More primaries are being held on Tuesday as well. Democrats are banking on a rare chance to regain ground in Iowa, a rural state that has repeatedly eluded them in recent years. Republicans, meanwhile, are grappling with a New Jersey congressman whose unexplained absence could put their already slim majority at risk.

— California: Voters are weighing in on who should lead the nation’s most populous state, where there is no clear leader among candidates vying to advance in the race to succeed Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom. Plus, U.S. House races are on the ballot, along with the Los Angeles mayor’s race.

— New Mexico: Contests in the state include primaries for congressional seats, a U.S. Senate seat and a long list of statewide offices, but the governor’s race is the main attraction. Former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland is running for the Democratic nomination, which could put her on a historic path for Native American leaders.

— New Jersey: One of this year’s most closely watched House midterms will take place in the battleground district represented by Rep. Tom Kean Jr., who has drawn public scrutiny and concern after missing more than 100 House votes due to an undisclosed medical issue. Voters are deciding which Democrat will run against him in November.

— Read more about races in Iowa, Montana and South Dakota.

Here's the latest:

Mid-decade redistricting in California

California’s primaries are taking place in newly drawn congressional districts approved by voters last November. The map, pushed forward by Gov. Newsom, was designed to create more favorable conditions for Democrats. It came in response to Trump’s call for redistricting that would bolster Republicans’ position in midterms this fall.

Crowd roars as Haaland takes stage as Democratic nominee for New Mexico governor

A mariachi band played and supporters chanted “Deb! Deb! Deb!” as Haaland arrived on stage to address the crowd.

She outlined her own time as a single mother in saying she’s experienced struggles that are familiar to many New Mexicans. But, she said, a better New Mexico is possible with grit, creativity and persistence.

She said she’d work to lower costs, make healthcare more accessible, improve education and make communities safer.

Polls have closed in California

In-person Election Day voting concluded in California at 11 p.m. ET, which is 8 p.m. local time. But vote-counting will likely take awhile.

Comparable primaries from past elections can offer clues about when to expect the first vote results and how long the vote count might take.

In the 2024 primaries, the AP first reported results at 11:08 p.m. ET, or eight minutes after polls closed. The last vote update of the night was at 6:01 a.m. ET with only about half of total votes counted. The count reached 99% of total votes about two weeks later on March 20 at 7:47 p.m. ET.

Iowa’s Democratic US Senate candidate Josh Turek says he feels hope

Turek said he wants to help families like his own be able to achieve the American Dream once again and be “a voice for the voiceless.”

“I am feeling hope here in Iowa for the first time in a very long time,” Turek said to big cheers.

Turek thanked his Democratic primary opponent, Zach Wahls, for making him a stronger candidate. He soon pivoted to Ashley Hinson, the Republican he will face in the general election, arguing the congresswoman doesn’t serve everyday Iowans.

“I will fight for you — all of you — no matter what,” he said.

Spencer Pratt and his supporters are arriving at an LA restaurant

Pratt entered with his wife, Heidi Montag.

Some supporters are wearing campaign hats and t-shirts, while others are in full glam as they pull up to the valet stand.

Dozens of news cameras and reporters are set up in front of a black curtain blocking off the entrance of the Mexican restaurant.

Fellow former reality TV star Brody Jenner was among those seen arriving.

Iowa Democrat Josh Turek celebrates nomination for Senate

Turek smiled and popped a wheelie on his chair as he approached the stage to celebrate his primary win. Democrats in Des Moines roared with excitement.

“Iowa sure does love an underdog, and we have done it tonight,” he said. “I am honored to be your nominee.”

A sea of campaign signs were lifted in the air.

Joe Mitchell is GOP nominee for Ashley Hinson’s Iowa US House district

Mitchell was endorsed by Trump.

He defeated state Sen. Charlie McClintock in the Republican-leaning 2nd District.

The seat is open because Hinson is running for U.S. Senate.

Emergency at bank leads California Democrat to cancel election night party

State Assemblywoman Jasmeet Bains, who is competing for a chance to face vulnerable Republican U.S. Rep. David Valadao in November, announced she was canceling the party because of the incident.

Police remained encircled around a bank Tuesday evening in downtown Bakersfield, where a man was holding several people inside.

In her statement, Bains said she was canceling the event “to avoid creating a large gathering of people in close proximity to this incident.”

Steve Hilton wants to break Democrats’ winning streak in California

“We cannot let this chance for change slip away,” said Hilton, a former Fox News host who has Trump’s endorsement in the California governor’s race.

California hasn’t had a Republican governor since Arnold Schwarzenegger left office in 2011.

Hilton said he can win if he and one of his Democratic rivals advance to the general election in November. He’s pledging to cut regulations and reduce costs in the state.

“This state needs change, and it can’t be provided by a Democrat,” he told reporters in Southern California about an hour before polls were set to close.

Haaland greeted by supporters, including from her own community of Laguna Pueblo

Singers from Laguna Pueblo, where Haaland is an enrolled citizen, congratulated her on winning the Democratic primary for New Mexico governor. Then, they performed traditional songs to honor her.

Haaland thanked New Mexicans earlier on social media for “believing in what we can build together.”

Supporters were gathered in the Old Town neighborhood of Albuquerque for the event that included a prayer in Tiwa, one of many Native languages spoken among tribes in the state, and traditional hoop dancing.

Democratic Governors Association head says Haaland’s life story ‘one of resilience’

Chair Andy Beshear said Haaland, a former tribal administrator who helped oversee education and childcare programs, will be a champion for New Mexico’s residents.

“She knows the pain New Mexicans are feeling right now, which is why she will never stop fighting to bring down costs and create jobs, strengthen schools, expand affordable health care, and create safer communities,” he said.

Zach Wahls vows support for winning Iowa Democratic Senate candidate Josh Turek

“The work that we began together one year ago this month does not end tonight. It is going to end in November when Rep. Josh Turek defeats Ashley Hinson in November,” Wahls, a state senator from Iowa City, told supporters in an upstairs bar near the University of Iowa.

Wahls praised his competitor, despite disagreements over policy the future of the party.

“Josh and I competed hard against each other,” he said. “Josh is a good man. He will be an infinitely better United States senator than Ashley Hinson.”

The room burst into applause.

Hinson, Iowa’s 2nd District representative, easily won the Republican primary Tuesday for the seat being vacated by two-term GOP Sen. Joni Ernst, who is not seeking a third term.

Iowa’s vote history keeps the Senate seat in play for Democrats

Republican U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson and Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek won tonight’s U.S. Senate primaries in Iowa, setting the stage for a competitive race in the fall.

Democrats are eyeing the open seat vacated by retiring Republican Sen. Joni Ernst. Before Ernst’s election in 2014, Iowa was represented by Democrat Tom Harkin for three decades, marking a period where Democrats were still competitive statewide.

Iowa also backed former President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, indicating how a strong Democratic candidate can resonate with Iowa voters despite the state’s recent Republican lean.

Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks wins GOP nomination in Iowa’s 1st District

Miller-Meeks defeated David Pautch, who also ran against her in 2024.

Miller-Meeks went on to eke out a win in the general election that year, earning a third term after a recount confirmed her roughly 800-vote lead over Democrat Christina Bohannan.

Polls have closed in Montana

In-person Election Day voting concluded in Montana at 10 p.m. ET, which is 8 p.m. local time.

Comparable primaries from past elections can offer clues about when to expect the first vote results and how long the vote count might take.

In the 2024 U.S. Senate primary, the AP first reported results at 10:26 p.m. ET, or 26 minutes after polls closed. The last vote update of the night was at 4:06 a.m. ET with about 84% of total votes counted.

Ashley Hinson speaks of bipartisanship after winning Iowa’s Republican US Senate primary

Hinson dubbed it “a resounding victory” in a statement, before listing what she wanted to continue doing in Congress: make life more affordable, take on “Big Pharma and Big Health Insurance” and “root out corruption in Washington.”

“My record is one of delivering bipartisan results for Iowans, and that’s exactly what I’ll do in the United States Senate. I’ll work with anyone, from any party, to get things done for Iowa,” she said.

Iowa Democrats cheer and wave Josh Turek signs in Des Moines

The supporters started waving the campaign signs featuring Turek’s signature Paralympic gold medal after The Associated Press called the race in his favor.

Turek defeated Zach Wahls for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. Cheers erupted after CNN announced the race call live on air.

Turek, a relative newcomer to elected office, won his state House seat in 2022. He played professional wheelchair basketball in Europe, and he competed for the U.S. in four Paralympics, including as recently as 2021.

Christina Bohannan came close to winning Iowa’s 1st District in 2024

The winner of the Democratic primary for the district in southeast Iowa is seeking the seat for the third time.

In 2024, she came within about 800 votes of unseating Republican U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks.

She defeated first-time candidate Travis Terrell in the Democratic primary.

An LA Democrat sees hope in outsider Spencer Pratt

Pratt has campaigned on disillusionment with the city’s liberal leadership, something that was echoed by his supporters at a block party on Sunday.

Deanna Madrid, a Democrat, was particularly frustrated by the growing influence of the Democratic Socialists of America.

“Their ideas never pan out in the reality,” she said. “They ignore the residents.”

She believes Mayor Karen Bass, also a Democrat, has done too little with homelessness, while bungling the devastating Palisades Fire — which destroyed Pratt’s home and thousands of others — and its aftermath. Madrid said Pratt represented change from the city’s status quo.

“I believe he’s running on his truth. And his truth is now our truth,” Madrid said.

Josh Turek wins Iowa Democratic US Senate primary

Turek is a former Paralympian and relative newcomer to public office, winning his state House seat in 2022.

His primary race against Zach Wahls was upended by a flood of outside support that boosted him in the final stretch. Democratic political operation VoteVets spent millions of dollars to blanket the airwaves, social media and mailboxes.

He will next try to flip the seat currently held by GOP Sen. Joni Ernst, who is retiring.

Deb Haaland wins Democratic nomination for New Mexico governor

One of the first Native American women elected to Congress and the nation’s first Native American Cabinet secretary could break another political barrier. As the Democratic nominee for governor, she is on her way to become the first Native American to hold that position in any U.S. state.

Haaland’s primary win makes her the frontrunner in November. Democrats have consolidated control over every statewide elected office in New Mexico over the past decade.

As interior secretary under President Joe Biden, Haaland championed public lands conservation and oversaw a first-of-its-kind federal investigation into the abuse of Native American children at government-run boarding schools. On the campaign trail in New Mexico, Haaland focused on reducing costs for families while emphasizing her ancestral roots in the state and experience in the nation’s capital. She’s a member of Laguna Pueblo.

US Supreme

Court allows Alabama to use congressional map favoring Republicans in this year’s elections

The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed Alabama to use a congressional map favoring Republicans in this year’s elections, blocking a lower court ruling that the redistricting plan intentionally discriminates against Black people.

The justices granted the state’s emergency appeal to use a map it adopted three years ago that has a majority-Black population in just one of its seven congressional districts.

The high-court order is the latest development in a redistricting frenzy that is part of a broader push by President Donald Trump to try to hold on to Republicans’ slim House majority in the November elections. It comes a day before an important deadline that Republican Gov. Kay Ivey had already extended in the state’s desire to use the map in special primary elections in August.

Rebecca Bennett tells Rep. Tom Kean Jr. ‘we are coming for you’

Addressing supporters at an Election Night party after winning the Democratic nomination in New Jersey’s battleground 7th District, Bennett called the Republican incumbent a “coward.”

“You are failing us, and you do not deserve to represent us in Washington,” the former Navy helicopter pilot said to Kean, who has been away from Congress with an unspecified illness for months.

Bennett’s victory over three other Democrats in the closely-watched district sets up the state’s premier contest in November. The district has flipped in the last two midterm elections.

Introducing his wife, Bennett’s husband told the crowd that Tuesday marks their 14th wedding anniversary.

Ashley Hinson wins GOP nomination to replace Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst

Hinson, who is endorsed by Trump and Ernst, defeated former state Sen. Jim Carlin.

The former TV anchor is in her third term representing Iowa’s 2nd District, in the northeastern part of the state.

She got into the race for Senate almost immediately after Ernst said she was retiring. Hinson won her most recent election with the support of 57% of voters.

Mood light at Zach Wahls event at an Iowa City bar

Supporters of the state senator were awaiting returns for the Democratic U.S. Senate primary at Reunion Bar, just off of the University of Iowa’s pedestrian mall.

Televisions in the campus area bar carried CNN and MSNBC broadcasts of primary night analysis, while supporters of the Iowa City lawmaker chatted over wine and beer.

Chants of “Flip that seat!” broke out when CNN’s John King noted Iowa’s 1st District Democratic primary, where the party has hopes of ousting three-term Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks.

Local Democratic activists from eastern Iowa and the capital Des Moines milled through the brick-walled upstairs room, as polls were closing.

Wahls is competing with state Rep. Josh Turek for the Democratic nomination to compete for the seat being vacated by two-term Republican Sen. Joni Ernst, who is not seeking a third term.

A closer look at New Mexico’s voting population

New Mexico has the highest share of Hispanic or Latino voters among U.S. states and the second-highest share of American Indian or Alaska Native voters, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Despite Indigenous people accounting for nearly a tenth of New Mexico’s voting-eligible population, New Mexico did not elect its first Native American member of Congress until Deb Haaland’s historic victory in 2018.

After serving as U.S. secretary of the interior under former President Joe Biden, Haaland is running in tonight’s Democratic gubernatorial primary.

Polls have closed in Iowa, New Mexico, and the rest of South Dakota

In-person Election Day voting in Iowa, New Mexico and South Dakota concluded at 9 p.m. ET. Polls closed an hour earlier in the parts of South Dakota that are in Central time.

Comparable primaries from past elections can offer clues about when to expect the first vote results and how long the vote count might take.

In the last contested Iowa state primary in 2022, the AP first reported results at 9:12 p.m. ET, or 12 minutes after polls closed. The last vote update of the night was at 2:29 a.m. ET, with more than 99% of total votes counted.

In the 2022 New Mexico gubernatorial primary, the AP first reported results at 9:11 p.m. ET, or 11 minutes after polls closed. The last vote update of the night was at 2:50 a.m. ET, with more than 99% of total votes counted.

In South Dakota’s most recent U.S. Senate primary in 2022, the AP first reported results at 9:02 p.m. ET, or two minutes after the last polls closed. The final vote update of the night was at 3:22 a.m. ET, with more than 99% of total votes counted.

Rebecca Bennett wins Democratic primary in New Jersey’s 7th District

Bennett, a former Navy helicopter pilot, will take on Rep. Tom Kean Jr. this fall. Her win over three other Democrats in the closely-watched district sets up the state’s premier contest for November, when the party hopes they can flip the seat.

Winning in districts like the 7th, which includes bedroom communities and farm towns as well as Trump’s Bedminster golf club, will be key to Democratic hopes of gaining control of the narrowly divided House.

The win comes as Kean has missed more than 100 votes in the House because of a medical issue that his office has declined to specify.

Republican voter in Sacramento suburb says she’s frustrated with state’s high costs

Rosamaria Cerezo, a 57-year-old substitute teacher, said Democrats, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, have failed to make California more affordable.

“Both my husband and I have two jobs each just to make ends meet,” Cerezo said outside a polling location in Elk Grove.

She planned to vote for Republican Steve Hilton, a conservative commentator, in the crowded race to replace Newsom. She wanted to back the GOP candidate she thought had the best chance of advancing to the general election in November.

Democratic voters in a Sacramento suburb split on contentious race

Outside a polling location in Elk Grove, Tamara Alton, a 65-year-old marriage and family therapist, said she was voting for incumbent Rep. Doris Matsui in the 7th District.

Alton said she’s more familiar with Matsui than her younger challenger, Democrat Mai Vang, a Sacramento City Council member.

“I’m going with who I know,” she said.

Democrat Khydeeja Alam, 42, a small farmer who also works for the state, said she planned to vote for Vang.

Alam, who is Muslim, said Matsui didn’t do enough to engage with Muslim Americans after the war in Gaza began.

“She’s not been accessible, which has been a really big disappointment,” Alam said.

New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District: By the numbers

New Jersey’s 7th District remains one of the most competitive U.S. House districts in the country. In 2018, former Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski unseated longtime Republican incumbent Leonard Lance, flipping the seat after decades of GOP control.

Malinowski managed to hold off now-Rep. Tom Kean Jr. in 2020, but following redistricting, the district seesawed back to Republicans in 2022 when Kean won by 2.8 points.

In 2024, Kean expanded his margin to 5.4 points, but Trump won the district by only 1.1 points that same year, making the race for this seat anyone’s game.

California voter says he has ‘no political home’

John Sileo, a 65-year-old business owner, said he voted for candidates who would put a check on Trump and also California’s liberal government.

The self-described moderate Republican said he never liked Trump and voted for Democrat Joe Kerr for Congress rather than the two Republican contenders.

“Trump has a monopoly now and you’ve got to at least turn the House,” he said outside a vote center in Orange.

Sileo said he refused to vote for Steve Hilton for California’s governor because he is backed by Trump, and wouldn’t vote for Xavier Becerra because he sees him as a continuation of Democrats’ policies in the state.

“I voted for Tom Steyer because at least he’s a disruptor,” he said. “He was the best of poor choices.”

LA voter says she went with ‘anybody but Spencer Pratt’ for mayor

Deanna Crane, 33, said “anyone with a pulse other than Spencer Pratt” would suffice for mayor.

She ultimately went with Nithya Raman because she was unhappy with the way Karen Bass handled the wildfires last January as well as her progress on addressing homelessness.

She said the main issue on her mind was broadly “community,” making sure the people around her were cared for and could afford to live. She went with Tom Steyer in the governor’s race because she felt like he was the most progressive candidate.

“I don’t particularly love voting for a billionaire,” she said. “That was a rough one.”

New Jersey voter thinks politicians should have military service background

Frank Coit is a retired orthopedic shoe store owner and Democratic voter from Somerville, where he said he voted for Rebecca Bennett for U.S. House.

A Vietnam War Army veteran, Coit said he liked and appreciated her military service. Bennett served about 15 years in the Navy, working as a helicopter pilot.

“I think every politician going should have some military service,” he said.

California Democratic voter wants to ‘stand up’ to Trump

Vanessa Rosella, a 47-year-old teacher, said she focused her pick for California’s next governor on the candidate she felt would best defend the state against the president.

“We need someone to stand up,” said Rosella, who cast her ballot for Xavier Becerra.

She said she considered voting for Tom Steyer, but she felt the state didn’t need a billionaire in charge when affordability has become such a critical issue.

Polls have closed in New Jersey and parts of South Dakota

In-person Election Day voting concluded in New Jersey at 8 p.m.

Comparable primaries from past elections can offer clues about when to expect the first vote results and how long the vote count might take.

In the New Jersey gubernatorial primaries last year, the AP first reported results at 8:03 p.m. or three minutes after polls closed. The last vote update of the night was at 11:43 p.m. with about 93% of total votes counted.

Although South Dakota spans two time zones and some polls close at 8 p.m. ET, state law requires that no results are released until the final polls have closed at 9 p.m. ET.

Republican voter in New Mexico says GOP candidate most likely to curb violent crime

While a Democrat is favored to win the governor’s job in New Mexico, many voters on the outskirts of Albuquerque cast ballots in the Republican primary.

The fire station serving Edgewood is the town’s only polling place. Registered Republican A. J. Rodriguez voted for Gregg Hull, who he says is most likely to be elected, and be in a position to rein in violent crime and government spending.

“The state keeps voting blue, and we’re getting hammered by policies that aren’t working,” said Rodriguez, a retired sheriff’s office lieutenant. “We need someone who can actually put up a good fight.”

Competitive US House district nudges first-time Iowa primary voter

Sophia Brown was voting in her first primary in part because she sees Iowa’s 1st District as within reach for Democrats in November.

“I’ve seen the races be so close, so getting out here earlier feels like it might have an impact,” said Brown, a pharmacist for University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.

Brown voted for Christina Bohannan, who is seeking her third chance against Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, a Republican elected in 2020 and reelected twice by narrow margins.

The 25-year-old resident of Coralville, just outside the University of Iowa’s home in Iowa City, said she often encounters people in her work without health insurance and unable to pay for prescribed medication.

“I see people every day who can’t get discharged from the hospital with the medicine they need,” she said. “That’s something that bothers me, and we need someone who is more acutely aware of that.”

Democrats look to Iowa to rebuild in the heartland

Iowa wasn’t always a Republican stronghold.

Before Trump reshaped American politics, this was the state the lifted the political career of Barack Obama and sent Tom Harkin to the Senate for five terms.

The party is particularly excited about Rob Sand, who is running unopposed for the Democratic nomination for governor. A native of Decorah, Iowa, he has the rural roots that have become rare among Democrats. Perhaps most importantly, he’s a proven winner in a Republican-leaning state, having been elected twice as auditor.

Republicans head into the primary with five candidates. Trump jumped in last week to endorse Rep. Randy Feenstra.

This is the first open contest for the governor’s seat since 2006. Democrats are hoping that a combination of the economic fallout from Trump’s tariff policies, rising gas prices stemming from the Iran war and the lack of a Republican incumbent could give them their best opportunity in years. Sand also has a fundraising advantage over the Republicans, including Feenstra.

▶ Read more

Iowa has some of this year’s most competitive House races

1. In southeastern Iowa’s 1st District, Republican U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks again faces a challenge from businessman David Pautsch, who earned 44% of votes against the incumbent congresswoman in the 2024 primary. Three-time Democratic candidate Christina Bohannan, who came about 800 votes shy of unseating Miller-Meeks in the last election, has the Democrat congressional committee’s support but must first fend off her primary opponent, first-time candidate Travis Terrell.

2. In northeastern Iowa’s 2nd District, former state Rep. Joe Mitchell, endorsed by Trump, and state Sen. Charlie McClintock are Republicans seeking U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson’s open seat. Three Democrats want the nomination: state Rep. Lindsay James, former nonprofit leader Clint Twedt-Ball and Kathy Dolter, a former dean of nursing at an Iowa community college.

3. In southcentral Iowa’s competitive 3rd District, Republican incumbent U.S. Rep. Zach Nunn and Democratic state Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott are both unopposed on the primary ballot.

From ‘The Hills’ to City Hall?

Spencer Pratt rose to fame on “The Hills,” a show about young people living in Los Angeles. Now he wants to be the city’s mayor.

Pratt’s home was destroyed in the Palisades Fire, and he blames Mayor Karen Bass for the widespread destruction. He is campaigning on a promise to clean up Los Angeles, but faces long odds in a city that hasn’t elected a Republican as mayor since 1997.

His campaign has drawn attention with videos generated by artificial intelligence. One of them casts Pratt as Batman, saving a dystopian city from Bass, portrayed as the Joker.

New Jersey Rep. Tom Kean Jr. says he’s returning soon

The Republican has been absent from Congress for months because of an unspecified medical issue.

He issued a statement saying “I will continue putting our constituents first” and “I am optimistic about the road ahead.”

“Right now I am focused on my recovery and under the advice of healthcare professionals. I will transition from virtual work to in person work within a matter of weeks,” said Kean, who is seeking a third term in November. “I look forward to sharing my experience with the public.”

Kean told a local political blog nearly two weeks ago that he expected to be back “in the next couple of weeks.”

Former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland could make history in New Mexico

If she wins her party’s nomination, Haaland will be on a path to become the first Native American woman elected as a governor in the U.S.

In 2018, the member of Laguna Pueblo became one of the first two Native American women elected to Congress. Under President Joe Biden, she became the first Native American Cabinet secretary.

New Mexico has trended increasingly blue in recent years, with Democrats winning every statewide elected office since 2017.

Haaland leads her challenger Sam Bregman in fundraising by a significant margin.

Democrats worry about being locked out of a California US House race

Democrats convinced California voters to let them redraw the state’s congressional map to counter the five-seat gain Republicans hoped to earn in Texas when they revised that state’s map at the president’s urging.

But one of the seats Democrats are counting on picking up, a new district outside San Diego that replaces a conservative seat, could end up out of their reach on primary night.

That’s because California’s primary awards spots on the November ballot to the top two vote-getters, regardless of political party. Nine Democrats are on the ballot in the 48th District, so many that some in the party worry the two Republicans will nab the top two slots while the Democrats split the majority of the vote and get locked out of the general election.

Other Democrats are confident their voters will coalesce around one of the most prominent candidates — former Obama administration official Ammar Campa-Najjar or San Diego City Councilwoman Marni von Wilpert.

Democrats compete to take on Tom Kean Jr.

Democrats in New Jersey's 7th District, where incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Kean Jr. has been absent for months, are picking their nominee to take him on in the fall.

Kean’s team has said he’s dealing with a personal medical issue and he plans to return soon, but they haven’t disclosed any details about what’s made him more than 100 votes in Congress.

Bruce Paterson, 75, a self-described “regular Democrat” who has been supportive of Kean, said at a recent state legislative town hall that he’s been tracking Kean’s absence.

“He has been out for months. Nobody knows where he is,” he said.

Competing for the Democratic nomination are Rebecca Bennett, Michael Roth, Tina Shah and Brian Varela.

The district, which has New York suburbs and rural areas and includes Trump’s Bedminster golf course, has flipped parties in midterms in 2018 and 2022.

GOP House members slug it out after being drawn into same California district

Democrats redrew the 40th District southeast of Los Angeles to create a solidly conservative district that was bound to eliminate one of two Republicans they have struggled to defeat over the years: Rep. Ken Calvert or Rep. Young Kim.

Both incumbents are now stuck in the same district and have launched a monthslong slugfest over who is more conservative and more loyal to Trump. Both might make it through to the general election. But if one doesn’t, their political career will end — at least for now.

Los Angeles voter says he was excited to vote for Nithya Raman for mayor of Los Angeles

Leo Blain, 24, likes Raman’s progressive agenda and believes she can be effective at building coalitions.

“I think she has a really good understanding about how the city of LA works and would be a really effective mayor,” Blain said Tuesday outside his polling place.

But Blain found it hard to get excited about any of the candidates for governor.

He voted for billionaire Tom Steyer because he believes the Democrat has the best shot to win in the November general election.

Turek, who defeated state Sen. Zach Wahls for his party's nomination, now faces a full-throttled Republican defense of the retiring two-term Sen. Joni Ernst’s seat, which the GOP considers pivotal to keeping its Senate majority.

Hinson, endorsed by Trump and Republican leaders, prevailed over former state Sen. Jim Carlin to secure the GOP’s nomination for Senate.

The Senate primaries were among many competitive races in Iowa attracting national interest, including from the White House. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance have both touched down in the state this year to shore up Republican enthusiasm.

Democrats feel hopeful that high prices, lost manufacturing jobs, shuttered healthcare facilities and a struggling agricultural economy will help the party dismantle the all-GOP federal delegation and Republican statehouse trifecta.

State Auditor Rob Sand, the lone Democrat currently holding statewide office, is the party’s nominee for governor. Unopposed in the primary, Sand has been able to hone his moderate message, remind voters of his rural upbringing and amass an $18 million campaign fund.

In the five-way GOP primary for governor, U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra and businessman Zach Lahn were in a tight race for the nomination. Feenstra was endorsed by Trump. Lahn previously worked for conservative political organization Americans for Prosperity.

Tense Senate primary grappled with Democratic establishment and electability

While many voters felt Turek and Wahls were largely aligned on key Democratic positions, Turek prevailed in convincing voters that he’s better to go up against Hinson.

Turek told an election night crowd that he has been a fighter his whole life and will fight for Iowans in Washington.

“This is what we need in D.C., fighters for the people. And that is what I will be in the United States Senate,” he said to cheers. He also criticized Hinson, saying “she does not represent Iowa and does not represent our values.”

Turek, a relative newcomer to elected office, leaned on his experience campaigning and winning in a red, Trump-won state House district as evidence that he could appeal to independent and moderate Republican voters in November. He played professional wheelchair basketball in Europe, and he competed for the U.S. in four Paralympics, including as recently as 2021. He won his state House seat in 2022.

Turek referred to himself as an underdog when he launched last August and said last week that he still thinks of his campaign that way, especially against Hinson. Still, a flood of outside support and Washington endorsements boosted him in the final stretch. A Democratic political operation spent millions of dollars to blanket the airwaves, social media and mailboxes. An adviser for VoteVets said in a statement Tuesday that they were “ready to continue the fight.”

Political organizations affiliated with U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, Senate minority leader, and Kirsten Gillibrand, who chairs the Democratic Senate campaign arm, have both contributed to Turek’s campaign committee.

Wahls had criticized the massive cash spend for Turek as insiders’ influence on the race and made his opposition to Schumer as party leader a defining tenet of his campaign. He criticized a coastal playbook that doesn’t work in Iowa.

But Wahls on Tuesday vowed to support Turek in the general election, saying he was committed to beating Hinson.

As Democrats look to reclaim Senate control, Iowa was one of the last states on the map where candidates were still fighting to be the party’s nominee. The GOP Senate campaign arm has committed $29 million to help Hinson, who currently represents northeast Iowa in Congress.

Hinson’s campaign immediately went on the attack against Turek, criticizing what she called his “radical record” and his support from Schumer.

“Chuck Schumer is on the ballot in Iowa – he goes by the name Josh Turek,” the campaign said.

GOP jostling over the governor’s seat

The GOP nominee for governor will face Sand in the race to replace Gov. Kim Reynolds, who opted out of a third bid.

Besides Feenstra and Lahn, the candidates were state Rep. Eddie Andrews, former state Rep. Brad Sherman and former director of the state Department of Administrative Services Adam Steen.

Trump said in his Friday endorsement of Feenstra that “Randy is MAGA all the way!"

If no candidate earns at least 35% of Republican primary voters, the nominee would be selected at a contested state party convention scheduled for June 13.

While Republicans celebrate years of progress under Reynolds, the primary has unearthed sticking points over economic development, tax policy and property rights, as well as the relationship between the state’s water quality, farm conservation practices and rising cancer rates.

Primaries in targeted congressional seats

Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, endorsed by Trump, again fended off a 1st District challenge from businessman David Pautsch, who had earned 44% of votes against the incumbent congresswoman in the 2024 primary. Three-time Democratic candidate Christina Bohannan, who came about 800 votes shy of unseating Miller-Meeks in the last election, won the nomination from her party in the district, fending off first-time candidate Travis Terrell.

In northeastern Iowa, former state Rep. Joe Mitchell, endorsed by Trump, secured the Republican nomination for Hinson’s open 2nd District seat over state Sen. Charlie McClintock. State Rep. Lindsay James won the Democratic nomination, defeating former nonprofit leader Clint Twedt-Ball and Kathy Dolter, a former dean of nursing at an Iowa community college.

Republican incumbent Rep. Zach Nunn and Democratic state Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott are both unopposed on the primary ballot in the competitive 3rd Congressional District.

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Associated Press reporter Thomas Beaumont contributed from Iowa City.

Hertl’s finish off Sisson’s feed from the right faceoff circle broke a 4-4 tie and pushed the Golden Knights ahead in an entertaining back-and-forth start on the sport’s biggest stage. It marked Vegas’ seventh straight win of the playoffs, starting with the last two games of the six-game second-round series against Anaheim and then the shocking four-game sweep of the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Colorado Avalanche.

That series included Vegas erasing a 3-0 deficit to take Game 3, and now the Golden Knights have followed by rallying from another multigoal deficit — this time 2-0 in the opening period — against the team that finished second only to the Avs in the regular season.

“It was awesome. It was tough,” Hertl said in a postgame interview on the ABC broadcast. "I know this building was buzzing. We obviously didn’t have the greatest start, but that’s kind of our story all season. We never give up. It doesn’t matter if we’re up, down, we just keep playing.”

Game 2 of the best-of-seven series is Thursday in Raleigh, with Vegas already having taken home-ice away from the Hurricanes as it chases a second Cup title in four seasons.

Shea Theodore, Ivan Barbashev, William Karlsson and Brett Howden also scored for Vegas, with Howden’s postseason-leading 11th score giving the Golden Knights a 4-3 lead just 1:21 into the third period. Carter Hart finished with 23 saves.

Nikolaj Ehlers scored twice for the Hurricanes, the first coming 25 seconds into the game when he got loose and a rush and blasted one past Hart from the left side on the game’s first shot. He followed with a breakaway that gave Carolina a 2-0 lead and sent a charged home crowd into an eruption in the team’s first Stanley Cup Final game in two decades.

Jordan Staal and Shayne Gostisbehere each scored tying goals after Vegas had pushed to a lead, with Gostisbehere skating in clean on the left side to blast one past Hart at 11:19 of the third period and tie it once more at 4.

The Hurricanes went 12-1 through three rounds to get back to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time since coach Rod Brind'Amour captained them to the title in 2006. It also comes amid an eight-year playoff streak that has included at least one series win every time as a regular postseason contender.

Carolina swept through Ottawa and Philadelphia before taking the last four games of a five-game win against Montreal to punch through an Eastern Conference Final roadblock. That made the Hurricanes the first team since 1983 to reach the Stanley Cup Final with one loss, and the first since the NHL went to best-of-seven series in all four rounds in 1987.

Meanwhile, Vegas had been getting stronger with every playoff round, winning for 19 of 24 games going back to the unexpected late-season firing of Bruce Cassidy to hire John Tortorella as coach. That included the shocking result against the Avalanche, who managed just seven goals in four games.

Defense had been the standout feature for both teams, in fact, with Carolina having allowed two or fewer goals in 12 of 13 playoff games. But that wasn't the case in Tuesday's fast-paced series opener, with both teams capitalizing on their chances in an entertaining back-and-forth game before Hertl got Vegas the lead for good.

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AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

Pelley had criticized the program's leadership during an introductory meeting Monday between the show’s staff and Nick Bilton, the new executive producer named by Weiss last week, according to a detailed report on the Status website. In a termination notice obtained Tuesday night by The Associated Press, Bilton, a former technology journalist and filmmaker with no traditional broadcast news experience, accused Pelley of carrying out an “ambush” against him.

“Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt,” the letter states.

Status, which said it had heard a recording of the meeting Monday, reported that Pelley began grilling Bilton about the firings last week of Bilton’s predecessor, Tanya Simon, and correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega. Weiss was not present at that meeting.

In the dismissal letter late Tuesday, Bilton said Pelley’s “performative display of hostility” demonstrated that he has “no interest in contributing to the future success of the show.”

Pelley’s agent did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Southeastern and Big Ten conferences said the “bill leaves critical issues unresolved,” including not “meaningfully” preempting state laws with a federal one, which has long been considered a key element for a measure to get support from the NCAA and the conferences.

In an interview last week, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who drafted the bill with Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., told The Associated Press “the bill is drafted to preempt state laws that conflict with the provisions in this bill.”

The SEC-Big Ten statement came out less than 24 hours before a scheduled hearing about the bill in front of the Senate Commerce Committee. Cruz chairs the panel and Cantwell is the ranking Democrat.

The legislation has received support from the Big 12 and Atlantic Coast Conferences, but the Big Ten and SEC, as the two richest leagues that also have decision-making power over the future of the College Football Playoff, hold the biggest cards.

One of the bill's key provisions would give conferences an option to pool their media rights — an idea the Big Ten and SEC have long claimed would not result in a financial windfall that proponents suggest. The leagues' statement did not speak to that issue.

A spokesperson for the Commerce Committee that Cruz chairs acknowledged the Big Ten-SEC position.

