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As the media industry took stock of Paramount Skydance’s startling acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, one question lingered on the minds of many in the news business and beyond: what will this mean for CNN?

The iconic 24-hour cable news network is among the various Warner Bros. assets that would be scooped up by Paramount in a deal announced Thursday that could transform the media landscape.

Paramount has undergone a swift transformation under Chief Executive David Ellison following his family’s acquisition of the company last summer. These changes reached CBS News almost immediately with the appointment of Bari Weiss, the controversial Free Press co-founder, as its new editor in chief.

Bari Weiss moderated a town hall with Erika Kirk, widow of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

(CBS via Getty Images)

Weiss’ tenure so far has been rocky.

Her decision to pull a “60 Minutes” story about conditions inside an El Salvador prison that housed undocumented Venezuelan migrants from the U.S. received widespread criticism and accusations of political motivation. The network said the story was held for more reporting, and the segment eventually aired.

There was more upheaval last week at the news magazine, when “60 Minutes” correspondent and CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper announced that he’d be leaving to spend more time with his family.

And earlier this year, a veteran producer at “CBS Evening News With Tony Dokoupil” was fired after he expressed disagreement about the editorial direction of the newscast.

Now, the concern is that similar changes could be in store for CNN, which has long been a target of President Trump’s ire. He has personally called for the ouster of hosts at the network who have questioned his policies.

CNN Worldwide Chief Executive Mark Thompson tried to quell some of those fears, particularly inside his own newsroom.

In an internal memo dated Thursday and obtained by The Times, Thompson urged employees not to “jump to conclusions about the future” and try to concentrate on their work.

“We’re still near the start of what is already an incredibly newsy year at home and abroad,” he wrote in the note. “Let’s continue to focus on delivering the best possible journalism to the millions of people who rely on us all around the world.”

Chairman and CEO of CNN Worldwide Mark Thompson and media editor for Semafor, Maxwell Tani, speak onstage.

(Shannon Finney / Getty Images for Semafor)

CNN declined to comment beyond Thompson’s memo.

Ellison has said his vision for a news business is one that is ideologically down the middle.

“We want to build a scaled news service that is basically, fundamentally in the trust business, that is in the truth business, and that speaks to the 70% of Americans that are in the middle,” he said during a Dec. 8 interview on CNBC, shortly after Warner said it had chosen Netflix as the winning bidder for its studios, HBO and HBO Max. “And we believe that by doing so that is for us, kind of doing well, while doing good.”

Ellison demurred when asked whether Trump would embrace him as CNN’s owner, given the president’s past criticisms of the network.

“We’ve had great conversations with the president about this, but … I don’t want to speak for him in any way, shape or form,” he said.

First Amendment scholars have raised concerns about press freedom and free speech rights under the Trump administration, particularly after last month’s arrest of former CNN journalist Don Lemon and the Federal Communications Commission’s pressure on late-night hosts like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert.

Press freedom groups have long asked questions in other countries about how authoritarian regimes use their power and “oligarchical alliances to belittle, silence, and punish independent journalistic voices, or to steer media ownership toward … a preferred version of the truth,” said RonNell Andersen Jones, a 1st Amendment scholar and distinguished professor in the college of law at the University of Utah, in an email.

“We see them asking at least some of these questions about the U.S. today,” she wrote.

Apprehension about the merger also extends beyond its implications for CNN and the media business.

Lawmakers such as Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) have raised concerns about how the consolidation of two major Hollywood studios could affect industry jobs and film and television production — which has significantly slowed since the pandemic, the dual writers’ and actors’ strikes in 2023 and corporate cutbacks in spending.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called the deal an “antitrust disaster” that she feared could raise prices and limit choices for consumers.

“With the cloud of corruption looming over Trump’s Department of Justice, it’ll be up to the American people to speak up and state attorneys general to enforce the law,” she said in a statement.

Already, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta has said the merger isn’t a “done deal,” adding that he is in communication with other states attorneys general about the issue.

“As the epicenter of the entertainment industry, California has a special interest in protecting competition,” he posted Friday on X.

Ellison addressed some of these concerns in a statement Friday.

“By bringing together these world-class studios, our complementary streaming platforms, and the extraordinary talent behind them, we will create even greater value for audiences, partners and shareholders,” he said. “We couldn’t be more excited for what’s ahead.”

Times staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.

President Trump on Friday directed federal agencies to stop using technology from San Francisco artificial intelligence company Anthropic, escalating a high-profile clash between the AI startup and the Pentagon over safety.

In a Friday post on the social media site Truth Social, Trump described the company as “radical left” and “woke.”

“We don’t need it, we don’t want it, and will not do business with them again!” Trump said.

The president’s harsh words mark a major escalation in the ongoing battle between some in the Trump administration and several technology companies over the use of artificial intelligence in defense tech.

Anthropic has been sparring with the Pentagon, which had threatened to end its $200-million contract with the company on Friday if it didn’t loosen restrictions on its AI model so it could be used for more military purposes. Anthropic had been asking for more guarantees that its tech wouldn’t be used for surveillance of Americans or autonomous weapons.

The tussle could hobble Anthropic’s business with the government. The Trump administration said the company was added to a sweeping national security blacklist, ordering federal agencies to immediately discontinue use of its products and barring any government contractors from maintaining ties with it.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who met with Anthropic’s Chief Executive Dario Amodei this week, criticized the tech company after Trump’s Truth Social post.

“Anthropic delivered a master class in arrogance and betrayal as well as a textbook case of how not to do business with the United States Government or the Pentagon,” he wrote Friday on social media site X.

Anthropic didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Anthropic announced a two-year agreement with the Department of Defense in July to “prototype frontier AI capabilities that advance U.S. national security.”

The company has an AI chatbot called Claude, but it also built a custom AI system for U.S. national security customers.

On Thursday, Amodei signaled the company wouldn’t cave to the Department of Defense’s demands to loosen safety restrictions on its AI models.

The government has emphasized in negotiations that it wants to use Anthropic’s technology only for legal purposes, and the safeguards Anthropic wants are already covered by the law.

Still, Amodei was worried about Washington’s commitment.

“We have never raised objections to particular military operations nor attempted to limit use of our technology in an ad hoc manner,” he said in a blog post. “However, in a narrow set of cases, we believe AI can undermine, rather than defend, democratic values.”

Tech workers have backed Anthropic’s stance.

Unions and worker groups representing 700,000 employees at Amazon, Google and Microsoft said this week in a joint statement that they’re urging their employers to reject these demands as well if they have additional contracts with the Pentagon.

“Our employers are already complicit in providing their technologies to power mass atrocities and war crimes; capitulating to the Pentagon’s intimidation will only further implicate our labor in violence and repression,” the statement said.

Anthropic’s standoff with the U.S. government could benefit its competitors, such as Elon Musk’s xAI or OpenAI.

Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT and one of Anthropic’s biggest competitors, told CNBC in an interview that he trusts Anthropic.

“I think they really do care about safety, and I’ve been happy that they’ve been supporting our war fighters,” he said. “I’m not sure where this is going to go.”

Anthropic has distinguished itself from its rivals by touting its concern about AI safety.

The company, valued at roughly $380 billion, is legally required to balance making money with advancing the company’s public benefit of “responsible development and maintenance of advanced AI for the long-term benefit of humanity.”

Developers, businesses, government agencies and other organizations use Anthropic’s tools. Its chatbot can generate code, write text and perform other tasks. Anthropic also offers an AI assistant for consumers and makes money from paid subscriptions as well as contracts. Unlike OpenAI, which is testing ads in ChatGPT, Anthropic has pledged not to show ads in its chatbot Claude.

The company has roughly 2,000 employees and has revenue equivalent to about $14 billion a year.

Iraq is in a political deadlock. It still has no government, though general elections were held in November.

At the heart of the crisis is the former prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who was picked by the majority coalition in parliament as its candidate to take over the role again.

But that choice has been met with strong opposition from United States President Donald Trump.

And that warning has further polarised the political landscape in the country.

So, what’s really behind Washington’s strong stance against al-Maliki? And what role does the US still play in Iraq?

Presenter: James Bays

Guests

Muhanad Seloom – Assistant professor of international politics at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies

Ahmed Rushdi – President of the House of Iraqi Expertise Foundation, and a former foreign policy adviser in the Iraqi parliament.

Kenneth Katzman – Senior Fellow at The Soufan Center

US President Donald Trump said the US is in talks with the government of Cuba and that “we could very well end up having a friendly takeover of Cuba.” The country is facing a severe energy shortage after the US imposed a fuel blockade.

WASHINGTON — President Trump just can’t seem to choose among friends in the Texas Senate Republican primary.

So when he travels to the state on Friday for his first post-State of the Union trip, where he plans to promote his energy and economic policies, Trump will have all three candidates in the competitive race join him — just days before his party casts ballots in the primary race.

