like Thomas Massie, Brian Fitzpatrick, Tom Barrett, and Warren Davidson did the same. These are still small numbers. But big shifts often start small.

The bigger story might be that some Republicans are finally imagining a future without Trump dominating every headline. A younger crop is coming up—they agree with him on immigration, trade, and culture wars, but they don’t want the party to be defined only by personal loyalty to him forever. They want a Republican Party that can keep going after he’s gone—Trumpism as one important piece, not the whole thing.

History shows parties sometimes tie themselves too tightly to charismatic leaders. Sometimes it revitalizes them. Sometimes it drags them down.

Right now, some inside the GOP worry Trump might be moving from asset to liability—especially with the Iran war dragging on and polarization getting worse. Trump is still the biggest force in the party with a rock-solid base. But power and lasting control aren’t the same.

These congressional votes show that at least some Republicans are already looking ahead to the next chapter. They see the risks of hitching the whole party’s future to one man. Whether they’re right or wrong, time will tell. But the conversation inside the party has clearly moved past just Iran or war powers. It’s now about whether the Republican Party still belongs to Trump — or whether it can finally start belonging to itself again.

The US president has sought to reshape the capital city’s image and institutions through series of plans and projects.

President Donald Trump’s name is set to be removed from the facade of the Kennedy Center, an entertainment and cultural institution in Washington, DC, after a judge rejected a last-minute request to keep it in place.

US District Judge Christopher Cooper dismissed an effort by the centre’s board, whose members were handpicked by Trump, to reverse a previous order taking his name off the building by Friday.

The saga is yet another example of Trump’s effort to make changes to major sites and institutions across the nation’s capital, on which he has sought to impose himself through a series of planned projects that include an enormous triumphal arch and a White House ballroom.

Many of those efforts have faced legal challenges.

Trump dismissed the centre’s previous leadership and appointed a board that named him chairman.

Cooper had ruled last month that the addition of Trump’s name to the exterior of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was illegal and ordered its removal.

“Unfortunately, Judge Cooper and the Radical Left would rather see it DIE than have President Trump transform it into something that everyone could be proud of,” Trump wrote in a 580-word social media post at the time, slamming the decision, referring to himself in third-person.

A June 4 memo from the centre’s Office of General Counsel had instructed staff to use the name “The John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts” or “Kennedy Center” in email signatures, letterhead and other documents. The centre’s website also dropped Trump’s name.

But the board attempted to salvage the change in an appeal on Thursday, appealing a previous ruling that denied their request for a stay. Cooper rejected that request on Friday.