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AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports

The campaign pilgrimage by the two candidates, one from each end of the political spectrum, comes as both men face concerns their respective campaigns could cost their parties winnable races in the November midterms, with control of the Senate at stake for the final two years of Trump's second presidency.

Paxton's planned meeting with Trump comes after he won the president's coveted endorsement ahead of trouncing Sen. John Cornyn in the Texas runoff last month. The schedule was confirmed by a person with knowledge of the president's plans but who was not authorized to discuss them publicly.

Senate Republicans feared that Paxton, the Texas attorney general, would be a weaker candidate against James Talarico, the Democratic nominee, in the fall. Paxton has endured an indictment, an impeachment and public disclosure of marital infidelity.

He also is expected to meet with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who backed Cornyn. Senate Republicans’ campaign arm excoriated Paxton during the primary campaign, accusing him of “repulsive and disgusting” behavior and quoting his estranged wife saying she filed for divorce “on biblical grounds.”

Platner swung by Democrats’ Senate campaign headquarters on Tuesday to meet with several senators, including the group’s chair, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. The meeting comes days after the disclosure that he and his wife have had marital difficulties and sought counseling after he reportedly sent sexually explicit text messages to other women.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, who had backed Maine Gov. Janet Mills in the state’s Democratic primary before she suspended her campaign, told reporters Tuesday afternoon that he had met with Platner earlier in the day.

“We’re going to beat Susan Collins and take back the Senate,” Schumer said repeatedly when asked about Platner’s controversies.

As the questions continued, Schumer tried to change the subject.

“Any other subject you’ve got?” Schumer responded to reporters.

Platner and Paxton are pressing ahead with few apologies

Platner and his wife have criticized media coverage of their marriage, framing it as a private matter that should not shape the campaign. Still, the latest personal issues added fuel to some Democrats' skittishness about Platner, who already faced scrutiny over online posts that were dismissive of sexual assault and a tattoo that is recognized as a Nazi symbol. Platner has apologized for the posts and covered up the tattoo.

Paxton has offered no apologies for his baggage. He framed his win over Cornyn as a “Texas-sized message to Washington,” and thanked Trump — who himself has endured repeated personal and political scandals to win two national elections — for his support.

Like Paxton, Platner was not the choice of his party's Senate brass. But Platner effectively became the presumptive nominee after Mills suspended her campaign weeks ago because of fundraising difficulties.

Maine's primary is on June 9, and Platner would face Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican running for a sixth six-year term, in November. Defeating Collins is crucial to Democrats' attempts to regain control of the Senate. Democrats have repeatedly tried to unseat Collins, but she has always survived. In 2020, Collins won reelection even though Democrat Joe Biden carried the state over Trump by nine percentage points.

In Texas, some Republicans fear they will need to divert critical resources to boost Paxton over Talarico, who has become a national fundraising phenomenon.

Although Republicans have dominated Texas for decades, prominent party leaders have said the race could be genuinely competitive this time. Eight years ago, during the midterm election of Trump's first presidency, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz won reelection over another Democratic fundraising juggernaut, Beto O'Rourke, by less than 3 points.

Republicans hold a 53-47 Senate advantage and earlier in the campaign cycle were heavily favored to maintain their majority. But as Trump's popularity fades and primary fights yield nominees, Democrats have become more confident in their prospects.

Most Democrats and Republicans are taking their usual sides

With control of the Senate on the line, most partisans have generally lined up behind Platner and Paxton, even if begrudgingly, because of their political baggage. Tuesday's fundraising events were the latest evidence. The event for Paxton, with a $1,000 minimum donation required, according to the invitation, is being co-hosted by seven senators, including Cruz. The fundraiser for Platner is being co-hosted by former Biden White House chief of staff Ron Klain.

“My priority is to make sure that Republicans control the majority so we can continue the agenda that we're on,” said Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, on Tuesday. “Ken Paxton is absolutely necessary as far as keeping that majority. I have faith that the people of Texas will support him, and he'll get across the finish line."

Sen. Martin Heinrich, who had endorsed Platner, said he doesn’t believe Maine voters are focused on Platner’s marriage. Asked if Platner still has a shot in the race, Heinrich said “we’ll have to see” and “I suspect so.”

Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a progressive, said her top concern is Platner's prospective constituents.

“I want to hear from him about the economy,” she said ahead of their meeting. “And more about what he talks to the people of Maine about.”

That echoes another leading progressive who, like Warren, has endorsed Platner. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats, said he still supports Platner as part of the left's economic populism.

“Of course,” Sanders told reporters Monday. “Why would I not?”

But not all Democrats are on board, including one who first came to the Senate with an outsider persona. Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, a Democrat who has earned a reputation for speaking and voting against his party, even appeared to relish Platner’s newest controversy, calling him “phustle,” a reference to Platner’s apparent profile uncovered on Kik, a private messaging app.

“So much bizarre and tacky and gross stuff that you lose count. It’s like you need to have a bingo card,” Fetterman said.

The senator stopped short of calling on Platner to drop out, but he echoed some Democrats' private concerns.

“I mean, what’s next?” he said.

He later said, “I’m not going to carry water for that guy.” ___

Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa, and Barrow reported from Atlanta.

“He’s been kind of the last couple of weeks kind of dealing with some shoulder soreness, just kind of more nagging,” manager Aaron Boone said before the series opener against the Guardians. “Then over the weekend, the last couple of games in Sacramento, I think it became a little more than just that, where I noticed with some swings and stuff. It became a little more than just nagging. I think it was affecting him.”

Boone said tests on the team's off day on Monday revealed the bruise. Judge met with team physician later Dr. Christopher Ahmad Tuesday and following Tuesday's 9-4 loss, Boone said Judge will see a specialist on Wednesday.

Judge had an rib injury in March 2020 when doctors discovered a stress fracture in his right rib. The injury occurred when he dove for a ball in September 2019, but Judge did not miss any time because of the injury because the 2020 season was delayed due to the pandemic.

“Tough to say,” Boone said. “We'll look at it and that's why we want a specialist to look at it too and just try and rule out anything or see if there's something else to see.”

In March 2020, doctors discovered a stress fracture in his right rib, stemming from a dive he made in a game the prior September. He was shut down for two weeks, but the season was delayed until July due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Judge is hitting .248 and 17 homers and 38 RBIs. The three-time AL MVP has one homer in his last 18 games since May 10 and ended an 11-game homer and RBI drought with a game-ending, two-run drive in the ninth inning to give the Yankees a 2-0 win over Tampa Bay on May 24.

Judge entered the game against Tampa Bay in a 1-for-24 slump that dropped his batting average to .246. He was hitless in 15 at-bats before singling in the first inning.

“I think probably something that’s been affecting him a little bit here recently, especially this weekend,” Boone said. “So, hopefully, it is something that we just get calmed down here and put it behind us.”

Judge won the batting title last season when he batted a career-high .331 with 53 homers and 114 RBIs in 152 games. He missed 10 games from July 26-Aug. 4 with a flexor strain in his right elbow sustained on a throw to home July 22 in Toronto. He underwent a plasma-rich injection and did not require offseason surgery, though he did not return to the outfield until Sept. 5.

When Judge was hurt last season, Giancarlo Stanton played 17 games in the outfield. Stanton has been out since April 24 with a strained right calf.

On Tuesday, José Caballero made his 22nd career start in right field and third since being acquired from Tampa Bay at the July 31 trade deadline.

Judge had started 52 of New York's first 59 games in right field. Rookie Spencer Jones made four starts in right field before getting sent down May 23 and Cody Bellinger has started two games.

Yankees move prospect Carlos Lagrange to bullpen at Triple-A

The Yankees said Tuesday that prospect Carlos Lagrange is being moved to the bullpen at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes Barre to possibly provide relief help at the major league level later this season.

"We definitely view him long term as a starter,” Boone said. “But in the 2026 lens, there’s a chance for him to potentially impact us out of the bullpen while not really disrupting anything moving forward.”

Lagrange is rated as New York's fourth-best prospect by MLB Pipeline and the No. 2 pitcher.

Lagrange is 0-3 with a 4.41 ERA in 11 Triple-A starts. Across 49 innings, he has allowed 40 hits and 25 walks, striking out 63 while holding opponents to a .215 batting average.

The 23-year-old is averaging 98.9 mph on fastballs this season and has topped out at 103.0 mph on a fastball after spending time with the Yankees at spring training.

“It’s electric stuff,” Boone said. “The exciting thing for me was, really being around him for the first time, seeing the person and the competitor."

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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/MLB

Haaland celebrated Tuesday night at a historic plaza in Albuquerque’s Old Town neighborhood, where supporters gathered for a mariachi band, traditional hoop dancing and a prayer in Tiwa, one of many Native languages spoken among tribes in the state.

“I’m the only candidate who has been a single mom," Haaland said. "I’m the only candidate who worked across the aisle in Congress and got bills signed into law.”

Under President Joe Biden, Haaland championed public lands conservation and oversaw a first-of-its-kind federal investigation into the abuse of Native American children at government-run boarding schools. In 2018, the citizen of Laguna Pueblo made history as one of the first two Native American women elected to Congress.

While voters will decide primaries in three congressional seats, a U.S. Senate seat and a long list of statewide offices, the governor’s race is the main attraction. The winner of the November general election will succeed Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who reached her term limit.

New Mexico has trended left in recent years and Democrats have won every statewide elected office since 2017.

Surging oil prices have translated into an influx of tax revenue

New Mexico is grappling with high rates of violent crime, chronically underperforming schools and cuts to federal programs that are key safety nets for residents.

“Our challenges today are not new but we must come to the table with new solutions," Haaland told her supporters Tuesday night. “Everything is getting more expensive. The state will step up to put more money back in your pockets."

Despite the state's persistent challenges, the primary election comes at a time of promise for the next governor. Surging oil prices caused by the Iran war have translated into an influx of tax revenue to state coffers. New Mexico is the nation’s second-largest oil-producing state behind Texas, and the industry’s revenue funds an array of progressive social programs that include universal childcare.

For the first time, the primary was open to voters who are independent. The state’s semi-open primary system, which was signed into law by Lujan Grisham last year, allows the roughly 23% of New Mexico voters who are not affiliated with a political party to request either a Democratic or Republican ballot.

Haaland's campaign resonated with voters

On the campaign trail, Haaland focused on reducing costs for families while emphasizing her ancestral roots in the state and experience in the nation’s capital.

She made her first stop Tuesday at San Felipe Pueblo, a Native American community north of Albuquerque, where she was greeted with hugs.

Meredith Ansera, a project coordinator with the pueblo, said she worked with Haaland during her tenure as a tribal administrator who helped oversee education and childcare programs. “She knows what our needs are and she’s been there,” Ansera said.

She defeated Sam Bregman, an Albuquerque-based district attorney and the father of Chicago Cubs All-Star Alex Bregman, who campaigned on a promise to curb violent crime.

Bregman said he was deeply grateful to every person who supported his campaign as he envisioned a “stronger, safer, more prosperous” New Mexico.

“This campaign may be over, but my commitment to the people of New Mexico is not,” he wrote in a statement to The Associated Press.

He criticized Haaland after her name appeared in the Jeffrey Epstein files. She flew on a private jet chartered by one of Epstein's companies during her 2014 unsuccessful bid for lieutenant governor. That flight to a fundraising meeting in Washington, D.C., was paid for by Gary King, her running mate at the time. King's family had sold Epstein a ranch in New Mexico two decades earlier.

Haaland said she was unaware of Epstein’s role in arranging the flight and never met him.

Republican candidates face an uphill battle

Three candidates are running in the Republican primary and the winner will face an uphill battle in November.

Gregg Hull was mayor of fast-growing Rio Rancho and has pointed to his leadership there as a blueprint for how he would govern, promising to attract large employers.

Republican Doug Turner, a PR professional, waved at passersby Tuesday and shook hands with those who came up to him near a polling site in Albuquerque. His campaign has focused on plans to lift the state’s public education system from the bottom of national rankings.

“This place is truly special. It’s worth fighting for,” he said of New Mexico, adding that it goes beyond party politics and that people just want to keep their children safe, have good jobs and not worry about where their next meal will come from.

Duke Rodriguez, former state Cabinet secretary under former Republican Gov. Gary Johnson turned cannabis CEO, has focused on stabilizing the state’s healthcare system, which faces financial troubles and a severe shortage of physicians.

While Hull and Turner have not aligned their campaigns with the MAGA movement, Rodriguez was recently served a cease-and-desist letter from a law firm representing President Donald Trump for “deceptive use” of Trump’s image in campaign materials.

“Have you voted yet?” Rodriguez asked shoppers Tuesday as they funneled into a store in northeast Albuquerque. With every affirmative answer he gave an enthusiastic thumbs-up and exclaimed, “Good job!” He said the election is about getting voters to turn out and exercise their rights, particularly new voters.

The winner of November's general election will inherit the oil windfall in the state budget that has led to competing ideas on how best to use it — from cutting one-time checks for taxpayers to funding tax credits that would mostly aid low-income residents to eliminating the state's income tax.

The state's reliance on fossil fuels to fund its programs also has proved politically sensitive for Democrats.

The state’s unusual primary system, in which the top two vote-getters advance to the general election regardless of party, means Democrats have a chance of effectively missing out on a pickup in the San Diego suburbs, where Republican Rep. Darrell Issa's district was redrawn to give it a slight Democratic lean.

Issa retired, and a Republican San Diego County supervisor, Jim Desmond, stepped in to run. So did an avalanche of nine Democrats — so many that some fear the Democratic vote will be split among them, leaving Desmond and the only other GOP candidate, Jim O’Neil, as the top vote-getters. Under that scenario, Democrats would be locked out of the November general election.

“After millions of dollars and a nationwide effort to redraw these districts in response to Texas, Democrats being shut out would be a nightmare,” said Ammar Campa-Najjar, a former Obama administration official who is one of the Democrats running.

California was Democrats' prize in midterms redistricting

California has been the bright spot for Democrats in a redistricting war kicked off by President Donald Trump to help his party retain control of the House. After Texas redrew its map to make as many as five more seats winnable for the GOP, California voters allowed Democrats to suspend their state’s own independent redistricting commission and create a new map in retaliation.

But when Virginia Democrats tried to replicate that, they were blocked by their state Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, letting Republicans eliminate some majority-Black congressional districts in the South.

Campa-Najjar, San Diego City Councilwoman Marni von Wilpert and investor Brandon Riker, who is financing his own campaign, are the most prominent Democrats in the race for the seat vacated by Issa. Many Democrats are optimistic their voters will coalesce around one candidate and set up a competitive election this fall against Desmond, whom Trump endorsed.

Younger progressives challenge veteran Democrats

The schism between establishment Democrats and a younger, insurgent progressive wing is a defining characteristic of many of this year's primaries across the country, and it's no different in California.

In Sacramento, city council member Mai Vang is challenging 81-year-old Rep. Doris Matsui, who succeeded her late husband after he died in 2005.

The split in the party was encapsulated at a polling place in the suburb of Elk Grove on Tuesday. Tamara Alton, a 65-year-old marriage and family therapist, said she was voting for Matsui.

“I’m going with who I know,” Alton said.

Democrat Khydeeja Alam, 42, a small farmer who also works for the state, said she planned to vote for Vang.

Alam, who is Muslim, said Matsui didn’t do enough to engage with Muslim Americans after the war in Gaza began.

“She’s not been accessible, which has been a really big disappointment,” Alam said.

Rep. Brad Sherman, whose Southern California district stretches from the San Fernando Valley to Malibu, is being challenged by Democrat Jake Levine, a 42-year-old lawyer who argues that it is time to move on from the 15-term congressman. In a redrawn district that stretches from Napa Valley into conservative Northern California farming communities, 14-term Democratic Rep. Mike Thompson has drawn a younger challenger, former venture capitalist Eric Jones.

And in a safe Democratic district in San Francisco, Scott Wiener, a state lawmaker and former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, is considered likely to make the November race to replace retiring former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The suspense is over whether he will face Saikat Chakrabarti, a wealthy former technology entrepreneur who supported Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s insurgent primary in 2018, or Supervisor Connie Chan, who was endorsed by Pelosi.

Republicans grapple with redrawn districts

California's congressional primaries also will determine the fate of Republicans targeted in the Democratic redraw.

In the Central Valley, they redrew the seat held by Republican Rep. David Valadao to make it even more Democratic. Valadao is a survivor of several targeted Democratic campaigns and one of two remaining Republican House members who voted to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

He’s expected to make it to the general election, so the primary will determine which Democrat faces him — state Assemblywoman Jasmeet Bains, a moderate backed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or Randy Villegas, a political science professor at College of the Sequoias and a school board member who represents the party’s liberal wing.

The district was rattled Tuesday evening by an hourslong standoff in downtown Bakersfield between police and a man holding local residents inside a bank. Local officials said the main county building and its ballot drop box remained open, but Bains canceled her election night party, citing the standoff.

In Southern California, sitting Republican Reps. Ken Calvert and Young Kim were drawn into the same conservative district and are battling over their pro-Trump credentials. That was on the mind of Brett Christensen, a 55-year-old school safety monitor who voted for Calvert on Tuesday because he thought the congressman had been a more reliable conservative vote.

“Young Kim’s voting record has not been consistent,” Christensen said outside a polling place in the city of Orange.

In the Sacramento suburbs, Rep. Kevin Kiley, who left the GOP to become an independent and a critic of partisan gerrymandering, hopes to survive in one of the two Democratic-leaning districts where his more conservative district’s voters were scattered.

Meanwhile, in the San Francisco suburbs, six Democrats and two Republicans are running for the seat formerly held by Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell, who resigned and ended his gubernatorial bid amid sexual harassment allegations. The top two vote-getters advance to the November ballot to fill the seat starting in 2027, while a special election will be held June 18 for the remainder of Swalwell's current term.

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This story corrects the spelling of the name of a candidate who is running in San Francisco. It is Saikat Chakrabarti, not Saikat Charkrabati.

___

Sophie Austin in Elk Grove, California, and Amy Taxin in Orange contributed to this report.

But much of the focus is on California, home to Hollywood but not a governor's race packing much star power. It's a somewhat different story in Los Angeles, where a reality television personality is running for mayor as the city prepares to host the Olympics.

Here are some early takeaways from primary elections in California, Iowa, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota.

Democrats side with establishment-backed candidate in Iowa

Democrats stunned by how President Donald Trump has remade American politics have spent the past decade debating which type of candidate is best positioned to energize voters and help the party win elections, not moral victories.

Iowa marked the latest stop in this sometimes agonizing conversation.

The party’s establishment supported Josh Turek, a state representative who presented a compelling personal biography that included competing for the U.S. in four Paralympics. State Sen. Zach Wahls, meanwhile, offered himself as a more disruptive player, expressly refusing to back Chuck Schumer as Democratic leader if he were elected.

Democratic voters united behind Turek, who will face Republican Ashley Hinson in the fall.

At this point, many of the party’s most fractious races are in the mirror. But Turek's win could be closely watched in Michigan, where one of the last major Democratic primaries will unfold on Aug. 4. Rep. Haley Stevens is emerging as the establishment candidate there vying against state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and progressive Abdul El-Sayed.

Both races are important for Democrats increasingly bullish about retaking the Senate majority in November. To get there, they must protect their seat in Michigan while looking for pickup opportunities in places like Iowa.

The results in the fall could have longer-term implications as Democrats look to rebuild their standing in the Midwest, which swung to Trump in 2024.

Independents emerge in red-state Senate races

If Democrats hope to compete in red-state Senate contests this fall, they may have to abandon their party’s nominees and rally around independents.

That’s one of the takeaways after voters on Tuesday finalized general election matchups in Montana and South Dakota, where little-known Democrats earned their party’s nominations. In both states, however, higher-profile independent candidates also qualified for the general election ballot.

It’s much the same in Idaho and Nebraska, which held Senate primaries last month. Democratic leaders in Nebraska are openly endorsing independent Dan Osborne over their party’s nominee, who has promised to drop out to make it easier for Osborne to win.

In Montana, independent Senate candidate Seth Bodnar, the former University of Montana president, looks like the strongest opponent to Republican Kurt Alme — on paper, at least. Bodnar raised more money than all of the five Democratic primary candidates combined. He’s even significantly outraised Trump-backed Alme.

In South Dakota, three-term incumbent Republican Mike Rounds cruised to his party’s nomination Tuesday. He’ll face Democrat Julian Beaudion, a former highway patrol trooper and small business owner, on the November ballot. But it’s a former Democrat now running as an independent, military veteran Brian Bengs, who some Democrats believe may be the tougher challenger.

The Democrats shift toward independents reflects the party’s toxic brand in Republican strongholds.

Absent congressman gets a Democratic challenger

One of the most closely watched U.S. House races is set.

Democrats nominated Rebecca Bennett to take on incumbent Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. in New Jersey’s 7th congressional district.

The district, which stretches from the New York City suburbs to the Pennsylvania border, is critical for Republicans as they defend a narrow majority in Congress. The race was always going to be one of the most competitive on a map that has been increasingly gerrymandered to protect both parties. But it’s under particularly close scrutiny because of Kean’s extended and unexplained medical absence.

He's missed more than 100 votes since casting his last one on March 5.

Bennett, a former Navy pilot, was among the Democrats in the primary who made the absence and the lack of clarity surrounding it an issue, arguing Kean wasn’t around to protect money for a new rail tunnel connecting New Jersey and New York City. That line of attack will likely only grow heading into the general election.

Trump reiterated his endorsement of Kean on Monday. And the congressman released a statement Tuesday saying he is “focused on my recovery.”

“Under the advice of healthcare professionals, I will transition from virtual work to in person work within a matter of weeks,” he said. “At that time I will be completely transparent as to the nature of my medical condition.”

New Mexico could make history in governor's race

The stage is set for Deb Haaland to make history this fall after the former U.S. interior secretary secured the Democratic nomination for governor in New Mexico.

Haaland, who served under President Joe Biden for four years, was the first Native American to serve as a presidential cabinet secretary. And this fall, the citizen of Laguna Pueblo could become the first Native American woman elected governor of any U.S. state.

She defeated Albuquerque-based District Attorney Sam Bregman, the father of Chicago Cubs All-Star Alex Bregman, in a Democratic primary campaign that emphasized her ancestral roots in addition to lowering costs and her governing experience.

Three Republicans were vying to face Haaland in the general election.

California's low-wattage race for governor

Ronald Reagan. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Jerry Brown. Gavin Newsom.

The governor's office in California typically attracts some of the highest-wattage names in politics, but not this year.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Alex Padilla took a pass on the race. And with Newsom barred from seeking a third term, the campaign to succeed him turned into a sprawling, often messy contest.

In the final stretch, much of the attention has focused on Democrats Xavier Becerra, the former congressman and state attorney general who was also health secretary under President Joe Biden, and Tom Steyer, a billionaire known for his climate activism. Republican Steve Hilton is campaigning with Trump's endorsement.

Under California's primary system, all candidates appear on a single ballot and the top two finishers advance to the November general election, regardless of party. The absence of a front-runner incentivized virtually anyone with political ambition and a modicum of organization to join the race, leaving Democrats worried that their candidates would divide the vote and ultimately be shut out of the fall campaign. But those fears have eased in the primary's closing weeks, with the party now expecting to secure at least one slot on the November ballot.

The results could offer insight about how voters are feeling in a state where Democrats have dominated statewide elections for two decades.

Los Angeles mayor seeks to fend off reality star challenger

In a city still recovering from the most destructive wildfire in its history, Mayor Karen Bass is in a tough fight for reelection.

The mayor, who is a frequent target of Trump's criticism, was in Ghana as part of a presidential delegation when the blaze began. She has acknowledged mistakes but has centered her campaign around a message of recovery and progress.

Bass is facing a spirited challenge from reality television personality Spencer Pratt, who has blamed Bass for presiding over destruction that claimed his own home. Pratt, who rose to fame on “The Hills,” has shared videos created by artificial intelligence that show him taking on a superhero persona to battle street criminals and Democratic politicians.

The race is officially nonpartisan, but Bass is a Democrat, as is progressive city council member Nithya Raman, who made a last-minute decision to challenge her one-time ally. Pratt is a registered Republican who has received a nod of approval — if not an outright endorsement — from Trump.

Unless a candidate receives a majority of the vote in the primary, the top two will advance to a general election in November.

Los Angeles hasn't elected a Republican mayor since Richard Riordan won his second term in 1997, and the results will be closely watched for signs of dissatisfaction with liberal urban governance. The winner will emerge as a national and global figure as the city prepares to host the Olympics in 2028.

JSO officers responded to the shooting around 7:37 p.m. at the Pine Hills Apartment complex on Oriole Street.

A man was found shot in his lower back and right forearm. Police said he met with an unknown individual through Instagram to purchase an item. JSO did not specify what item was exchanged.

During the exchange, the man paid the suspect, who then pulled out a gun and fired multiple shots at the victim, striking him twice, JSO said.

The man was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

The shooter drove off from the scene.

Anyone with information is encouraged to contact the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office at 904-630-0500, email JSO Crime Tips at jsocrimetips@jaxsheriff.orgor contact Crime Stoppers at 1-866-845-8477.

The justices granted the state’s emergency appeal to use a map it adopted three years ago that has a majority-Black population in just one of its seven congressional districts. The three liberal justices dissented.

The high-court order is the latest development in a redistricting frenzy that is part of a broader push by President Donald Trump to try to hold on to Republicans’ slim House majority in the November elections. It comes a day before an important deadline that Republican Gov. Kay Ivey had already extended in the state’s desire to use the map in special primary elections in August.

The state’s Republican leadership went to the Supreme Court last week, the day after a three-judge court refused to let the state use its preferred map.

The lower court had ordered Alabama to use the same court-drawn map it used in the 2024 elections that sent two Black Democrats to Congress. Black residents comprise a majority or close to it in two of the state’s seven congressional districts.

"The Supreme Court’s decision gives cover to Alabama and others to deliberately and openly discriminate against Black voters without fear of any consequence. The Court’s shameless decision to reinstate an intentionally racially discriminatory map defies any thoughtful or consistent application of the law,” Deuel Ross, director of litigation for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said Tuesday night.

He said the fund will “continue to throw all of our resources into the fight to ensure that Alabama voters have the fair representation that they deserve.”

Shortly after the court acted, Ivey confirmed that the state will use the map in special congressional primaries in four districts on Aug. 11.

“The U.S. Supreme Court confirmed what I have said all along and that is that Alabama knows our state, our people and our districts best. Today’s decision is a win for the people of Alabama and our elections. Alabama is doing our part to keep America strong, and I am proud our state continues to fight the fight to ensure activists do not get the final say,” Ivey said.

“I will see y’all at the polls August 11!” she said.

The order is the latest development in the fallout from last month’s Supreme Court ruling that struck down a Black-majority district in Louisiana and weakened the federal Voting Rights Act. That ruling has led Republicans in several Southern states, including Alabama, to take steps to reshape voting districts with large minority populations that have elected Democrats.

The Alabama cases stretches back several years. The three-judge panel in 2023 ruled that a map drawn by Republican state lawmakers intentionally diluted the voting power of Black citizens. The court said the state, which is about 27% Black, should have two districts where Black voters are the majority or close to it.

After the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in the Louisiana case, Alabama officials moved to implement the 2023 state-drawn map. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority agreed to lift the injunction that had blocked the map’s use and sent the case back to the three-judge panel for reconsideration in light of the Louisiana ruling.

In the meantime, voters cast ballots in Alabama’s May 19 primaries, and Ivey set the new special August primaries in the districts affected by the map switch.

Upon further review, the judicial panel said it was standing behind its initial finding that there was “undisputed evidence” of intentional racial discrimination.

It said the special congressional primaries should instead proceed under the previous court-approved districts.

The panel was wrong, the high court’s conservative majority wrote in an unsigned opinion that said the lower court “did not heed the presumption of legislative good faith.”

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor chastised her colleagues for enabling what promises to be “a chaotic election, held under a never-before-used congressional map that intentionally discriminates against Black Alabamians.”

The use of the court-ordered map led to the 2024 election of U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures, a Black Democrat. The map put into place by Tuesday’s order gives the GOP an opportunity to reclaim the south Alabama seat.

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Associated Press writer Kim Chandler contributed to this report from Montgomery, Ala.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.

RELATED: City debuts music video featuring Mayor Deegan, local rapper, students for anti-littering campaign

The money will buy ATVs and trailers to let cleanup crews cover larger areas more efficiently and safely, officials said. The city also plans to install a mix of fixed and portable cameras at chronic dumping sites so law enforcement can gather the evidence needed to hold repeat offenders accountable.

“This is our city, and we are going to treat it that way by keeping it clean,” Deegan said, adding that the effort includes education to change behavior and the launch of a “Keep Jax Cute” citywide call to action.

Richard Reichard, who oversees the Department of Administrative Services, said the new equipment will speed response times and support crews working both daytime and after-hours cleanups. He said the city also secured additional funding to expand litter-control teams and contract crews.

“We wrapped [a trailer] with our new logo and we’re going to fill it up with gloves, tools and supplies to assist our thousands of volunteers,” Reichard said.

Al Ferraro, manager of blight initiatives, said illegal dumping and homeless encampments have affected all 14 council districts. He traced the problem in part to steep cuts in blight funding over the past two decades, saying the program once had $2 million and seven fully staffed cleanup crews.

He said budget reductions left the city with one dump site and far fewer crews even as the population grew from about 700,000 to more than 1 million.

“If we stop the littering, we could use this money on sidewalks, roads, drainage and other things that are important,” Ferraro said.

Officials also noted a volunteer competition tied to the initiative. Next month’s winning team will receive tickets in a private suite to a Jumbo Shrimp game and the opportunity to select someone to throw out the first pitch, they said.

After the remarks, city staff demonstrated equipment and officials answered questions from attendees.

Supporters say it could provide meaningful relief as the cost of living remains high. But local leaders across Northeast Florida and others around the state are warning the proposal could create major budget gaps for cities and counties that rely on property tax revenue to pay for services.

What the proposal would do

The measure is a proposed amendment to the Florida Constitution.

According to the House joint resolution approved by lawmakers, the amendment would:

• Increase the homestead exemption for non-school property taxes:
• • $150,000 beginning Jan. 1, 2027
  • $250,000 beginning Jan. 1, 2028
• Keep school district taxes out of the expanded exemption
• Reduce the cap on annual assessment increases for many non-homestead properties (including certain residential and other properties not covered by the homestead cap), from 10% to 5% beginning Jan. 1, 2027.
• Limit how counties and cities can use ad valorem tax revenue, restricting it to “core services,” including public safety, education and schools, infrastructure, natural resource projects, debt service, retirement obligations and basic operations of constitutional offices and local government administration.

To take effect, the proposed amendment would need 60% voter approval.

What residents are saying

Some homeowners News4JAX spoke with said they welcome the possibility of lower property tax bills.

“I think that’s actually good for the community,” said Markisha Warrick, a lifelong Florida resident. “Honestly because the economy already sky high. Take the ease on some people.”

Another resident, Israel Davila, called the proposal “excellent,” adding: “Save money for everybody. We pay a lot already and you save money like that is really good.”

Lovellia Simmons said any relief would matter: “Money in the pocket is worth it. Because the cost of living is high and we struggling.”

Why local leaders are concerned

Local governments often depend on property tax revenue to fund services such as police and fire protection, road maintenance and other day-to-day operations.

News4JAX political analyst Rick Mullaney said the proposal is likely to drive a heated campaign before the election because of the competing impacts.

“What you’re going to hear a number of people talking about of course is relief to taxpayers and it will be significant,” Mullaney said. “On the other side … what this means for local governments … it is by far and away the greatest reduction in revenue cut in the history of Duval County.”

House staff analysis estimates the revenue impact to non-school local governments would start around $4.6 billion per year and could grow to about $8.4 billion per year.

Mullaney warned that if revenue drops sharply, local governments could face difficult decisions, including shifting costs, raising other taxes or fees or cutting services.

What’s next

The proposed constitutional amendment will appear on the November 2026 general election ballot, where voters will decide whether to approve it. If it passes with at least 60%, the changes would begin in 2027.

Iran fired missiles toward Kuwait and Bahrain, but failed to hit their targets, the U.S. said. The two fired at Kuwait fell apart en route, while U.S. and Bahraini forces intercepted the missiles aimed at Bahrain.

U.S. Central Command said it responded with strikes on an Iranian military ground control station on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said it had targeted the headquarters of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet in Bahrain and another country in its attack, without naming Kuwait. It said it launched its attack in response to the U.S. firing a missile into the engine room of another oil tanker trying to reach Iran despite the U.S. blockade.

“We had previously warned that in case of aggression, the response would be different and more severe, and we acted accordingly," the Guard said in its statement.

Central Command also said it “downed multiple drones” launched by Iran targeting American forces in Kuwait.

The attacks happened after Iran stopped communicating with mediators about extending a ceasefire in the war with the U.S. and Israel, according to reports Tuesday from two semiofficial Iranian news agencies. President Donald Trump disputed the claim and said talks were continuing.

The reports by the Fars and Tasnim news agencies, both believed to be close to the Guard, came as tensions flared in Israel’s separate-but-related fight against the Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah in Lebanon.

A regional official involved in the mediation, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the talks, told The Associated Press that Iran had not communicated at all on Tuesday after saying that a ceasefire needed to be enforced in Lebanon for negotiations to continue.

Trump says talks ‘going on continuously’

Trump called reports of a cessation in talks “false and erroneous.”

“The conversations between us have been going on continuously, including four days ago, three days ago, two days ago, one day ago and today,” Trump said in a social media post. "Where they lead, one never knows, but as I told Iran, ‘It’s time, one way or another, for you to make a Deal."

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not address the reported cutoff in communications as he testified at a congressional hearing in Washington. Instead, he sounded an optimistic note about the nuclear dimension of the negotiations, while cautioning that there’s no guarantee of reaching “a deal that’s acceptable.”

Iran has been trying to increase pressure on Trump over negotiations on the Iran war ceasefire and loosening the Islamic Republic's chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz and the oil, gas and other commodities that normally pass through it. Trump then could potentially push Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to halt or slow the advance of his forces, which have moved deeper into Lebanon than at any time in over a quarter of a century.

The conflicts have increasingly become conjoined, as Iran insists that any potential truce in the war there must also quell the fighting in Lebanon.

Israel and the U.S. maintain the fighting in Lebanon is separate from the Iran war talks.

Inflation takes an economic toll on Iran

Meanwhile, year-on-year inflation in Iran reached a level in May unseen since World War II, underlining the economic pain average Iranians are facing. While the U.S. is eager to ease the Islamic Republic's grip on the strait — through which a fifth of all traded oil and natural gas passed in peacetime — Iran faces economic challenges as its oil-backed economy remains under a U.S. naval blockade.

Economic pressure touched off nationwide protests in Iran in 2017 into 2018, when rising food prices sparked demonstrations that killed over 20 people and saw hundreds arrested. The next year, an increase in government-subsidized gasoline prices caused protests that saw over 300 people reportedly killed.

Then came the protests over the collapsing value of Iran's currency, the rial, at the start of this year. They were the most intense demonstrations to shake the Islamic Republic since its 1979 revolution and the chaotic years that followed. Iran's theocracy met January's protests with a crackdown on demonstrators in January that killed over 7,000 people, according to activists' estimates.

Now, even as hard-liners hold gun-handling workshops and organize marriages under the shadow of a ballistic missile to bolster spirits, experts note there could be new demonstrations if people find themselves priced out of feeding their families.