Sen. John Cornyn is battling for his fifth term and is being challenged by state Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt in a primary fight that has become viciously personal. And all three men, missing the coveted endorsement from Trump, have been trying to highlight their ties to him as they ramp up their campaigning ahead of Tuesday’s vote.

For his part, Trump will be seeking to ride the message of his State of the Union address from Tuesday, where he declared a return to economic prosperity and a more secure America — two centerpiece arguments for Republicans as they campaign to keep their congressional majorities this fall.

Trump’s hesitation to endorse in the Texas Senate primary speaks to the tricky dynamics of the race.

Cornyn is unpopular with a segment of Texas’ GOP base, in part for his early dismissiveness of Trump’s 2024 comeback campaign and for his role in authoring tougher restrictions on guns after the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. But Senate GOP leadership and allied groups see Cornyn as the stronger general election candidate, in light of a series of troubles that have shadowed Paxton.

Paxtonbeat impeachment on fraud charges in 2023, and has faced allegations of marital infidelity by his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, have urged Trump to endorse Cornyn. They and allied campaign groups argue that the seat would cost the party hundreds of millions more to defend with Paxton as the candidate.

“It is a strong possibility we cannot hold Texas if John Cornyn is not our nominee,” Scott told Fox News on Wednesday.

Hunt, a second-term Houston-area representative, was a later entry to the race, but claims a kinship with Trump, having endorsed him early in the 2024 race. Hunt campaigned regularly for Trump and earned a prime-time speaking slot at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

If no candidate reaches 50% in Tuesday’s primary, the top two finishers will advance to a May 26 runoff.

Cornyn’s campaign and a half-dozen allied groups have poured more than $63 million into the race since last fall, chiefly trying to slow Paxton but recently attacking Hunt in an effort to keep him from making it to the runoff.

Earlier this month, Trump feinted toward weighing in on the race when he said he was taking “a serious look” at endorsing in the Texas primary. He has since reaffirmed his neutrality.

Still, you wouldn’t know it from watching TV in Texas. Cornyn has been airing ads since last year touting his support for Trump’s agenda, even though his relationship with the president has been cool at times. Paxton and Hunt both have ads airing now featuring them standing with Trump.

“I like all three of them, actually. Those are the toughest races. They’ve all supported me. They’re all good. You’re supposed to pick one, so we’ll see what happens. But I support all three,” Trump said earlier this month.

The GOP battle comes as Democrats have a contested primary of their own in Texas between state Rep. James Talarico, a self-described policy wonk who regularly quotes the Bible, and progressive favorite U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett.

Trump hasn’t been shy about wading into other contested Republican primaries in the state. Parts of Corpus Christi fall within Texas’ 34th congressional district, where former Rep. Mayra Flores is fighting to reclaim her seat against the Trump-endorsed Eric Flores. (The two are not related.) The winner of the primary will face off against Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, long a target of the GOP, whose district was redrawn to make it easier for a Republican to win.

Eric Flores will be at the Trump event at the Port of Corpus Christi, which technically is located in a neighboring district.

Elsewhere in the state, the president has also endorsed Rep. Tony Gonzales, who is fighting calls from his own party to resign from Congress after reports of an alleged affair with a former staffer who later died after she set herself on fire. Gonzales is refusing to step down and has said that there will be “opportunities for all of the details and facts to come out” and that the stories about the situation do not represent “all the facts.”

Gonzales is facing a primary challenge from Brandon Herrera, a gun manufacturer and gun rights influencer who Gonzales defeated by fewer than 400 votes in their 2024 runoff. The White House did not return a request for comment on Thursday on whether Trump stands by his endorsement of Gonzales.

Kim and Beaumont write for the Associated Press. Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Ia. AP writer Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix contributed to this report.

At a time when so many forces seem to be dividing us as a nation, it is tragic that President Trump seeks to co-opt or destroy whatever remaining threads unite us.

I refer, of course, to the U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team winning gold: the kind of victory that normally causes Americans to forget their differences and instead focus on something wholesome, like chanting “USA” while mispronouncing the names of the European players we defeated before taking on Canada.

This should have been pure civic oxygen. Instead, we got video of Kash Patel pounding beers with the players — which is not illegal, but does make you wonder whether the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has a desk somewhere with neglected paperwork that might hold the answers to the D.B. Cooper mystery.

Then came the presidential phone call to the men’s team, during which Trump joked about having to invite the women’s team to the State of the Union, too, or risk impeachment — the sort of sexist humor that lands best if you’re a 79-year-old billionaire and not a 23-year-old athlete wondering whether C-SPAN is recording. (The U.S. women’s hockey team also brought home the gold this year, also after beating Canada. The White House invited the women to the State of the Union, and they declined.)

It’s hard to blame the players on the men’s team who were subjected to Trump’s joke. They didn’t invite this. They’re not Muhammad Ali taking a principled stand against Vietnam, or Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising fists for Black power at the Olympics in 1968, or even Colin Kaepernick protesting police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem. They’re just hockey bros who survived a brutal game and were suddenly confronted with two of the most powerful figures in the federal government — and a cooler full of beer.

When the FBI director wants to hang, you don’t say, “Sorry, sir, we have a team curfew.” And when the president calls, you definitely don’t say, “Can you hold? We’re trying to remain serious, bipartisan and chivalrous.” Under those circumstances, most agreeable young men would salute, smile and try to skate past it.

But symbolism matters. If the team becomes perceived as a partisan mascot, then the victory stops belonging to the country and starts belonging to a faction. That would be bad for everyone, including the team, because politics is the fastest way to turn something fun into something divisive.

And Trump’s meddling with the medal winners didn’t end after his call. It continued during Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, when Trump spent six minutes honoring the team, going so far as to announce that he would award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to goalie Connor Hellebuyck.

To be sure, presidents have always tried to bask in reflected glory. The main difference with Trump, as always, is scale. He doesn’t just associate himself with popular institutions; he absorbs them in the popular mind.

We’ve seen this dynamic play out with evangelical Christianity, law enforcement, the nation of Israel and various cultural symbols. Once something gets labeled as “Trump-adjacent,” millions of Americans are drawn to it. However, millions of other Americans recoil from it, which is not healthy for institutions that are supposed to serve everyone. (And what happens to those institutions when Trump is replaced by someone from the opposing party?)

Meanwhile, our culture keeps splitting into niche markets. Heck, this year’s Super Bowl necessitated two separate halftime shows to accommodate our divided political and cultural worldviews. In the past, this would have been deemed both unnecessary and logistically impossible.

But today, absent a common culture, entertainment companies micro-target via demographics. Many shows code either right or left — rural or urban. The success of the western drama “Yellowstone,” which spawned imitators such as “Ransom Canyon” on Netflix, demonstrates the success of appealing to MAGA-leaning viewers. Meanwhile, most “prestige” TV shows skew leftward. The same cultural divides now exist among comedians and musicians and in almost every aspect of American life.

None of this was caused by Trump — technology (cable news, the internet, the iPhone) made narrowcasting possible — but he weaponized it for politics. And whereas most modern politicians tried to build broad majorities the way broadcast TV once chased ratings — by offending as few people as possible — Trump came not to bring peace but division.

Now, unity isn’t automatically virtuous. North Korea is unified. So is a cult. Americans are supposed to disagree — it’s practically written into the Constitution. Disagreement is baked into our national identity like free speech and complaining about taxes.

But a functioning republic needs a few shared experiences that aren’t immediately sorted into red and blue bins. And when Olympic gold medals get drafted into the culture wars, that’s when you know we’re running out of common ground.

You might think conservatives — traditionally worried about social cohesion and anomie — would lament this erosion of a mainstream national identity. Instead, they keep supporting the political equivalent of a lawn mower aimed at the delicate fabric of our nation.

So here we are. The state of the union is divided. But how long can a house divided against itself stand?

We are, as they say, skating on thin ice.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

WASHINGTON — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani presented President Trump with a mock newspaper front page during a visit to the White House on Thursday to discuss massive new housing investments in the city.

It’s a tactic designed to appeal to Trump, who is keenly aware of his media coverage and, aside from being an avid viewer of cable news, is known to voraciously consume coverage in the local New York City publications. The Republican president and Democratic mayor have maintained a cordial relationship since their first meeting last fall.

Anna Bahr, Mamdani’s communications director, said the mayor’s team created a mock front page and headlines for Trump to look at and demonstrate what kind of reaction new federal housing investments could bring. The mock New York Daily News front page says “Trump to City: Let’s Build” — a riff on the famous 1975 cover that read “Ford to City: Drop Dead,” referring to Gerald Ford’s vow to veto financial assistance to the city.

The mayor posted the photo of their meeting, featuring the front pages, to his social media page.