“I have no doubt that if Trump leaves (Iran without a formal peace deal) ... most probably, we will see something like January by the end of summer because of the economic and social situations," analyst Mohsen Jalilvand said in a video published by Iran's Fararu news website.

Iran faces skyrocketing inflation

Iran's Central Bank said the consumer price index, which measures a basket of goods and services, reached 77.2% in May compared with the year before. The rate is 8.5% higher than in April, the bank added. Inflation in daily and general needs — like medicine, taxi fares, tobacco and communication fees — rose 113.8% from the year before.

A private economic think tank in Iran, the Bamdad Institute of Economic Studies, described the current figures as “an unprecedented rate since World War II.” Iran’s Central Bank did not acknowledge the significance of the figures.

The previous record came in 1942. During the war, the British and Soviets invaded Iran and took over its railway, disrupting food supplies. The lack of food, worsened by a poor harvest, sparked hyperinflation and a famine. Hunger and a typhus outbreak killed many.

Airstrikes this year have greatly damaged Iran's businesses and its oil industry, Meanwhile, the U.S. blockade has been targeting Iranian crude oil shipments trying to reach the international market, a key source of hard revenue. Tax revenues have been depressed by businesses struggling even after the fighting paused.

The rial, which traded at 32,000 to $1 in 2015, now trades at over 1.7 million to $1.

“We will definitely have higher prices," Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian warned in May. "We are fighting, and we must accept this hardship.”

Tehran-based economist Saeed Leilaz, speaking to the AP, warned that annual inflation in Iran could reach 80%.

"Iran’s society cannot tolerate above 25%” annual inflation, he said.

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Karimi reported from Tehran, Iran. Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Jennifer Peltz in New York and Aamer Madhani and Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report.

In a wide-ranging interview with “The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg to promote her White House memoir, the former first lady said Tuesday that she had put life in perspective after her husband, former President Joe Biden, was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

She said she is no longer angry about the way Democrats pressured her husband to end his reelection bid after performing disastrously in a 2024 debate against Republican Donald Trump.

“No, I’m not angry. I mean, what’s the purpose of anger now?” Jill Biden said at the first event for her book, which was published Tuesday and held at the 92nd Street Y in New York.

‘I think we were partly in denial’

Jill Biden wrote in the memoir, “View from the East Wing,” that addiction wasn’t something she and her husband talked about. “I think we were partly in denial,” she acknowledged, adding that she wondered why someone who had a family that loved him, a good education and a lucrative career would turn to drugs.

“It’s hard for me to say this, but Hunter was a drug addict,” she said Tuesday.

She said Hunter's spiral into addiction was “a really hard time for our family to go through.” Hunter Biden started abusing alcohol and drugs after his older brother, Beau Biden, died in 2015 of an aggressive form of brain cancer. Hunter has now been sober for several years, she said.

“I'm sorry that I didn't talk about it a little bit more,” she said on stage.

Jill Biden talked about how proud she is of Hunter for turning his life around, becoming an artist and helping other recovering addicts.

“And I hope that by talking about it more as I go forward I hope that it offers other people hope,” she said. “It is such a tough, tough thing to deal with.”

Hunter Biden wrote about his addiction to drugs and alcohol in a memoir of his own, published in 2021.

His addiction led to federal charges that he lied about his drug use on forms he used to buy a gun. He was convicted after a trial and faced prison time but ultimately received a pardon from his father, who had repeatedly insisted that he wouldn’t use the powers of the presidency to spare his son — until he changed his mind just before turning the office over to Trump.

Fighting cancer has been tough, too

Jill Biden has said she was angry over how the Democratic Party treated her husband after the debate — but has since put that aside after Joe Biden was diagnosed a year ago with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones.

“I think Joe's cancer diagnosis, it really puts life into perspective and you really do appreciate each and every day and a lot of anger that you have, you think, 'What's the point?' You know, ‘What is the point?’ she said. ”And I think that's why Joe and I try to, you know, just take each day that comes and try to find the joys."

The former president, 83, was in the audience for the event, along with many other Biden family members, and received a couple of standing ovations from the packed house.

She said when the doctor told them that her husband of nearly 50 years had a problem, “I never ever thought it was going to be prostate cancer.” She didn't go into detail, but suggested the former president's treatment and the drugs he's taking are taking a toll on him.

The drugs and treatments have “consequences,” Jill Biden said, “and I think those consequences are pretty tough.”

Living in a ‘fishbowl’

Biden described some of her favorite memories of life in the White House, including weekends at Camp David and working with military families.

She said the hardest part of the role of first lady, in her view, was the loss of privacy.

“You really do live in a fishbowl,” she said. “Everybody knows everywhere you are. It's the truth. I couldn't even walk downstairs to my office."

She mimicked how U.S. Secret Service officers would speak into their devices as she walked through the White House, using their code name for her.

“'Capri on elevator. Capri walking down hallway. Capri walking up steps. Capri walking outside,'” Jill Biden said, as the audience laughed. She also cited the scrutiny of her clothes, including one time she was photographed in Washington with her hair pulled into a ponytail by a scrunchie.

’I wore a scrunchie and they wrote about it," she said. "Who cares?”

Misted in rain, they fastened ceramic nametags onto mesh that covered a cobblestone wall at Omma Poom Park — meaning “mother’s embrace" — in Paju, South Korea.

More than 900 tags, suspended like unmailed letters, formed a quiet monument to years of mass child-parent separations that has created what's likely the world’s largest diaspora of adoptees.

“There are so many tiles that hang, and yet that is merely a small fraction of us that exist,” said Nicole Rieth, adopted to Michigan when she was 4 months old, in January 1989.

“As far as connecting with my birth mother, it’s not about gleaning specific information from her or even necessarily seeking a relationship. I’ve just always wanted to know who I looked like, because I’ve never had that before.”

Each nametag, hand-painted by an artist, carries the adoptee’s name, birth year and birthplace. Colors mark the decade of adoption, and most are red and sky blue, for the 1970s and 1980s, when foreign adoptions peaked. White is for adoptees who died without reunions.

One laminated note fluttered among the tags, left by anonymous parents searching for a child named “Bora.”

“You are not alone. You have a mother and a father,” it said. “I’m so sorry and I love you.”

Resurfaced pain

Paju, which sits near the North Korean border and once hosted U.S. military bases, carries a long memory of foreign adoptions, which began in the aftermath of the 1950-53 Korean War with mixed-race children born to Korean women and American soldiers, regarded as outcasts at home.

Adoptions surged in the 1970s, when the focus shifted to fully Korean children, typically born to unwed mothers or impoverished families. Thousands were sent annually to the West for decades through the mid-2000s, including more than 6,600 a year during the 1980s, when Seoul’s former military dictatorship aggressively sought to reduce mouths to feed.

Omma Poom opened in June 2025 after a yearslong campaign by Paju-based photographer Lee Yong-nam and Me & Korea, an adoptee support group.

Lee, 72, said his interest in adoption issues grew from searching for a Black-Korean childhood friend likely adopted to America.

“Adoptions continued unchecked and now the pain is surfacing,” he said of the visitors, who are mostly younger than the war generation.

1,000 letters to birth mothers

On a hill overlooking Omma Poom, a converted U.S. army building serves as a museum, where some 1,000 profile pages — each containing an adoptee’s photo, birthdate and message to a birth mother — are stored.

One of the profiles belongs to Angela Lee-Pack, adopted to Canada in 1971 at age 2.

“I think about you every day and only wish the best for you,” she wrote to her Korean mother. “I hope one day I will be able to know who I am.”

Growing up in Ontario, Lee-Pack says she endured severe abuse from her adoptive mother, including being locked in a closet without food. She says she was later abused in another home, left at 15, and struggled for years before finding stability as an adult.

Lee-Pack has visited South Korea twice while searching for her birth mother, putting flyers across Seoul and Jeonju.

During her first trip in 2019, a man reached out, believing Lee-Pack was the daughter of a late uncle. The lead unraveled slowly and painfully. The man later found a woman in her 70s whose background appeared to match. But she denied giving up a child and refused contact. Lee-Pack collapsed in her hotel room and cried.

“Every time I look in the mirror I wonder who she is and what she looks like,” she said of her birth mother. “The thoughts never end.”

Lost connections

Rieth says that becoming a mother to two sons led her to begin looking for her birth mother.

According to her adoption file, Rieth was the third child of a couple who relinquished her shortly after her birth in 1988, citing financial hardship during a time when Seoul was actively pressuring families to have fewer children.

Rieth began searching for her biological family in 2024, but letters her adoption agency sent to her birth mother’s last known address went unanswered.

She is now pursuing another search through the National Center for the Rights of the Child, a government office. She wants her sons to know the heritage she grew up without.

“I kind of don’t want to allow myself to hope because the whole journey has been a roller coaster of hoping, finding something out, and diving down into hopelessness, getting a glimmer of a maybe,” she said. “And yet I want to exhaust every effort ... so that there are no regrets.”

Deep scars

During the peak of adoptions, authorities largely ignored rampant fraud, including illegal child procurements from hospitals and orphanages and manipulation of children’s origins. Many were falsely labeled as abandoned orphans to ease placements with Western families.

The deception left generations of Korean adoptees not knowing who they were, where they came from, whether they had been loved, abandoned or stolen.

On the other side were birth mothers pressured to surrender children born out of wedlock, separated from them without consent, or left searching for decades before learning they had been sent overseas under falsified records.

The gathering at Omma Poom came shortly after a group of birth mothers asked South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate the alleged illegal adoptions of their children, adding to hundreds of fraud and abuse claims filed by adoptees.

Adopted in 1993 to Michigan, Jalyn Smith's agency in 2021 located her birth mother, who, according to the file, had relinquished Smith after separating from her biological father. The woman declined contact.

Five years later, Smith is pursuing the search again.

“Hanging it up, I felt proud,” Smith said about her name on Omma Poom’s wall. “I feel proud to be part of this community, though it comes with a lot of conflicting feelings of sadness and anger and grief.”

Opinion surveys suggested Lee’s Democratic Party is certain to win more races than its main rival, the conservative People Power Party, which remains in disarray after President Yoon Suk Yeol was removed from office and convicted of rebellion and other crimes over his martial law debacle.

Given its favorable political landscape, experts say the DP must score a landside victory and win some key races such as the mayoral vote in Seoul, the capital, so as to give Lee a clear boost.

“The conservatives' support base has been fractured and weakened in the wake of Yoon's impeachment, while the liberals' support base has grown stronger. Considering that, results of the elections will determine whether their dominance would prolong for a considerable time," said Jeong Han-Wool, director of the Korean People Research Institute.

Up for grabs in Wednesday’s polls are 16 mayoral and provincial gubernatorial posts, 12 of them held by the PPP. Fourteen new members of the 300-member National Assembly will also be chosen in by-elections.

The polls opened at 6 a.m. in about 14,300 stations and are to close at 6 p.m. As of 10 a.m., the voter turnout rate stood at 11%, according to the election commission. South Korea has 44.6 million eligible voters.

Some earlier surveys indicated the DP would win up to 15 of the 16 posts. But newer surveys showed opposition or independent candidates were closing the gap with their DP competitors or even overtook them in five to seven races.

The DP entered the elections with a clear advantage because the public still has strong negative feelings about Yoon’s martial law imposition in December 2024. Also, the fact that the Lee government is just one year in office could mean more voters view it as a new government which still deserves their support, not their attempt to check its power, said Choi Jin, director of the Seoul-based Institute of Presidential Leadership.

Subsequently, Choi said that a resounding victory for the DP would be it winning at least 12 races in the elections. He said the party must also win the hotly contested Seoul mayoral race or the Lee government would suffer “a tremendous blow."

The Seoul race pits the DP's Chong Won-o, a former Seoul district head who rose politically after Lee praised his governance last October, against current mayor and political heavyweight Oh Se-hoon with the PPP.

A Seoul mayor “isn't a post that someone whose campaign solely relies on the president's coattails can afford," Oh told reporters Tuesday. “Our country would be safer when the rival forces keep each other in check than one side controlling every things. Please, leave Seoul, the last stronghold, in our hands.”

In a separate news conference Tuesday, Chong said he expected Seoul voters to deliver “a stern verdict” on Oh over what he called the mayor's incompetent and irresponsible governance style.

Thursday will mark one year in office for Lee, whose approval ratings hover over 60%. A key factor attributing to Lee's popularity is what he describes as “pragmatic diplomacy” that eased concerns that his rule would hurt ties with the U.S. and Japan. Whatever the outcome of Wednesday's election, Lee's foreign policy agenda will likely remain unchanged, experts say.

Lee won a snap-election arranged after the Constitutional Court ruled to remove Yoon over his martial law enactment. In February, a Seoul district court convicted Yoon of rebellion and sentenced him to life in prison.

Yoon's ouster plunged the PPP into a massive infighting between reformists who joined the DP-led push to impeach Yoon and his loyalists who attempted to protect the embattled leader.

Among the candidates running for the parliamentary by-elections is Han Dong-hoon, leader of the reformist faction who was eventually expelled from the PPP. Surveys show Han, now an independent, holding a slim lead over the DP's Ha Jung-woo, a former Lee adviser on artificial intelligence, in a race in Busan, the country's second biggest city in the southeast.

Jeong, the institute director, said that a Han victory could help anti-Yoon reformists regroup and emerge as a new force among the struggling conservatives in South Korea. But Choi, another institute head, said Han's win could worsen a divide in the conservatives because Yoon loyalists would feel a sense of crisis and close ranks further.

The dollar briefly surpassed 160 Japanese yen before slipping back slightly. Oil prices rose more than $1 a barrel.

Buying of technology shares linked to the boom in artificial intelligence has been driving rallies worldwide.

By midmorning, the Nikkei 225 was up 2.2% at 68,172.89. Shares in computer chip equipment maker Tokyo Electron gained 10.1%, while those for chip testing equipment maker Advantest gained 4.6%.

In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng lost 0.9% to 25,804.51, while the Shanghai Composite index slipped 0.2% to 4,068.77.

Australia's S&P/ASX 200 added 0.3% to 8,747.10 and Taiwan's Taiex was up 1.8%.

Markets in South Korea were closed for a holiday.

On Tuesday, winners of the artificial-intelligence boom kept driving higher, pushing U.S. stocks to more records.

The S&P 500 rose 0.1% to 7,609.78 after drifting between small gains and losses through the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.4% to 51,307.79, and the Nasdaq composite edged up by less than 0.1% to 27,093.90. All three set all-time highs.

A report said that U.S. employers were advertising many more jobs at the end of April than economists expected, a potential signal of continued health for the U.S. labor market.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise's stock soared 19.5% after it reported a profit for the latest quarter that blew past analysts’ expectations. It credited demand from customers building their artificial-intelligence capabilities.

Marvell Technology leaped 32.5% for its best day since its stock began trading in 2000 after Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, suggested at a conference in Taiwan that Marvell could be “the next trillion-dollar company.” The last company to enter the expanding club of behemoths was Micron Technology, which is likewise riding the AI wave. Nvidia, which slipped 0.7%, has seen its total value top $5 trillion.

Generac climbed 5.7% after saying it signed a deal to provide backup power generators to an unnamed “leading hyperscale data center operator.”

Such “hyperscalers” are spending tremendous amounts of money to build huge AI data centers, which are powering what proponents believe is the next great revolution for the global economy.

Alphabet is one of those hyperscalers. The parent company of Google said it’s raising $80 billion in cash to help pay for its investments by selling shares of its stock, which lost 3.9% on Tuesday.

The company is planning to spend as much as $190 billion on equipment and other investments this year. That’s more than all the stock of The Walt Disney Co. is worth, and Alphabet is forecasting its spending on investments next year will “significantly increase.”

Such huge sums raise the question about whether AI can produce the profits and productivity necessary to make all the investment worth it or if there is a bubble in AI investments.

Analysts have been saying the broad U.S. stock market may be set for a slowdown following an unrelenting streak of nine straight winning weeks for the S&P 500, its longest since 2023.

The rally has been largely due to strong profit reports from U.S. companies, and to hopes that the United States and Iran will reach a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. That would allow oil to flow freely again from the Persian Gulf and hopefully lower its price.

In the oil market, prices resumed climbing. Brent crude oil, the international standard, climbed $1.03 to $97.03 per barrel early Wednesday. It’s still well above its roughly $70 level from before the war.

U.S. benchmark crude oil advanced $1.10 to $94.86 per barrel.

After briefly trading at 160.44 yen, the U.S. dollar slipped to 159.86 yen from 159.92 late Tuesday. The euro fell to $1.1631 from $1.1632.

___

AP Business Writers Stan Choe and Matt Ott contributed.

The end of the voting period, which began in early May, concludes a chaotic contest without a clear front-runner. Candidates tried to elbow each other out in the final stretch as each sought to convince voters that they were best prepared to lead the most populous state and one of the world's largest economies.

California puts all candidates on a single primary ballot regardless of party, and the top two finishers advance to the November general election. About 60 candidates were on the ballot, most of them largely unknown to the state’s roughly 23 million voters.

In the race's final days, much of the attention focused on two Democrats — Xavier Becerra, a former state attorney general and U.S. health secretary, and Tom Steyer, a billionaire climate activist — and Republican Steve Hilton, a conservative commentator and former British political adviser.

Becerra cast himself as the experienced, responsible pick, while both Steyer and Hilton ran as change agents. Steyer pledged to advance progressive policies like universal health care and aggressive climate policy, while Hilton said he would bring a badly needed reset after years of Democratic rule.

“Make sure we don't let this chance for change slip through our fingers,” Hilton said Tuesday on social media, urging Republicans to coalesce behind him or risk sending two Democrats to the general. President Donald Trump endorsed him, boosting him with the party's voters.

Republican Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and Democrats Katie Porter, a former member of Congress; and Matt Mahan, the mayor of San Jose were among other contenders in the race.

Affordability has been a key theme

The through line of the race was how to tackle the state's notoriously high cost of living.

Drivers were paying $6.08 per gallon at the pump as of the end of May, $1.65 higher than the national average, according to AAA. Meanwhile the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office has estimated that the typical home is about $775,000, more than double the national average. And Californians pay the second-highest residential electricity rates behind Hawaii, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Some candidates proposed suspending the state’s gas taxes, which total roughly 70 cents a gallon, while others floated subsidizing in-state tuition at public colleges. A few of the Democrats said they would eliminate private health insurance in favor of a government-run system with no premiums, while the Republicans vowed to increase oil and gas production and reduce regulations.

Democratic leaders have not done enough to bring costs down, said Republican Rosamaria Cerezo, a 57-year-old substitute teacher who planned to vote for Hilton.

“Both my husband and I have two jobs each just to make ends meet,” she said.

Primary system creates uncertainty

Earlier in the race, Democrats worried about possibly being locked out of the general election even though they count 45% of the state's registered voters compared to Republicans' 25%.

The concern was that their relatively crowded field of candidates could split the Democratic vote enough for the two Republicans to advance under the single primary system, which was first used at the statewide level in 2014. But in the race's final days, it was Republicans who feared a potential lockout.

Brett Christensen, a 55-year-old school safety monitor from Orange who is not registered in a political party but tends to vote Republican, chose Hilton.

“He’s the only viable Republican candidate that can make it to the runoff,” Christensen said.

Candidates squabbled over their records

Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell’s resignation and withdrawal from the race after sexual assault allegations were made against him left an opening for Becerra, who previously had struggled to gain traction.

Highlighting his long political resume, Becerra started raising more money and won the endorsements of powerful labor groups and Latino legislative leaders.

But that momentum also made him a target, and his rivals criticized his leadership as health secretary including his handling of an influx of unaccompanied migrant children at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2021, when Becerra's Department of Health and Human Services was responsible for shelters where they were housed.

Democrat Tamara Alton, a 65-year-old marriage and family therapist, was voting for Becerra because of his experience.

“I'm going to go with him because I want somebody that knows what they're doing,” Alton said.

Steyer's campaign spent or booked more than $203 million in ads for broadcast TV, cable and radio, according to tracker AdImpact. On the campaign trail, he was attacked over past investments in fossil fuels and private prisons at a hedge-fund he founded in the 1980s and left more than a decade ago to focus on political giving and climate activism. And some accused him of trying to buy the election.

“Some folks are out to prove that they can actually buy elections," Becerra said in an interview with a popular YouTube channel that he promoted on social media Tuesday. “We're going to prove just the opposite — money does not buy you leadership in California.”

But some Democratic voters said they chose Steyer despite uneasiness with his wealth because of his focus on tackling climate change.

Jude Mayer, 24, said she was not thrilled about voting for a billionaire but Steyer “is talking about the environment in the way that I want to hear about it.”

A final result could take a while

All California voters receive a mail ballot, and election officials count those that are received up to a week after Election Day so long as they are postmarked by then. That often results in a drawn-out count, with no winners declared until days or even weeks later.

It is the first time in over two decades that there has not been a political superstar in the governor’s race. In 2003, A-list actor and Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger rocketed into office in a recall election that ousted then-Gov. Gray Davis; in 2010, former Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown cemented a political comeback by winning nearly three decades after his first two terms; and in 2018, Newsom had already established a national profile after stints as lieutenant governor and San Francisco mayor and won easily.

Democrats were relishing the chance to put Republican senators on the record about the settlement fund for those who claim to have been politically prosecuted. They were promising scores of votes on the issue when the immigration bill is considered.

“Democrats won’t settle for half measures," said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York. "We’re going to kill the slush fund permanently and we are going to bury it and bury it deep.”

GOP senators has also revolted against the settlement fund before leaving for a Memorial Day recess two weeks ago. They returned to Washington this week saying they wanted more information from the administration about the future of the fund, which could potentially go to Trump supporters who beat police and attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The Justice Department said Monday it would comply with a court order pausing implementation of the fund. And then acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in testimony Tuesday that it was being dropped altogether.

“We are not moving forward with the fund, period,” Blanche said.

Immigration bill caught in settlement uproar

Caught in the middle is legislation that would fund Trump’s immigration enforcement agencies for three years. Republicans abruptly left town May 21 without passing it after Democrats said they would offer amendments to scrap the fund or scale it back, forcing Republicans to go on the record for or against it and endangering the money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol.

Returning to Washington on Monday evening, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he wasn’t sure if the immigration spending bill would move this week. “To be determined,” he told reporters.

He offered little more clarity after Blanche's assurances.

“It’s still a work in progress," he told reporters.

Republican senators leaving a lunch meeting Tuesday also said it was still unclear if it would move.

“We'll just have to wait and see,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told reporters. If senators are satisfied with Blanche's testimony, “we'll probably proceed quickly,” he said.

Standoff comes after surprise announcement

The extraordinary standoff comes after Trump announced the fund with no heads up to lawmakers as part of a settlement to resolve his lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns. When word of the settlement broke, the Senate was already navigating tricky passage of the immigration legislation with an added $1 billion in White House security costs — including for Trump’s ballroom project.

Furious, Senate Republicans jettisoned the White House security money from the bill and made clear they would not pass the legislation at all unless the White House made major changes to the settlement.

“I do think the best way to handle it is if the administration decides to shut it down themselves,” Thune told reporters Monday, referring to the fund.

The Justice Department said it would comply with a ruling Friday from U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who temporarily halted the fund for two weeks. The judge scheduled a June 12 hearing for arguments on whether to extend her order.

Republicans issue rare ultimatum to DOJ

The outrage over the fund came to a head last month at a closed-door meeting between senators and Blanche that Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas described on a recent episode of his podcast as “one of the roughest meetings I’ve seen in my entire time in the Senate.”

GOP senators had been discussing several ways that they could curb the fund, including limiting who can receive payouts, changing the makeup of the commission in charge of settlement decisions, adding some sort of judicial review for applicants or scrapping the fund altogether.

Also complicating matters is Trump’s campaign-year push to defeat GOP lawmakers whom he sees as disloyal, including some of Thune’s most reliable Republican votes in the narrow 53-47 Senate.

Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and John Cornyn of Texas both lost reelection bids in May after Trump endorsed their primary opponents, and it’s unclear how supportive they’ll be of the president’s agenda going forward.

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Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

RELATED: 30 years later, 5-month-old Gabrielle Hanshaw’s killer will be executed. We look back at the chilling Jacksonville case

Andrew Richard Lukehart, 53, received a three-drug injection starting at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke.

He was sentenced to death after being convicted of aggravated child abuse and felony murder in the death of Gabrielle Hanshaw. The baby’s mother told News4JAX she plans to attend the execution.

Hanshaw’s mother attended the execution but declined to share a statement.

According to court records, Lukehart was watching his girlfriend’s baby in February 1996 while his girlfriend was caring for her older daughter, who had been ill.

The girlfriend said that she heard Lukehart driving away from their Jacksonville home in her car, and then she couldn’t find baby Gabrielle.

Lukehart called his girlfriend about 30 minutes later and told her to call police because the baby had been kidnapped and he was chasing the kidnapper.

Later that evening, Lukehart was found in a neighboring county after driving his car off the road.

During questioning the next day, Lukehart admitted to investigators that the kidnapping story was a lie and that Gabrielle was dead.

He said, at first, that she died after he dropped her on her head and then shook her. He told police that he panicked and threw the baby in a pond.

Law enforcement officers searched the pond and found the child’s body.

The medical examiner said Gabrielle had suffered five blows to the head, including two that caused skull fractures.

In his final appeals, Lukehart’s attorneys claimed that the medication he was taking for kidney disease could have a negative reaction with the lethal injection drugs. They also argued that having only a month between the signing of Lukehart’s death warrant and the execution deprived him of his due process.

The Florida Supreme Court denied those appeals last week, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied Lukehart’s final appeal on Monday.

Protestors on site

People who were against Lukehart’s execution gathered on Tuesday to protest his death. In a statement after Lukehart’s death, the group, Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, emphasized the lasting grief that Hanshaw’s family would experience while criticizing the death penalty.

Tonight, We, the People of the State of Florida, executed Andrew Lukehart. His murder of five-month-old Gabrielle Hanshaw was horrific, and it remains an open wound for her family and loved ones. Indeed, the loss of a child is always tragic. We mourn for Gabrielle, and we lament the circumstances that led to her death. 

Today, news stories will recount the facts of Gabrielle’s death in graphic detail. They will explain how she died and how Andrew killed her. But those facts are not suddenly more important today than they were yesterday. Andrew has been incarcerated for nearly three decades. Had he received a life sentence rather than a death sentence, there would be no statewide media coverage, no breaking news alerts, and no public debate about whether he deserved to live or die. He would have remained in prison until his natural death, largely forgotten by the public.

Gabrielle’s family could have spent the intervening years cherishing who she was, how much she was loved, and who she could have been. Instead, Andrew’s death sentence has repeatedly dragged them back to the tragedy that took her life. This is just one of the many cruelties of the death penalty.

It is impossible to meaningfully talk about Gabrielle’s death without also talking about the life of Andrew Lukehart. Andrew’s own life had been shaped by years of violence, abuse, neglect, and disregard for his humanity. Recognizing that reality does not diminish the loss of Gabrielle Hanshaw. It helps explain how such a tragedy became possible in the first place. 

What Andrew did when he was 22 years old was a tragedy. It was also the act of a profoundly damaged young man who had grown up surrounded by severe physical and sexual abuse, violence, instability, intellectual limitations, and untreated trauma. Long before Gabrielle’s death, Andrew struggled with depression, hopelessness, and a deep sense of worthlessness rooted in the very people who were supposed to love and protect him. His frustrated actions were those of a person who was ill-equipped to manage an infant and incapable of handling the profound responsibility of caring for a child.

Overcome with guilt, despair, and horror at what he had done, he attempted to take his own life by driving his vehicle into a tree. Officers placed him under Florida’s Baker Act. Then, Andrew led law enforcement to Gabrielle’s body and acknowledged responsibility for her death. When the case went to trial, he testified that although he did not intend to kill Gabrielle, he alone was to blame.

During his trial, jurors heard the details of this crime and weighed them against the reality of Andrew’s life leading up to his actions in 1996. Three of them concluded that he could be held accountable and safely housed in prison for the rest of his life. They believed that death was not necessary. Those jurors were right. 

Over the course of his 26 years on death row, Andrew settled into the rhythmic routine of prison life. And, over the past 18 months, he watched as Florida’s pace of executions accelerated and man after man was taken from the wing and executed. When his own death warrant was signed, Andrew turned to the men around him and thanked them for being his friends. He then called his beloved aunt, knowing the news of his impending death would break her heart, and assured her that he was going to be okay.

Andrew formed deep and meaningful relationships with the religious volunteers who walked alongside him during his years on death row. His Catholic faith was a constant source of strength, comfort, and dignity, and the guidance of his spiritual advisors sustained him as he faced the reality of his execution. In his final moments, as the State carried out its sentence, his priest stood beside him, laid hands on him, and prayed.

In this case, the death penalty is equivalent to closing the barn door after the horse has already left. Andrew spent decades in prison. He no longer posed a threat to anyone. Accountability had been achieved. The State of Florida had another option available to it. Instead, another tragedy has been added to a story that already contained far too much suffering.

Statement from Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty

Executions in Florida

This would be Florida’s eighth execution so far this year, following a record 19 executions in 2025. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis oversaw more executions in a single year in 2025 than any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The previous record was set in 2014 with eight executions.

A total of 47 people were executed in the U.S. in 2025. Florida led the way with a flurry of death warrants signed by DeSantis. Alabama, South Carolina and Texas tied for second with five executions each.

Another execution is planned in Florida later this month. Dusty Ray Spencer, 74, was convicted of fatally stabbing his wife in 1992.

All Florida executions are carried out via lethal injection of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.

A criminal complaint was unsealed in federal court in Detroit against Vincent Munster, who is chief of the virus ecology section at Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana, and Claude Kwe, who works with him.

Munster and Kwe were stopped at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in January after a flight from Paris and nine days in the Republic of Congo. An outbreak of the mpox disease has been linked to more than 2,000 deaths in Congo, a vast region in central Africa, though a two-year outbreak was declared over in April.

Munster “adamantly denied” returning to the U.S. with biological materials or samples, the FBI said in a court filing.

But tests subsequently revealed that Munster and Kwe were traveling with vials of deactivated mpox, the FBI said, yet they had failed to declare them or obtain the necessary permission.

"Any deliberate effort to conceal and smuggle biological materials into the United States without proper authorization is a breach of the public’s trust and could have placed the public at risk,” said Marcus Sykes of the Office of Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Munster and Kwe did not immediately respond to requests for comment. They are expected to appear in federal court in Missoula, Montana, on Wednesday.

“This matter is currently under investigation, and NIH is cooperating fully with law enforcement and appropriate authorities,” said the National Institutes of Health, which oversees the lab. “Because this is an ongoing investigation and personnel matter, we are limited in what additional information we can provide at this time.”

There was no mention in the government's court filing about why Munster and Kwe may have wanted to bring the deactivated mpox virus to their lab. But they are virologists who have worked extensively on mpox research, the FBI said.

Munster told investigators at the Detroit-area airport that any necessary documents were in his laptop, “but you don't need them. I do this all the time,” the FBI quoted him as saying.

“It is reasonable to believe that Munster's statements regarding the possession of the required documentation to (customs officers) were materially false,” the FBI said.

The most common symptoms of mpox, according to the World Health Organization, are a rash and fever, but it can sometimes cause serious illness. Most people recover fully.

Mpox, previously known as monkeypox, was first identified by scientists in 1958 during outbreaks of a “pox-like” disease in monkeys. Until a few years ago, most human cases were seen in people in central and West Africa who had close contact with infected animals.

In 2022, the virus was confirmed to spread via sex for the first time and triggered outbreaks in more than 70 countries that had not previously reported mpox.

The showers across Putnam and Flagler counties will wind down around 10 - 11 p.m. The showers over Georgia will weaken as they move south, with showers possible near and along I-10 from 11 p.m. to 12 a.m.

A notable change from our normal early June temperatures

A strong low-pressure area over the Atlantic will drive a cold front across our forecast area as a strong area of high pressure builds to our north. Get ready for a shot of spring before we slip back into summer.

Wednesday will feature a pleasant departure from our early June weather. Increasing northeast winds will be the primary weather story, especially along the Atlantic coast, where sustained winds of 15 to 25 mph and gusts up to 35 mph are expected. Inland locations will also experience breezy conditions.

A steady northeasterly breeze will continue through Friday as the area of high pressure remains to our north. Seasonal temperatures return this weekend, as the low dew points and drier air linger.

Tonight: Isolated showers and storms through around 10 p.m. Strong to severe storms with locally heavy rainfall and gusty winds are possible.

Wednesday: Becoming partly cloudy and windy. Lows in the 60s and 70s. Highs in the 70s and 80s. Wind: NE 15-20 mph, gusts to 35 mph. Mostly clear and cooler overnight as the wind slowly subsides.

Thursday - Friday: Mostly sunny to partly cloudy skies with less than seasonal temperatures. Average lows this time of year are around 68 degrees with afternoon highs around 88 - 90 degrees. Morning lows in the 50s, 60s and 70s. A little cooler across SE GA. Highs will reach the 70s to mid 80s. Wind: NE 5-15 mph.

Looking ahead: Seasonal temperatures under partly cloudy skies this weekend.

Tropics: Quiet across the Gulf, Caribbean, and the Atlantic for the next 5 to 7 days.

Sunrise: 6:25 p.m.

Sunset: 8:26 p.m.

“We are not moving forward with the fund, period,” Blanche said in response to questions at a House hearing on the Justice Department budget.

"Not moving forward ever?” asked Rep. Grace Meng, a New York Democrat.

“Correct,” Blanche answered.

The blunt declaration marked an extraordinary, and rare, Trump administration turnabout in the face of mounting political opposition to a fund that officials said was meant to compensate people who believe they have been improperly targeted by the criminal justice system. Since the establishment of the fund two weeks ago, it’s been paused by a judge and lambasted by Democrats and Republicans alike who said they were troubled by a lack of oversight and the potential for payouts to participants in the violent Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

The fund drew concerns even from Republicans

The furor especially complicated matters in the Senate, where Republicans defiantly left town nearly two weeks ago without passing legislation to fund President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement agencies after Democrats said they would offer amendments to scrap or scale back the compensation fund.

Furious, Senate Republicans jettisoned White House security money from the bill and made clear they would not pass the legislation at all unless the administration made major changes to the plan. They had sought reassurances from Blanche before moving forward.

The $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” was established last month to resolve Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns. The Justice Department had said it was an appropriate measure to correct what officials have insisted was the weaponization of federal law enforcement during the Biden administration, when Trump faced criminal charges and several of his allies were investigated and prosecuted.

The administration had said that anyone who felt unfairly persecuted could apply for compensation regardless of political affiliation, but Blanche's refusal to publicly foreclose the possibility that people convicted of crimes of violence in the Jan. 6 riot could get payouts alarmed lawmakers. A five-member commission was to have been responsible for deciding on the payouts, though no commissioners had yet been named and the criteria for eligibility remained unclear.

Blanche made clear Tuesday that he stood behind the rationale for the fund even as he was abandoning its implementation, saying: “This Department of Justice, unfortunately, was weaponized against many, many Americans, and we’re trying every day to to fix it. And we’ve made a lot of progress, but we have a lot more to do.”

Merrick Garland, the attorney general under President Joe Biden, has denied allegations of politicization and said his decisions followed the facts, the evidence and the law. The Justice Department under his leadership investigated prominent Democrats too, most notably by appointing a special counsel to investigate Biden's handling of classified information and another special counsel who brought tax and gun charges against Biden's son Hunter.

As part of the same deal to resolve the tax lawsuit, the IRS agreed to drop any pending probes of Trump over whether he’s paid his fair share of taxes. Pressed over whether it was also abandoning that part of the deal, Blanche said “nothing has changed with that,” and said the administration was only backing away from plans to create the $1.8 billion fund.

The administration had earlier hinted at a retreat

Signs of the retreat surfaced Monday when a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press that the Republican president was reconsidering whether to move forward with the fund. The Justice Department said separately it would comply with a Virginia court temporarily blocking the fund, effectively agreeing to pause the plan for at least several weeks.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday that he hoped the White House would move to drop the fund, telling reporters, “I do think the best way to handle it is if the administration decides to shut it down themselves."

The hearing Tuesday before a House Appropriations subcommittee was scheduled for discussion of the Justice Department's budget, but lawmakers quickly focused their questioning on the fund.

“This administration has engaged in what are perhaps the most brazen acts of flagrant corruption I’ve ever seen,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat from Connecticut, said before Blanche announced the abandonment of the fund. “And you are at the center of many of them, Mr. Blanche.”

She called the fund “a corrupt payout scheme for the president and his political allies. It is shameful.”

Courts reacted coolly to the fund

The Justice Department’s efforts to move forward with the fund were also facing headwinds in the courts after several lawsuits filed by Trump critics, including a fired Jan. 6 prosecutor and two police officers who helped defend the Capitol.

On Friday, a federal judge in Virginia halted the fund’s formation and any potential payouts for at least two weeks and scheduled a June 12 hearing for arguments on whether to extend her order. Separately, the judge in Florida overseeing Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS ordered the president’s attorneys to respond to “grievous allegations” by settlement critics that Trump abandoned his claims to avoid the court’s scrutiny of an illegal deal.

Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward — which brought one of the lawsuits — said of Blanche’s comments Tuesday, “If you can say it on TV, you should say it in court.”

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Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this report.

Their latest deal is among the biggest and the riskiest — and it's totally their style.

Myles Garrett walked into the Rams' training complex in Woodland Hills on Tuesday after LA gave up budding star Jared Verse and three high draft picks to complete one of the NFL's biggest trades in recent seasons.

“To acquire a player like this, these things don’t come up often,” coach Sean McVay said.

Yet this bold deal for arguably the greatest pass rusher of this generation is only the latest in the line of blockbuster trades engineered by Snead. In the past 10 years alone, he has maneuvered to get Jared Goff, Matthew Stafford, Jalen Ramsey, Von Miller, Trent McDuffie, Brandin Cooks and other veterans for trade prices that would have been too steep for many front offices.

The Rams have spent a decade chasing rings with an urgency that screams “win now,” but is actually rooted in an organizational confidence that McVay's coaching ability will make up for the sacrifices necessary in draft capital and veteran talent.

“You’re always threading that needle for sustainability, trying to win consistently,” Snead said Tuesday. “But it’s a hard one to thread.”

McVay is all in on the Rams' organizational urgency, since the coach is often the most aggressive voice in Snead's ear to get big deals done: “I'm not the most patient person,” McVay said with a smirk.

“To be able to add players like (Garrett) is so rare,” McVay added. “We feel really fortunate that this feels very similar to when we were fortunate enough to acquire a player like Matthew Stafford. Things like this don’t present themselves, and we wanted to be aggressive.”

These opportunities might be rare, but the Rams have seized a whole lot more of them than other teams — and they were already a top Super Bowl contender even before they landed Garrett.

Snead addressed Los Angeles' primary weakness three months ago by acquiring McDuffie, making him the NFL's highest-paid cornerback and re-pairing him with free-agent signee Jaylen Watson, his longtime Chiefs teammate.

But even with a defensive line featuring four above-average players all still on their rookie contracts, Snead and McVay wanted to improve.

The GM made contact with Browns counterpart Andrew Berry after the team adjusted Garrett's contract in a way that signaled a deal was possible for the All-Pro who had just set the NFL's single-season sacks record.

“Andrew and I have a good relationship, (and) we like talking football a good bit,” Snead said. “So I would pester him a little bit, probably jokingly at first. Kept doing that, and then we began talking a little more seriously.”

Snead hoped to do the deal only with picks, both before and after the current draft. Berry wanted Verse, the budding young star and the only first-round pick that Snead had actually made between quarterbacks Goff (2016) and Ty Simpson (2026).

Although both Snead and McVay claim they were reluctant to part with Verse, the Rams finally agreed with the backing of owner Stan Kroenke, who has been fully supportive of his front office's uncommon urgency.

Garrett was eager to join this franchise's lineage of superstar pass rushers stretching from the Fearsome Foursome to Aaron Donald. But he also agreed to the trade because after nine seasons in Cleveland, he finally wanted to play for a consistent contender.

That's what the Rams have been ever since McVay took over in 2017 — racking up eight winning seasons, seven playoff berths, four NFC West titles, three conference title game appearances, two Super Bowl berths and one ring.

“It just came down to the timing of everything," Garrett said. “What does it look like to be a winner now, and to have the opportunity to do that immediately? That was just too good of an opportunity to pass up.”

The Rams' aggression doesn't just apply to trades: Snead and McVay have also shown no hesitation to drop good players and franchise icons when they deem it necessary, either for reasons financial or competitive.

They've released Super Bowl MVP Cooper Kupp and star running back Todd Gurley, and they traded Goff and receiver Robert Woods before the contract extensions they had received from the Rams had even started.

Those moves often feel heartless to fans, and players like Goff and Kupp have expressed public dismay about the way Snead and McVay moved on from them. But everyone eventually seems to understand that this is how the Rams do business.

That includes Woods, a stalwart five-year contributor and a locker-room leader on McVay's early teams after signing as a free agent in 2017.

The Southern California native hurt his knee in practice midway through the 2021 season, forcing him to miss the Rams' Super Bowl championship run — and Snead traded him to Tennessee a month after the trophy was raised.

Woods bounced around the NFL for four more seasons before retiring earlier this year — and he quickly returned to the Rams as an assistant coach.

___

AP NFL: https://apnews.com/NFL

His family said in a statement that Bryson died Tuesday evening, days after having a stroke.

“While our hearts are broken, we find comfort in knowing how deeply Peabo was loved and how many lives were touched by his voice and his generous spirit,” the family's statement said. “His legacy and music will live on for generations to come.”

Internationally celebrated for his Disney classics, Bryson also built a career over five decades as one of R&B’s premier balladeers, recording hits including “Feel the Fire,” “I’m So Into You" and “Can You Stop the Rain."

“For more than five decades, Peabo’s extraordinary voice served as the soundtrack to some of life’s most cherished moments,” the family's statement said. “His music carried generations through joyful celebrations, great love stories and enduring moments of comfort and inspiration.”

Born and raised in South Carolina, the singer, songwriter and balladeer launched his career with the group Moses Dillard and the Tex-Town Display in the 1970s. Shortly afterward, Atlanta label Bang Records signed him as a solo artist.

He recorded for Capitol, Elektra and Columbia Records and became one of music’s most sought-after duet partners. Aside from Belle and Dion, he also collaborated with artists including Roberta Flack and Natalie Cole.

His duet with Flack, “Tonight, I Celebrate My Love,” became one of the defining love songs of the 1980s, while “If Ever You’re in My Arms Again” helped expand his audience beyond R&B radio. He later scored No. 1 R&B hits with “Show & Tell” and “Can You Stop the Rain.”

Beyond music, Bryson appeared in stage productions including “Raisin,” “The Wiz” and “Porgy and Bess.” In 2018, he returned with “Stand for Love,” his 21st studio album, produced by hitmaking duo Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.

Bryson had a stroke in late May and was placed under medical care.

“At this time, the family requests privacy as they navigate this deeply personal moment together,” a statement from his representative read at the time. "The thoughts, prayers and love of friends and fans are welcomed and deeply appreciated.”

In 2019, Bryson made a full recovery after having a heart attack.

Comedian and television host Loni Love said she worked with Bryson on a cruise ship last year and spoke with him for hours on the deck one night after she noticed him sitting alone.

“He shared incredible stories, spoke passionately about his music, and had such a deep love for his craft,” she wrote in a social media post Tuesday. “I am so grateful to have had that special moment with him.”

Bryson's family said memorial and celebration-of-life arrangements will be announced at a later date.

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This story has been updated to correct that Bryson sang “Beauty and the Beast” with Dion and “A Whole New World” with Belle, not the other way around. It has also been updated to correct a misspelling of “Aladdin."

The senator told reporters in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday that he thinks the appearance on the state's primary ballot of another Republican with the same name is a dirty political trick coordinated by Democrats and the campaign of his chief rival for the seat, former Democratic U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola. He threatened a lawsuit to get to the bottom of it.

“Everybody in Alaska knows I’m Dan Sullivan-R. So he’s trying to do that. Why?" the senator said of the other Dan Sullivan. “He’s not an R. He’s purposely trying to trick my constituents to rig the election for Peltola.”

A spokesman for the Peltola campaign, Harry Child, said it “has no involvement with either Sullivan campaign." Jenny-Marie Stryker, executive director of the Alaska Democratic Party, said her organization “is in no way affiliated with either Dan Sullivan.”

The kerfuffle over the dueling Dan Sullivans on Alaska's August primary ballot has drawn the attention of state and national Republicans. They claim that adding a second Dan Sullivan to the ballot will sow confusion among voters who support the incumbent and help Peltola.

In Alaska's primary, the top four vote-getters, regardless of party affiliation, advance to the ranked-choice general election.

Blake Murphy, an attorney for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, sent a letter dated Monday to Alaska election officials outlining concerns about the potential for voter confusion. Murphy also raised questions about the party affiliation of the challenger, calling the other Dan Sullivan a “sham” candidate.

Murphy wrote the NRSC could consider legal action “to ensure that the Alaska electoral process remains fair.”

Carmela Warfield, the state Republican Party chair, said in a statement accompanying Murphy’s letter that until recently, the challenger was registered as undeclared. In previous years, ballots have not identified which candidates were incumbents.

A spokesperson for the Alaska Division of Elections, Steve Kirch, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter and said a records request would be required to get details of the challenger Sullivan’s voter registration history.

Sullivan, the incumbent senator, is an ally of President Donald Trump and is seeking a third term. He and Peltola are the highest-profile candidates in a race that’s being closely watched nationally as Democrats try to retake the Senate majority in this year’s midterm elections.

State election officials certified a Republican Dan J. Sullivan, from the southeast Alaska fishing community of Petersburg, as one of the candidates in the U.S. Senate race. Efforts to reach him were not immediately successful on Tuesday, and he did not appear to be registered with the Federal Election Commission.

His campaign website says he is a Midwesterner who moved to Alaska to work for the U.S. Forest Service and has been in Petersburg for nearly 50 years. After becoming disillusioned with what he saw as government inefficiency and “lack of long-term thinking,” he switched careers and became an elementary school teacher, the site says.

The challenger Sullivan said on his campaign website that the state deserves a senator who “puts Alaska first every single day. That’s the commitment I’m making to the people of this state, and together, we’re going to elect a Sullivan that actually stands up for Alaska.”

Sen. Sullivan, emphasizing his words with an expletive, told reporters in Washington that having the second Sullivan on the ballot was a scandalous attempt to trick Alaskans: “That's an insult."

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Freking reported from Washington.

“Aaron is a guy that I stay really close in touch with, and I know the respect that he has for Myles,” McVay said. “Talked to him about the opportunity to be able to bring (Garrett) on board. If Aaron decides he wants to dust them off at the age of 35, I bet you he could still do it at a pretty high clip.”

While the Rams would never close the door on Donald's possible return to the NFL, McVay confirms it's entirely up to the superstar defensive tackle to open that door if he wants to play alongside Garrett.

The possibility of Donald's return from two seasons in retirement became a hot topic almost immediately after the Rams swung their blockbuster trade Monday to acquire Garrett from the Cleveland Browns. Now 35 years old, Donald walked away in March 2024 after a prolific 10-year career spent entirely with the Rams.

ESPN personality Pat McAfee stoked the idea on Tuesday when he said he had texted about a comeback with Donald. McAfee said Donald told him that Garrett’s arrival in LA “for sure got me thinking,” and that he’s “gotta see if that fire can light back up.”

Donald racked up eight All-Pro selections, 10 Pro Bowl nods, three AP Defensive Player of the Year awards and a Super Bowl ring during 10 seasons in St. Louis and Los Angeles. He went out near the top of his game with a franchise-record 111 sacks as the NFL's best interior pass rusher, saying he was ready to step back from the daily grind required to maintain that level of play.

But because Donald retired at a relatively young age for defensive linemen, his possible return has been a topic of conversation for two full years in Los Angeles, where the Pittsburgh native still spends most of his time with his family. Rams fans openly pined for his return last season while the team appeared capable of making a second Super Bowl run, but Donald resisted the lure.

Donald even worked out with Jared Verse, the first-round pick and rising star edge rusher who was traded to Cleveland along with three high draft picks. The Rams gave up a fortune to get Garrett, the two-time AP Defensive Player of the Year and one of Donald's very few peers in the 21st century.

Garrett has previously spoken of his respect for Donald's game, and the Rams' new superstar nodded along Tuesday while McVay praised Donald.

The Rams' defensive line is already strong, with Garrett joining 12-sack edge rusher Byron Young and strong interior linemen Kobie Turner, Braden Fiske and Poona Ford. Garrett has already secured his No. 95 jersey from Ford, who wore it with the Rams last season.

“There was a conversation,” Garrett said with a laugh.

“A conversation and a couple of bucks?” McVay interjected.

“Maybe more than a couple of bucks,” Garrett said with a laugh. “He was open to it.”

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AP NFL: https://apnews.com/NFL

Now a member of a Los Angeles Rams team favored to raise the Lombardi Trophy next February, Garrett is ready to fill the one glaring hole in his football resume.

“Since the very beginning, it’s always been about winning. … And to have an opportunity to do that immediately? That was the opportunity that was too difficult to pass up,” Garrett said at his introductory news conference Tuesday, one day after the blockbuster deal that sent him from Cleveland to Los Angeles.

Garrett had been to the playoffs with the Browns in 2020 and 2023, which were his only two winning seasons in Cleveland after being drafted first overall in 2017. With the Rams, the 30-year-old defensive end has joined an organization that has reached the postseason in seven of head coach Sean McVay’s nine seasons in charge, won the Super Bowl following the 2021 campaign, played in another, and came agonizingly close against Philadelphia and Seattle teams that ended up winning it all the past two seasons.

The Rams spent the offseason loading up for another Super Bowl push by addressing the defensive deficiencies that cost them in the 31-27 NFC title game loss to the Seahawks. They traded for All-Pro cornerback Trent McDuffie, signed fellow Chiefs defensive back Jaylen Watson in free agency, and capped it by acquiring a two-time AP Defensive Player of the Year and five-time first-team All-Pro in Garrett.

The moves have Garrett expecting big things.

"I see a position to solidify myself here as well among the very greats,” he said.

Following a season where he set the NFL single-season record with 23 sacks and also had a career-high 33 tackles for loss, Garrett believes the Rams’ structure and support could allow him to reach even greater heights. He joins a defense that already ranked in the top 10 in points allowed and sacks, and Garrett expects an offense led by quarterback Matthew Stafford, who was voted NFL MVP after throwing for 46 touchdowns, to give him plenty of chances to close games out in the fourth quarter.

Those opportunities were few and far between in Cleveland, where Garrett had 125 1/2 sacks in 134 career games. The Browns went 58-90-1 during Garrett's time there.

“I mean, that did play into the decision as well, knowing I have the ability, you know, late game, to pin my ears back, not just because we need a play to be made, but because we have the lead and it’s obvious passing downs, being able to make those game-changing plays to win the game for us, those are things that appealed to me,” Garrett said.

Garrett has already taken steps to get comfortable in his new surroundings, striking a deal with nose tackle Poona Ford to secure the No. 95 jersey.

Garrett is also looking forward to getting in touch with NBA superstar LeBron James, who has spent the past eight seasons with the Los Angeles Lakers, for more information about the city. Garrett described James as a “positive force in my life,” having received advice and mentorship from the Akron, Ohio, native and four-time NBA champion over the years since joining the Browns.

Garrett already has some familiarity with the region. His girlfriend, Olympic gold medalist snowboarder Chloe Kim, is from Torrance, California, in Los Angeles County. His father, Lawrence, was born in Los Angeles.

For all the initial excitement surrounding the trade, Garrett understands it will ultimately be judged by how he and the Rams fare on the field.

“Nothing changes for me,” he said. “I don't feel any pressure to be anything else, be anything different. As long as I'm myself and I come here to work every day and I'm a leader, the success will follow.”

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AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl

Stars officials announced Tuesday the signing of a nonbinding letter of intent to build a new hockey-specific arena and entertainment district about 20 miles north of the downtown American Airlines Center, which they have shared with the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks since it opened in 2001.

The leases at the AAC for both teams expire in 2031. The two franchises have been in a legal dispute about their partnership agreement and management of the building.

The Stars made their intentions known a day after the Mavericks said they have a preliminary agreement on a site for their own new arena about 10 miles north of downtown, but still within the Dallas city limits. The NBA's team deal is for 104 acres on the former site of Valley View Mall, which was demolished three years ago.

A new arena for the Stars is expected to be part of a large-scale redevelopment project at The Shops at Willow Bend, where the last enclosed mall built in Texas is set for demolition.

The Stars submitted their letter of intent to the city of Plano, which placed it on the City Council agenda for consideration at its next meeting Monday. The letter includes plans for the mixed-used project as well as design and construction of the arena.

“This project would present a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our franchise,” Stars owner Tom Gaglardi said in a statement. “We eagerly await the vote by the Plano City Council and look forward to continuing the conversation to be part of the redevelopment of The Shops at Willow Bend.”

That mall on about 90 acres opened in 2001, and there are open restaurants and parking garages in the area. The new arena would anchor the redevelopment that could include sports, entertainment, retail, dining and public gathering spaces.

The NHL franchise was known as the North Stars before moving south from Minnesota and beginning play in Dallas for the 1993-94 season. The Stars in 1999 became the first of hockey's Sun Belt teams to win a Stanley Cup title.

The Stars won that championship while still playing at Reunion Arena, a building they also shared with the Mavericks after first moving to Dallas. The site of that downtown arena, which was fully demolished in 2009, is about a mile from the AAC.

The NFL's Cowboys were in Dallas during the franchise's first 11 seasons at the city's Cotton Bowl (1960-70), but moved to Texas Stadium in Irving in 1971, the season of their first Super Bowl title. They have played since 2009 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, which is halfway between the downtown areas of Dallas and Fort Worth.

Arlington is also home to the MLB's Texas Rangers, the franchise that began as the Washington Senators in 1961. The Rangers are in their third stadium in Arlington since moving there in 1972. Globe Life Field, their retractable-roof stadium adjacent to AT&T Stadium, opened in 2020.

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AP NHL: https://apnews.com/NHL

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The buoy 80 meters (260 feet) below the water's surface will be removed June 16 from the Ocean Observatories Initiative — a network of more than 900 ocean sensors built at a cost of $386 million that has continuously collected real-time data for more than a decade. But last month, the National Science Foundation announced it would dismantle most of the system, pulling instruments from waters off Oregon, Washington, Alaska, North Carolina and Greenland by 2027.

Funded by the foundation, the observatories have tracked everything from ocean circulation and marine ecosystems to climate change and extreme weather. Its data has been freely available and has informed more than 500 scientific publications. The project was slated to run for another 15 to 20 years.

In an emailed statement, the foundation said the decision is not a cancellation, but a “descoping” aligned with a “wider strategy of a nimbler approach to prioritize support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies, as well as smart lifecycle management within its research infrastructure portfolio.” The foundation added that its decision drew in part on a 2025 National Academies report on the future of ocean science.

But for the scientists who built and operated the system — and the researchers, educators and students who rely on its data — the timing feels particularly punishing.

An El Nino event, which disrupts weather patterns and supercharges marine heat waves, is predicted to arrive along the Pacific coast this summer. One marine heat wave is already pushing unusually warm water off California.

Without the Oregon and Washington moorings and the network of underwater gliders the Ocean Observatories Initiative operated in the region, researchers say they'll lose much of their ability to measure what's happening below the surface, which is precisely where the most significant oceanographic signals are.

“It’s a crippling loss of information,” Ed Dever, a professor at Oregon State University who helped lead the initiative’s Pacific Northwest operations, told The Associated Press Tuesday. Scientists can get some data from the surface, such as temperature and the distribution of chlorophyll, which drives photosynthesis in plants, but information below cannot be gathered from satellites alone, including low oxygen zones.

The initiative launched in 2015 after more than a decade of community planning and construction. It was designed as a 25 to 30-year project, built in part around the oceanographic consensus that detecting meaningful climate signals requires at least three decades of continuous data. “We’ve just got to the 10 year record,” Dever said, “which will give you some hints, but it won’t continue on.”

One significant piece will remain: a seafloor cable network managed by the University of Washington off the Pacific Northwest coast, which will continue providing data on volcanic and seismic activity in the region.

Scientists had seen warning signs as the administration’s proposed 2026 budget included a 55% cut to the science foundation. Official word to begin shutting down arrived in early May.

The initiative was coordinated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in collaboration with the University of Washington and Oregon State University, as well as past partners including Rutgers University and Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

The initiative operated on roughly $48 million a year, not including the cost of research vessels, which adds substantially to the overall price. Prior to budget cuts, which began in 2025, around 60 to 70 people worked directly on the project across its partner institutions, Dever said.

“What’s happening with the Ocean Observatories Initiative is not unique,” he said. “This is just one of a number of science facilities that is being dismantled at the present time. It seems to really mark the end of a federal commitment to basic scientific research — a commitment that has served this nation very well for the last 70 years.”

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Alexa St. John contributed to this report from Detroit.

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Follow Annika Hammerschlag on Instagram: @ahammergram.

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The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

Andrew Richard Lukehart, 53, was pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m. after receiving a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He was sentenced to death after being convicted of first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse in 1997 for the death a year earlier of 5-month-old Gabrielle Hanshaw.

When the curtain of the execution chamber went up at 6 p.m., Lukehart was already strapped to a table with an IV in his arm. A priest sat at the foot of the table to pray over him as he died.

When a warden asked Lukehart if he had a final statement, he raised his head to look at a group in the front row of the viewing area and said, "I’m sorry.”

Lukehart then recited the Bible verse Luke 23:34, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” which Scripture says Jesus Christ uttered during his crucifixion.

Lukehart lost consciousness almost immediately after the administration of the lethal drugs began. Several minutes into the execution, the warden shook Lukehart and shouted his name, but there was no reaction.

A medic was called in to check his vital signs, and he was declared dead several minutes later.

Lukehart declined a last meal and did not receive any visitors before the execution, though he did meet with a spiritual adviser, Department of Corrections spokesperson Jordan Kirkland said during a news conference.

This was Florida’s eighth execution so far this year, following a record 19 executions in 2025. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis oversaw more executions in a single year in 2025 than any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The previous record was set in 2014 with eight executions.

According to court records, Lukehart was watching his girlfriend's baby in February 1996 while his girlfriend was caring for her older daughter, who had been ill. At some point, the girlfriend said Lukehart drove away from their Jacksonville home, and she couldn't find baby Gabrielle. Lukehart called his girlfriend about 30 minutes later and told her to call police because the baby had been kidnapped and he was chasing the kidnapper.

Later that evening, Lukehart was found in a neighboring county after driving his car off the road. During questioning the next day, Lukehart told investigators that Gabrielle died after he dropped the baby on her head and then shook her. He told police that he panicked and threw the baby in a pond. Law enforcement officers searched the pond and found the child's body.

The Florida Supreme Court denied Lukehart's appeals last week. His attorneys had claimed that medication he was taking for kidney disease could have a negative reaction with the lethal injection drugs. They also argued that having only a month between the signing of Lukehart's death warrant and the execution deprived him of his due process.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied Lukehart’s final appeal Monday.

A total of 47 people were executed in the U.S. in 2025. Florida led the way with a flurry of death warrants signed by DeSantis. Alabama, South Carolina and Texas tied for second with five executions each.

Another execution is planned in Florida later this month. Dusty Ray Spencer, 74, was convicted of fatally stabbing his wife in 1992.

All Florida executions are carried out via lethal injection of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.

Carmichael has served as a science teacher, dean of students and opening principal of Fruit Cove Middle School. Most recently, he served as principal of Pedro Menendez High School before retiring in July 2023.

Carmichael also continues to serve as an adjunct professor at both Jacksonville University and the University of North Florida.

According to documents from the school district, the investigation into the accusations against O’Connell began after the Fetty Wap lyric, “Everybody hatin’, we just call them fans though” from the song “Trap Queen,” was printed on the first page of Trout Creek Academy’s 2025-2026 yearbook.

The documents included interviews with the yearbook teacher and editor at the academy and O’Connell, emails from other staff members, and letters to O’Connell regarding the conditions of her leave.

In a letter from a concerned parent to St. Johns County Superintendent Dr. Brennan Asplen, the parent attributed the quote directly to O’Connell, calling it inappropriate and citing it as a defensive response to parental criticism.

Dear Superintendent,

I am writing as a concerned parent regarding a quote included in the K-8 school yearbook by Principal Mrs. O’Connell that stated: “Everybody hating, we just call them fans though.”

While some may view it as humorous, many parents feel this was inappropriate and unprofessional coming from a school leader responsible for setting the tone and example for young adults.

A principal represents leadership, maturity, and professionalism. Referring to criticism or concerned parents as “haters” in a school publication sends the wrong message to children and families. In a K-8 environment especially, many of us expect communication and conduct that reflects respect, accountability and positive leadership.

This may seem minor to some, but it reflects a broader concern about professionalism and the culture being modeled within the school. I hope the district will take parent concerns seriously and address whether this type of messaging is appropriate in official school materials moving forward.

Letter from a concerned parent

In an email from the yearbook teacher, she defended O’Connell, noting that the principal was “not aware that the quote was going to be used.”

To whom it may concern, Please be advised that as yearbook teacher and editor for the Trout Creek Academy Yearbook class, | want it on record that Katherine O’Connell was not aware that quote was going to be used in the 20 25-20 26 school yearbook.

Upon proofreading, a quote was not on the final proof of the book. Miss O’Connell gave us recommendations for the final draft of the book. I can only assume the students noticed there was no quote and added what they thought was best. Ms. O’Connell wasn’t aware that quote was used until the yearbooks arrive yesterday. | can assure you that Ms. O’Connell had no intent whatsoever of causing issues to upset her students and the community.

I will try to locate my notes of what was proofed to show that the quote was not in the yearbook upon her final review and provide them if needed. On behalf of the yearbook students and staff | would like to take this information into consideration as we feel the yearbook turned out very well this year and the students and other staff have been providing positive feedback.

Letter from yearbook teacher

When the yearbook teacher was asked, “Why did [the quote] not make it into the proof that Ms. O’Connell viewed?”

She responded, " The quote may not have been there. When Ms. O’Connell reviewed it with me, she mentioned her quote was not there. | mentioned it to the students who must have then put it in."

She also said she was unaware of the quote being included.

“I did not know anything about the quote,” she said in the interview.

Trout Creek Academy’s assistant principal also defended O’Connell in an email sent on May 20.

The assistant principal said on April 9 (the day before the yearbook’s submission), an administrator was asked to help proofread the yearbook for grammar. While other errors were flagged, she said the quote was not on the first page during proofreading and appeared only after printing, adding that O’Connell’s signature was incorrect.

On April 9th, the day prior to submission, just after lunch, admin was asked to assist with the grammatical proof reading of our yearbook. Errors were found with spelling, with pronouns and incorrect verb tenses. We specifically edited several instances of “Ms. versus Mrs.”

The quote on the first page, which was present after printing, “Everybody hatin, we just call them fans though” was not there during the proofreading done on April 9th. On this quote, it is signed “Mrs. O’Connell”. This is not how Ms. O’Connell signs her name, she always uses, “Ms. O” as is evident in her weekly communications with families and messages/posters around the school. Had the quote been there at the time of admin editing; it would have been corrected.

Email from assistant principal

The order establishes a framework for the federal government to vet the national security risks of the most advanced AI systems for up to a month before their public release. Participation by AI developers would be voluntary, the order says.

“Advanced AI capabilities make our Nation stronger, but also introduce new national security considerations that require coordinated action across executive departments and agencies,” the order says.

It was not immediately clear to what extent the order differed from the one Trump declined to sign on May 21.

The order says the government would have only 30 days to review an AI system, a shorter time frame than some in the industry were expecting. A longer time period might have been seen as too burdensome for a fast-moving and highly competitive industry.

Trump canceled an Oval Office event with tech industry executives last month because he did not like what he saw in the earlier version of the order's text. “We’re leading China, we’re leading everybody, and I don’t want to do anything that’s going to get in the way of that lead,” Trump told reporters at the time.

That directive was characterized as a voluntary collaboration with participating U.S.-based tech companies, including Anthropic, OpenAI and Google, which are sometimes described as “frontier labs” because they are building the most advanced AI systems. Several companies had been planning to have executives present at the May 21 signing event. Trump ended up signing it without any ceremony.

The White House said in a social media post Tuesday that the executive order "creates a process for frontier labs to voluntarily share cutting-edge cyber models in order to secure critical infrastructure and strengthen the government’s own cyber defenses. We are NOT conducting oversight of all new models, as that level of government overreach would have chilling effects on free speech and innovation."

Juan Londoño, a policy analyst at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute, said the order is imperfect but “a step in the right direction to prepare the nation for the release of advanced AI systems.”

He applauded the White House's characterization of the process as voluntary but said he was concerned about the vagueness of how the government, led by the director of the National Security Agency, will decide which AI models qualify for scrutiny, and how it will decide which “trusted partners” get early access to them.

Londoño said in an interview that giving so much discretion to the NSA director was a “dangerous precedent” that could enable the government to “weaponize” the policy against companies it is clashing with, like Anthropic.

Plans for a new AI cybersecurity directive followed Anthropic's April announcement of its most advanced AI model, called Claude Mythos, in the middle of the company's legal fight with the Trump administration over a contract dispute with the Pentagon.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and outgoing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell soon after convened an urgent meeting with Wall Street CEOs, warning them about the risks posed by Mythos' apparent ability to find cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the world’s software. Anthropic has limited access to Mythos to only a small group of trusted partners, such as big tech companies and banks, though it said Tuesday it has expanded that group by another 150 organizations.

Anthropic called Trump's new order “an important step in strengthening America’s leadership in AI” and said it looks forward to collaborating with the White House to support its implementation.

Its chief rival, ChatGPT maker OpenAI, also described the policy as an important step, as did Google.

“As AI capabilities continue to advance, we believe effective safety frameworks should continue to be developed through democratic institutions, informed by technical expertise and broad stakeholder input, to promote accountability and public trust,” said a statement from Chris Lehane, OpenAI's chief global affairs officer.

Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, also welcomed Trump's policy but criticized the administration for having “belatedly discovered the need to redo something it hastily dismantled in its first year.”

Trump repealed many of former President Joe Biden’s guardrails for AI just hours after returning to the White House last year.

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AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay contributed.

Gabby’s family spent the hot afternoon running errands, then went back to their home on Epson Lane, near Normandy Boulevard.

Gabby was placed in her playpen. Her mom, Misty, took her 2-year-old sister, Ashley, into a bedroom to lie down because Ashley had been sick.

That left 5-month-old Gabby in the care of 22-year-old Andrew Lukehart, her mother’s boyfriend.

He would be the last person to see her alive.

On June 2, 2026, Lukehart, now 53, is set to be executed, more than 30 years after Gabby drew her last breath while in his care.

He was convicted in February 1997 of child abuse and felony murder in Gabby’s death, and a jury recommended the death penalty in a 9-3 vote.

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Lukehart’s death warrant on May 1, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied Lukehart’s final appeal on Monday.

After decades of appeals, Tuesday’s execution at Florida State Prison in Raiford feels like it’s been a long time coming for Gabby’s mother.

Misty declined an interview for this story, but she did tell News4JAX she will be at Lukehart’s execution.

FROM THE VAULT: Press play below to see Channel 4’s coverage of Lukehart’s 1996 arrest and 1997 trial and sentencing

How the case unfolded

Around 4:30 p.m. on Feb. 25, 1996, Lukehart picked Gabby up out of the playpen and noticed she had a messy diaper. He went into the room where Misty was lying down with Ashley to get a clean diaper and some baby wipes, but Misty told him the baby wipes were in the back den.

Lukehart took the clean diaper and Gabby into the room at the back of the house.

Misty never saw Gabby alive again.

Around 5 p.m., she heard her car – a white 1981 Oldsmobile Regency - start up in the driveway and looked out to see Lukehart driving away. She checked the house but couldn’t find Gabby anywhere.

Where was he going? And where was Gabby?

Half an hour later, Lukehart called from a Lil’ Champ convenience on Normandy Boulevard and told Misty to call 911.

He said someone had come into the home, taken Gabby and left in a blue Chevrolet Blazer. He was chasing the kidnappers in her car.

That was a lie.

But Misty didn’t know that, so she hung up and called police to report the kidnapping.

Around 6 p.m., half an hour after Lukehart had called Misty, a Clay County deputy responding to a crash report found Misty’s Oldsmobile abandoned on the side of County Road 217.

It was still running and in drive about 50 feet off the road in a ditch near a telephone pole.

Deputy Jeff Gardner saw a baby chair in the back seat on the passenger side and some baby clothes on the floorboard.

He didn’t know about the reported abduction and spent the next hour trying to find the owner of the car. Eventually, he got a number for Misty’s house and called.

Someone with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office answered the phone.

Gardner heard the story about the reported abduction of a 5-month-old and that Misty’s boyfriend said he had used her car to chase potential kidnappers in a blue Chevy Blazer.

Gardner had found the car, but where was Lukehart?

A few minutes after talking with the officers, Gardner found out.

Lukehart, wearing no shirt and no shoes, had walked up to a home in rural Clay County that happened to belong to a Florida Highway Patrol trooper.

That’s where Gardner picked him up and brought him back to the crash site, where he eventually spoke with JSO Detective Tim Reddish.

When Reddish told Lukehart that neighbors on Epson Lane had seen him driving away in the Oldsmobile but never saw a blue Blazer, Lukehart shifted his story.

Now, he said the kidnappers had taken Gabby out of the car at the Lil’ Champ.

The whole situation seemed bizarre.

But a reported child abduction was serious and time was crucial.

A command center was set up in Clay County, where Lukehart said he had lost sight of the Blazer before crashing on the side of CR 217. (He later confessed that he’d tried to ram the telephone pole but had missed.)

After crashing, Lukehart left the car running in the ditch and walked into the woods, where he tried to hang himself from a tree using his shirt. When it didn’t work, he walked out of the woods and up to the home of the FHP trooper.

Still believing they were on the hunt for potential kidnappers, about 25-30 officers from Clay County and Jacksonville searched for Gabby through the night using dogs, helicopters and a dive team.

The truth comes out

By 6:45 a.m., during an interview at JSO headquarters, Lukehart said he would help Reddish retrace his route following the kidnappers. On the way, Reddish got Lukehart breakfast at a Burger King and clothes at a Walmart.