Mamdani’s office declined to elaborate on the mayor’s housing proposal, but Bahr said Trump was “very enthusiastic” about it. When Trump and Mamdani last met in November, the president encouraged Mamdani to return to him with an idea to build big things together in New York City, Bahr said.

Though Trump repeatedly maligned Mamdani as a “communist” as he ran for New York City mayor, the president appeared charmed by him after their one-on-one meeting at the White House in November.

At the meeting on Thursday – which was previously unannounced and lasted for about an hour – Mamdani also brought up the detainment of Ellie Aghayeva, a Columbia University student from Azerbaijan who was arrested earlier Thursday by federal immigration agents.

The agents had accessed a campus residence by claiming they were searching for a “missing person,” according to Aghayeva’s attorneys and Columbia’s president. As he met with Trump, Mamdani urged Trump to consider releasing her.

In a phone call not long after their White House meeting, Trump told the mayor that Aghayeva would be released. Mamdani also gave White House chief of staff Susie Wiles a list of four other students targeted by federal authorities and asked for the administration’s help with them.

The four students are Mahmoud Khalil, Yunseo Chung, Mohsen Mahdawi and Leqaa Kordia, who were all detained for their roles in pro-Palestinian protests. Of the four, only Kordia remains in custody, although all cases are proceeding through the courts.

Kim writes for the Associated Press.

The men’s team was criticised after several players appeared to laugh when Trump made his comment, but Knight said: “I think there’s a genuine level of support there and respect. That’s being overshadowed by a quick lapse.

“The guys were in a tough spot, so I think it’s a shame this storyline and narrative has kind of blown up and [is] overshadowing that connection and genuine interest in one another and cheering each other on.”

US men’s player Charlie McAvoy subsequently apologised for his team’s response, saying it was “not reflective” of how his side view the women’s squad.

“Certainly sorry for how we responded to it in that moment,” the Boston Bruins player told reporters before an NHL game on Thursday. “Things just happened really quick there.

“If you know the men’s team, and if you know the relationships that we have, the amount of time that we’ve spent with the women’s team and how we’ve supported them, it’s certainly not reflective of how we feel and look at them and their accomplishments.”

Knight, 36, ended her Olympic career with 15 goals, the most by any US male or female player.

She said she hopes the Trump controversy proves to be a “really good learning point, to really focus on how we talk about women, not only in sport but in industry”.

She said: “Women aren’t less than, and their achievements shouldn’t be overshadowed by anything else other than how great they are.”

U.S. women’s hockey star Hilary Knight wasn’t a fan of a comment that President Trump made about her team days after it claimed Olympic gold at the Milan-Cortina Games.

“I thought it was sort of a distasteful joke, and unfortunately, that is overshadowing a lot of the success of just women at the Olympics carrying for Team USA and having amazing gold medal feats,” Knight said Wednesday during an appearance on ESPN’s “SportsCenter.”

On Feb. 19, the U.S. defeated Canada 2-1 in overtime for a third gold medal in women’s hockey; the team won gold in 1998 and 2018. Three days later, the U.S. men’s hockey team also won gold by defeating Canada 2-1 in overtime.

After the men’s game, Trump addressed the U.S. players by phone in the locker room, extending an invitation for them to attend his State of the Union address two days later and adding a seemingly dismissive comment about the women’s team.

“I must tell you, we’re gonna have to bring the women’s team, you do know that,” Trump said during the call. By not inviting the other American gold medal hockey team, the president said, “I do believe I’d probably be impeached.”

Trump’s comment was met with loud laughter in the locker room. But Knight said she and her teammates aren’t spending much time thinking about the remark.

“We’re just trying to focus on celebrating the women in our room, the extraordinary efforts and continue to celebrate three gold medals in program history, as well as the double gold for both men’s and women’s at the same time and really not detract from that with a distasteful joke,” Knight, who has won two gold medals and three silvers in five Olympics with the U.S. team, said.

“It was unfortunate, but yeah, I think really focusing on celebrating all great things that have come out of the Olympics and feeling the love and the support and getting back in our respective communities and sharing this journey with them, that’s what it’s all about and that’s what makes this moment super special.”

The majority of the men’s team met with Trump at the White House on Tuesday before being honored at the State of the Union address, where they received a bipartisan standing ovation lasting about two minutes. During his address, Trump announced that goalie Connor Hellebuyck will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

The women’s team confirmed in a statement Monday that it declined an invitation to attend the State of the Union address “due to the timing and previously scheduled academic and professional commitments following the Games.” Trump said during the address that the women’s team would be visiting the White House “very soon.”

Amid the controversy over Trump’s locker room comment, hip-hop legend Flavor Flav invited the women’s hockey team to a special event celebrating their achievement in Las Vegas. He later extended the invitation to “ALL Female US Olympians and Paralympian medalists” for the “She’s Got Game Weekend” from July 16-19.

“It was definitely super special, after everything that’s been going around online, to have someone step up like that and really go to bat for us,” forward Alex Carpenter said of Flav’s invitation during a Seattle Torrent news conference on Wednesday. “I think we’re fully gonna take advantage of that and go have some fun and celebrate like we deserve to.”

U.S.men’s team member Jeremy Swayman told reporters at Boston Bruins practice Wednesday that the laughter heard in the locker room following Trump’s comment does not reflect how the players feel about the women’s team and its accomplishments.

“Yeah, we should have reacted differently,” Swayman said. “We are so excited for the women’s team, we have so much respect for the women’s team, and to share that gold medal with them is something that we’re forever grateful for. And now that we’re home we get to share that together forever and see the incredible support we have from the USA and share in this incredible gold medal.”

Jack Hughes, who scored the winning goal for the U.S. men against Canada, said the men’s players were caught “in the moment” during the president’s call that came during the middle of their victory celebration.

“Obviously it is what it is now, but we have so much respect for the women’s team and they have so much respect for us,” Hughes told reporters after his New Jersey Devils’ 2-1 loss to the Buffalo Sabres on Wednesday night. “We’re all just proud Americans and we’re happy that we both swept the Olympics.”

Knight said she thinks there is “a genuine level of support and respect” between the U.S. men’s and women’s players and called the moment a “sort of a quick lapse” by the men’s players.

“I think the guys were in a tough spot,” Knight said. “So it’s a shame that this storyline and narrative is kind of blown up and overshadowing that connection and genuine interest in one another and cheering one another on.

“I think this is just a really good learning point to really focus on, you know, how we talk about women, not only in sport, but in industry.”

Discussion about the call wasn’t the only criticism of the White House from the world of Team USA hockey.

On Thursday, men’s player Brady Tkachuk said he was unhappy that the White House shared a video on TikTok that made it appear he disparaged Canadians while using profanity. The video, which also features hockey footage and part of an interview with Hughes, carries a note saying it “contains AI-generated media.”

“It’s clearly fake because it’s not my voice and not my lips moving. … I know that those words would never come out of my mouth,” Tkachuk told reporters.

He added: “I would never say that. That’s not who I am.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Associated Press.

Tkachuk also denied being the voice heard shouting “close the northern border” during the team’s call with Trump.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Over 32.6 million viewers watched President Trump address the nation on Tuesday night, according to Nielsen data.

It’s both the smallest audience Trump has received for the annual speech to a joint session of Congress, and the longest State of the Union address in recent history.

This was the president’s first State of the Union address of his second term. Previously, his addresses scored 45.5 million in 2018, 46.8 million in 2019 and 37.1 million in 2020, the Nielsen data show.

This year’s speech clocked in at 107 minutes, topping the previous record set by President Clinton in 2000.

Facing low approval ratings, Trump played up positive economic numbers, some of which were misstated, and the administration’s aggressive crackdown on undocumented immigrants, drawing polarized reactions in the chamber.

Trump also recognized the Men’s Olympic hockey team, which won its first gold medal since 1980 on Sunday with its victory against Canada, and a number of other guests attended the address, including the widow of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk and Paramount Skydance’s CEO David Ellison.

The U.S. Olympic men’s ice hockey team arrives for the State of the Union address .

(Kenny Holston / Pool, Getty Images)

There were 15 networks that televised the speech. Fox News had the largest audience with 9.1 million viewers. ABC was second with 5.1 million, followed by NBC‘s 3.6 million, CBS’ 3.3 million, MS NOW’s 2.4 million, CNN’s 2.2 million, and the Fox broadcast network’s 2.1 million.

US judge says that rapid deportation of migrants to countries other than their own violates due process.

A United States federal judge has ruled that the administration of President Donald Trump had violated the law through the swift deportation of migrants to countries other than their own, without giving them an opportunity to appeal their removal.

US District Judge Brian Murphy declared the policy invalid on Wednesday, teeing up a possible appeal from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to the Supreme Court.