At the time, he thought Lukehart was a witness, not a suspect.

After going back over the route, Reddish and Lukehart ended up back at the crash scene, where Lukehart met Lt. Jimm Redmond with the Crimes Against Persons Unit of the Clay County Sheriff’s Office.

Redmond had asked to talk with Lukehart, hoping he might be able to get some new details out of him that could help investigators find Gabby.

Around 10:30 a.m., Redmond got into the patrol car with Lukehart and went back over the kidnapping story with him. Then someone handed Redmond a photo of Gabby.

He showed it to Lukehart, but the 22-year-old balked.

“Don’t show me the picture,” he said.

Redmond asked why, and Lukehart said he “just didn’t want to look at the picture.” He was crying.

Something shifted.

Lukehart’s reaction made Redmond switch gears.

Suddenly, he told Lukehart he didn’t believe his story about the kidnappers, and he tried to convince Lukehart to tell them where the baby was.

About 20 minutes later, Lukehart caved.

It was all a lie.

There was no blue Chevy Blazer. There were no kidnappers. Gabrielle was not in Clay County.

Something had happened at Misty’s house when he was changing Gabrielle’s diaper, and the little girl was dead.

He’d panicked and left the house with her, then threw her body in a pond off Crystal Springs Road before calling Misty and making up the kidnapping story.

When investigators searched the pond Lukehart directed them to, they found Gabby.

“It was an isolated location. If he hadn’t done that, I doubt seriously we would have found the child for quite some time,” a detective said in 1996.

Previous child abuse case

One of the factors jurors considered when they recommended the death penalty for Lukehart was that he had a previous child abuse conviction from just two years earlier.

Lukehart pleaded guilty in September 1994 and received four years’ probation in a case involving the 8-month-old daughter of a woman he was living with.

Prosecutor Angela Corey, who was on the team that tried Lukehart, said the baby had suffered a “severe” head injury, retinal hemorrhages and broken ribs and had nearly drowned.

Lukehart admitted to leaving the 8-month-old alone in a tub briefly and finding her face down in the water.

Despite pleading guilty, Lukehart has since claimed he was covering for the child’s mother and did not cause the 8-month-old’s injuries.

So what really happened to Gabby?

According to testimony from the Medical Examiner, 5-month-old Gabrielle had bruises on her arm and head. She’d suffered five blows to the head, two of which had caused skull fractures.

But like his previous child abuse case and his claim that Gabby was kidnapped, Lukehart’s story about how Gabby had suffered her injuries kept changing.

In his four-page written confession, he said he’d dropped Gabby when she was wiggling in his arms after he changed her diaper, and she’d fallen on her head and stopped breathing.

But during the trial, when Lukehart testified in his own defense, he said he’d been changing Gabby’s diaper on the floor when she kept pushing herself up on her elbows. He said he forcefully pushed her down in the upper chest and neck four or five times and she struck her head on the carpet.

“The last time I did it, she just stopped moving. She was just completely still,” he said on the stand.

But he admitted the distance he was pushing her down was only about 4 to 5 inches.

“It would have to be quite a forceful push to cause a fracture of this nature from that distance,” Dr. Jack Daniel said on the stand.

He also said it “would be a little unusual” for a 5-month-old child to be able to push up on their elbows the way Lukehart had described.

During the trial, Medical Examiner Dr. Bonifacio Floro said that Gabrielle’s injuries required “the use of substantial force” and could have been caused by “hard blows with a fist” or by “being slammed against a floor” but not by an accidental fall from a few feet.

At the time Gabby died, she was 24 inches long and weighed just 15 pounds. Lukehart, on the other hand, was 6-1 and weighed 225 pounds.

It took the jury about 90 minutes of deliberations to convict Lukehart of child abuse and felony murder in Gabrielle’s death.

“He killed my baby,” Misty said to reporters after the trial, explaining why she wanted the death penalty for Lukehart.

During later appeals, Lukehart claimed he’d been on medication during the trial that messed with his memory, forcing him to come up with the story about pushing Gabby to the ground. He reverted to saying he’d dropped Gabby accidentally.

The truth is, the only person who knows how Gabby suffered her fatal injuries took those answers to his grave on Tuesday.

Surveillance video captured the screams and panic as the dog grabbed Jakya Dawkins, who was taken to a hospital and is recovering, relatives said.

“Me and him were in the room and I heard her screaming at first,” her mother said. “And her screams just started being different so I looked out the window and he had her by the back of her pants and was just dragging her across the yard.”

In a panic, Dawkins’ mom and stepdad ran outside to get the dog off of her.

“When I jumped the fence, I just went to swinging and just making all kind of loud noises, just anything to kind of get the attention off of her, and onto me,” her stepdad said.

Dawkins said she was afraid and the attack happened out of nowhere.

“He just slipped out the doorway and then just charged at me,” she said.

The girl is recovering from the injuries suffered in the attack.

“Her wrist is very bad,” her mother said. “It was 11 centimeters from her artery and her wrist and her chest, her side, and her backside has been bad.”

Dawkins said she won’t go outside until the dog, Lucky, is gone.

News4JAX was at the home when Animal Care and Protective Services arrived to check on the dog involved in the attack, but they didn’t take the dog. ACPS explained why.

“This is a dog that put somebody on their own property and it’s an unfortunate situation but after speaking to the owners, they have the dog contained they will be holding for the quarantine period and we visually put eyes on the dog today,” Michael Bricker, ACPS division chief said.

The dog’s owner, Chelsea Rodriguez, said she is apologetic.

“I did not mean for my dog to go above and beyond,” she said. “He was just protecting his home. What he thought he was protecting his home.”

Dawkins’ stepfather said it’s important always to pay attention to your children and their surroundings.

“Because a situation like this, it can happen in the split of second,” he said. “Nobody wants to see their child go through that.”

Dawkins’ family said their focus now is helping her recover physically and emotionally from the attack.

ACPS said the dog remains under a mandatory quarantine while the agency continues its operation.

Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said he received the decision “with indignation.” He also blamed the decision by the U.S. administration on his rival in October's elections, Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, who visited Washington last week. The senator is the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, once nicknamed “the Trump of the Tropics” by his allies.

The announcement late Monday came after an investigation by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, charging Brazil with lax anti-corruption enforcement and unfair tariffs of its own, among other things.

The U.S. has had a goods trade surplus with Brazil for years.

U.S Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said that he and President Donald Trump had “constructive’’ meetings with Lula and other Brazilian officials. But he said that “we continue to have substantial differences in resolving the issues identified in this investigation.’’

Lula on Tuesday cited other reasons for the punishing tariff proposal. For the first time he named an American official as a hurdle to his relations with Trump and once again he threatened to retaliate.

“I spoke to President Trump for three hours, and that Marco Rubio guy, the head of the State Department, he is anti-Latin American,” Lula said. “He is a deadly enemy of Cuba, a deadly enemy of many Latin American countries. I already told Trump that he does not like Brazil.”

The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond a request for comment from The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Brazil’s government said in a statement that its dialogue with American counterparts, which includes “personal involvement of Presidents Lula and Trump,” is being ”sabotaged by merely electoral and family matters” of the Bolsonaros.

It added that it hopes “the recommendations do not become effective tariffs.”

“But we stress we will adopt every measure that is capable of reducing the damage that might be caused to the national economy, to the jobs and the income of Brazilians,” the country's government said.

Last year, Trump had slapped Brazil with a 50% tariff, mainly to protest its prosecution of Jair Bolsonaro for trying to overturn his electoral defeat in 2022. Trump's relationship with Lula seemed to have improved early May, when the Brazilian visited the White House.

But last week, the Trump administration designated two Brazilian gangs as terrorist organizations, after Sen. Bolsonaro's visit. Lula opposes the designation, which analysts say could bolster his political rival.

Sen. Bolsonaro published in his social media channels a statement he said he sent to Rubio, in which he criticizes the potential new tariff hike for it would cause “serious damages to the Brazilian people — precisely the citizens that see the United States as a partner and a friend.”

“I am writing to formally repeat the request I did to you in person, that the U.S. do not impose tariffs on Brazil,” Sen. Bolsonaro said.

Greer’s office has scheduled a public hearing July 6 on the proposed tariffs.

Trade lawyer Ryan Majerus, a partner at King & Spalding, noted said that the administration’s plan excludes more than half of U.S. imports from Brazil, including aircraft and key minerals.

The Trump administration invoked Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 to launch the investigation into Brazil’s trade practices.

Sen. Bolsonaro travelled to meet officials in Washington last week in the wake of a scandal at home in which he admitted receiving funds from a disgraced banker. Another son, former lawmaker Eduardo Bolsonaro, was also present.

On Tuesday, Trump posted a photo of the Bolsonaros in the Oval office on his social media site.

“These sons of Bolsonaro can be worse than him. They are actually sellouts of our country, they went there to ask a foreign nation to meddle in Brazilian affairs,” Lula said in a speech to residents of the city of Catalao, south of capital Brasilia. “They are traitors.”

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in February that Trump overstepped his authority by using a different law – the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977 – to impose sweeping tariffs on U.S. trading partners, including Brazil.

However, Section 301 tariffs have survived legal challenges, and the administration is likely to use that authority to impose other tariffs and to recoup some of the tax revenue lost when the Supreme Court rejected the IEEPA tariffs.

Brazil’s president said that during his visit to Washington early May, he handed Trump documents showing that the U.S. has a trade surplus with Brazil.

Documents published by the U.S. Trade Representative show that last year, U.S. exports to Brazil rose nearly 11% to $54.4 billion. Brazilian exports to the U.S. fell 5.7% to $39.9 billion, meaning the U.S. had a trade surplus of more than $14 billion.

The trade imbalance for services is more lopsided in favor of the U.S., with services exports in 2024 reaching $29.6 billion, quadruple the Brazilian services exports to the U.S.

“I am not going to cry about it,” Lula said. “If they (the U.S.) don’t want to buy from us, we will sell to someone else.”

China has been Brazil’s biggest trading partner for about a decade.

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Mauricio Savarese reported from Sao Paulo.

His testimony to Congress comes more than a month after The Associated Press and other outlets reported that war-torn Congo was among the countries where the U.S. was considering sending the 1,100 Afghans and relatives of American service members who have been stranded in Qatar for more than a year.

Advocates have said the other option would be for the refugees to go back to Afghanistan, where they face likely reprisal from the Taliban.

Democrats on House and Senate committees questioned Rubio during an annual budget hearing about why the U.S. has not followed through on its promise to take in the hundreds of allies who had been rigorously vetted before President Donald Trump signed executive orders in January 2025 that targeted asylum and refugee cases.

“We’re obviously operating right now under a directive that prohibits the entry of Afghans into the United States,” Rubio said. Despite the restrictions, he said officials had been “engaging every single day” on this issue and that several countries have already indicated their willingness to take in some of those waiting in limbo.

Rep. Grace Meng, a Democrat from New York, told Rubio that regardless of U.S. immigration policy, Congo would be “a death sentence” for those living at the camp in Doha, including Afghans who served as interpreters and with Special Operations Forces as well as the immediate families of more than 150 active-duty U.S. military members.

The African country has been battered by decades-long fighting between government forces and Rwanda-backed rebels in its eastern region and is now at the heart of an Ebola outbreak.

“Can we rule out deporting people to conflict zones?” Meng asked Rubio. After some deflection, he responded that he doesn't think any of the countries being discussed would be conflict zones.

But he added that the issue remains how many Afghans other countries will take.

“I don’t think there’s one country that’s going to take all 1,000, but it has to be countries that are willing to assume some of this responsibility and numbers that are manageable to them, but also places that give more options to these individuals that they would be comfortable going to," Rubio said.

Negotiations between the U.S. and willing countries, including Botswana and Malaysia, started months ago, according to Shawn VanDiver, a Navy veteran who heads a coalition that supports Afghan resettlement efforts called #AfghanEvac.

VanDiver and other advocacy groups have blasted the administration's handling of Afghan allies over the last 18 months, saying the U.S. is abandoning those who served alongside U.S. forces during America's longest war.

“These are not strangers. They are the spouses, the children, and the parents of men and women wearing our uniform right now,” VanDiver said in a statement Tuesday. “We told them, with the full faith of the United States, that if they stood with us we would stand with them.”

He added, “That promise did not come with an expiration date, and it did not come with conditions.”

Rubio defended some of those conditions, including why Afghans, who have gone through some of the most rigorous vetting and biometric tests, are facing hurdles while the administration has made the U.S. refugee program a vehicle to allow in Afrikaners — a group of white South Africans descended mainly from Dutch settlers.

“Everything we do has to be geared by the national interest, and it is in our national interest if we are allowing people to enter our country — be people who can quickly assimilate into society and be successful,” Rubio said.

Meng pushed back on that notion, saying there is a large Afghan population in her district in Queens, New York, who have assimilated, contributed and paid taxes.

“We’ve already assumed a lot of Afghan refugees, as you said, you have them in your district. We’ve already assumed a large number in the past," Rubio responded.

The killing of 18-year-old Henry Nowak in December drew renewed attention after the killer was sentenced to life with a minimum of 21 years in prison on Monday, and following the release of a video showing police dismissing Nowak when he said that he had been stabbed.

The killer, Vickrum Digwa, 23, who is Sikh, had reported to police that he was the victim of a racist attack by Nowak, who was white.

Officers who arrived at the scene on a residential street in the southern England coastal city of Southampton appeared to take him at his word. But the court determined that Digwa had lied about being the victim of racism.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was sickened by the video and said there were questions to be answered about how “accusations of racism informed the decision-making in this case."

On Tuesday night, hundreds protested the arrest outside a Southampton police station, with some protesters shouting, “I can't breathe.”

A large group then walked to an area near where Nowak was killed and clashed with riot police, who retreated as they were pelted with chairs, rocks and flares.

Victim complained he couldn't breathe as police handcuffed him

In the video, Nowak is seen lying on his back, telling police he had been stabbed as they grabbed his wrists and tried to make him sit up. He repeatedly said he couldn't breathe.

“You've been stabbed? Whereabouts?” an officer said in the video. “Don't think you have, mate.”

After the sentencing hearing, the victim's father, Mark Nowak, said the case was not about racism or religion, and that he wanted his son's death to lead to safer streets and not to be used to create “further division, hatred or tension.”

But Nigel Farage, leader of the anti-immigration Reform UK party, said on Tuesday that it was an example of so-called two-tier policing — a popular far-right talking point that suggests ethnic minorities are better treated than white people.

Farage urged people to respond to the incident with “pure cold rage,” and called for an end to “anti-white prejudice" and the promotion of the idea “that white lives matter just as much as Black lives.”

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood rejected that there are different policing standards for different communities and urged members of Parliament not to “allow this murder to turn communities against one another."

Mahmood said that she understood people's horror over the video of the tragic death, adding that the government is trying to sharply reduce knife crime.

Police watchdog investigates response by officers

Mahmood called for calm as the Independent Office for Police Conduct investigates the conduct of the officers from the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary. She said online rumors had led to death threats against an officer who wasn't involved in the arrest.

“Misinformation and inflammatory commentary is making a dreadful situation even worse,” she said. “We must all together condemn it.”

In 2024, a stabbing rampage killed three girls and wounded 10 people at a dance class in northern England, leading to nearly a week of widespread rioting after people incorrectly identified the teen suspect on social media as a Muslim asylum seeker. The violent clashes with police were mostly aimed at migrants and Muslims.

The parents of the British-born attacker in that case were Christians from Rwanda. Investigators have not been able to pin down his motivation but have ruled out terrorism. Police found documents on his devices about subjects that included Nazi Germany, the Rwandan genocide and car bombs.

In the case of Nowak, a first-year student at the University of Southampton who had been out with friends, police officers walked up to the scene of what had been reported as an assault. Nowak could be seen on a driveway and was being held up by someone who said he had a mouthful of blood.

Digwa was standing nearby and told officers he had also been injured, pointing to his eyelid that he said was swollen. He claimed that Nowak had knocked off his turban and pulled his hair.

After Nowak was handcuffed, officers lay him on his side and searched for stab wounds. He appeared to have lost consciousness when one of the officers said he was being arrested for assault and read him his rights.

When officers discovered his injuries, they uncuffed him and started CPR, police said.

Judge disputes racism claim

Digwa was convicted of murder in Southampton Crown Court. Judge William Mousley told Digwa that he didn’t believe Nowak said anything racist to him.

“You are the only person to make that claim and it is completely at odds with his previous character,” he said.

In the United Kingdom, where gun ownership is strictly regulated, knives are often used in violent crimes and are also subject to restrictions. In general, people are not allowed to carry bladed weapons except for pocketknives whose cutting edge is no longer than 3 inches (7.62 centimeters).

But Sikhs are allowed to carry ceremonial knives, known as kirpans, for religious reasons.

The judge said Digwa had a small kirpan but also had an 8-inch (21-centimeter) sheathed Sikh dagger that was used as the weapon to kill Nowak.

Mousley said that the religious association of the knives had endangered other Sikhs.

“Your actions have stirred up racial tension in Southampton and across the country which have made many Sikhs worried about their own safety even though they have done absolutely nothing wrong," the judge told Digwa.

Police apologized to Nowak's family and said that the lies told by Digwa had misled officers.

“It is devastating the officers did not believe Henry when he said he’d been stabbed and couldn’t breathe," Police and Crime Commissioner Donna Jones said. “The details of the police response raises serious concerns about police impartiality, fairness and judgment."

Digwa's mother, Kiran Kaur, 53, was convicted of assisting an offender after trying to hide the murder weapon. She will be sentenced on July 17.

“As of yesterday, there are 1,057 members of the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office,” the sheriff said, presenting the budget on behalf of the full agency.

Personnel services make up 80% of the total budget at $115 million. Salary and benefits account for 79% of overall spending — a figure the sheriff said reflects where the bulk of public safety investment goes each year.

The proposal calls for a $3,000 base pay increase plus step raises for sergeants and below, pushing starting deputy pay from $60,500 to $63,500. Civilian employees would receive a $1,000 base increase plus step raises. The overall increase for sworn deputies below sergeant rank is proposed at 5.8%, while non-sworn personnel would see a 3.8% to 7% increase.

Competing with Jacksonville

The sheriff raised a pointed concern about the agency’s ability to compete for talent with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, which is transitioning to the Florida Retirement System, or FRS, for the first time.

“Out of all the agencies in the state of Florida, which is 67 Sheriff’s Offices, there is only one agency that is not on the Florida Retirement System plan, which of course is the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office,” the sheriff explained.

FRS portability has long been a competitive advantage for St. Johns County, allowing deputies to carry their retirement benefits to any of the other 66 sheriff’s offices in the state — or to agencies like the Florida Highway Patrol or Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission — without losing a single day of accrued retirement.

Once Jacksonville joins FRS, that advantage disappears. The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office will offer a starting salary of $71,828, with pay approaching $90,000 at the five-year mark — a threshold the sheriff acknowledged St. Johns County cannot currently match.

“I’m not in a competition with Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, but I can tell you from my brothers and sisters, they’ll tell you that everybody wants to go to the bigger machine,” the sheriff said.

School safety: A growing cost

One of the most detailed sections of the presentation focused on school safety — a line item the sheriff broke out separately for the first time this year.

With 46 public schools currently operating and two new campuses opening — one in Silverleaf — and one in Nocatee — the Youth Resource Deputy program carries a total budget of $9.6 million, composed entirely of personnel costs and benefits with no equipment funding included.

The St. Johns County School District reimburses the sheriff’s office $7.3 million of that cost, covering hour-for-hour pay for deputies assigned to schools during the academic year. That reimbursement equals 69.2% of the program’s total cost.

“No, ma’am, we’re not there,” the sheriff told a commissioner who asked whether full reimbursement had been achieved. “Some of the areas are actually zero, or they went to the Guardian program, which I do not agree with.”

The remaining gap is absorbed by the county. When school is not in session, those deputies return to general patrol and augment other divisions, including criminal investigations and a newly launched juvenile diversion program.

The school crossing guard program adds another $2.2 million to the budget. Guards currently work 28 schools, staffing 78 posts and helping approximately 26,000 children travel to and from school each day. The four new positions requested this year — along with eight new crossing guards and two additional public service assistants — are tied directly to the opening of the two new schools.

The sheriff also noted that state funds may exist to offset crossing guard costs and said the agency is working with County Administrator Joy Andrews and school Superintendent Dr. Brennan Asplen to track down those dollars.

Operations, fleet, jail

Operating expenses have been squeezed by inflation, particularly in fleet costs. The base price for a patrol vehicle has risen from roughly $56,000 five-and-a-half years ago to approximately $88,000 today.

Capital improvement costs dropped by just under $9,000 this year, a result the sheriff credited to aggressive grant-seeking at the federal, state and local levels. Fleet debt currently stands at $6.1 million, with the agency using surplus funds to pay down loans rather than return money to the county at year’s end.

The jail, overseen by Director Jason Caban, carries a $34.9 million budget. The average daily inmate population is 414 — down 20 to 30 inmates per year — a trend the sheriff attributed to investments in re-entry programming, homeless reunification, job placement and education. The jail set a record last year with 25 GED completions.

Total annual bookings stand at 7,107. The E911 center, funded separately through a $0.40 per-line charge on landlines and cell phones, adds $2.1 million to the overall budget figure of $149 million but carries no direct cost to county general revenue.

Calls for service reached 289,000 through the computer-aided dispatch system, with 101,911 calls to the 911 center. Total inbound and outbound call volume at the dispatch center reached approximately 360,000.

The agency recently added a new air unit to its fleet, returning a Bell helicopter that had been on loan through the federal 1033 program. The unit is used primarily to support water rescue operations and provide real-time intelligence to fire, rescue and patrol units.

The county’s recommended budget will be submitted in July and once approved, take effect in October.

In his confirmation hearing earlier this year, Mullin portrayed himself as a steadying hand for the Department of Homeland Security after multiplecontroversies roiled his predecessor's tenure. But on Tuesday, Democrats expressed deep skepticism of his ability to change the department, specifically its approach to immigration enforcement and its commitment to the rule of law.

“I want to be very clear, Secretary Mullin, I’m watching closely to see what steps you now take as the new DHS secretary,” said Washington Sen. Patty Murray. "Even now, we are seeing some outrageous proposals.”

Mullin, who just a few months ago was a senator alongside those criticizing him, defended himself, calling the attacks “outlandish” and “just flat wrong.”

Mullin’s appearance at the appropriations subcommittee on homeland security comes as the Senate is weighing legislation that would fund immigration enforcement agencies through the end of President Donald Trump’s term in a maneuver that would bypass the need for support from Democrats, who have demanded restraints before agreeing to fund the agencies.

The attempt to fund those two agencies for the long term has been stalled over separate Republican opposition to a $1.776 billion settlement fund to compensate Trump allies who believe they have been politically prosecuted, a plan that was suspended on Tuesday.

Criticism over Mullin's CBP airport threat

Murray cited Mullin's threats to pull U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers from airports in states that the Trump administration deems “sanctuary cities,” meaning they don't cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“Your plan to withdraw CBP officers from airports in cities that don’t roll over for Trump, that is insane," Murray said. "It would also spell economic crisis for blue and red states.”

Mullin has set the travel industry on edge with threats to withdraw CBP officers from airports in so-called “sanctuary cities.” There is no strict definition of what constitutes a sanctuary jurisdiction, but the term is generally used to describe cities and states that limit cooperation with ICE. Courts have rejected the idea of pulling funding from them in the past.

Mullin hasn't yet put forward a concrete proposal but has repeatedly suggested publicly that he's weighing the idea.

The U.S. Travel Association said Mullin also confirmed during a meeting with the group last month that he was considering such a move. The trade group had met with Mullin to discuss other Trump administration proposals affecting the travel industry.

U.S. Travel and the major airlines quickly condemned any move to pull CBP officers from airports, and even Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has said it doesn’t make sense to him.

Such a move could upend international travel at a time when millions of visitors are gearing up to come to the U.S. for the World Cup.

Although Democrats criticized Mullin for the suggestion, he wasn't directly asked about the plan during the Tuesday hearing and didn't address the issue.

Murray also said she believed the White House still had significant influence over Mullin and DHS.

“I have yet to see you take back the reins from Stephen Miller,” she said, speaking of Trump's advisor who's one of the architects of the administration's immigration crackdown.

After a blistering opening statement from Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut questioning his commitment to the rule of law, Mullin diverted from his opening statement to defend himself and his department.

“When you start saying it’s unconstitutional, what’s unconstitutional that we’re doing? We swore to uphold the Constitution, just like you swore to the Constitution,” said Mullin, who blamed rhetoric like Murphy’s for a growing number of threats and attacks against his officers.

Mullin defends detainee treatment in New Jersey

Murphy also pressed Mullin over treatment of detainees at an ICE detention facility in Newark, New Jersey. Protesters and Democratic members of Congress have raised concerns about the treatment of immigrants being held in the facility.

Democratic members of Congress who've toured the facility say the food has sometimes contained maggots and criticized the level of medical care for detainees. Murphy added to those criticisms, saying detainees had described “spoiled food, delayed medical treatment, sewage backups" as well as "undue pressure to sign deportation paperwork.”

The Department of Homeland Security has denied any allegations of abuse or mistreatment inside the facility.

Mullin said Tuesday that there are currently about 700 detainees in Delaney which he said is licensed to hold about 1,000 people. He pushed back on the criticism, saying that health inspectors were just recently at the facility and found “zero violations.” Mullin also accused some of the protesters of attacking DHS officers.

“We had officers bit, we had officers scratched, we had officers poked, we had officers hit,” said Mullin.

Peters says Trump administration politicizes disaster response

Mullin also faced criticism about money disbursed for disaster relief through the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat, cited recent reports that Trump has approved more major disaster declarations for red states than blue.

“Do you think it’s right for a president to approve disaster aid based on whether a state voted for him, instead of the amount of damage that actually occurred in the state?” Peters asked Mullin.

“That’s not my experience with the president,” Mullin replied, pointing out that Trump last week issued a flurry of disaster approvals and denials to both red and blue states. Disaster aid “shouldn’t be politicized,” Mullin later added.

Republicans largely expressed support for Mullin's work, saying he was following the rule of law. He did face pushback from Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who asked whether DHS would be flexible on high fees and quotas for certain types of work visas.

Tuesday's hearing was the first time Mullin has appeared in the Senate since his confirmation hearing in March. Mullin, who was tapped by Trump to lead Homeland Security after his predecessor Kristi Noem was fired, will testify in the House about the budget on Wednesday.

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Associated Press writers Rio Yamat in Las Vegas and Gabriela Aoun Angueira in San Diego, California, contributed.

Christopher Baldner, 47, of Catskill, was taken to jail immediately after the sentencing in Ulster County, about 84 miles (136 kilometers) north of New York City.

Baldner was convicted in March of manslaughter in the December 2020 death of 11-year-old Monica Goods, who was in the SUV. He was previously acquitted of murder and reckless endangerment.

According to prosecutors, Baldner rammed the SUV twice on the New York State Thruway, causing it to lose control and flip over. Baldner’s attorneys said the crash occurred after the SUV cut off the trooper as he pulled alongside during the pursuit.

Baldner pulled Monica Good's father, Tristin Goods, over for speeding on the highway near Kingston just before midnight on Dec. 22, 2020. Goods, his wife and two daughters were heading north from New York City to visit family.

Baldner and Goods argued, and the trooper pepper-sprayed the inside the vehicle. Goods drove off and Baldner pursued.

Baldner’s lawyers said Goods collided with the trooper's car twice during the pursuit. An accident reconstruction expert for the defense testified that Goods lost control of the SUV when he overcorrected after “a very minor impact."

Baldner retired in 2022 after almost 20 years with the state police.

The house fire started with an earlier explosion, and firefighters confirmed Tuesday morning that one person was found dead in the home.

They could not confirm if the person found is the same person who had remained unaccounted for on Tuesday morning.

Authorities have received reports that oxygen was present inside the home.

Firefighters had to put out hot spots on Tuesday after the fire reignited in places.

One person was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, Bradford County Fire Chief Ben Carter said, but it’s unclear if the homeowner was home at the time.

The homeowner’s granddaughter, Mackenzie Demille, said she’s afraid her grandmother was the one killed in the fire.

“I’m scared that she’s in there and nobody’s found her,” Demille said. “I’m scared to live in a world without my grandmother.”

She said she’s lived there since she was a toddler.

“Last night we got a call and they were like, ‘we don’t know what’s going on but the house is up in flames,” she said.

One firefighter who was injured in the secondary explosion was treated at the scene, and the other was taken to a hospital. Neither had injuries that were life-threatening.

There’s significant debris in the home, so crews are going back out to dismantle the home, Carter said.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation.

DeSantis put his plan to Florida lawmakers during a special session that started on Monday. After making some tweaks, the House passed the Save Our Homes amendment proposal 75-26, and the Senate passed it 30-9.

Now it will be up to voters to decide. The amendment needs 60% approval from voters to go into effect.

According to the House website, the amendment will revise limitations on annual assessment increases for specified real property, increase homestead exemptions, provide limitations on the use of ad valorem taxes levied by counties & municipalities, & provide an effective date.

House and Senate committees tweaked the governor’s proposal to reduce impacts to local governments and school districts, which rely on the revenue.

During the debates on the issue, local government representatives pleaded with lawmakers not to impose such a large cut to their revenues.

The plan is drawing concern from some residents and local leaders who say the money still has to come from somewhere, and could leave counties, cities, and schools with fewer resources for services.

Now that the measure is going on the ballot, local leaders will have to take those concerns to the voters, who will make the ultimate decision on whether to pass the cuts.

As the Legislature began debating the proposal, leaders from Clay County, a Republican-dominated county, warned in a statement that the changes could mean less funding for everyday services and fewer local choices.

Jack Cory, a lobbyist whose clients include Jacksonville Beach, told the House committee the “unstudied” proposal will be made up with fees and is simply “a get out of vote drive in ’26, not caring what happens in your communities in ’27.”

And the Jacksonville Mayor’s Office shared the following statement:

“The homestead exemption bill currently being debated in the Florida Legislature would have a significant impact on the city’s budget. We are closely monitoring progress of the proposal, which would still need to be approved by voters with a 60% threshold in the November election. As it stands now, property tax revenue barely covers Jacksonville’s police and fire costs. Eliminating or dramatically changing this funding source will hurt public safety efforts, as well as core services that improve quality of life and affordability.”

Democrats warned DeSantis’ measure could “bankrupt” local governments, and GOP members of the House State Affairs Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee amended the bill (HJR 1F/SJR 2F) to carve out the effect on school districts.

Before the bills were changed, local governments were projected to lose $8.4 billion in revenue per year, with firefighters warning of up to 25% cuts.

“What this is going to do, and what the governor has put forward in his proposal, and what we believe Floridians have a right to make a determination about, is whether or not the revenue coming into local governments is where it should be,” said Rep. Sam Garrison, R-Fleming Island, who is slated to be the House Speaker after the November elections.

Under the measure, the current $50,000 property tax exemption would increase to $150,000 in 2027 and to $250,000 in 2028, but it wouldn’t apply to school districts’ levies.

Future legislators would be allowed to further expand the exemption.

Sanibel City Councilmember Holly Smith, president of the Florida League of Cities, said the overall proposal is a tax shift.

“When homesteaded properties come off the tax roll, the cost of services they don’t disappear; it shifts to businesses and non-homesteaded properties,” Smith said.

A House staff analysis put the drop in revenue at $4.6 billion a year to non-school governments, growing to $8.4 billion a year.

House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell, D-Tampa, envisioned the “creation, frankly, of welfare counties, particularly where you have the smaller rural counties and the fiscally constrained counties who would have to come to the state and be made whole.”

But supporters of the measure pointed to skyrocketing tax bills for homeowners in recent years and noted voters still get a say.

“What are we afraid of? That we pass this and the voters actually get a choice?” said Sen. Jonathan Martin, R-Fort Myers. “If they want lower taxes, they can vote yes; if they don’t want lower taxes, they can vote no.”

The bill would also lower the current 10% cap on annual assessment increases for non-homestead properties, which include vacation and investment homes and apartments and commercial properties.

It would also limit the use of property taxes to core services that include fire, police, stormwater, education, infrastructure and the constitutional offices, such as supervisors of elections, property appraisers and tax collectors.

Both committees removed a provision from DeSantis’ proposal to create a trust fund to assist small, rural counties.

Sen. Erin Grall, R-Vero Beach, noted there was no dedicated source of money for the trust fund, which on the ballot would confuse voters who might think money would automatically be set aside in case of a shortage.

“Here we have the permission to set up an empty bank account,” Grall said.

The House passed a proposal earlier in the year to eliminate non-school property taxes for homestead owners, but the Senate didn’t go along.

The Florida Association of Counties put the collective revenue hit to the state’s 67 counties at $3.6 billion in fiscal year 2027-2028 and $6.4 billion in fiscal year 2028-2029.

Republicans rejected Democratic amendments to sunset the changes in 2031 or to include water management districts as an allowed use for property taxes.

The investigation would lead police to some sensational findings.

The attack turned out to be linked to a $245 million Bitcoin heist the month before involving the couple's son. And this week, a California cryptocurrency mogul who authorities say called himself “The Godfather” and had previously hired off-duty sheriff’s deputies to strongarm his enemies admitted to orchestrating the attempted abduction to get a piece of the son's stolen loot.

The California man, 25-year-old Adam Iza, pleaded guilty Monday to conspiracy to interfere with commerce by robbery. Federal prosecutors are seeking a prison term of at least 14 years when he's sentenced.

Iza’s lawyer, William Paetzold, didn't immediately respond to Tuesday phone and email messages seeking comment.

The case is part of an increasing trend worldwide of cryptocurrency theft spilling over to violence.

Nightclub fight spawns kidnapping plot

A month before the abduction attempt, one of Iza's alleged co-conspirators got into a beef with the couple's son, Veer Chetal, at a Miami nightclub, according to an FBI affidavit. The man, James Schwab, then told an acquaintance to rob Chetal and his friends at their Miami rental home, authorities said. It's not clear if the robbery happened.

Schwab's lawyers didn't immediately respond to phone messages seeking comment.

Then came the Bitcoin heist. A few weeks after the nightclub fight, Chetal and two other men hatched an elaborate online scheme that involved impersonating technical support staff for Google and a cryptocurrency exchange. They managed to steal 4,100 Bitcoins — worth about $245 million at the time — from a Washington, D.C., resident, according to court documents.

The trio lived large after the theft, spending millions of dollars on cars, clothing, jewelry, rental mansions and nightclub parties before being arrested, prosecutors said. Chetal pleaded guilty last November and awaits sentencing, while the two other men have pleaded not guilty.

Iza and Schwab, meanwhile, came up with the idea to take Chetal's parents hostage in a bid to snatch some of his ill-gotten riches, the FBI said, citing information from informants. Schwab and Iza's brother, Saif Faiq, also were charged in the kidnapping attempt and pleaded not guilty.

They recruited six other men to go to Connecticut, paying for their travel and lodging, authorities said. A week after the Bitcoin heist, the group surveilled Chetal's parents hours before the kidnapping, according to court records.

Abduction quickly goes awry

Sushil and Radhika Chetal were driving in the Lamborghini on Aug. 25, 2024, near Danbury High School when they were rear-ended by a car. A white van then pulled in front of the SUV and several men surrounded them, police said.

The men pulled the Chetals out of the SUV and forced them into their van, beating Sushil Chetal with a baseball bat and dragging Radhika Chetal by her hair. The couple were bound with duct tape and the van drove off, according to court documents.

After witnesses called police, officers soon spotted the van and a chase ensued. The van eventually crashed and four of the men got out and fled on foot but were arrested shortly thereafter. The other two men were later found at a home the group had rented in a nearby town. The Chetals were taken to a hospital and released.

The six men, all from Florida, have pleaded guilty in connection with the kidnapping. Two have been sentenced to 11 years in prison and the others await sentencing.

How the ‘Godfather’ went from a Bel Air mansion to federal charges

Before Iza's arrest in the Connecticut case, he was under investigation by federal authorities in California for extorting money and property from victims in Los Angeles and elsewhere, court records show. He was charged in that case a month after the kidnapping and later pleaded guilty.

Iza, also known as Ahmed Faiq, was living in a mansion in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles, calling himself The Godfather while running a crypto trading company, Zort. While stealing millions of dollars and funneling it through shell companies, Iza spent freely on luxury cars and other extravagances, including cosmetic surgery to lengthen his legs, prosecutors said.

Beginning in August 2021, Iza paid around $100,000 a month for his personal protection to a private security firm founded by a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy that also employed other deputies, prosecutors said.

Iza, authorities said, hired off-duty deputies to act as enforcers against people with whom he had personal and business disputes. He used the deputies to extort, intimidate, set people up for arrest and abuse the legal process, prosecutors said.

The deputies used law enforcement databases to generate information about Iza's enemies and obtained search warrants under false pretenses, authorities said. On one occasion, two deputies held a victim at gunpoint inside Iza's home, pressuring the victim to transfer $25,000 to Iza's bank account, prosecutors said.

When he pleaded guilty in that case in January, Iza also admitted to stealing more than $37 million by fraudulently accessing the business manager accounts of Meta Platforms, owner of Facebook, and their lines of credit from 2020 to 2022. He awaits sentencing after pleading guilty to wire fraud, conspiracy against rights and tax evasion.

His attorney in California, Josef Sadat, declined to comment Tuesday.

Several deputies also were charged in the investigation.

Kostyuk won an intense all-Ukraine quarterfinal against Elina Svitolina 6-3, 2-6, 6-2 on Tuesday. That set up Kostyuk against Russian teenager Mirra Andreeva, who thumped Romanian veteran Sorana Cirstea 6-0, 6-3.

In men’s play, 20-year-old Jakub Mensik ended the run of Brazil's Joao Fonseca with a 6-4, 6-3, 7-6 (3) victory.

“It was one of my best performances so far,” Mensik said.

The 19-year-old Fonseca beat 24-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic in five sets in the third round and then eliminated two-time runner-up Casper Ruud in the fourth round.

Mensik collapsed to the clay with cramps upon edging Mariano Navone in a fifth-set tiebreaker in the second round and also needed five sets to advance in the fourth round against Andrey Rublev.

For a place in Sunday’s final, Mensik will face second-seeded Alexander Zverev, the 2024 runner-up, who beat rising Spanish player Rafael Jodar 7-6 (3), 6-1, 6-3.

Kostyuk leads Andreeva 2-0 on the tour; the second win in the Madrid final a month ago. Kostyuk didn’t shake hands at the net, following protocol for Ukrainians with opponents from Russia and its ally Belarus since the war started four years ago.

“We had a very difficult night again in Ukraine, especially in Kyiv, so many people dead,” Kostyuk said. "I want to give this match to Ukrainian people and to their resilience. Slava Ukraini! (Glory to Ukraine!)”

Russia launched hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles against Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities overnight, killing at least 18 civilians and wounding more than 100 others, authorities said Tuesday.

“I texted my family if they were OK. This is pretty much all I can do,” Kostyuk said. “The biggest thing I can do is sit here and talk about it so more people can find out about it so they don’t get used to this terrible life.”

Svitolina said friends in Ukraine told her about the attacks just hours before the match.

“Just very sad that we all have to really put up with this heaviness and pain every single day, and scared moments not knowing what’s going to bring the next day,” Svitolina said.

She will leave Roland Garros to look after the daughter she has with French tennis player Gael Monfils, but will be cheering on Kostyuk.

“Hopefully she can get the title,” Svitolina said. “It’s going to be massive for Ukraine.”

No. 7-seeded Svitolina got off to a slow start but worked her way back, matching No. 15 Kostyuk’s power from the baseline. Kostyuk was better on the important points in the decider and improved her impressive 2026 record on clay to 17-0.

She's the first Ukrainian woman to reach the semifinals at Roland Garros in the Open era since 1968. Svitolina has reached the semis at the other three Grand Slams but failed for the sixth time to win a French Open quarterfinal.

Andreeva will appear in her second French Open semifinal, two years after the first. She was asked about the challenges of playing a Ukrainian in wartime.

“Well, for me it doesn’t matter who I play,” Andreeva said. “I really try to play against the ball that is coming at me. Usually it doesn’t matter to me who I’m playing against, so I’m trying to really focus on the game and on the game plan.”

Asked whether she found it frustrating to hear Russian opponents avoiding the issue, Kostyuk said she wished “there was some more clear stance on what’s going on.”

“Especially when your country is killing other people,” she added. “I don’t know how you can sleep at night peacefully when you know that this is going on, and you have nothing to say about it.”

After a week of hot weather, rain arrived in Paris and play started and finished under the closed roof of Court Philippe-Chatrier. Competing in the quarterfinals for the first time in 17 years, Cirstea struggled to find her rhythm against her 19-year-old rival.

The 36-year-old veteran, playing the final season of her career, immediately dropped her serve. She didn't hold serve or win a game until the first game of the second set. Andreeva’s deep, accurate groundstrokes and charges to the net took a toll on 18th-seeded Cirstea, whose attempt to come back was shortlived.

“I felt like it was one of my best matches so far this tournament,” Andreeva said. “Super happy to be back in semis.”

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AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis

A victory would put him in the conversation as the greatest New York Knick ever, and at the same time earn New York sports immortality status.

After just four years, he is all over the record book for a Knicks franchise that has been around for all 80 NBA seasons. He is already third on its career list in playoff points. The Knicks have advanced in the postseason every year since Brunson arrived in 2022, after winning one series in the two decades before.

Now they are in the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999, with a shot to win their first title since 1973.

Patrick Ewing, Walt Frazier and Willis Reed — in some order — are widely regarded as the top players in franchise history. If Brunson can lead the Knicks to the title now, there’s an argument he could be the best of them all.

“Well, right now a lot of people say he’s the greatest Knick ever because of getting them to the finals and obviously if he wins a championship,” Frazier said. “So I don’t think he’s the greatest Knick ever — I always say it’s Willis, and Willis said it’s Patrick, and Patrick says it’s Patrick. So he would definitely be on Mount Rushmore. We’ll put him up there if he can bring this title.”

Brunson is averaging 26.9 points in the postseason, slightly up from his 26 per game in the regular season. The Eastern Conference finals MVP is making history just by reaching the finals, as he and his father, Rick, a Knicks assistant who played for them in 1999 when Jalen was just shy of 3 years old, will become the first father-son duo to play in the finals for the same franchise.

None of this was expected when Brunson signed in New York. This wasn't Victor Wembanyama arriving in San Antonio from France as the No. 1 pick in the draft as a 7-foot-4 giant whose array of skills made it easy to forecast that he could become one of the greats of the game.

Brunson stands just 6-2 and doesn't appear to be blessed with explosive speed. That's how a two-time NCAA champion and college player of the year at Villanova ended up as just a second-round pick in 2018. He landed in Dallas at the same time as Luka Doncic, and seeing how easy the Slovenian sensation made the game look had Brunson wondering about his own abilities.

“It made me kind of question myself to see how hard I actually had to work to be in the position I wanted to be,” he said.

He was largely a backup in his four seasons in Dallas before the Knicks spent more than $100 million to pry him away. It's probably the best decision they ever made — and with what Brunson has done in New York at that low cost for a now perennial All-Star, one of the best free agent moves any team ever has.

The Knicks have just two NBA titles, and the wait for a third has lasted so many generations that Brunson would easily join New York sports icons such as Joe Namath, Derek Jeter or Reggie Jackson, still celebrated around the five boroughs long after their championships, if he can win just one now.

Get it and the second-team All-NBA pick would be confirmed as a superstar. Of course, the opposite could happen. If Brunson struggles against the Spurs' good defensive guards and the Knicks lose, there will be critics quick to say they need more because Brunson just isn't quite a 1-A.

“I mean, I don’t really care what people say, so at the end of the day I’m not going to base my judgment or evaluation of him as a player off people that never played the game and just never been in that situation,” teammate and close friend Josh Hart said. “So I know he doesn’t really care about it, I don’t really care about it. At the end of the day those quote-unquote people are irrelevant.”

Around New York, it's clear the respect Brunson commands. Mets slugger Juan Soto hit a home run and performed the hand gesture Brunson uses to celebrate a 3-pointer. Jets coach Aaron Glenn said the impact the captain has on the club is evident.

“I mean, you can tell that the leadership, the fight, everybody follows that, and it’s easy to follow that,” Glenn said. “He’s a guy, and I continue to say this, that leadership really comes down to one word and that’s ‘influence.’ You really see the influence that he has, and it’s not always verbal. It’s a lot of just what he does and how he operates.”

Brunson doesn't seem to seek the spotlight and will never ooze coolness like Frazier, the stylish “Clyde” known for his colorful suits. But a title puts him in the same club, and membership has long-lasting benefits.

“I can’t walk the street, it’s like I’m in a parade. Anywhere I go people are like, ‘Oh, there he is, there’s Clyde! There’s Clyde!’” Frazier said. "So if these guys win another title — man, I can’t spend money now in New York. I’ll never have to spend money again in this city.

“And that’s what I want to show the players. Hey man, I’ve been doing this for 50 years. Fifty years just for winning two titles! So you guys can have it if you just win one title.”

___

AP Pro Football Writer Dennis Waszak Jr. in Florham Park, New Jersey contributed to this report.

___

AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/nba

Tyrone Julius Ferguson, of Orange Park, was detained without incident after deputies with the sheriff’s SWAT and Special Operations divisions and members of the Northeast Florida INTERCEPT task force served a search warrant at an apartment at 1863 Wells Road, the sheriff’s office said.

Detectives with the Internet Crimes Against Children unit interviewed Ferguson while officers processed the residence for evidence.

Investigators developed probable cause to charge Ferguson with four counts of possessing, controlling or intentionally viewing child sexual abuse material and two counts of possessing animal sexual abuse material. He was booked into the Clay County Jail. The investigation remains ongoing, the sheriff’s office said.

“The Clay County Sheriff’s Office will continue to hold those victimizing our most vulnerable accountable — every time, no exceptions. The safety, dignity and future of our children depend on swift and unwavering justice,” Sheriff Michelle Cook said.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective Eva Solis at esolis@claysheriff.com or 904-264-6512. Tips can also be submitted anonymously through the SaferWatch app or to First Coast Crime Stoppers by dialing **TIPS.

Rubio defended the Trump administration's approach to Iran and other global hotspots in back-to-back hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a House Appropriations subcommittee. He was briefly disrupted by protesters at each session.

In his first public testimony since the Iran war began at the end of February, Rubio said the Iranians have agreed to negotiate on nuclear points that they had not been willing to address in the past but would not offer an assessment on what those talks might produce.

“They have agreed to negotiate aspects of their nuclear program that just a month ago, just a year ago, they were refusing to even mention,” Rubio told the Senate. He noted, however, that there was no guarantee "it will lead to a deal that’s acceptable” and that negotiations have been made difficult by the instability of Iran’s leadership.

Rubio's optimism ran counter to pessimistic reports from two semiofficial Iranian news agencies that Iran has stopped communicating with mediators after Israel threatened to bomb Beirut as it fights the Hezbollah militant group. President Donald Trump disputed that Iran has cut off communication with mediators, calling the Iranian reports “false and erroneous.”

Democrats criticize Trump administration's approach to Iran, and Rubio defends it

Rubio's wide-ranging testimony was met with fierce objections from Democrats, including tough questions about the status of U.S. foreign assistance to respond to diseases such as the Ebola outbreak in Africa. Rubio insisted the dismantlement of the U.S. Agency for International Development had not affected Washington’s ability to assist with global humanitarian responses.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., blasted Rubio and Trump for foreign aid cuts and overseas intervention. Van Hollen specifically took aim at the U.S. and Israeli decision to strike Iran, accusing the Republican president of entering the war on behalf of Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “said he’s been waiting 40 years to do this," Van Hollen said. "It turns out he finally found a president who was both stupid and reckless enough to join him. Let’s face it, Mr. Secretary, the Trump foreign policy has become a dumpster fire."

Rubio's testimony, which took place as Israel and Lebanon began a new round of political talks at the State Department, did not provide definitive answers on any of the main questions of the day.

He said Iran is not guaranteed a massive payout for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial waterway for global oil shipments, and would have to commit to further concessions on its nuclear program to get significant sanctions relief.

“The more they give, the more they would get,” he said, later adding, “They’re not going to get it as a signing bonus.”

Rubio also said there are indications that Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is taking a bigger part in the discussions despite not being seen publicly since the war began.

"I think there are indications out there that he is increasingly engaging at some level, although all of his communications have been in writing and through intermediaries,” he said.

Democratic senator says drugs being on boats isn't a targeting criterion for US strikes

Rubio dismissed questions about the legality of Pentagon strikes against dozens of alleged drug-smuggling vessels in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean, which have killed more than 200 people since early September.

Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia said the military's targeting criteria for those strikes do not include drugs being present on the boat. He called it “odd” but said he could not share much more because the criteria are classified.

Rubio pushed back, saying on every strike a legal officer makes a determination on whether it is legal. He also said the U.S. military has “walked away from strikes” multiple times because they did not meet the targeting criteria.

The Trump administration says the U.S. is at war with drug cartels, while many Democrats have questioned the legality and effectiveness of the strikes.

The Republican former senator faces another pair of hearings Wednesday, also about the State Department's annual budget request, though questions again are expected to focus on top foreign policy issues.

Rubio wades into Taiwan arms sales opposed by China

Rubio acknowledged that the Trump administration is holding up a potential $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan but said it remained under consideration and would not be canceled. He noted that the U.S. sold arms to Taiwan in December worth $11 billion.

He said the deal is not under review because of pressure from China, although he said the Chinese bring up the issue in discussions with the United States. Trump has described it as a great negotiating chip.

“They are constantly talking about Taiwan arms sales, but that in no way is what is holding up our decision-making or the White House’s decision-making,” Rubio said. “It is something the president will have to decide on the timing of when and how that is executed on.”

On another issue involving China, Rubio said Iran has Chinese military equipment from its previous relationship but noted that the U.S. has seen no indication that anything provided has “changed the dynamic in the battlefield.”

However, the State Department last month imposed sanctions on three China-based entities for providing satellite imagery that enabled Iran’s military strikes against U.S. forces in the Middle East.

Protesters chant at Rubio about Cuba

Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, also was questioned about the Trump administration’s escalatory behavior toward Cuba, as Trump has hinted that the small island country could be the next U.S. target after operations in Iran are wrapped up.

He faced chants from protesters who urged him to “stop killing Cubans” when he entered the Senate briefing room. The protesters were quickly pulled from the room. Their chants also included “Let Cuba live!”

Rubio defended the administration's approach and said it would remain focused on changing the Cuban government's policies.

"I really don’t believe this system is capable of reform unless new people take over or a new mindset takes hold,” he said.

Despite a series of meetings between U.S. and Cuban officials, Trump and Rubio have renewed threats against the island's government, which take on greater weight after the administration announced criminal charges against former President Raúl Castro.

Over his congressional career and now as America's top diplomat, Rubio has maintained that Cuba is a national security threat because of its ties to U.S. adversaries and that Trump is intent on addressing it.

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Amiri reported from New York. AP writer Didi Tang contributed.

After drawing outcry in Congress and the courts, however, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told lawmakers on Tuesday that the administration was scrapping plans to create the fund. That potentially means the suit — and the possibility that the president could still cash in — might be back on.

Trump hasn’t been shy about turning the presidency into a major source of personal benefit, involving everything from merchandising deals to crypto ventures to high-dollar political and official events at his properties.

Asked about possible self-dealing, the White House called such suggestions “the same, tired narrative that Democrats have pushed against President Trump, his family, and his administration for a decade.”

"President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public — which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office, despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media," spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement. “There are no conflicts of interest.”

Here are some key ways Trump has reaped rewards for himself, his children and allies in his second term:

Suing his government and deals favoring his family

Last year, the president submitted a claim seeking $230 million in compensation from the Justice Department for a FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida as part of an investigation into whether he took classified records from the White House.

In January this year, Trump, his two eldest sons and the family's business, the Trump Organization, filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS and Treasury Department after a former IRS contractor illegally leaked Trump's tax returns.

In an attempt to resolve those cases, Trump's government agreed that $1.776 billion in taxpayer funds be distributed to people who believe they were targeted by past administrations for politically motivated prosecution — including the Trump supporters imprisoned for attacking police while overrunning the U.S. Capitol in 2021.

After blowback from even some congressional Republicans, the Justice Department now said it would comply with a ruling temporarily blocking the fund. Blanche was clearer on Tuesday, telling a House committee that, “We’re not moving forward with the fund.”

But there was less clamor about another part of the deal allowing the government to drop pending IRS audits into Trump and his relatives. Blanche said the Justice Department was not abandoning that part of the agreement.

Separately, the Air Force has agreed to purchase interceptor drones from Powerus, a Florida-based company linked to Trump’s family. And ProPublica reported that direct intervention from the White House preceded the Pentagon agreeing to loan $620 million to Vulcan Elements, a North Carolina startup linked to Donald Trump Jr.

Trump Organization spokesperson Kimberly Benza denied any ethical conflicts between the White House and the family business.

“The Trump Organization operates completely separate from the presidency and is in full compliance with all ethics and conflict-of-interest laws,” Benza said in a statement.

As for Powerus, Benza said Eric Trump was “a passive investor in a vehicle that, among many others, holds an interest” in the company, but wasn't involved in its decision-making or management.

Trading in financial markets he can help move

Trump has traded stocks and bonds in unprecedented ways for a sitting U.S. president.

Office of Government Ethics filings show Trump made more than 3,600 stock trades in the first quarter of 2026 alone — transactions far exceeding $100 million in value.

Many of those trades involved sizable purchases of shares of technology and artificial intelligence giants like Nvidia, Dell, Oracle and Palantir before Trump's administration took policy actions favoring those firms.

Similar disclosures last year show that Trump bought up more than $300 million in bonds issued by companies, states and municipalities even as he repeatedly pressed the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates — a move that could help drive up the value of his holdings.

Crypto ventures

Trump's family has raked in big profits in the crypto sector since he was reelected. A key driver has been the $TRUMP meme coin, announced the day before Trump took office. Some 220 of the top investors were invited to a subsequent, private reception with the president.

Trump's family also has a controlling stake in World Liberty Financial, a crypto firm co-founded with the president's special envoy Steve Witkoff and run by his son Zach. It has its own stablecoin, USD1, and got a major boost when, just before Trump took office, an investment fund linked to the United Arab Emirates bought a large stake in it.

An Abu Dhabi state-backed investment firm, MGX, subsequently pledged to use $2 billion worth of USD1 to purchase a stake in Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange — a move that further bolstered World Liberty Financial.

Trump-branded bonanza

Beyond the digital realm, scores of companies pay to license the president's name for physical products, from Bibles, guitars and sneakers to watches, fragrances and a gold-hued cellphone.

Trump has promoted many such goods on social media, particularly during his 2024 campaign, but they've also made conspicuous appearances at the White House.

When French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited last summer, Trump showed them a merchandise room off the Oval Office stocked with goods for sale on his website. A few months later, video emerged of Trump at the White House spraying Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa with bottles of his “Victory 47” cologne and perfume, which he gave him as a gift.

The president displayed hats emblazoned with “Trump 2028” on the Resolute Desk while meeting with congressional Democrats last year. And, during a televised Cabinet meeting in May, at every seat was a red hat commemorating America's 250th anniversary.

Each hat sells for $55 on Trump's website.

Paydays for the president's properties

The Republican National Committee and various political groups associated with Trump and the GOP have held fundraisers and political events at Mar-a-Lago, as well as Trump's estate in Bedminster, New Jersey, and his golf clubs in Doral, Florida, and Sterling, Virginia.

The LIV Golf league, controlled by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which is helmed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has held events at Doral. Trump will host the G20 summit there in November.

That means world leaders, support staff, business executives, journalists and the bevies of others involved will be paying the Trump Organization, which purchased Doral in 2012, to attend. The president has already tried to head off criticism of self-dealing around the summit, saying that government attendees will be billed “at-cost" and “We will not make any money on it."

Renovation and construction projects

Qatar gave Trump a $400 million jet that he intends to employ as Air Force One, then store at his presidential library after he leaves office. The gift has undergone extensive taxpayer-funded rebuilding and security upgrades that lawmakers estimate may exceed $1 billion.

Trump has also ordered up scores of renovation projects meant to leave his mark on Washington while passing on the costs to taxpayers.

He long insisted that wealthy donors would pay for the $400 million ballroom he demolished the White House's East Wing to build — only to seek $1 billion in federal funding for security upgrades he says the military and Secret Service have sought as part of the project.

At least $15 million in public funds is going for a ceremonial arch. The National Park Service is also paying a contractor $13.1 million to carry out the Trump-directed renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans will meet Tuesday to discuss next steps after the Justice Department said it would comply with a court order pausing the implementation of a $1.776 billion settlement fund designed to compensate President Donald Trump’s political allies.

Trump has tapped Federal Housing Finance Director Bill Pulte to be the acting director of national intelligence to replace Tulsi Gabbard. Trump made the surprise announcement Tuesday on Truth Social.

The Latest:

US military stops 7th ship trying to run blockade of Iranian ports

The U.S. military has stopped a seventh ship trying to run its blockade of Iranian ports on Tuesday, U.S. Central Command said in a social media post.

The Botswana-flagged merchant vessel M/T Lexie was stopped by a U.S. aircraft firing a Hellfire missile into its engine room after the crew ignored repeated warnings from U.S. forces over 24 hours, the post said. The halting of the Lexie comes just days after U.S. forces halted another merchant vessel, the Lian Star, using a similar approach.

This latest halt brings the total of commercial ships disabled by U.S. forces to six because one stopped vessel was ultimately allowed to continue on its way. Another 122 ships have been redirected, the military said.

Justice Department not abandoning other part of Trump settlement, Blanche says

Blanche said that while the Justice Department was scrapping plans to create the ‘anti-weaponization’ fund, it was standing by another part of Trump’s settlement with the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns.

As part of that deal, the IRS agreed to drop all pending probes of Trump over whether he’s paid his fair share of taxes.

Pressed over whether it was also abandoning that part of the deal, Blanche said “nothing has changed with that,” and that the administration was only retreating on plans to create the $1.8 billion fund.

News of ‘anti-weaponization’ fund being scrapped catches Democrat by surprise

Blanche revealed that the administration was backing down on the proposed fund under questioning by Rep. Grace Meng, the top Democrat on the subcommittee.

Meng pressed Blanche on the administration’s plans for the fund, asking him: “Not moving forward, ever?” Blanche responded: “Correct,” prompting Meng to let out a surprised “oh.”

The Justice Department on Monday had only committed to temporarily pausing the plans for the fund to comply with a court order blocking it.

Trump administration scrapping plans to create a $1.8 billion ‘anti-weaponization fund’

Blanche told lawmakers that the administration was backing down after widespread political backlash and setbacks in the courts.

Blanche’s comments during a House committee hearing came in response to mounting pressure from Republicans for reassurances that the Justice Department’s plans were off the table before they would move forward with legislation funding President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement agencies.

The Trump administration had previously defended the fund as an appropriate measure make up for what officials insist was a weaponized Justice Department during President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration, a claim the Biden administration strongly denied

Democrats slam plans for ‘anti-weaponization’ fund

Democrats opened the hearing with Blanche to rail against the administration’s plans to create a $1.8 billion fund to compensate Trump allies who believe they were unjustly investigated and prosecuted.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat from Connecticut called the proposed fund an “extraordinary display of self-dealing” and a “corrupt payout scheme for the President and his political allies.”

“It is unconscionable, this sort of a scandal would ruin any other administration,” she said.

Rubio wraps up full day of congressional hearings, first since Iran war began

The Secretary of State testified for nearly five hours in total before lawmakers on Capitol Hill, starting with a Senate Committee hearing in the morning and a House subcommittee hearing in the afternoon.

Rubio faced a wide array of questions that ranged from the Iran war, Trump’s peace plan for Gaza, U.S. support for Taiwan and a U.S. stockpile of birth control that was supposed to go to foreign countries.

Both hearings were punctuated by the shouts of protestors, some of whom called Rubio a war criminal for U.S. operations in the Middle East and Latin America.

Rubio will face the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Wednesday morning.

US won’t use $9 million stockpile of contraceptives, Rubio says

Democratic Rep. Grace Meng of New York questioned Rubio about the fate of the stockpile, which as of last year was stored in a U.S.-funded warehouse in Geel, Belgium. It includes contraceptive pills, contraceptive implants and IUDs that could spare women in war zones and elsewhere the hardship of unwanted pregnancies.

The Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which managed foreign aid programs, left the supplies’ fate uncertain.

Meng also asked about the cost of storing the birth control. Rubio said he didn’t know what the cost was, adding that some of the contraceptives have been destroyed. He said they’re not distributing them per an executive order.

“We’re not going to use them or the government of the United States is not going to be involved in distributing contraceptives and all these other things around the world,” Rubio said.

Hearing featuring acting Attorney General Blanche getting underway

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is expected to face questions from lawmakers over the Trump administration’s plans to create a $1.8 billion fund meant to compensate allies of the Republican president.

The administration is facing pressure from Republicans to scrap the fund that has provoked outrage over the mere possibility that violent pro-Trump rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, could be eligible for payouts.

A person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Monday that Trump was reconsidering whether to move forward with the fund established to resolve his lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns.

— Alanna Durkin Richer

Democrats introduce legislation to rein in AI use by the military

Democrats in Congress are introducing legislation to rein in AI use among the military as the Trump administration pushes for its expanded use.

U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York introduced legislation Tuesday that, if passed, would prohibit the use of AI for nuclear weapon launches, establish controls on its use for surveilling U.S. citizens, and broadly restrict the use of fully autonomous weapons systems, according a statement released by her office. The bill also codifies a policy that requires humans to always be involved in decisions to use force or other “high-consequence” actions.

Gillibrand’s bill comes just months after Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, also a Democrat, introduced a similar bill.

The proposed legislation comes as leaders in the Pentagon, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have insisted that the Pentagon be allowed to use the technology in any legal way it sees fit.

Rubio says China hasn’t provided help to Iran that ‘in any way impeded our operations’

Rubio told lawmakers on a House subcommittee that Iran has Chinese military equipment from their previous ties but said the U.S. has seen no indication that anything provided has “changed the dynamic in the battlefield.”

The remarks came several weeks after the State Department sanctioned three China-based entities for providing satellite imagery that enabled Iran’s military strikes against U.S. forces in the Middle East.

The Trump administration alleged that one company collected satellite imagery of U.S. and allied military facilities to support Iranian imagery request during the Iran war. Another company provided satellite imagery to Iran during the military operation and the third published open-source images detailing U.S. military activity.

Rubio does not support Netanyahu’s plan of seizing 70% of Gaza

Rep. Rose DeLauro of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, pressed Rubio on where the U.S. stands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s goal of seizing 70% of Gaza to defeat the Hamas militant group.

Rubio said Netanyahu’s statement was not part of President Trump’s 20-point plan to end the conflict between Israel and Hamas. The plan would end Hamas’ rule and rebuild the territory.

“We have a plan — it doesn’t call for that,” Rubio said. “And at the end of the day, we understand that what we want, and I think what the Israelis would ultimately want, is a Gaza that is governed by a non-Hamas” entity.

Testy exchange between Murphy, Mullin kicks off hearing

The budget hearing with DHS Secretary Mullin is already getting heated.

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy used his opening statement to lambast Mullin and his department.

Murphy said while Mullin vowed during his confirmation hearing to keep the department out of the news, he’d done the opposite. He slammed Mullin’s threats to pull CBP officers from airports and accused the department of reckless spending.

“Every day, this agency is breaking the law at scale and wasting billions of taxpayer dollars. DHS does not implement the law any longer. It makes up the law,” said Murphy.

Mullin, who until just a few months ago was a senator alongside Murphy, diverted from his prepared remarks to respond to Murphy.

“I do have an opening statement here, but, wow, Senator Murphy, the outlandish claims you made there, it’s just flat wrong,” said Mullin who blamed rhetoric like Murphy’s for a growing number of threats and attacks against his officers.

Democratic lawmaker blasts ‘insidious sledgehammer’ to foreign aid during Rubio’s second hearing

Rep. Lois Frankel, one of the senior Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, said that when Rubio was first confirmed to be America’s top diplomat she was hopeful about what he had presented as his “commitment to democracy and American leadership.”

“And then what happened? DOGE came in with Elon Musk,” the Florida lawmaker said.

She added that Musk and his allies’ time in the administration has had “devastating consequences” that resulted in the dismantling of USAID agency, terminating critical health and development programs, and forcing thousands of experienced public servants out of government.

Rubio faces continued protests during second hearing

When Rubio began his testimony before a House Appropriations subcommittee on Tuesday afternoon, a man stood up with a sign and urged the Secretary of State stop supporting Israel and what the man said was “genocide.” The man was quickly led out of the room.

Rubio faced protesters during an earlier hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. They raised concerns that sanctions against Cuba were hurting children on the island nation.

This is the first time Rubio is testifying to lawmakers since the Iran war began.

Mullin hearing kicks off in Senate

A Senate budget hearing with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin is getting started.

Mullin is at the appropriations subcommittee on homeland security.

The Senate is currently weighing legislation that would fund immigration enforcement agencies through the end of President Donald Trump’s term.

That’s designed to bypass any need for Democratic support. They’ve demanded restraints on ICE and Border Patrol before agreeing to fund the agencies.

But that funding attempt has been caught up in Republican opposition to a $1.776 billion settlement fund to compensate Trump allies who believe they have been politically prosecuted.

Mullin’s likely to face questioning about conduct of immigration enforcement officers, treatment of detainees at an ICE facility in New Jersey and security preparations for the World Cup.

Rubio faces more grilling during second congressional hearing of the day

Rubio is testifying for the second time Tuesday before lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

The stated reason is the State Department’s budget, but questions will likely veer into issues concerning the Iran war, the Trump administration’s campaign against drug cartels in Latin America and U.S. support for Taiwan.

The former Republican senator from Florida sat for well over two hours of questioning on Tuesday morning in front the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In the afternoon, he’ll be testifying before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations.

Like the Senate hearing, the hallways outside the room included protestors. Some called Rubio a terrorist and told him to stop killing children in Gaza and Iran when he walked into the room.

Mullin faces Senate grilling on DHS budget, immigration crackdown and World Cup worries

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin is slated to appear Tuesday in the Senate to answer questions about the agency’s budget, at a time of intense scrutiny about how the Trump administration is carrying out immigration enforcement and preparing for the World Cup.

The Senate is weighing legislation to fund immigration enforcement agencies through the end of Trump’s term in a maneuver that would bypass the need for support from Democrats, who have demanded restraints. The attempt has stalled over separate Republican opposition to a $1.776 billion settlement fund to compensate Trump allies who believe they have been politically prosecuted.

Mullin, who was tapped by Trump to lead Homeland Security after his predecessor Kristi Noem was fired, is appearing in the Senate Tuesday for the first time since his confirmation hearing in March. On Wednesday, he’ll testify in the House about the budget.

From festering infections to untreated cancer, ICE detainees across the US describe medical neglect

An investigation by KFF Health News and The Associated Press has found that hundreds of detainees across at least 33 states allege immigration detention facilities are failing to provide adequate medical care.

Detainees allege they didn’t receive medications on time — or at all — for conditions including high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, epilepsy, Parkinson’s and HIV. Requests for help went unanswered for weeks. Blood sugars rose. Infections festered. Cancers remained untreated. Detainees collapsed and had seizures.

U.S. jails and immigration detention centers have long struggled to meet the medical needs of the people in their charge. But the system is sagging under an influx of detentions since Trump returned to office: More than 75,000 immigrants were being detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as of mid-January, up from around 40,000 a year earlier.

KFF Health News and AP asked the Department of Homeland Security to respond to the findings six days before publication but it did not provide comment.

▶ Read more

Trump keeps getting checkups because ‘he likes the results,’ Oz says

The CMS administrator faced another question about the president’s more-than-annual physicals. The president went for the fourth known checkup of his second term last week.

“I think he likes the results,” Oz responded. “He aces the test every single day, and I do actually believe that he is curious to make sure everything is going in the right direction.”

His getting so many physicals was more of a sign of his “very meticulous” nature, Oz contended, because he “wants to know all the numbers” and stay on top of them.

Oz says he trusts Trump’s judgement, when asked why Pulte is qualified to serve as director of national intelligence

Oz was repeatedly questioned about why Pulte is qualified for the role when he has no known experience with intelligence or national security.

He called Pulte “a great guy” and said, “I know him socially” but had not worked with him in his job.

When pressed, Oz said, “You’re asking me a question that’s not in my lane. I’m so focused on making sure Americans are healthy.”

He later said that he appreciated reporters want an answer but said, “I’m not going to be the one giving it to you.”

Oz says Trump’s health is ‘spectacular’

The CMS administrator, who is a physician by trade, says the almost 80-year-old president has “excellent” health, according to his medical records.

Trump went for another checkup at Walter Reed last week.

“That amount of energy and that amount of mental acuity does not exist in a vacuum,” Oz told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. Referring presumably to Trump’s physical body, Oz said: “you have to have a vessel to carry it.”

Trump appears to dispute state media reports that Iran cuts off talks

Trump in a social media post on Tuesday disputed that Iran has cut off communication with mediators, calling Iranian reports of a cessation in talks “false and erroneous.”

“The conversations between us have been going on continuously, including four days ago, three days ago, two days ago, one day ago, and today,” Trump said. “Where they lead, one never knows, but as I told Iran, ‘It’s time, one way or another, for you to make a Deal. You’ve been doing this for 47 years, and it cannot be allowed to go on any longer!’”

Fars and Tasnim, two semiofficial Iranian news agencies, reported earlier Tuesday that Iran had stopped communicating with mediators about extending a ceasefire in the war with the U.S. and Israel.

Oz reveals TrumpRx is adding 160 more drugs

The CMS administrator announced during the White House press briefing that 160 new medications are being added to the government’s discounted drug website TrumpRx.

That brings the total number of drugs on the site to more than 750, Oz said.

The news comes two weeks after the Trump administration unveiled partnerships with various online pharmacies to add some 600 generic drugs to the platform.

Even with generics added, experts said the potential savings heavily depend on a patient’s situation. For the vast majority of Americans who have health insurance, using that coverage to get medications is cheaper than paying cash through TrumpRx.

Rubio Senate hearing ends as House hearing nears

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has wrapped up his hearing before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, which was his first before Congress since the Iran war began.

Rubio will face the House Appropriations Committee at 2 p.m.

Lights, camera, press briefing: The Dr. Oz show comes to the White House

Dr. Mehmet Oz is about to be in the spotlight. It’s a place where he’s already comfortable.