“It is not fine, nor is it legal,” Murphy wrote in his decision, adding that migrants could not be sent to an “unfamiliar and potentially dangerous country” without any legal recourse.

He added that due process – the right to receive fair legal proceedings – is an essential component of the US Constitution.

“These are our laws, and it is with profound gratitude for the unbelievable luck of being born in the United States of America that this Court affirms these and our nation’s bedrock principle: that no ‘person’ in this country may be ‘deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law’,” Murphy said.

The ruling is the latest legal setback in the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.

Trump has long pledged to remove immigrants from the country who violate the law or are in the country without legal paperwork. But critics argue that his immigration crackdown has been marked by widespread neglect of due process rights.

They also point out that some of the deportees have been in the country legally, with their cases being processed through legal immigration pathways like asylum.

Murphy said in his ruling that the swift nature of the deportation obscures the details of each case, preventing courts from weighing whether each deportation is legal.

“The simple reality is that nobody knows the merits of any individual class member’s claim because [administration officials] are withholding the predicate fact: the country of removal,” wrote Murphy.

In the decision, Murphy also addressed some of the Trump administration’s arguments in favour of swift deportation.

He highlighted one argument, for instance, where the administration asserted it would be “fine” to deport migrants to third-party countries, so long as the Department of Homeland Security was not aware of anyone waiting to kill them upon arrival.

“It is not fine, nor is it legal,” Murphy responded in his decision.

Murphy has previously ruled against efforts to swiftly deport migrants to countries where they have no ties, and over the past year, he has seen some decisions overturned by the Supreme Court.

Noting that trend, Murphy said Wednesday’s decision would not take effect for 15 days, in order to give the administration the opportunity to appeal.

Last year, for instance, the conservative-majority Supreme Court lifted an injunction Murphy issued in April that sought to protect the due process rights of migrants being deported to third-party countries.

The injunction had come as part of a case where the Trump administration attempted to send eight men to South Sudan, despite concerns about human rights conditions there.

Wednesday’s decision, meanwhile, stemmed from a class-action lawsuit brought by immigrants similarly facing deportation to countries they had no relation to.

A lawyer for the plaintiffs, Trina Realmuto from the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, hailed Murphy’s latest ruling.

“Under the government’s policy, people have been forcibly returned to countries where US immigration judges have found they will be persecuted or tortured,” Realmuto said in a statement.

Realmuto added that the ruling was a “forceful statement” about the policy’s constitutionality.

Capitalizing on a grand stage Tuesday night, President Trump delivered a State of the Union speech laced with political broadsides blaming Democrats for the nation’s problems, including on immigration and the economy, and heaping praise on himself and his administration for ushering in “a turnaround for the ages.”

He did not mention that after a year of his holding the White House and his party controlling both chambers of Congress, many Americans remain displeased and financially frustrated, with increasing numbers blaming Trump, according to polling.

The speech was heavy on partisan attacks, but light on any real acknowledgment of — or proposed path out of — the mounting political tensions that are roiling the nation under his leadership and threatening his party’s chances of retaining power in the upcoming midterms.

“President Trump’s State of the Union address was deeply disconnected from the lived reality of most Americans and profoundly insulting to the immigrant communities who strengthen and sustain this country every day,” Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, said in a statement. “While working families struggle with rising costs, threats to civil liberties, and attacks on fundamental rights, the Trump Administration continues to choose distortion over truth and division over unity.”

Time and again, Trump criticized the Democrats in the room — for not taking his bait and applauding as he waxed on about his immigration agenda, for not agreeing with his pronouncements against transgender athletes, for not being sufficiently adulatory toward members of the U.S. men’s hockey team for winning gold at the recent Winter Olympics.

“These people are crazy,” Trump said of Democrats, after they wouldn’t agree with his comments on transgender athletes. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” he said after they wouldn’t clap for his remarks about “illegal aliens.”

The speech went over well with many Republicans.

“Last Night, President Trump gave the BEST and LONGEST State of the Union speech in history because of ALL the many wins he had to tout,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) wrote on X. “In one year, we have REVERSED the damage we inherited from Biden and the Democrats and we are delivering for the American people.”

Democrats watched sedately, or with barely obscured disdain, with brief scoffs and a few vocal rebuttals. But in their remarks afterward, they slammed Trump for ignoring Americans’ mounting displeasure with his agenda.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called the speech “Trump’s state of delusion.”

“For nearly two hours, the president inflated his ego, rewrote reality, and offered zero solutions to the problems American families are struggling with every day,” Schumer said.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said the speech was “riddled with dirty rotten lies.”

Many other Democrats also bristled over Trump’s rose-colored depiction of the nation as thriving, the economy as “roaring.”

Trump repeatedly mentioned his campaign to crack down on illegal immigration and his administration’s success in reducing border crossings. But he made no mention of one of the largest scandals of his first year in office — the killings of U.S. citizens Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis — or the cratering public support for his immigration campaign overall.

He mentioned bombing Iran’s nuclear sites last year and said negotiations against future weapons development are ongoing. But he didn’t explain why the Pentagon has led a buildup of U.S. aircraft and warships in the Middle East, or address mounting concerns that he is preparing to take the nation to war.

He spoke of bringing down healthcare costs through several unproven programs, such as his “TrumpRx” prescription platform, but didn’t mention that under his party’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” and its cuts to Obamacare subsidies, millions of Americans are facing increased healthcare costs.

He talked about violent crime declining under his administration, a trend any president would claim as a success. But he skipped over the fact that the declines are a clear continuation of sharp drops under the Biden administration — the same drops he had vociferously denied during his 2024 campaign.

Every president treats the State of the Union as a chance to highlight their wins, less a venue for mulling over controversies or losses. It is a time-honored tradition, but also political theater — a chance for a president to project strength no matter the headwinds they are facing, as Trump did over and over again in his nearly two-hour speech.

But as many Democrats noted, his assessment also conflicted with the sentiments of many Americans, in poll after poll.

“The truth is that the State of our Union does not feel strong for everyone,” said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) in his Spanish-language rebuttal to the speech. “Not when the costs of rent, food and electricity keep rising. Not when Republicans raise our medical costs to fund tax cuts for billionaires. And definitely not when federal agents — armed and masked — terrorize our communities by targeting people because of the color of their skin or for speaking Spanish — including immigrants with legal status and citizens.”

Minneapolis and other parts of the nation have been beset by poorly trained federal forces waging immigration round-ups that have left communities in fear and American citizens detained and even dead in the streets. Anger over those tactics has dominated the political discussion for months. In his speech, Trump never addressed the Minneapolis campaign head-on.

For months, Trump has also rattled key U.S. allies, including North Atlantic Treaty Organization partners, by repeatedly demanding that the United States be given Greenland, a territory of Denmark. He couched the stunning breach of diplomatic norms as a necessity given sweeping U.S. security concerns in the region. But in his speech, he made no mention of his demands or those concerns.

And while Trump asserted the “state of the union is strong,” he gave little explanation for why he has repeatedly denigrated and targeted the cornerstones of its federal system.

In the last year, Trump has cast himself and the executive office as all powerful; a substantial swath of the federal judiciary as “radical left” lunatics; the nation’s state-controlled voting system as corrupt and unreliable; and many Democrats and other political opponents as illegitimate or even criminal.

He has repeatedly asserted the power to reject decisions and reallocate federal spending by Congress, rewrite by executive fiat the Constitution and core rights within it such as birthright citizenship, and command or coerce states and a vast swath of civil society — including universities and law firms — to align with him politically or face devastating financial losses, including by demanding unprecedented mid-decade redistricting by red states to better his chances of Republican victory in the midterms.

Trump has tried to assert his will on the Federal Reserve, which is designed to independently lead the nation’s economy, and called Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell “incompetent” — which can’t be a good sign for the nation’s economy, no matter how you parse it.

As Trump walked out of the room Tuesday night having addressed few of those unprecedented moves, Republicans showered him with praise — with some telling him he’d just delivered the best State of the Union ever.

Many Democrats, meanwhile, wondered which union the president had been describing.

For this year’s State of the Union address, as usual, the president was the center of attention. That’s just where Donald Trump lives, so it’s no wonder that he broke his record for the length of the nationally televised speech. He was the star of his own unreality show, with an audience of tens of millions. In front of him, idolatrous Republican lawmakers popped up and down to applaud like clowns in wind-up music boxes of old.

In fact, a president comes to the Capitol as a guest in Congress’ home, there only by invitation of the speaker of the House. It’s a historical nod to the separation of powers so essential to America’s system of government. But of course Trump acts as though he owns the place. And why not? The Republican majorities in the House and Senate essentially gave him the keys and title, along with much of their constitutional power over spending, federal appointments, war powers and more.

“What a difference a president makes,” a triumphalist Trump imperiously marveled about himself on Tuesday night, after exaggerating or falsely claiming his achievements of the past year.