The heart surgeon and longtime daytime TV host, now running the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, will lead Tuesday’s White House press briefing as the fourth administration official to stand in for press secretary Karoline Leavitt during her maternity leave.

Oz rose to prominence on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show before spinning off his own series, “The Dr. Oz Show,” in 2009. And though he now leads one of the Trump administration’s wonkiest agencies, he’s still found ways to use his camera showmanship to his advantage.

With social media videos and speeches around the country in recent months, he’s become one of the most public promoters of the administration’s efforts to fight healthcare fraud.

Democratic senator calls Rubio absence during US-Iran talks in Pakistan ‘embarrassing’

Sen. Jacky Rosen of Nevada called out her former senate colleague for being at a party while Vice President J.D. Vance led a delegation to Pakistan in April to meet with their Iranian counterparts.

Rubio was actually cage-side with Trump at a UFC event in Miami as the peace talks with Iran failed on the other side of the world.

“I just feel that’s embarrassing for us and it’s embarrassing for you,” Rosen said. “We confirmed you to be in the negotiations that are happening. And it’s just unthinkable to me that you are not you are missing high stakes negotiations or that you’re not involved. It’s sad.

In one of his more sharp rebukes, Rubio defended his absence.

“I was co-located with the president in the midst of a high stakes negotiation, so that I could immediately inform him about events occurring halfway around the world,” he said. “I was where I needed to be at that moment.”

Republicans offer first takes on Trump’s pick for intelligence chief

Some Republicans are voicing skepticism about the qualifications of President Donald Trump’s choice to serve as the acting director of national intelligence.

“I don’t see any evidence of qualifications for that job, but as you know, the Senate doesn’t have a role to play in acting (appointments,)” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said of Trump’s choice, Bill Pulte.

“I do not know Mr. Pulte at all. I do not know if he has any intelligence or military background. I don’t even know if he has a security clearance. I know nothing about him at all,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.

Collins said she had not made a firm decision yet “because maybe there’s a lot in his background that is relevant to this important position.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., said Pulte “doesn’t seem qualified.”

“Beyond his absence of apparent qualifications, maybe there’s something I don’t know about,” Cassidy said.

‘No one is begging’: Rubio defends US unsteady stance in Iran negotiations

In a tense back-and-forth, Democratic Sen. Cory Booker and Rubio argued over who has the upper-hand in the more than two month war between U.S. and Iran.

The New Jersey lawmaker pointed to the unsteady ceasefire between Washington and Tehran, which has been further tested in recent days by back-and-forth attacks.

“We are the strongest nation on the planet Earth, and we’re in a stalemate with Iran,” Booker said to the secretary. “And now we’re begging to get back into a deal that you all trashed in the first place.”

“There’s no one begging,” Rubio responded, detailing what he called the dire situation of Iran’s economy. “I don’t know where you’re getting this perception that Iran is stronger.”

Rubio says Afghan allies can’t come to US but will try to resettle them elsewhere

The secretary said he could not commit to Democratic Sen. Chris Coons to resettle more than 1,000 Afghans who assisted America’s war effort and relatives of U.S. service members to the U.S. as was promised under the Biden administration.

Rubio said the U.S. is in talks with multiple countries to take a few hundred of them in order to avoid sending them back to the Taliban where they will likely face reprisal.

Those individuals have been stranded at a U.S. base in Doha for the past year as the Trump administration’s immigration actions have left them in a limbo.

The refugees at Camp As-Sayliyah include Afghans who served as interpreters and with Special Operations Forces as well as the immediate families of more than 150 active duty U.S. military members.

The plaintiffs argued in two lawsuits that Trump’s order should be found unconstitutional because the states and Congress, not the president, have the power to set election rules. They also told the court that the move imposes a costly burden on state election officials to comply and would spread fear about the possibility of prosecution.

"This is going to be a sea change in the way that some states administer their ballots," said Michael Cohen, who was part of a team representing California, adding that “it will be difficult to overstate the disruption that this will cause.”

Trump's executive order, the second one aimed at elections during his second term, comes as he continues to raise the specter of widespread voting by noncitizens as a reason to change election rules. But states already have detailed processes aimed at keeping their voter rolls accurate, and voting by noncitizens has been shown to be rare. It also is a felony that can be punishable by deportation.

His latest order is being challenged through multiple lawsuits, including two filed in U.S. District Court in Boston.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the League of Women Voters in one of the two Boston cases, has called the order “a dangerous attempt to disenfranchise eligible voters nationwide." The group said the order transforms "the U.S. Postal Service from a neutral mail carrier to an arbiter of who may cast a ballot by mail.”

“This case challenges an extraordinary and abusive assertion of executive power over the administration of federal elections,” the organization said in its complaint.

The hearing comes less than a week after another judge declined to halt the order. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee in Washington, agreed with the Trump administration’s contention that it was too early to block the order because it has yet to be implemented.

The administration, in its motions to dismiss the lawsuits, argued that the plaintiffs lack standing to bring their claims. They also argued the motions are premature and that plaintiffs lack the legal basis to bring their Administrative Procedure Act claim, which governs how federal agencies develop and issue regulations.

Stephen Pezzi, a lawyer for the Trump administration, said the harms the plaintiffs referenced were subjective, since much can change with the voting list before it is finalized. He also said no one would be prosecuted for violating the executive order.

Missouri Solicitor General Lou Capozzi, speaking for the states supporting the list, argued it was too early to say how his state might use the list, but that it was “unlikely” any voter would be removed this year from the voter rolls because of it.

“We are not exactly sure how we would use it,” Capozzi said, adding that "we don't want this process to be strangled in the crib, so to speak.”

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani took the requests for motions to halt the order, along with motions to dismiss the cases under advisement.

During oral arguments, Talwani expressed concerns about whether the federal system envisioned under the executive order could be ready for the upcoming midterm elections and about the risks posed to election workers who rely on a state list that differs from the federal one. She also raised doubts about the reliability of a federal list — noting, for example, women who changed their names after getting married or someone who has moved from state to state might be missed.

“Isn’t there a reasonable fear and concern on behalf of voters that they will be precluded?” Talwani asked.

Trump issued the order in March after a bill he supported to overhaul voting stalled in Congress. The order would have had the federal government create a list of eligible voters and then directed the Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to those on the list. Election officials argued that it was ripe for abuse and could cause chaos, and the postal union has objected to the idea of mail carriers policing ballots.

The Postal Service has published a proposed rule required by Trump's executive order in the Federal Register. Among other things, the rule would not apply to primary elections or overseas ballots.

Since his 2020 presidential election l oss to Democrat Joe Biden, Trump has groundlessly claimed mail voting is rife with fraud and has launched a federal investigation into that year’s vote, even though repeated audits and investigations, including ones run by Republicans, found it was free of widespread fraud. Trump also has said he wants to “take over” election administration in Democratic areas.

The artist Wyland says he hand-painted the sprawling mural that covered roughly 17,000 square feet (1,580 square meters) across two of the building's walls.

The mural stood for nearly three decades before workers began painting over it last month, causing an uproar among residents who admired the mural's grand scale and message of ocean conservation.

The area’s World Cup organizing committee said in a statement that, in place of Wyland's mural, new artwork is planned "that captures this current historical moment and reflects the energy, unity, and global spirit surrounding the World Cup 2026.” It said a portion of Wyland's mural would be preserved.

Wyland filed suit Monday in U.S District Court in Dallas saying that World Cup organizers, along with the building's owner and management company, painted over his mural without his consent or even notifying him. He says their actions violated a 1990 federal law passed to protect visual artists from destruction of publicly displayed works.

Wyland is seeking at least $25 million in damages. His lawsuit says world soccer's governing body, FIFA, and other defendants “hastily and irrevocably destroyed a civic landmark” to promote the World Cup.

“Though FIFA claims they were working to develop art for the host city, in truth, they defaced an historic fixture of the host city,” the artist's lawsuit says.

A FIFA spokesperson said Tuesday the federation “has no involvement in this whatsoever” and referred a reporter to the tournament's local organizing committee.

A spokesperson for the North Texas FWC Organizing Committee declined to comment. The committee isn't named as a defendant in the lawsuit.

A spokesperson for Slate Asset Management, which manages the building where the mural was painted over, said in a statement that local World Cup organizers asked Slate in March to donate the mural space for “a new public art installation.”

“Slate is not being compensated in any way for the use of the wall space and was told by the local groups that Mr. Wyland had been notified,” the management company's spokesperson said in an email.

Dallas is hosting more World Cup matches than any of the other sites in the event co-hosted by the U.S., Canada and Mexico, with nine matches set to be played at AT&T Stadium in suburban Arlington, home of the Dallas Cowboys.

Wyland's Dallas mural, titled “Whaling Wall 82,” was finished in 1999 and is among more than 100 similar murals known as Whaling Walls the artist painted around the world to promote the conservation of ocean life.

An online petition protesting the mural's destruction and calling for protecting of public artwork in Dallas has received more than 2,600 signatures.

Wyland's lawsuit alleges violations of the Visual Artists Rights Act, a 1990 federal law that protects artwork of “recognized stature” even if someone else owns the physical artwork.

A judge cited that law in 2018 when he ordered a property owner to pay a group of New York graffiti artists $6.7 million for whitewashing dozens of their spray-painted murals on buildings that once housed a factory in Queens. The ruling was upheld on appeal.

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Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia.

Jacobs was on the field Tuesday for the Packers’ second week of organized team activities. Packers coach Matt LaFleur said before Tuesday's practice that Jacobs’ situation hasn’t caused distractions.

“I would say business as usual,” LaFleur said.

Jacobs was arrested May 26 in Brown County, Wisconsin, on allegations of strangulation and suffocation and other offenses. Hobart/Lawrence Police Chief Michael Renkas said police had been dispatched to a complaint involving Jacobs on the morning of May 23.

Jacobs has issued a statement through his lawyers saying he “vehemently denies the allegations.” He was released from a Wisconsin jail Wednesday during the Packers’ first week of OTAs while authorities investigated the case.

District Attorney David Lasee said it’s too soon to make a formal charging decision.

“Our office has requested additional investigation, as there is reason to believe that additional evidence may exist that would impact whether criminal charges are appropriate, and what charges would be issued. ... The investigation remains open and is ongoing,” Lasee said last week.

Packers safety Xavier McKinney indicated this wasn't Jacobs' first day back with the team since the arrest. This was only the second OTA practice that was open to the media. The first such workout occurred Wednesday, when Jacobs was getting released from jail and therefore wasn't practicing.

Jacobs wasn't in the locker room during the Packers' media availability after Tuesday's practice, but quarterback Jordan Love discussed how the team has addressed the situation.

“We’ve talked internally,” Love said. “Everyone knows what the situation is there and we’ve talked, but obviously the details, everybody’s keeping that under wraps right now just out of respect for the situation and obviously all the legal stuff that’s going to be playing out. But it’s great to have Josh here with us, being able to work with us and get back to work."

Love was asked if he has considered the possibility the Packers might not have Jacobs for at least part of the upcoming season.

“There’s always questions,” Love said. “I was shocked when I saw it, and like I said, it’s one of those things we’re going to let it play out. There’s a lot of uncertainty when you hear something like that of what might happen. But we’ll see, we’ll let it play out and go from there.”

Jacobs rushed for 929 yards and 13 touchdowns last season. The Packers have nobody else on their roster who ran for as many as 200 yards for them a year ago.

That followed a 2024 season in which Jacobs ran for 1,329 yards and 15 touchdowns while earning his third Pro Bowl selection.

Jacobs, 28, has rushed for 7,803 yards and 74 touchdowns in his seven-year career, which included five seasons with the Raiders. He earned All-Pro honors and had an NFL-leading 1,653 yards rushing with Las Vegas in 2022.

NOTES: Bo Melton apparently is exclusively a wide receiver again. Melton spent much of last year working out at cornerback, though all of his actual playing time still came on offense and special teams. “I would anticipate him sticking with wide receiver,” LaFleur said. ... LaFleur said the Packers currently aren't planning on having joint practices before their preseason games at Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, though he didn't rule out the possibility. The Packers are expecting to have a joint practice with Arizona before their Aug. 28 home preseason game with the Cardinals. LaFleur's younger brother Mike is Arizona's new head coach.

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AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl

Apparently, they weren't just speaking publicly about the incident.

On Tuesday, Fever guard Sophie Cunningham revealed the team's players and coaches also had a frank, “long” conversation intended to hash things out and get everyone back on the same page following back-to-back losses on the West Coast.

“We had a team meeting (Monday) — a long meeting — and so hopefully we've kind of turned the page,” Cunningham said. “I think we were in there an hour and a half, almost two hours and we built back all the layers. I think everyone's on a good page right now and ready to work. We'll say it started (as a) coaches (meeting) and then ended up being players. It was much needed, though.”

Cunningham and All-Star guard Kelsey Mitchell did not divulge specifics about what was discussed, and White said the meeting didn't go quite as long as Cunningham thought.

Clearly, though, everyone thought it was necessary and valuable after TV cameras caught the incident between Clark and White during Saturday night's 100-84 loss to Portland — an expansion team Indiana beat by 17 points just 10 days earlier without Clark.

White and Clark each downplayed the scene Monday, saying it was merely two competitors trying to figure out how to win a game, and White explained she was simply challenging her star player to perform at a higher level. Mitchell saw it the same way.

“I think it's a part of being a family," she said. “If you think everything is glitz and glamour, then you're mistaken. I think hard times can make you or break you and, hopefully, it doesn't break us, and I think losing is important because you find out a lot about yourself, about where you need to be, where you're missing the mark and I'm happy that's happening now. If there is frustration, I'd rather it be now than later.”

There is reason for concern.

Indiana opened the season considered a title contender after White helped the Fever get within one win of reaching the WNBA Finals despite enduring a series of debilitating injuries, including the loss of Clark.

Not much has gone right in this season's first month, though.

The Fever enter Thursday's game against Angel Reese and the Atlanta Dream with a 4-4 record, a half game out of the eighth and final playoff spot, hoping to snap this two-game skid.

Clark hasn't been her typical self, either. While the former Iowa star and NCAA's career scoring leader is averaging 20.1 points and 8.1 assists, she's also shooting 39.3% from the field, 33.3% from 3-point range and has committed 4.6 turnovers per game. She has also been criticized about her defensive miscues.

But Clark isn't alone on defense. While Indiana is scoring a league-best 91.8 points per game, it also is tied for the second-highest points allowed at 89.0.

What's wrong?

“We have all the pieces we need (to win), but it's knowing your role, owning your role and also just being tough,” Cunningham said. “We're just too soft right now, and that's not what our identity is, so we need to get away from that."

Cunningham also noted playing more types of defenses would help.

White believes varied defenses will come in time, but she first wanted the players building their confidence by doing a few things well. And while White wants to see improvements, she doesn't believe the struggles are related to effort.

“Often times when you see a ‘lack of effort,’ a lot of it is just indecision, right?" she said. “It's paralysis by analysis.”

Perhaps airing out those thoughts will be part of a longer-term solution to what they hope is a short-term problem. Cunningham and her teammates certainly hope that's true as they begin the defense of last year's Commissioner's Cup championship.

“No one wants to have these meetings, but everyone, every team has them,” Cunningham said. “Everyone has trials, everyone has shortcomings and I'm just thankful ours is at the beginning of the season and not during September, October.

"We didn't even watch film (from the Portland game), that tells you how bad it is because normally she (White) is watching every second of it. We wanted to flush that one, everyone knew it was bad. We all kind of watched it on our own and it's just unacceptable. We're too good to be playing like that.”

___

AP WNBA: https://apnews.com/hub/wnba-basketball

The S&P 500 rose 0.1% after drifting between small gains and losses through the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 228 points, or 0.4%, and the Nasdaq composite edged up by less than 0.1%. All three set all-time highs.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise helped lead the market, and its stock soared 19.5% after it reported a profit for the latest quarter that blew past analysts’ expectations. It credited demand from customers building their artificial-intelligence capabilities.

Marvell Technology leaped 32.5% for its best day since its stock began trading in 2000 after Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, suggested at a conference in Taiwan that Marvell could be “the next trillion-dollar company.” The last company to enter the expanding club of behemoths was Micron Technology, which is likewise riding the AI wave. Nvidia, which slipped 0.7%, has seen its total value top $5 trillion.

Generac climbed 5.7% after saying it signed a deal to provide backup power generators to an unnamed “leading hyperscale data center operator.”

Such “hyperscalers” are spending tremendous amounts of money to build huge AI data centers, which are powering what proponents believe is the next great revolution for the global economy.

Alphabet is one of those hyperscalers, and the parent company of Google said it’s raising $80 billion in cash to help pay for its investments by selling shares of its stock. It’s planning to spend as much as $190 billion on equipment and other investments this year.

That’s more than all the stock of The Walt Disney Co. is worth, and Alphabet is forecasting its spending on investments next year will “significantly increase.”

Such huge sums raise the question about whether AI can produce the profits and productivity necessary to make all the investment worth it. Critics have already been talking about the possibility of a bubble in AI investment, and Alphabet’s stock fell 3.9%. It was one of the heaviest weights on the S&P 500.

All told, the S&P 500 rose 9.82 points to 7,609.78. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 228.91 to 51,307.79, and the Nasdaq composite inched up 7.09 to 27,093.90.

Analysts have been saying the broad U.S. stock market may be set for a slowdown following an unrelenting streak of nine straight winning weeks for the S&P 500, its longest since 2023. The rally has been largely due to strong profit reports from U.S. companies, as well as hopes that the United States and Iran will reach a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. That would allow oil to flow freely again from the Persian Gulf and hopefully lower its price.

In the oil market, prices rose again to claw back more of last week’s slump. Brent crude oil, the international standard, climbed 1.1% to settle at $96.00 per barrel, and it’s still well above its roughly $70 level from before the war.

In the bond market, Treasury yields were relatively steady.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped to 4.45% from 4.47% late Monday. It briefly jumped after a report said that U.S. employers were advertising many more jobs at the end of April than economists expected, a potential signal of continued health for the U.S. labor market. But it quickly pulled back to where it was just before the report’s release.

High yields worldwide recently have threatened to slow economies and undercut prices for stocks and all kinds of other investments. They have already forced the average long-term U.S. mortgage rate to its most expensive level in nine months, and they could curtail companies’ borrowing to build the AI data centers that have supported the U.S. economy’s growth recently.

In stock markets abroad indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng jumped 2.5% for one of the world’s biggest moves.

___

AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed to this report.

Through their own determination and courage, and with family support, Yousufi and others like Mona Amini had been able to study, to play soccer for clubs and for the Afghanistan women’s team. But when the Taliban returned to power in 2021 it shut down all women’s sports, and the players of the Afghan team went into hiding.

After a frantic evacuation, 13 of the players settled in Australia where for five years they lived, played and trained in the hope of once again being allowed to represent their country.

The Afghanistan soccer federation doesn’t recognize the women’s team. But in April, soccer’s world governing body granted the Afghan women’s team eligibility for international competition.

This week, 23 members of the Afghan Women United program are in a training camp in Auckland, New Zealand and will play games against a team from the Cook Islands.

“It was a special day that we heard that Afghanistan can represent again our flag in international tournaments," Amini, a midfielder, told The Associated Press in a Zoom call Tuesday. “This is the result of hard work that we did in the past four or five years.”

Seven months ago, the Afghan women played in the so-called “Unite” tournament in which they achieved a win over Libya.

“It was a very special moment because we played in an international friendly tournament, and after three years we heard our anthem,” Amini said. “That was amazing for me.”

A better future

FIFA’s subsequent recognition was another important milestone on a long and perilous journey.

Yousufi, a Melbourne-based goalkeeper, remembers her reaction vividly.

“We’re going to have the national team! That’s the greatest thing ever that could have happened to the team," she said. “It was super important to us, especially thinking of the time when we arrived in Australia and we had lost everything: family, our childhood memories and that national team.”

Yousufi said she left home with one backpack, “to be safe and to continue to be alive.”

“When we came here the most important part of our life was to be a soccer player and to be a soccer team,” she said. "When we we saw we could not be (officially) a national team and we could not represent our country ... it was like I lost the game.”

While many ended up in Australia, there are Afghan players spread across Europe and some in the United States. Coach Pauline Hamill holds talent identification camps and helps pull the squad together for games.

Memories of their darkest days remain a strong part of the team’s motivation to succeed, and to represent women and girls still in their homeland. The Afghan women’s team played its last official competitive match in 2018.

“We couldn’t play freely in Afghanistan," Amini said. “Going out from home was tough because there was the risk of the Taliban seeing us and finding that we were playing soccer. "It was a very tough time and I’m pretty sure every one of the girls, every single one of us, fought hard to create this team and we are very happy right now to stay with each other.”

A student and an athlete

Yousufi was a student and a soccer player, and she said it was difficult even before the Taliban returned to power “for a girl to play football in Afghanistan with such difficulties as family barriers and difficulties of the society to accept a woman in sport.”

“We were thinking of any other outcomes like the danger we were facing, everyday dangers in Afghanistan like bomb explosions. Considering all those things — and it was the same for the other girls — we took all those risks to be part of the national team and to be a football player.”

Then life became even more difficult.

“The only thing humans want is freedom, and the Taliban took our freedom,” Amini said. “It is really difficult that you cannot educate, you cannot play sport, you cannot go outside or you cannot do what you love ... (or) follow your dreams.”

Role models

Amini said the refugee players now were determined to represent all women and girls in Afghanistan.

“We are here and we are going to be trying our best to do something for them, to be the voice of them so that we could have a new generation for the future for the Afghanistan women’s national team,” she said.

Yousufi said she was among a group of players “adopted by the Australian government,” and “we’re now living our life and continuing our journey with football, with our education and also being a voice for all those girls who are in Afghanistan.”

“Our team might be the one to change the way the people think and also the way that things are happening towards the girls and women in Afghanistan," she said. “We're all trying our best show that women and girls can be part of the society and can be someone who is in education or in sport, that women also have the right to do that.”

___

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

Trump made the surprise announcement Tuesday on social media that Pulte would be replacing Tulsi Gabbard, the former Hawaii congresswoman who had served as the director of national intelligence. Trump said Pulte will keep his other positions even as he fills in for Gabbard, who resigned last month after revealing her husband’s cancer diagnosis.

The Republican president cited Pulte's work at the FHFA and his role as chair of the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as indicating that his real estate work would overlap with the skills needed to coordinate 18 federal agencies tasked with aspects of foreign and domestic security.

“William has deep experience managing the most sensitive matters in America, the safety and soundness of the Markets," Trump posted on Truth Social.

Trump's choice to elevate Pulte, who would also continue in his post at FHFA, shows how the president is putting a greater priority on loyalty to him, even as the Iran war has damaged Trump politically going into November's midterm elections and raised concerns about the quality of advice that aides are giving to a president who has rewarded flattery.

It’s unclear what national security expertise Pulte brings to bear as the U.S. faces conflict in the Middle East, helps Ukraine defend itself against Russia's assault and manages the emergence of artificial intelligence as a military tool. But Pulte, who's 38 years old, has been a frequent guest on Air Force One as Trump has traveled to Mar-a-Lago, his home and club in Palm Beach, Florida.

On one such flight, the housing finance director stood in a doorway as Trump discussed with reporters the ballroom he’s building at the White House and handed Trump a series of renderings of the project that the president held up.

Questions about Pulte's experience

Several Senate Republicans reacted skeptically to Pulte’s appointment, questioning whether the housing finance director has the experience necessary to oversee the intelligence agency.

“We don’t need a weaponized DNI. We need professionals there," said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota. "I’m trying to get more information about the current state of their thinking about that position. And, again, if he’s somebody they want in that position permanently, he’s got, as you all know, a lengthy road ahead of him.“

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in response to questions about Pulte's national security credentials: “I have no observations on the matter.”

Republican Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and John Cornyn of Texas, all of whom are leaving the chamber after this year's elections, joined the chorus of wariness against Pulte.

“Doesn’t seem qualified,” Cassidy said.

“I don’t see any evidence of qualifications for that job,” said Cornyn, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“When we looked at his background for the current confirmation, I thought most of his experience was in the building industry,” Tillis said. “I didn’t know he had any national security experience.”

Democrats noted that Pulte's major qualification appeared to be his enthusiasm for fulfilling Trump's requests.

“The concern is not only that Mr. Pulte lacks the ‘extensive national security experience’ required by statute for the job, which was created after intelligence failures led to the deaths of thousands of Americans on 9/11," said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., in a statement. “It is that he appears to have been selected precisely because the White House believes he will provide the narrative it wants, not the intelligence we need.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said Pulte has been “abusing his authority” as the federal housing finance director and Trump is now "rewarding his lackey — who has no national security experience — with a perch atop our nation’s intelligence community. What could go wrong?”

Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, the liberal consumer rights advocacy group, warned that Pulte was “Trump's hatchet man” who would use the government against those Americans who object to the president's actions.

“Placing Pulte in this post would position him to use the nation’s massive surveillance apparatus and police capacity to harass, intimidate and threaten the many, many people that Trump considers his enemies," Weissman said.

Pulte's attacks on Trump foes

As the grandson of the founder of PulteGroup, one of the country's largest homebuilders, Pulte has cut a combative streak on social media and used his post at the FHFA to attack perceived opponents of the Trump administration.

His time overseeing mortgage finance has been linked with criminal referrals over allegations of mortgage fraud by public officials Trump sought to punish, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat; Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.; and Lisa Cook, a board member of the Federal Reserve, who was nominated by a Democratic president, Joe Biden.

The prosecution against James was dismissed in November after a judge concluded that the prosecutor who filed the charges was illegally appointed. Other referrals made by Pulte, including against Schiff and Cook, have not yielded any criminal charges. Lawyers for both have denied any claims of wrongdoing. But Trump did try to use the possibility of mortgage fraud as grounds for removing Cook from the Fed.

Cook’s lawyer accused Pulte of pursuing mortgage fraud on a partisan basis, focusing on Democrats and refusing to pursue similar allegations against Republicans.

Pulte told reporters at the White House several months ago that he had also made criminal referrals regarding at least one Republican official, but he declined to provide the name.

He has famously gone after then-Fed Chair Jerome Powell for not cutting the central bank’s benchmark interest rates as aggressively as the president wanted. He has also been linked to ideas such as the 50-year mortgage and efforts to lower mortgage rates through the purchase of home loan debt that have not paid off as promised, as mortgage rates began to climb after the Iran war started at the end of February.

Pulte has a reputation for cultivating enemies. In a legal feud pursued by Pulte that involved his family namesake's homebuilding company, he accused his grandfather’s widow of insider trading. He was believed to be the driving force behind a website trashing an aunt as a “fake Christian.” And he publicly blasted another relative as “a fat slob,” “weirdo” and “grifter,” according to court records.

Politico reported in September that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent threatened to punch Pulte in the face. The showdown occurred at a private dinner, and the treasury secretary claimed that he had heard Pulte had been badmouthing him to Trump.

Still, he had fans inside the White House elsewhere.

“Bill Pulte is a terrific guy, very careful person, very much in the details of things, trusted by the president, and a really, really close friend to everybody in the White House,” Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council at the White House, told reporters on Tuesday. “He'll do a great job.”

If formally nominated, Pulte would need to be confirmed by the Senate to hold the position full-time.

In his first term, Trump at various points had acting officials leading the Justice and Defense departments and in top posts at Homeland Security and the Interior.

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Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti and Seung Min Kim in Washington contributed to this report.

As of 3:55 p.m., all southbound lanes were closed at SR 207, according to the St. Augustine Police Department.

They have since reopened.

Included in the sanctions are Iran's largest digital assets firm Nobitex and its chairman and co-founder, Amir Hossein Rad. Treasury says Nobitex has processed more than 50% of all Iranian digital asset income last year and supports Iran's vast sanctions evasion network.

The sanctions come as a pair of semiofficial Iranian news agencies reported Tuesday that Iran stopped communicating with mediators about extending a ceasefire in the war with the U.S. and Israel.

U.S. President Donald Trump has disputed the claim and said talks are continuing.

Treasury accuses Nobitex of moving assets and funds out of the country to shield regime wealth after the start of U.S. combat operations in Iran. A representative from Nobitex could not be reached through email.

U.S. officials maintain that Iran relies heavily on cryptocurrency and other digital assets to evade sanctions. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said at the Reagan National Economic Forum this month, “We have seized about a billion dollars of their crypto."

The Trump administration's latest announcement is one of a variety of measures put in place to inflict economic pain on Iran. It has also imposed secondary economic sanctions on countries doing business with people, firms, and ships under Iranian control — including allies like the United Arab Emirates and competitors like China. Banks have received warnings about handling Iranian money.

And last week, the U.S. imposed sanctions on Iran's newly created Persian Gulf Strait Authority, which is an agency intended to control shipping through the narrow Strait of Hormuz. Treasury calls the agency a “scheme to extort international shipping.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. military has stopped merchant vessels trying to break through a U.S.-led blockade of Iranian ports. The U.S. launched the blockade on April 17 after Iran effectively closed the strait after the war in the Middle East began with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Feb. 28.

Randy Campbell, who was arrested Nov. 20, 2025, following a Be-on-the-Lookout (BOLO) alert, was extradited to Jacksonville on Sunday after being taken into custody in Dallas, Texas. He is charged with second-degree murder.

RELATED: ‘Bright, beautiful’: Sister identifies 24-year-old mother of 2 found dead in business parking lot off Sunbeam Road

Jacksonville police said Campbell is accused of fatally shooting Cherrish Nunley, 24, on Nov. 15, 2025, in a parking lot behind a Chuze Fitness on Sunbeam Road in Mandarin.

Nunley, a mother of a 5-year-old daughter and a 1-year-old son, died at the scene before officers arrived, just weeks before what would have been her 25th birthday.

According to the redacted arrest report, Campbell, who was identified as ‘RJ’ in the report, is the father of one of Nunley’s children, but the report did not specify which child was his. The report also said Nunley was involved in a custody dispute with both of her children’s fathers at the time of her death.

A Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office detective who arrived at the scene spoke with a witness who reported seeing a black crossover parked near the fence line with its lights off. Additional details provided by the witness were redacted from the report, but the witness also provided police with a description of Campbell.

The witness attempted to follow Campbell’s vehicle after the shooting, but Campbell sped away before the witness could catch up to him, according to the report.

The report also said a detective received a call from Campbell’s brother, who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. He told investigators that his brother had contacted him the previous day with information related to the shooting.

He also told investigators that his brother drove a black Hyundai Santa Fe with a Florida tag that was registered to Campbell’s grandmother, according to the report.

The Sante Fe matched the vehicle’s description that the witness reported to police as well, leading to the BOLO alert.

Campbell was booked in the Duval County Jail on May 31, nearly seven months after the incident.

The Dorion Family Pediatric Center, set to officially open June 11 inside the Earl B. Hadlow Center for Caring on Sunbeam Road, is being described as Florida’s first dedicated pediatric hospice and palliative care center and one of only a few such facilities in the nation.

The center will become the new home of Community PēdsCare, a program that currently serves more than 300 children across Northeast Florida living with serious and complex medical conditions.

For families like that of Andjay Nesterenko, the program has already been life-changing.

Andjay, who lives with cerebral palsy, is known for his outgoing personality and love of the Jacksonville Jaguars. Through Community PēdsCare, he had the opportunity to meet Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence, a memory he still talks about with excitement.

His mother, Antonina Nesterenko, said her son refuses to let his disability define him.

“He is a child with a disability, and he understands that he is not like every kid, but he does not feel that he can’t do something,” she said.

Community PēdsCare provides a range of services for children and families, including music therapy, psychosocial support and care coordination. Antonina said music therapy through the program helped Andjay gain independence and eventually begin walking on his own.

Until now, nearly all of those services have been delivered in patients’ homes.

“We service a little over 300 children in the community, and currently right now all those services that we provide are being done in the homes, which can present a challenge at times,” said Annie Tuttle, vice president of philanthropy and community impact for The Foundation of Community Hospice & Palliative Care.

The new center is designed to expand access to care while creating opportunities for children and families to connect with others facing similar challenges.

The facility will offer therapeutic recreation, caregiver support programs, psychosocial and spiritual care services, and gathering spaces designed to foster community among families navigating complex medical conditions.

Tuttle said one of the biggest challenges many families face is isolation.

“What we’ve discovered is that a lot of our families and patients feel isolated,” she said. “There’s not a lot of support for them outside of their home.”

The center was intentionally designed to feel welcoming and child-friendly rather than clinical, with spaces for play, therapy and family interaction.

Community Hospice officials say centralizing services in one location will also allow care teams to spend less time traveling and more time directly supporting patients and families.

The center is named in honor of Dottie Dorion and the Dorion family, whose support helped make the project possible.

For Antonina, the new facility represents more than a building.

“What it will provide to kids, it’s life-changing,” she said. “It’

But when reporters tried to ask Dr. Mehmet Oz about the most-pressing issues of the day — the point of the White House briefing where he was speaking for the administration — the head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services had little to offer, and said so again and again.

Oz’s appearance showcased how the White House can struggle to respond to major news that breaks on any given day — a telling weakness as public sentiment has increasingly turned against the president. And it comes as President Donald Trump himself has spent more time than usual out of reach of reporters' questions.

Pressed on why Trump tapped Bill Pulte to be the acting director of national intelligence, despite the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency having no clear national security credentials, Oz said he trusted the president's judgment while also offering, “I think Bill's a great guy. I know him socially.”

Asked on the same topic again, he said, “Ma'am, you’re asking me a question that’s out of my lane."

When a reporter said that the White House had given so little information on Pulte's nomination that there was no choice but to seek answers from Oz during the briefing — despite it not being his area of expertise — Oz acknowledged, "I appreciate you want an answer. I’m not not going to be the one giving it to you.”

Still another attempt finally prompted him to exclaim, “I don’t know anything more about Bill Pulte than you do. I did not think that the questions would even come up here. I hadn’t even heard the news when I walked out.”

The administration has invited some of its most camera-ready voices to brief reporters while White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is on maternity leave. It started with Vice President JD Vance and then featured another possible 2028 White House hopeful, Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Last week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had his turn.

“I did watch them all, by the way," Oz said, explaining it helped him prepare for the experience. “I’m a doctor. I try and do my homework. I prepped for the case.”

Vance, Rubio and Bessent each fielded questions about the war in Iran and other topics. But Oz, an unsuccessful former Senate candidate in Pennsylvania and onetime prominent TV physician, stuck mostly to health care.

The White House said Oz was there to announce that 160 new medications are being added to the government’s discounted-drug website TrumpRx, bringing the total number of drugs on the site to more than 750.

“Dr. Oz authoritatively and articulately discussed the latest updates on several key Trump administration priorities, from lowering prescription drug prices to rooting out pervasive fraud in federal programs,” White House spokesman Kush Desai, said in a statement that also chided reporters for asking about “topics that President Trump himself has already weighed in on.”

Oz was also asked several times about Trump having undergone four publicly disclosed health screenings since returning to the White House and gave various answers, including, “I think he likes the results,” while piling on the praise about his boss, who turns 80 this month.

“That amount of energy, and that amount of mental acuity does not exist in a vacuum," Oz said. “You have to have a vessel to carry it.”

As of 4:10 p.m., backups were stretching all the way to Fort Caroline Road.

This is a developing story.