Got that? Even with a Congress controlled by his party, with its majorities at risk in this midterm election year because of his unpopularity, Trump couldn’t find it within his narcissistic self to share the specious credit. Then again, he does act alone most of the time, and polls show he’s getting blame, not credit, from 6 out of 10 Americans.

For the good of the nation, Congress must take back its powers from Trump and, with them, more of Americans’ attention. No less than Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, pleaded as much just days before the State of the Union address.

In concurring with the Court’s 6-3 ruling last week striking down the centerpiece of Trump’s agenda — unilateral tariffs — as a usurpation of Congress’ constitutional taxing power, Gorsuch all but implored lawmakers to restore Congress’ intended role as a co-equal branch of government — and the president to respect it as such. (Spoiler: He won’t.)

Gorsuch’s opinion was a masterclass in why the founders created Congress in the very first article of the Constitution, saving the presidency and the judiciary for the second and third articles. I don’t agree with Gorsuch on much, but his concurrence should be required reading for Trump and for members of Congress who plainly need remedial civics lessons. It’s worth quoting at length; italics are mine.

“Our founders understood that men are not angels, and we disregard that insight at our peril when we allow the few (or the one) to aggrandize their power based on loose or uncertain authority,” Gorsuch wrote.

“Yes, legislating can be hard and take time,” he closed. “And, yes, it can be tempting to bypass Congress when some pressing problem arises. But the deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design. Through that process, the Nation can tap the combined wisdom of the people’s elected representatives, not just that of one faction or man. There, deliberation tempers impulse, and compromise hammers disagreements into workable solutions. And because laws must earn such broad support to survive the legislative process, they tend to endure, allowing ordinary people to plan their lives in ways they cannot when the rules shift from day to day. In all, the legislative process helps ensure each of us has a stake in the laws that govern us and in the Nation’s future.”

Do you know what won’t endure? Trump’s policymaking by “impulse” and fiat, by hundreds of executive orders. Indeed, it would be in his interest to work with Congress on laws that will outlive him and stand as his legacy. Yet he wants to be a king, getting quick results on a whim, by the thumbing of a tweet or a Sharpie signature on paper. Legislating requires time, compromise and ultimately sharing credit.

Perhaps that’s why Trump is so intent on erecting edifices of tangible marble and gold in Washington and beyond: Those will endure when his policies don’t. And that’s the legacy he craves — mega-ballrooms, arches, statues, busts and buildings in his name and image.

Gorsuch wasn’t in the House chamber to hear Trump’s address and his slap at the court’s tariff decision. Just four of the nine justices were, including Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who wrote the main opinion, and two other justices who’d joined in opposing Trump’s tariff power grab. The president insisted he’d proceed with unilateral tariffs under separate laws, adding that “congressional action will not be necessary.” Republican lawmakers applauded.

The founders, in the Constitution, required presidents to annually report on the state of the union and to “recommend” to Congress “such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” Then it’s the president’s job to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” Yet as usual, Trump outlined little in the way of a legislative agenda.

The president likes to note, as he did in his address, that he’ll preside over this year’s celebrations of the nation’s 250th birthday. But he should know that the nation wasn’t born in a day, on July 4, 1776. The founders squabbled 11 years more over the Constitution, and states took another two years to ratify it.

Yes, democracy has been hard from the start. That’s why Trump’s appeal for some Americans is his action-figure persona — forget norms, laws and the Constitution.

But perhaps if Trump’s poll numbers remain in the tank, even Republicans in Congress will summon the guts to protect the institution’s powers. And if they don’t, that’s all the more reason for voters to turn the keys over to Democrats in November.

Bluesky: @jackiecalmes
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It was the Los Angeles Hispanic Republican Club’s potluck party for President Trump’s State of the Union address, but there was a problem:

Not many Hispanics showed up. Or people, period.

About half of the the 20-some folks who trudged into the club’s Woodland Hills offices were Latino. Four of them were chairman David Hernandez and his family.

“People are sick, hurt, or fed up with politics,” the soft-spoken 77-year-old told me with a laugh before the speech began.

It was a dramatic turn from three years ago, when Trump reclaimed the White House with 48% of the Latino vote, the highest percentage ever captured by a Republican presidential candidate. A record number of California Latinos won legislative seats. The Hispanic Republican Club opened chapters in Ventura and Orange counties. Rodriguez now sits on the California Republican Party board of directors along with former Cudahy mayor and fellow club member Jack Guerrero.

How the quesadillas have flipped. CNN poll released earlier this week showed Latino support for Trump went from 41% last February to just 22% right now.

“It’s the visuals of those raids,” Hernandez acknowledged with a sigh. “It only makes sense that people will feel afraid. Some of our supporters and friends, they’re suffering.”

He turned to his vice chair, Tony Barragan, who reviews restaurants for the club’s weekly radio show. Near them, a table hosted three clipboards fat with paperwork for new members to fill. It had a total of one name. “How many of the places you’ve visited are feeling the crunch?”

“Half,” Barragan replied. His father came to the United States from Mexico illegally then became a pioneering Mexican restaurateur in Los Angeles.

“We gotta win the Hispanic vote. I hope that he [Trump] changes his approach and remembers that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

Fat chance of that, Tony.

The cheers were muted as the State of the Union pageantry kicked off. When Trump claimed early on that “inflation is plummeting, incomes are rising fast, the roaring economy is roaring like never before,” only one club member offered a golf clap.

Maybe the audience knew that was just too big of a whopper.

No one seemed particularly animated in the beginning except Rolando Salmerón. He sat in the front cheering and fist-pumping and chanting “USA! USA!” every time Republicans gave Trump a standing ovation.

Los Angeles Hispanic Republican Club chairman David Hernandez hosts a political radio talk show at the studios of AM Radio 870 in Glendale in 2022.

(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

The electrical engineer, who gave his age as “over 1,000,” came to the United States from El Salvador illegally in 1975 but was now a citizen. He told me during dinner that Trump had done “more good in one year than Democrats ever did in 30” and especially supported his deportation deluge because MS-13 members assaulted and bullied his son during his high school years.

“Trump deported three million people — Obama deported way more,” said Salmerón. He wore a hat emblazoned with “FIGHT” over the famous photo of a bloodied Trump raising his fist just after a would-be assassin’s bullet grazed his ear. On the bill was an embroidered version of the president’s signature. “Unfortunately, the media that we have — including the L.A. Times — doesn’t say the truth.”

I mean, I think the truth is Trump’s deportation machine might not hesitate to hassle Señor Salmerón over here, like it has other Latinos, if he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We watched Trump’s speech on Fox News, which kept cutting to unflattering shots of conservative scapegoats like Rep. Ilhan Omar and Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Those prompts uncorked snide comments from members — “Traitor!” someone yelled when the television flashed an image of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett — that turned the atmosphere in the room from reserved to suddenly rollicking.

Hernandez, however, stayed silent.

While Trump bloviated about tariffs, the Hispanic Republican Club chair nibbled on dessert. As the triumphant U.S. men’s hockey team made a cameo, Hernandez was looking at his smartphone. Taxes, illegal immigration, foreign policy — nothing seemed to move Hernandez even as his fellow members got rowdier and rowdier. When Rep. Brad Sherman appeared on the screen, Hernandez finally said something: “There’s our congressman!”

But once Trump began to attack his enemies, Hernandez began to whisper comments with a smile to his daughter, who sat at the lonely check-in table. He laughed after the president gestured to the Democrats sitting glumly before him in the House of Representatives chambers and growled, “These people are crazy.” When Trump announced the awarding of Medals of Honors to a Korean War fighter pilot and a Marine who helped to capture former Venezuela dictator Nicolás Maduro, Hernandez — a Navy veteran — finally applauded.

I thought Trump’s speech, the longest State of the Union address ever, was a giant, xenophobic bore. So did viewers — a CNN survey found it was his worst-received State of the Union address ever and ranked even lower than any of Joe Biden’s attempts. But at the Hispanic Republic Club bash, we skeptics might as well been living in a different dimension.

“I liked the personal touch,” Hernandez told me after. “We need more of that. This is a marathon, not a sprint.”

“It was beautiful,” said 68-year-old Ricardo Benitez, who’s running for a state assembly seat in the San Fernando Valley and greeted Salmerón with a “¿Entonces, cipote? [What’s up, man?] — the only Spanish I heard all night. The Salvadoran immigrant was impressed by “how our president acknowledged victims of crime and how he freed Venezuela…He’s doing a good job regardless of what his enemies are saying.”

Benitez scoffed when I asked if he thought Trump’s immigration raids would cost Republicans Latino support in this year’s midterms.

“Democrats don’t know anything. They think the immigration raids will stop people from voting. That’s not true. Deportations have always happened. Obama deported more people.”

Various political flyers for various republican candidates sit on a table at the offices of L.A. Hispanic Republican Club on Tuesday in Woodland Hills.

(Ronaldo Bolanos / Los Angeles Times)

Nearby, Lani Kane helped to clear tables. “I like that [Trump] honored civilians and our military,” said the 50-year-old, whose T-shirt identified her as a daughter of a World War II veteran. “But in a way, I understand why Democrats don’t like him. The speech was all ‘I, I, I.’”

The Sylmar resident stayed quiet when I asked if she thought Latinos would stay with the GOP for the midterms and beyond.

“If Republicans can continue to promote our values and protect our youth and lower taxes, I hope they do,” Kane finally said.

But did she think they would? This time, Kane nodded vigorously.

“I think Hispanics are starting to wake up.”

Well, I agree with her there. But I don’t think they’re waking up the way Kane thinks.

When myself and a Times photographer thanked the group and left, the number of Latinos at the Los Angeles Hispanic Republican Club State of the Union potluck, already small, dropped by a quarter.

WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice appears to have withheld from disclosure files on disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein related to a claim that President Trump sexually abused a minor, a top Democratic lawmaker said Tuesday.

“Oversight Democrats can confirm that the DOJ appears to have illegally withheld FBI interviews with this survivor who accused President Trump of heinous crimes.” U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia of Long Beach said in a statement. “Oversight Democrats will open a parallel investigation into this.”

Garcia is the top-ranking Democrat on the House committee probing Epstein and how federal law enforcement handled its investigation into sex trafficking accusations against the financier.

Trump has repeatedly said he cut ties with Epstein two decades ago and was not aware of the late financier’s activities. The president has also said he didn’t engage in wrongdoing. Last year, Trump strenuously opposed releasing the Epstein files but then signed legislation forcing their release after it was passed by Congress.

A Justice Department spokeswoman said the file that listed all FBI interviews with the victim was temporarily removed in order to do redactions and put back online on Thursday. The spokeswoman said the department has not deleted any of the files and all documents responsive to the law have been produced unless they fall within a category that justifies being withheld.

The White House pointed to a Justice Department social media post saying “ALL responsive documents have been produced” unless there is a legitimate legal reason for withholding them. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee “should stop misleading the public while manufacturing outrage from their radical anti-Trump base,” the statement added.

A White House spokesperson previously cited the release of documents as evidence of its transparency and support for helping Epstein’s victims.

Sara Guerrero, a spokesperson for Garcia, said the department “has yet to respond as to why these documents are missing, despite the active subpoena from the Oversight Committee that does not allow for withholding these documents. They are not addressing the missing files about the survivor and her allegations.”

Legislation Congress passed last year to force disclosure of the Epstein files permits limited redactions for reasons such as to protect victims or classified information and to avoid jeopardizing ongoing criminal investigations.

“Under the Oversight Committee’s subpoena and the Epstein Files Transparency Act, these records must immediately be shared with Congress and the American public,” Garcia said. “Covering up direct evidence of a potential assault by the President of the United States is the most serious possible crime in this White House cover up.”

Tarabay and Strohm write for Bloomberg News. Steven T. Dennis and Hadriana Lowenkron of Bloomberg contributed to this report.

President Trump headed into Tuesday night’s State of the Union speech projecting confidence in his personal power to “Make America Great Again,” despite the woes he says he’s been saddled with by his Democratic predecessors.

He also stood in a uniquely precarious position — facing some of his lowest approval ratings ever, plummeting support on his signature issue of immigration, unrelenting pressure from the slow rollout of the Epstein files, a sluggish economy, mounting international tensions and looming midterm elections in which Democrats appear poised to make gains, possibly even retaking control in Congress.

Trump remains popular among his base and remarkably infallible in the eyes of his loyalist administration and still commands extraordinary deference from many leaders in his party. Many of his supporters share his confidence and suggest polls showing slipping support are bogus.

“This is what ‘America first’ looks like,” said Paul Dans, former head of the conservative Project 2025 playbook, which Trump has largely adopted. “The last year has been phenomenal. He has done more in one year than most presidents would accomplish in a whole term.”

Nonetheless, political observers see a landscape of vulnerabilities for the second-term president heading into the 2026 elections.

“He stands at a moment of rapidly declining political capital,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican consultant in California. “From a historical perspective, a president in year six, heading into what looks like a rough midterm, is probably not going to rise any higher again, in terms of their political equity — so he’s probably past his peak of power.”

Trump is in “about as weak a position” as any president heading into a State of the Union address in recent memory, agreed Bob Shrum, a longtime Democratic strategist and director of the Dornsife Center for the Political Future at USC. “I don’t think the country sees Trump as the solution to anything at this point.”

At the same time, however, Trump is not acting like other weakened presidents, Shrum noted.

Instead of taking stock and turning away from unpopular policies, including on immigration and the economy, he is signaling that he simply won’t accept major midterm losses for his party — which leaves the nation in “completely uncharted waters,” Shrum said.

“We have a president who by all traditional standards has been weakened seriously, but who acts as though he had maximum strength,” he said. “We have a president who is deeply unpopular, who by every measure should see his party do very poorly in the midterms, but who seems determined to interfere in the midterm elections in any possible way that he can.”

In the polls

A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll released Sunday showed 60% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s job performance, with 39% saying they approve. The last time Trump fared so poorly in that poll was shortly after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

A CNN poll by SSRS released Monday found that Trump’s job approval rating stood at 36%, with a 19-point drop in approval among Latinos in the last year, an 18-point drop among Americans younger than 45, and a 15-point drop to just 26% approval among political independents — the lowest it has ever been during either of his terms.

Shrum said such sharp declines in support among Latino and independent voters do not bode well for Trump or for other Republicans on the ballot in November — especially given that the president, who often dismisses polling not in his favor, does not appear inclined to alter his policies.

Dans, who is running for Senate in South Carolina against Republican incumbent Sen. Lindsey Graham, dismissed Trump’s slumping polling numbers as “fake or engineered,” and said if anything, the president should “go full Trump” — doubling down on his agenda.

On immigration

Trump has polled well on immigration in the past. But his heavy-handed crackdown — with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agents arresting people without criminal records, detaining U.S. citizens and legal immigrants and killing U.S. citizens in Minneapolis — has shifted that. The Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found 58% of adults disapprove of his handling of immigration.

Stutzman said Trump and his team obviously realize their approach has rubbed voters the wrong way, which is why they recently shuffled the leadership team in Minneapolis. But the broader policy has remained in place and “the numbers are still cratering on them,” he said.

Shrum said that if Trump “were intent on improving his situation, he would change the way ICE behaves, and might put some different faces on the effort that he’s making, and might focus on people who are actually convicted criminals,” but instead, he and other administration officials “seem determined to plow ahead.”

Dans said Trump received “a clear mandate in 2024 with respect to the mass migration, and it was to reverse and end that flow,” and that’s what he’s doing. “Everyone is going back home.”

On Epstein

Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing involving the late disgraced financier and convicted sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein, a onetime acquaintance. However, questions about Epstein’s ties to Trump and other powerful men have persisted as evidence from multiple investigations into Epstein’s abuses continue to be released.

Republicans in Congress broke with the president and joined Democrats to pass a bill requiring the records’ release last year. Justice Department officials have slow-walked the release by redacting and withholding records, further dragging it out.

The records contained unproven accusations of wrongdoing by Trump, which he has denied. Democrats and Republicans alike have argued more records need to be released.

On the economy

Trump was dealt a blow last week when the U.S. Supreme Court blocked a sweeping set of tariffs he’d imposed on international trading partners.

Trump has said his administration will use other legal authorities to impose similar or even stiffer tariffs, despite polls showing his tariffs are unpopular.

The Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, which was taken before the court ruling, found that 57% of respondents disapproved of Trump’s managing of the economy, and 64% disapproved of his handling of tariffs.

Dans said that Trump has already tempered inflation and that “the economy is ready to take off like a rocket ship,” especially if Congress gives the president the space to continue rolling out policies aimed at returning jobs to the U.S. that long ago went overseas.

“We’re really focused on reindustrialization,” Dans said. “This isn’t going to happen overnight, but all the building blocks are being put in place.”

Looking ahead

Stutzman said there is already evidence that Trump “doesn’t quite have a grip on Congress” like he used to, given recent votes on the Epstein files and tariffs, and that the conservative-leaning Supreme Court is still willing to rule against him, as it did on his tariffs.

If Democrats win back control in the midterms, Trump will see his influence wane even further as “the next two years turn into a quagmire,” with Democrats stymieing his agenda and launching one investigation after another, Stutzman said.

Dans said people standing in Trump’s way, including in Congress, need to clear out, because they’re “flouting” the will of the electorate. “It’s always about what the people want, and that’s what he’s going to deliver.”

Shrum said Trump trying to avoid losing power by interfering with the vote, including through the handling of mail-in ballots, is a major concern, as is Trump entering the U.S. into an armed conflict overseas in a “Wag the Dog” move — a reference to a 1997 movie of the same name in which an unpopular president uses a foreign war to salvage an election.

However, Shrum said he doesn’t think the latter would actually benefit Trump — “I don’t think that at this point another foreign incursion would make any president more popular” — and that, interference or not, a Republican drubbing in November is likely.

Trump, then, “will just try to govern by executive order,” will get sued and will have his agenda mired in court battles straight through the end of his presidency, Shrum said — a product, in part, of his confident despite all indications, “my way or the highway” approach to governing.

The Trump administration has directed U.S. diplomats to actively oppose foreign laws that restrict how American tech companies handle citizens’ data abroad. An internal State Department cable, dated February 18 and signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, described such measures as threats to artificial intelligence services, global data flows, and civil liberties.

Experts say the move signals a return to a more confrontational approach after previous efforts focused on building goodwill with European customers. The administration warned that data sovereignty rules could increase costs, introduce cybersecurity risks, and expand government control in ways that enable censorship.

Data Sovereignty in Focus

Data sovereignty or localization initiatives have accelerated, especially in Europe, amid ongoing tensions over U.S. trade policies and concerns about privacy and surveillance. European regulators, wary of American tech giants, have tightened rules on how data is stored and shared. The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) remains the most prominent example, restricting cross-border data transfers and imposing stiff fines on companies that fail to comply.

The State Department cable cited GDPR as “unnecessarily burdensome” and highlighted China’s restrictive data policies as an example of how technology rules can expand geopolitical influence. Beijing, it noted, bundles infrastructure projects with policies that provide access to international data for surveillance and strategic leverage.

Diplomatic Action Plan

The cable, labeled as an “action request,” instructed diplomats to track proposals that could limit cross-border data flows and to counter regulations deemed excessive. Talking points included promotion of the Global Cross-Border Privacy Rules Forum, a multinational initiative launched in 2022 by the United States, Mexico, Canada, Australia, and Japan to support free flow of data while ensuring privacy protections.

This directive follows a pattern of U.S. opposition to European digital regulation. Last year, diplomats were ordered to challenge the EU’s Digital Services Act, aimed at making the internet safer by forcing social media firms to remove illegal content. The U.S. is also reportedly planning an online portal to help users bypass content moderation, including restrictions on material flagged as hate speech or terrorist propaganda.

Analysis: A More Assertive U.S. Digital Strategy

The cable reflects a strategic shift toward actively protecting the interests of U.S. tech companies globally. While previous administrations attempted to engage Europe diplomatically, the current approach pressures foreign governments to loosen privacy and data storage regulations that could hinder U.S. business.

By framing data sovereignty laws as a threat to AI development, cybersecurity, and civil liberties, the administration is positioning the free flow of data as a cornerstone of U.S. economic and technological influence. At the same time, rising competition from China in digital infrastructure and AI adds urgency, highlighting the geopolitical stakes of controlling international data flows.

The broader implication is a growing clash between national data policies and global digital commerce. As countries enact stricter rules to protect citizens’ data, U.S. tech firms and policymakers are increasingly asserting that global interoperability and AI innovation must take priority, signaling potential tensions in transatlantic and international digital governance for years to come.

With information from Reuters.

WASHINGTON — To defend an increasingly unpopular immigration crackdown during his State of the Union speech, President Trump highlighted the victims of crimes perpetuated by undocumented immigrants.

But as Democrats pointed out, the president’s lengthy speech made no reference to the U.S. citizens, including Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, who were killed by immigration agents.

Recent polls show public approval of Trump’s immigration policies has fallen to record lows level since he returned to the White House. One poll, released Feb. 17 by Reuters and the market research firm Ipsos, showed just 38% of respondents felt Trump was doing a good job on immigration.

Another poll, published last month by Fox News, showed 59% of voters say U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is “too aggressive.”

“As President Trump brags about his immigration enforcement at tonight’s State of the Union, I can think only of Renee Nicole Good, Alex Pretti and the three dozen people who have died in ICE custody since Trump took office,” Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) wrote on X.

Within the first few minutes of his address on Tuesday night, Trump highlighted “the strongest and most secure border in American history, by far.” He also offered — at least momentarily — a softer tone, adding that “We will always allow people to come in legally, people that will love our country and will work hard to maintain our country.”

In reality, the administration has restricted legal immigration. It has revoked humanitarian benefits for hundreds of thousands of people, and an indefinite pause on all asylum applications filed with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Guests invited by various lawmakers to attend Trump’s speech offered dueling visions of the administration’s mass deportation effort.

Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-Iowa) said he would bring the father and brother of Sarah Root, who was killed in 2016 after a drunk driver, who was in the U.S. illegally, crashed into her vehicle. Trump held an event Monday for “angel families,” those with a relative who was killed by an undocumented immigrant, and signed a proclamation honoring such victims of crimes.

Democrats, meanwhile, invited immigrants, family members of those detained or deported, and U.S. citizens who were violently arrested by immigration agents.

Rep. Mike Levin (D-San Juan Capistrano), for example, said he was bringing the daughter of a Laguna Niguel couple deported last year to Colombia after their arrest during a routine check-in with ICE. And Rep. Jesus Garcia (D-Ill.) invited Marimar Martinez, a Chicago woman shot five times by Border Patrol Agent Charles Exum.

On X, the Department of Homeland Security shot back at Democrats with immigrant guests, saying the lawmakers are “once again prioritizing illegal aliens above the safety of American citizens.”

On Tuesday morning, Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) held a news conference on “the state of immigration,” flanked by Christian pastors, in which she touted her Dignity Act, which would provide permanent legal status to immigrants who meet certain benchmarks.

“Throughout the Scripture, there are two kinds of leaders: those who persecute faith communities and those who protect them,” she said.

California Sen. Adam Schiff was among the Democrats to boycott Trump’s speech, and he cited immigration enforcement as one reason for his absence.

“I have not missed the State of the Union in the 25 years I’ve been in Congress, but we have never had a president violate the Constitution, the laws every day with seeming impunity,” Schiff told Meidas Touch outside the Capitol. “We’ve never had masked armed, poorly trained agents, victimizing our cities, demanding to see people’s papers.”

Trump repeated claims about immigration that have been debunked, such as his assertion that President Biden’s immigration polices allowed millions of people to pour into the U.S. from prisons and mental institutions.

Trump also highlighted a figure he has often turned to — that Democrats let in “11,888 murderers.” That number, an inaccurate description of federal data, refers to immigrants who, over the course of decades (including the first Trump administration) were convicted of homicide, usually after their arrival in the U.S. Those immigrants are listed on ICE’s “non-detained docket” typically because they are currently serving their prison sentences.

Turning to Minnesota, Trump said Somalis have defrauded $19 billion from American taxpayers and referred to them derogatorily as “Somali pirates.”

Trump went beyond Somalis to disparage many immigrants, saying “there are large parts of the world where bribery, corruptions and lawlessness are the norm, not the exception.”

“Importing these cultures through unrestricted immigration and open borders brings those problems right here to the USA, and it is the American people who pay the price,” he said.

Trump also highlighted the case of Dalilah Coleman, 6, of Bakersfield who was left with a traumatic brain injury after a 2024 car crash in California.

He called on Congress to pass the Dalilah Law, which would bar states from granting commercial drivers licenses to immigrants without lawful status. He said, without proof, that “most illegal aliens do not speak English and cannot read even the most basic road signs.”

A year after Dalilah’s accident her family met with Partap Singh, the detained Indian immigrant responsible for the crash, at the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in Bakersfield. Marcus Coleman, her father, told Fox26 News that the focus shouldn’t be on Singh’s legal status because similar accidents happen every day.

Also present Tuesday night were the parents of Sarah Beckstrom, the West Virginia National Guard member shot and killed in Washington, D.C. by an Afghan immigrant, as well as Andrew Wolfe, who was also shot and survived.

Trump awarded Wolfe and Beckstrom the Purple Heart. He called Rahmanullah Lakanwal, the man charged in the shooting, a “terrorist monster.” Lakanwal legally entered the U.S. from Afghanistan through a Biden administration program in 2021 and his asylum application was approved under the Trump administration last April.

Turning his attention the fall’s midterm elections, Trump warned his supporters that if allowed back into power, Democrats would reopen the borders “to some of the worst criminals anywhere in the world.”

Trump then invited legislators to stand if they agreed with him that “the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.”

Republicans stood, offering one of the longest standing ovations of the night. Democrats remained seated.

Trump told Democrats they should be ashamed for not standing up.

“You have killed Americans!” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) yelled from the audience. “You should be ashamed.”

Energy affordability was in the spotlight during President Trump’s lengthy and at times rambling State of the Union address Tuesday evening as the president promised to bring down electricity prices in an effort to assuage voter concerns about rising costs.

The president announced a new “ratepayer protection pledge” to shield residents from higher electricity costs in areas where energy-thirsty artificial intelligence data centers are being built. Trump said major tech companies will “have the obligation to provide for their own power needs” under the plan, though the details of what the pledge actually entails remain vague.

“We have an old grid — it could never handle the kind of numbers, the amount of electricity that’s needed, so I am telling them they can build their own plant,” the president said. “They’re going to produce their own electricity … while at the same time, lowering prices of electricity for you.”

The announcement comes as polling shows Americans are dissatisfied with the economy and concerned about the cost of living. Experts on both sides of the political spectrum have said the energy affordability issue could translate to poor outcomes for Republicans in the midterm elections this November, as it did in a few key races in New Jersey, Virginia and Georgia last year.

While Trump has focused on ramping up domestic production of oil, gas and coal, residential electric bills have been soaring — jumping from 15.9 cents per kilowatt-hour in January 2025 on average to 17.2 cents at the end of December, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Through one year into his second term as president, Trump has vastly changed the federal landscape when it comes to energy and the environment, reversing many of the efforts made by the Biden administration to prioritize electrification initiatives and investments in renewable energy via the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

Among several changes, Trump’s administration has slashed funding for solar programs, ended federal tax credits for electric vehicles and canceled grants for offshore wind power — even going so far as to try to halt some such projects that were nearing completion along the East Coast.

Trump has also championed fossil fuel production and on Tuesday doubled down on his “drill baby drill” agenda, touting lower gasoline prices, increased production of American oil and new imports of oil from Venezuela.

Many of the president’s efforts are designed to loosen Biden-era regulations that he has said were burdensome, ideologically motivated and expensive for taxpayers.

Trump has taken direct aim at California, which has long been a leader on the environment. Last year, the president moved to block California’s long-held authority to set stricter tailpipe emission standards than the federal government — an ability that helped the state address historical air quality issues and also underpinned its ambitious ban on the sale of new gas-powered cars in 2035.

Trump also slashed $1.2 billion in federal funding for California’s effort to develop clean hydrogen energy while leaving intact funding for similar projects in states that voted for him. In November, his administration announced that it will open the Pacific Coast to oil drilling for the first time in nearly four decades, a move the state vowed to fight.

But perhaps no issue has come across voters’ kitchen tables more than energy affordability.

So far this term, Trump has canceled or delayed enough projects to power more than 14 million homes, according to a tracker from the nonprofit Climate Power. The group’s senior advisor, Jesse Lee, described the president’s data center announcement as a “toothless, empty promise based on backroom deals with his own billionaire donors.”

“Making it worse, Trump is continuing to block clean-energy production across the board — the only sources that can keep up with demand, ensure utility bills don’t keep skyrocketing, and prevent massive new amounts of pollution,” Lee said in a statement.

Earlier this month, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency repealed the endangerment finding, the U.S. government’s 2009 affirmation that greenhouse gases are harmful to human health and the environment, in what officials described as the single largest act of deregulation in U.S. history. The finding formed the foundation for much of U.S. climate policy. The EPA also loosened guidelines around emissions from coal power plants, including mercury and other dangerous pollutants.

The president’s environmental record so far is “written in rollbacks that put the interests of some corporate polluters above the health of everyday Americans,” read a statement from Marc Boom, senior director of the Environmental Protection Network, a group composed of more than 750 former EPA staff members and appointees.

Further, Trump has worked to undermine climate science in general, often describing global warming as a “hoax” or a “scam.” During his first year in office, he fired hundreds of scientists working to prepare the National Climate Assessment, laid off staffers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and dismantled the National Center for Atmospheric Research, one of the world’s leading climate and weather research institutions, among many other efforts.

In all, the administration has taken or proposed more than 430 actions that threaten the environment, public health and the ability to confront climate change, according to a tracker from the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council.

The opposition’s choice for a rebuttal speaker is indicative of how seriously it is taking the issue of energy affordability: Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger focused heavily on energy affordability during her campaign against Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears last year, including vows to expand solar energy projects and technologies such as fusion, geothermal and hydrogen. Virginia is home to more than a third of all data centers worldwide.

President Trump, speaking for well over an hour, shattered the record on Tuesday for the length of a State of the Union address.

Speaking for about 100 minutes, the nation’s leader touched upon a broad range of domestic and international topics, bragged about his accomplishments and awarded the nation’s highest honors to a pilot who participated in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a 100-year-old Korean War veteran, and a 32-year-old goalie for the gold-medal-winning Olympic men’s hockey team.

The previous record-holder was President Clinton, famously known for his Southern-twang verbosity. He spoke for nearly 90 minutes during his final State of the Union address in 2000.

The address is prescribed by the Constitution and calls for the president to apprise Congress about the state of the union. Over time the address has become a vehicle for presidents to address the nation’s residents, claim legislative victories and foreshadow upcoming policy goals.

Just over a century ago, President Harding’s and President Coolidge’s addresses were aired on the radio. In 1947, President Truman’s address was the first to be broadcast on television. As viewership grew, the annual speech has taken on greater gravity, leading to notable and controversial moments in American politics.

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) famously shouted “You lie!” during President Obama’s 2009 address to Congress when he spoke about healthcare policy. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) created a viral moment when she tore apart a copy of Trump’s text after he delivered the State of the Union in 2020.

On Tuesday night, Rep. Al Green, a Democrat from Louisiana, was escorted out of the chamber after he held a small sign that read: “BLACK PEOPLE AREN’T APES.”

The United States, President Trump said Tuesday night, is “bigger, better, richer and stronger than ever.”

“We are the hottest country anywhere in the world,” Trump said in his State of the Union address. “The economy is roaring like never before. America is respected again like never before. We’re winning so much we can’t take it.”

Not so, countered U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.).

“We just heard Donald Trump do what he does best: lie,” Padilla said.

In a Spanish-language rebuttal delivered on behalf of the Democratic Party, Padilla rebuked the president’s claim that he has brought about the “golden age of America,” accusing Trump of spurring economic uncertainty and plunging U.S. cities into violence.

President Trump gives his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol in Washington.

(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)

“The truth is that the State of our Union does not feel strong for everyone,” Padilla said. “Not when the costs of rent, food and electricity keep rising. Not when Republicans raise our medical costs to fund tax cuts for billionaires. And definitely not when federal agents — armed and masked — terrorize our communities by targeting people because of the color of their skin or for speaking Spanish — including immigrants with legal status and citizens.”

Padilla and Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who delivered the Democratic rebuttal in English, countered Trump’s upbeat pronouncements by painting a starkly different picture of a country that is deeply divided months before critical midterm congressional elections.

Trump, whose approval ratings have slumped amid concerns about the economy and the harsh tactics deployed in his mass-deportation campaign, touted what he described as victories on foreign policy, including the U.S. ouster of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, and a slowing of inflation.

Padilla sought to counter those claims and rally support for Democrats, who have struggled to formulate an effective response to Trump as he has dominated national discourse in recent years.

Spanberger, speaking from Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, questioned whether Trump is working on behalf of Americans — or in his own self-interest.

Trump, she said, repeatedly has sought to deflect attention away from accusations that he is using the Oval Office to enrich himself and his family and the scandal involving Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and sex offender.

“We did not hear the truth from our president,” Spanberger said. “He lied, he scapegoated and he distracted.”

Spanberger, who beat her Republican opponent in the purple state of Virginia last fall by 15 points, said voters are struggling under Trump’s policies and beginning to turn on him. Political winds, she said, are shifting in favor of the Democrats.

Padilla focused heavily on the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in cities such as Los Angeles and Minneapolis, where agents this year killed two U.S. citizens who were protesting deportations.

“We see ICE agents using excessive force: entering homes without judicial warrants and shooting at cars with families still inside,” Padilla said. “We are living a nightmare that divides and destroys our communities.”

He was, he said, partly speaking from experience.

Last year, federal agents tackled Padilla to the floor and handcuffed him after he sought to question Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a news conference in Los Angeles.

Padilla referenced the incident in his speech and encouraged others to defy Trump.

“I am still here standing. Still fighting,” he said. “And I know you are still standing and still fighting too.”

“Trump does not want us to recognize our power,” he said.

Padilla also slipped in a reference to Puerto Rican pop star Bad Bunny, who was criticized by Trump for performing in Spanish during the halftime of the Super Bowl.

“As Bad Bunny reminded us a few weeks ago: ‘Together, we are America.’” Padilla said. “Together, we rise, because our faith is stronger than any disappointment or any obstacle — including Trump. And together, we will build the future our children deserve.”