In a secret-ballot vote, Rahman defeated Cyprus' Ambassador Andreas Kakouris 99-91, with three countries not voting. He will succeed Germany's former Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, whose one-year term ends in September.

The presidency of the world body rotates by region and this year it was the Asia-Pacific region’s turn.

While the presidency of the General Assembly is largely ceremonial, it is also prestigious. It is the U.N. organ where countries large and small can speak, and is the scene of the only annual gathering of world leaders, in September.

The General Assembly controls the U.N. budget, adopts treaties, addresses global issues from poverty to corruption, and passes numerous resolutions that while not legally binding almost always reflect global opinion.

It has taken the spotlight in reacting to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza because action by the U.N. Security Council has been blocked by the veto power of Russia on Ukraine and, often, the United States on Gaza.

Rahman was selected as foreign minister in February by Bangladesh’s new prime minister, whose party won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections. They were the country’s first since a mass student-led uprising in 2024 toppled the previous prime minister, Sheikh Hasina.

Rahman previously served as national security adviser in the interim government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus, and as an ambassador.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres congratulated Rahman, saying, “Your remarkable political and diplomatic experience are a guarantee of success not only to the General Assembly but to the United Nations as a whole.”

He praised Rahman’s commitment to the ambitious program to reform the 80-year-old United Nations to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

Rahman told diplomats assembled in the General Assembly hall that its 81st session will open “at a historic crossroads” when “trust in our organization is being tested on multiple fronts.”

Conflict and war — which the U.N. was established to prevent — are inflicting “untold suffering, development gains remain fragile and uncertain, and in some cases are regressing,” he said. “Despite advancements in human rights, we witness a general backsliding of certain rights and freedoms across the world and shrinking humanitarian space.”

Rahman said this is happening at a time when the U.N. is facing financial stress. “This is a challenge I will confront with all of you,” he told the assembly.

The United States, which has historically been the largest contributor to the U.N. budget, is billions of dollars in arrears.

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While we need every drop, it’s all coming at once, and that means a risk for localized flooding. With so much rain falling fast, the ground just can’t soak it up quickly enough.

My best advice? Grab your raincoat before you step out the door. Even though it may look calm right now, you definitely do not want to get caught later!

If you’re heading out, keep an eye on where you walk, drive, and park. The Exact Track 4D radar is showing things are quiet first thing this morning, but that’s about to change.

What to expect from these storms

Showers and storms are forecast to become widespread just after 1 p.m., really picking up after 2 p.m. today. Expect some serious wind gusts in the mix—these could reach 40 mph to 60 mph this afternoon.

If you’re near Jacksonville, St. Augustine, or anywhere in between, rain totals could land anywhere from a half an inch up to 3 inches before the day is done.

For anyone worried about the bigger stuff, the National Weather Service says there’s no threat from hail or tornadoes with this system. That’s a little piece of good news!

Just remember: heavy rain and those strong gusts can still bring down power lines and tree limbs, so use caution out there.

Download the News4JAX app for instant weather alerts as the rain moves in through tonight and into Wednesday morning.

Looking ahead: clearing skies and summer sun

The good news is that the heavy stuff doesn’t stick around long. By Wednesday night, Thursday, and Friday, things clear out a lot, and rain chances start to taper off.

You’ll notice a little cool down—temperatures drop to the 70s on Wednesday, then bounce back into the 80s through Friday and right into the weekend.

If you love the beach, plan for sunshine and warmer temps by Saturday and Sunday. Just don’t forget the sunscreen!

Even though it’s only the second day of hurricane season, there’s nothing brewing in the Atlantic or The Gulf for us right now.

One more tip: If you’re walking the dog, try to do it before noon if you want to stay dry—wet fur is no one’s favorite!

Share your weather photos and videos using SnapJAX to help track the storms with The Weather Authority.

The dinner, cut short in April by a gunman who prosecutors say was trying to assassinate Trump, will now take place on July 24. It will be a more intimate gathering with “significantly enhanced safety measures and new access procedures,” said Weijia Jiang, president of the White House Correspondents' Association.

Jiang did not say where the dinner would be held. But Trump, on his Truth Social platform, revealed it would be at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue — former site of the Trump International Hotel.

The president said he’d been invited to return and speak, and had accepted the invitation. He called the rescheduling “a sign of Strength and Fortitude.”

“This announcement is a very good thing in that we cannot allow Lunatics to change our way of life, or even its scheduling,” Trump wrote.

He added he hadn't decided on whether to give his originally intended speech, in which he was widely expected to attack the press. “I don’t know whether or not I will give the same rather nasty statements, at least as it concerns certain people, but we will soon find out," he wrote. “In any event, it will be a 'HOT' ticket!”

Rescheduling decision took time

Jiang, in her announcement, noted that “rescheduling was not automatic,” and had involved much consideration and input from board members.

She emphasized the dinner’s stated purpose: “a celebration of a free press and the vital role of journalism in our democracy for over a century.”

“We will not allow an act of violence to have the last word, especially during a year when we are reflecting on the 250th anniversary of America and everything we stand for,” Jiang said.

It was not clear how large the rescheduled dinner would be, or whether it would be a full-scale dinner at all. Jiang made reference to a “more intimate gathering” than the original event, attended by close to 3,000 people at the Washington Hilton, but did not give details, saying they'd be shared directly with attendees.

Her remarks were in line with recent speculation that a rescheduled event would have to be pared down, a nod to financial as well as security concerns.

Concern expressed for wounded officer

Jiang also made note of the Secret Service officer who was shot in April and has been recovering. “Our thoughts remain with the officer who was injured and with everyone who experienced that evening,” she said. “We are indebted to the US Secret Service, law enforcement and the hotel staff whose swift response protected our guests and our staff.”

Though Jiang always insisted the dinner should be rescheduled, not everyone felt the same way.

Some critics said they felt it would be a good idea to scuttle the whole event permanently — not only for security reasons, but for what they saw as an unseemly enterprise of journalists hobnobbing in formal wear with the subjects of their reporting.

“It undermines the public faith in how the press does its work, and it makes it look like we are pals with the people we cover,” Kelly McBride, an ethics expert at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank, said in May.

Under a deal made public in March, French company TotalEnergies is getting $1 billion — essentially a refund of its leases for offshore wind projects off New York and North Carolina — if it invests the money in fossil fuel projects instead.

State attorneys general from Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Vermont joined New York in challenging the cancellation of the lease off New York, the larger of the two projects and the bulk of the payout. They say it will harm their states’ economies, energy grids and climate goals.

“This administration cooked up a sham deal to pay a foreign energy company hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to abandon offshore wind and invest in oil and gas instead," New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. "We are fighting back to stop this illegal agreement that threatens to erase over a thousand union jobs and cheat millions of New Yorkers out of clean, affordable energy.”

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she and James will continue to aggressively fight back against President Donald Trump’s “overt and never-ending hostility toward offshore wind." Trump, who often talks about his hatred of wind power, has said his goal is to not let any “windmills” be built.

The complaint filed in District Court for the District of Columbia names administration officials, including Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, as defendants, and argues that they canceled the lease without following proper procedures. The states are asking a federal judge to vacate the lease cancellation and settlement agreement with TotalEnergies' subsidiary, Attentive Energy.

Separately, a coalition of renewable energy groups filed a complaint in District Court in Oregon on Sunday over Pentagon officials not completing national security reviews for new onshore wind farms on private lands. They say this inaction has brought a total halt to all wind project development. The Pentagon has said its siting clearinghouse is actively evaluating land-based wind energy projects and it's a complex, time-consuming process.

In response to the New York-led lawsuit, the Interior Department said Tuesday the only thing blatantly unlawful was the process by which these offshore wind leases were negotiated and imposed under the Biden administration, funneling taxpayer dollars into unreliable, unaffordable energy projects. A spokesperson said the lease buybacks were voluntary agreements that no one was forced to sign, which were reviewed and approved by the Department of Justice.

Burgum also defended the TotalEnergies deal last month during a hearing at the House Natural Resources Committee.

U.S. Rep. Dave Min, a California Democrat, asked Burgum if it's appropriate for Interior to send $1 billion to a foreign oil company to stop producing energy, while people are dealing with sky-high utility bills.

Burgum said TotalEnergies was simply refunded their money, which they have already invested in other energy projects in the U.S.

“They essentially gave the U.S. government an interest-free loan and their money was refunded to them,” he said.

Min said the cancellation of TotalEnergies’ offshore wind leases is a case study on Interior's “economically illiterate and unlawful energy strategy.”

TotalEnergies purchased the lease off New York and New Jersey, in 2022, for $795 million. This was planned as a larger project, with the potential to generate 3 gigawatts of clean energy to power nearly one million homes. It would have brought $10 billion in savings to ratepayers across New York, with $500 million in savings for low-income households, on electricity bills, according to the complaint filed Tuesday.

TotalEnergies also purchased a lease for its Carolina Long Bay project in 2022 for about $133 million. It aimed to generate more than 1 gigawatt there, enough to power about 300,000 homes.

Burgum has said companies were sold a product that was only viable when propped up by massive taxpayer subsidies when they bid for these offshore wind leases in 2022, under former President Joe Biden.

The Trump administration is spending nearly $2 billion to get energy companies to walk away from U.S. offshore wind projects. It adopted this strategy after federal courts thwarted Trump’s efforts to stop offshore wind development through executive action.

Democrats in Congress are investigating the TotalEnergies agreement, and California is investigating a deal that ended a floating offshore wind project, Golden State Wind, proposed off the state's central coast.

Bluepoint Wind also agreed to end its lease for an offshore wind project in the early stages of development off the coasts of New Jersey and New York. Tuesday's complaint does not challenge this agreement, as the lease has not been canceled yet.

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

The arrest report said that Jon Kee Jr. messaged the student on Instagram after the student saw him working at a Circle K convenience store, offered the student free drinks and snacks, hugged the student and exchanged text messages and phone calls that turned inappropriate. Police recorded a phone call and interviewed the student as part of the probe, the report said.

Kee was interviewed by detectives after being advised of his Miranda rights and agreed to speak without an attorney, the sheriff’s office said. He was arrested on a charge under Florida Statute 800.101(2)(c), a second-degree felony.

Kee has worked at Twin Lakes since February 2022. He started as an office assistant and then transitioned into a security guard in July 2024.

Police said there was no indication of weapons, drugs or domestic violence in the case.

Twin Lakes Principal Aurelia Williams sent out a statement to parents after learning Kee was arrested.

I hope this message finds you well. I am reaching out today with important information about a serious matter that I know may cause concern for our school community.

The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office (JSO) has informed us that a member of our school staff, Mr. Jon Kee, was arrested on Thursday, May 29, and charged with an offense involving inappropriate conduct with a student. I understand how upsetting and alarming this news may be, and as both a principal and someone who cares deeply about our students and families, I share in your concern.

Please know that this situation is being taken extremely seriously. Mr. Kee has been immediately removed from our campus and will have no contact with students while both the criminal investigation and the district’s professional standards review are ongoing.

I want to assure you that the safety, well-being, and trust of our students are at the heart of every decision we make. We are working closely with district leadership and law enforcement to ensure all necessary steps are taken to protect our school community.

This remains an active investigation led by JSO. If you or your child may have any information that could assist, I strongly encourage you to contact JSO directly at 904-630-0500.

I also recognize that situations like this can be difficult for students and families to process. Please know that our school team is here to support you. If your child needs additional support or you have concerns, do not hesitate to reach out to us directly-we are here to listen and help.

Thank you for your continued trust and partnership as we work to maintain a safe and supportive environment for every student at Twin Lakes Academy Middle School.

Wishing you and your family a safe and restful summer.

Twin Lakes Principal Aurelia Williams

The investigation is ongoing.

The five-game series features a packed lineup of themed nights, giveaways, Pride celebrations, a bobblehead giveaway and opportunities for fans to bring their dogs to the ballpark.

🐶 Wednesday: Dog Day and T-shirt giveaway

June 3 at 7:05 p.m.

The homestand begins with Canines and Crustaceans (Dog Day), allowing fans to bring their canine companions to the game. Dogs receive free admission with the purchase of a human ticket.

Fans should note that dogs are not permitted in the Haskell Suite Level, Harbour Hall, PNC Club or Section 119.

The evening also includes:

• Charity Begins at Home, benefiting Pink Tides of Hope
• A Wear It Home Wednesday giveaway, with the first 500 fans through the Main Gate receiving an “I Got That Dawg in Me” T-shirt presented by Prime Shrimp and Ambetter Health

🌈 Thursday: Pride Night at the ballpark

June 4 at 7:05 p.m.

The Jumbo Shrimp will partner with River City Pride for Pride Night, welcoming members of the LGBTQ+ community, allies, families and local organizations for an evening of celebration and inclusion.

Fans can also take advantage of Coors Light Thirsty Thursday, featuring discounted draft beer specials throughout the ballpark.

🎸 Friday: Hair Band Night

June 5 at 7:05 p.m.

Fans are encouraged to break out their favorite rock-and-roll attire for Hair Band Night.

The game will feature music from iconic hair bands throughout the evening, and fans are invited to dress the part for a night of throwback fun.

Additional Friday promotions include:

• Friday Night Lites Happy Hour with discounted beverages until 7:30 p.m.
• Red Shirt Friday, where fans wearing red receive a discount at the box office while showing support for military members

🎁 Saturday: Jacob Berry bobblehead giveaway

June 6 at 6:35 p.m.

Saturday’s game features one of the most anticipated giveaways of the season.

The first 2,000 fans entering through the Main Gate at the Baptist Health Centerfield Plaza will receive a Jacob Berry bobblehead, commemorating the Jumbo Shrimp star whose walk-off heroics helped deliver the team’s Triple-A National Championship.

The game also features Viva Las Duuuval, a celebration of Jacksonville’s championship run in Las Vegas last season.

Fans hoping to secure a bobblehead are encouraged to arrive early, as giveaways are limited to the first 2,000 attendees entering through the Main Gate.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Sunday: Junior Jumbos, Sonic and family fun

June 7 at 2:05 p.m.

The series wraps up with a family-focused afternoon highlighted by the Junior Jumbos Takeover.

Members of the Junior Jumbos Kids Club will have opportunities to participate in special game-day experiences, including a pregame parade and other on-field activities.

Sunday’s promotions also include:

• Kids Meme Day, celebrating some of the internet’s most recognizable kid-themed memes
• A free Sonic the Hedgehog meet-and-greet
• Baptist Health Sunday Family FUNday, featuring catch on the field, face painting and balloon animals
• Kids Run the Bases after the game, presented by Goodwill Industries of North Florida

🎟️ Plan your visit

From Pride Night and Dog Day to a championship-inspired bobblehead giveaway and family-friendly Sunday activities, the Jumbo Shrimp are offering something for fans of all ages during their June homestand against Nashville.

Fans planning to attend giveaway nights are encouraged to arrive early, particularly for Saturday’s limited-edition Jacob Berry bobblehead giveaway.

The market in Trujillo was set on fire last June when the women refused to give in to threats. Days later, they marched, demanding protection from authorities. Nothing changed. But that didn’t surprise Saavedra, as police had failed her in August 2024, when her house was attacked with explosives in another extortion attempt.

That level of violence by Peruvian gangs is the main concern for voters who will elect a new president in a runoff election Sunday. Many will leave their homes to vote fearful of becoming crime victims again during their trip to the polls.

“You can’t even stick your head out for fear of being shot,” Saavedra, 49, said.

Illegal gold mining fuels organized crime

The first extortion cases reported in Trujillo took place more than 20 years ago, but the crime has spread throughout Peru in the last five years. During that period, extortion complaints increased fivefold, reaching 28,948 cases last year, while killings doubled, reaching 2,226 in 2025, according to official data.

Police and security experts attribute the expansion of criminal gangs in Trujillo to their involvement in illegal gold mining. They say the gangs initially profited by providing security to illegal gold miners in a nearby town, then used the proceeds to hire hitmen, buy weapons and strengthen their presence in the city.

According to official data, illegal mining generates approximately $7 billion annually, much more than the roughly $1.2 billion generated annually by drug trafficking.

The first victims of extortion were public transportation companies, whose drivers were killed if payment was not made. Transportation workers continue to be targeted, with at least 239 drivers killed last year across the country, according to the independent Observatory of Crime and Violence.

Of those killed, more than half were motorcycle taxi drivers, widely used on the outskirts of cities where roads are often unpaved. But it has been the murders of bus drivers that have triggered transportation strikes and protests.

Experts attribute the increasing power of organized crime in Peru to the profits that decades-old criminal groups are earning from illegal gold mining in the Andes and the Amazon. In 2025, Peru exported 100 tons of illegally mined gold, nearly matching the 109 tons of legally mined gold it exported.

Even schools are crime targets

In a Trujillo neighborhood where a quarter of the country’s footwear is manufactured, union leader Máximo Varas said that around 1,500 small business owners in that industry pay extortionists to be able to work.

“Everyone pays — even I get extorted. No one is safe,” he said.

Across Trujillo, several buses, restaurants, corner stores, nightclubs and even schools have stickers on their facades, including of a puma, a cross and a Batman logo. Police said the stickers indicate that the businesses have paid extortion fees. Authorities sometimes go around Trujillo removing those stickers and replacing them with ones from law enforcement.

For businessman Iván Díaz, 58, violence has increased “unreasonably" in Trujillo. In 2023, he was kidnapped for 11 days by criminals dressed as police officers who dragged him from his office. To obtain a $250,000 ransom, his captors cut off part of two fingers on his right hand and sent videos of the torture to his family to “advance the payment.”

“I had to adapt to reality and keep a cool head,” Díaz said.

In May, the courts sentenced four members of the criminal group Los Pulpos, which emerged in Trujillo in the 1990s and later expanded to neighboring Chile, to life imprisonment for Díaz’s kidnapping.

Authorities have limited resources to fight crime

The Ministry of Economy estimated in July that crime costs Peruvians some $5 billion annually. This figure includes state investment to fund police operations, but also private spending on surveillance cameras and security guards.

Peru’s outlying neighborhoods lack paved roads, potable water and electricity, but above all, they lack a police presence. In contrast, wealthier municipalities like the capital’s San Borja, where the two presidential candidates — the conservative Keiko Fujimori and the progressive Roberto Sánchez — live, have a large number of uniformed officers as well as an additional force of private security agents patrolling their streets.

Security experts maintain that combating crime requires an anti-corruption purge of the national police force, which has some 130,000 officers, and significant funding for investigations.

An agent investigating organized crime groups who asked not to be identified because he is not authorized to speak to the press told The Associated Press that due to a lack of technology, the police cannot track the phones associated with the digital wallets that criminals use to receive extortion payments.

Harvey Colchado, a congressman-elect and retired police officer, said each of the country’s 70 police investigative units had a monthly budget of $29,000 five years ago, but now, they have no funds as the state allocated the money elsewhere. He added that this is compounded by laws approved in recent years with the support of the parties of Fujimori and Sánchez that make it difficult to prosecute criminals.

The laws Colchado referred to eliminated preliminary detention in certain cases and raised the threshold for seizing criminal assets and carrying out searches.

“This is a cancer," Saavedra said. "(Police) don’t have the resources to trace the calls, to know where the messages are coming from. That’s the only way to stop it."

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Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

Senate bills 538 and 178 will become law on July 1, and the much-debated open division will begin this fall across multiple sports. The FHSAA will vote on the updates to its policies on June 9.

SB 538 will be significant for this era’s high school student. With nontraditional students (home school, charter, virtual) increasing every year, the FHSAA asked the state for help to curb rampant athletic transfers.

Among other items on the table for discussion are the addition of pickleball as a sport (160 schools said they are interested in sanctioning with another 260 unsure about it).

The big change means that students may not participate at two different schools in the same year unless they meet select criteria.

Situations involving foster care, active-duty military, court-ordered changes in custody, a full and complete residential move, a non-disciplinary reassignment by a district school and a transfer from a wait list within the first 20 days qualify.

Nontraditional students will have to compete at a school within their county of residence. If no public school offers the sport in that student’s district of residence and that student can’t reach an agreement to play on a private school in that district, only then can they try and play for a school in an adjacent district. An appeal to executive director Craig Damon would serve as a last resort if there were no schools in a student’s area to accommodate that sports request.

That will serve to eliminate situations of students playing fall, winter and spring sports at three different schools, or allowing out-of-state athletes to compete on teams. Damon spoke at a hearing in Tallahassee and detailed athletes playing the first week of the football playoffs at one school and on another school the next week after his team was eliminated.

The Open division

Talked about for years to help usher the transfer-heavy super teams away from the more traditional schools, the Open division finally has a date of action. Instead of just football, the Open division will apply to volleyball, basketball, soccer, baseball and softball.

In football, the top eight teams in state based on MaxPreps rankings will be seeded after the completion of the regular season and placed into their own state tournament. In all other sports, the seeding will take place after district tournaments.

It will include Pool A (seeds 1, 4, 5, 8) and Pool B (2, 3, 6, 7). After pool play, the top two teams will advance to the state championship to crown the Open champion. There’s still questions on whether the board will opt to add provisions such as allowing a team to opt out of the Open division if they quality. It is scheduled to begin this fall.

The Teddy Bridgewater portion

Bridgewater, the former head football coach at Miami Northwestern and current NFL quarterback, was suspended by his school after admitting in a social media post that he voluntarily supported numerous athletes on his team. Among things Bridgewater helped with it included Uber rides, meals and medical treatment. The amount he spent isn’t detailed exactly in his post, but Bridgewater would have still been in violation of the new bill by tens of thousands of dollars.

The only problem with that: those acts were forbidden by the FHSAA and looked at like impermissible benefits. That led to national attention asking how Bridgewater would be in trouble for helping in-need students out.

The FHSAA’s updated Policy 36 spells out how the Bridgewater Act will work.

Only the personal funds of head coaches can provide for players. The support must be related to the health, safety or welfare of the student. That is limited to food, transportation, and recovery services. It cannot be recurring.

A school must authorize that support, and the student’s parent/guardian must sign off on it as well. A report must be filed with the FHSAA within 10 days of the transaction. The bill is largely symbolic as Bridgewater was a highly unusual case. As an active NFL player with more than $66 million in career earnings, Bridgewater was uniquely positioned to help financially. High school head football coaching supplements in Florida are dreadfully low, starting at $3,038 (Broward County) and going up to $8,317 (Charlotte County). The average supplement in Florida according to News4JAX data is $4,972.

The video of Shelby Officer Karson Hyder pummeling Cherrie Moore on Friday has circulated widely on social media.

Hyder, 22, turned himself in to the Cleveland County Detention Center Monday morning and was released on a $10,000 secured bond. Court records do not list an attorney for him, and a phone number associated with his name was out of service.

Hyder, who was suspended Friday and fired on Saturday, was responding to a breaking-and-entering call when the scuffle ensued.

According to a warrant, Moore, 34, fled the residence on foot and resisted arrest, assaulting Hyder by “grabbing and ripping (his) uniform.”

A separate warrant filed Monday alleged Hyder “unlawfully and willfully did assault and strike Cherrie Moore” by grabbing Moore “by the arm, pushing her to the ground and striking her in the face with a closed fist, thereby inflicting serious injury possible broken nose and busted lip.”

The State Bureau of Investigation had announced Saturday it had opened an investigation into Hyder.

Moore was initially charged with breaking and entering, resisting arrest and assault on a public officer, but the latter two charges have since been dismissed. She was freed on an unsecured bond. A phone number associated with Moore was disconnected.

Her attorney, Ronald Haynes, told The Associated Press in an email that Moore “is recovering and receiving treatment for her mental health.”

“The heinous actions of former Officer Karson Hyder will forever negatively impact Ms. Cherrie Moore and her family,” Haynes continued. “It’s a small relief that city officials responded so promptly to terminate and charge Mr. Hyder."

Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, launched dozens of projectiles and drones toward Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon and Israeli cities and towns in recent days as Israel's airstrikes killed dozens, including women and children, in Lebanon. Hezbollah did not carry out any attacks on Israel after Trump's announcement.

The ongoing hostilities — despite Trump's announcement and a nominal ceasefire that began in April — are deepening displacement for Lebanon's conflict-weary population. They also are a significant sticking point in negotiations to extend a ceasefire in the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, as the Islamic Republic wants any such deal to end fighting in Lebanon, too.

Two semiofficial Iranian news agencies reported Tuesday that the country cut off communication with mediators facilitating the ceasefire talks.

Another round of talks between Israel and Lebanon began Tuesday in Washington, where Lebanese negotiators will seek a full ceasefire that will prevent future attacks. The talks began in April and were the first in more than three decades between the countries, which have no formal diplomatic relations. Hezbollah has rejected direct talks, counting on pressure from Iran.

The planned talks come days after Israeli ground troops made their deepest incursion into Lebanon in 26 years and Israel then threatened to strike Beirut’s southern suburbs, causing panic in the Lebanese capital as thousands fled.

Israel says it will keep attacking if Hezbollah does

Trump said Monday he'd spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and had communicated with Hezbollah through mediators, and that no troops would be “going to Beirut." But the intensity of attacks between Israel and Hezbollah continued.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Tuesday that Israel previously refrained from attacking Beirut out of deference to negotiations between the U.S. and Iran. But he said Netanyahu informed Trump in a phone call late Monday that Israel will attack Beirut's southern suburbs if Hezbollah continues targeting northern Israel, echoing comments from the prime minister the previous day.

Lebanon's top political authorities insist that the talks must continue, despite Beirut's struggles in stopping the strikes, and the mounting pressure from over 1 million displaced people living in difficult conditions.

“Negotiations is the least costly option on Lebanon and the Lebanese people,” Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said. “It is the shortest road to the occupation and allow our people in the south to return to the cities and villages.”

An Israeli drone strike hit a car on the road linking the southern town of Marjayoun with the city of Nabatiyeh, killing James Karam, a dentist from the nearby Christian town of Qlayaa, along with his daughter and son, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported Tuesday.

The Lebanese army said two soldiers were lightly wounded when another drone targeted them on a road outside the city.

Drone strikes killed two Syrians working at a plant nursery in the village of Jibchit and two people in the nearby village of Toul, the news agency reported. A third strike hit a car near the village of Harouf, killing one person.

Two other airstrikes on southern Lebanon killed three people, according to NNA.

The Israeli military said it wasn't aware of any Israeli strikes in the area where Karam and his family members were killed.

NNA also reported that an Israeli airstrike in the southern village of Marwaniyeh on Monday killed six people from the Abdullah family. Hassan and his wife Hanan were killed alongside four children Ali, Ibrahim, Leen and Julia. A third son survived but is undergoing treatment.

Hezbollah said Tuesday its fighters fired anti-tank missiles on Israeli troops who were pushing into the southern village of Hadatha, about 7 kilometers (4 miles) from the Israeli border.

Sirens sounded in several areas in northern Israel, its military said in a statement. It added that “a suspicious aerial target" was identified in the area where Israeli soldiers are operating in southern Lebanon, but that no injuries were reported.

More than 3,400 people have been killed in Lebanon

The latest round of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has killed 3,468 people in Lebanon and displaced more than 1 million people. According to Netanyahu’s office, at least 27 Israeli soldiers and a defense contractor have been killed in or near southern Lebanon. Two civilians have also been killed in northern Israel.

Israel’s military said late Monday that a soldier was killed in southern Lebanon. It added that seven more soldiers were wounded in the incident, three of them severely.

Hezbollah’s use of hard-to-detect fiber-optic drones has been deadly for the Israeli military, which is struggling to respond.

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This story has been corrected to say Hezbollah fired at Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon.

—

Lidman reported from Tel Aviv, Israel.

Alfred Jones III, 25, was taken into custody Sunday, after JSO SWAT officers say they located him at his home on Forest Boulevard. Jones is charged with second-degree murder and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Victim found dead at scene

Officers were dispatched to a Jacksonville motel on Friday, May 29 in response to a reported shooting. When officers arrived, they found Giavonathan Butler, 40, on the floor suffering from a gunshot wound to the head. Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department personnel pronounced Butler dead at the scene.

The JSO Homicide Unit and Crime Scene Unit responded to investigate. Investigators say they executed a search warrant at the scene and recovered two 9mm shell casings near the victim’s body.

Witness accounts lead to arrest: JSO

According to the arrest affidavit, a witness told detectives that Jones and Butler had been involved in a verbal dispute earlier that day. The witness said Butler told Jones to move away from his door, which angered Jones.

After the dispute, the witness said Jones told her he was tired of people “trying” him. The witness also told investigators that Jones asked several people to check on who was inside Butler’s room before he and an unknown male entered. Jones then allegedly fled through a back door, jumped a fence and ran toward Golfair Boulevard.

Detectives canvassing Jones’ flight path discovered a magazine containing six live 9mm rounds near a fence. Investigators noted the ammunition matched the casings found at the scene.

According to the report, a second witness told detectives that when he arrived at the scene, other individuals told him the victim had been shot by a man wearing a red outfit.

Criminal history confirmed

Through further investigation, detectives say they identified Jones — known by the nickname “YB” — as a person of interest. A criminal history check confirmed Jones is a convicted felon, prohibited from legally possessing a firearm.

Jones had been adjudicated guilty of burglary with assault or battery and possession of cocaine in March 2022. He was released from prison on April 7, 2026 — less than two months before the shooting.

Arrest made by SWAT

JSO SWAT officers say they located Jones at his Forest Boulevard residence and took him into custody without incident.

Jones faces a no-bond status on the second-degree murder charge.

Deputies managed to safely unlock the vehicle and rescue the pup without having to break a window.

But deputies said the accident serves as an important reminder to never leave pets unattended in a vehicle, especially during Florida’s hot weather.

“Even on days that don’t feel extremely hot, temperatures inside a vehicle can rise rapidly and become dangerous for pets in a matter of minutes,” said Sheriff Bill Leeper. “We were glad our deputies could help reunite this dog with its owner safely, but we encourage everyone to take extra precautions and never leave their pets unattended in a vehicle.”

If you see a dog locked in a vehicle, first determine whether it appears to be in distress. Is the air conditioning running? Is the owner nearby? Has the dog been inside for more than a few minutes? While a dog in a car is not always an emergency, it’s important to assess the situation carefully.

If the dog is clearly suffering and the owner cannot be located, call 911 or a nearby law enforcement officer for assistance.

If instructed, you may need to forcibly enter the vehicle to save the animal.

Florida law protects individuals from liability for damages when breaking into a vehicle to rescue a vulnerable person or animal, provided that:

• There is no other reasonable way for the person or animal to exit the vehicle
• The rescuer reasonably believes the person or animal is in imminent danger of harm
• Law enforcement or 911 is contacted before or immediately after entry
• No more force than necessary is used to gain access
• The rescuer remains with the person or animal in a safe location near the vehicle until first responders arrive

A few extra minutes of caution can help prevent a tragedy, the Sheriff’s Office said.

Our news partner, the Jacksonville Daily Record, reports that the tenant is Pepsi North America, according to Jacksonville-area industrial market observers, who say Pepsi is on the radar for the site. Pepsi officials have not responded to requests for comment.

Peter Anderson, vice president of new investments for Atlanta-based Pattillo Industrial, said June 2 that Pattillo had no comment as to the NorthPoint project.

Learn more about the possible project at JaxDailyRecord.com.

In an executive order, Trump lowered tariffs on agricultural equipment, including combines and harvesters, and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, to 15% from 25%.

He expanded the existing category of industrial equipment that is subject to a 15% tariff to include mobile industrial equipment like bulldozers and forklifts — when they're imported from countries that have a trade deal with the U.S.

The order says countries that use at least 85% melted and poured or smelted and cast steel or aluminum by weight could qualify for a lower 10% duty rate, in an effort to encourage companies in other countries to use U.S. metals.

The changes go into effect Monday. They are temporary and set to expire at the end of 2027.

“In my judgment, this temporary modification appropriately accounts for these products’ roles in productive economic activity in the United States,” Trump said in his order.

Tariffs on copper, steel and aluminum were imposed during Trump's first term in 2018 under Section 232 of Trade Expansion Act of 1962 — which allows tariffs on imports that are deemed a threat to national security. He renewed those tariffs in April 2025.

Since then, Trump has been adjusting tariffs on metals and metal products. In June 2025, he hiked nearly all of his tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to a punishing 50% from 25%.

In April 2026, he set a flat 50% rate for goods made entirely or almost entirely of aluminum, steel, or copper — such as steel coils or aluminum sheet — while implementing a 25% tariff rate for derivative products made “substantially” of steel, aluminum or copper.

Barry Appleton, a law professor and co-director New York Law School’s Center for International Law, said the adjustments appear to be more about the midterm elections than true relief for farmers.

"Farm bankruptcies are soaring, farm sentiment is declining, and Republican senators are openly warning their party is heading toward midterm losses in key agricultural states," he said. “This proclamation is the White House’s response: throw the farm belt a bone before voters go to the polls.”

ACPS and the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office responded to a home on Peach Drive last month after receiving a tip about a large number of cats on the property. ACPS Chief Michael Bricker initially estimated the home could contain between 40 and 80 cats, with some potentially deceased.

The next week, Bricker confirmed 40 cats had been recovered alive and nine others were found dead.

Not the first call to this address

This was not the first time ACPS had been called to the Peach Drive home. Bricker said someone previously contacted the agency saying they had gotten in over their head. At that time, ACPS was able to get most of the animals adopted out and treated.

How you can help

With kennels at capacity, ACPS is urgently calling on Jacksonville residents to adopt or foster.

“If you’ve ever thought about adopting or fostering, there has never been a more critical time,” the shelter said in a statement. “Even making space for one cat can change everything for an animal in need.”

The shelter currently has cats and kittens of all ages, temperaments and personalities — from playful kittens to relaxed lap cats. ACPS encourages anyone interested to visit in person.

Animal Care and Protective Services is located at 2020 Forest Street and is open every day from noon to 7 p.m.

According to reporting by our news partner, the Jacksonville Daily Record, signage on the former Hooters at 4521 Southside Blvd. shows Supra Revolving Sushi Bar is moving into that spot.

The Hooters restaurant next to the Cinemark Tinseltown and XD theater complex has been empty since it closed almost a year ago.

Supra, based in Linden, New Jersey, is an all-you-can-eat concept where sushi dishes come to tables on a conveyor belt. It is also a full-service restaurant where diners can order specific items.

Learn more at JaxDailyRecord.com.

Her hair covered by a pink bonnet, Basekawike prepares porridge, omelets and bread for breakfast in a shed outside the Evangelical Medical Center in Bunia, the heart of the outbreak in eastern Congo. Lunch and dinner might include fresh fish with fufu, made of mashed plantains, finished off by fruit. She feeds both patients and health workers.

“Even though the patients have this disease, they still feel better when they eat, and the doctors have the energy to treat the sick and give them medication,” Basekawike told The Associated Press as she prepared vegetables and potatoes with goat meat in a large pot. “I’m here for them like a parent, preparing food so they feel comfortable.”

Her contribution may appear like a simple task, but it has become a critical support for the remote region as it grapples with the rapidly spreading Bundibugyo virus, the rare species of Ebola confirmed in May.

As of Tuesday, 321 cases including 48 deaths had been confirmed in the Central African nation’s three eastern provinces of Ituri, North and South Kivu, according to the World Health Organization. WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier said the number of suspected cases has dropped to 116 from 906 last weekend as many were ruled out after investigation.

Neighboring Uganda's has had 15 cases and one death confirmed, its health ministry said Tuesday. Uganda closed its border with Congo last week despite WHO guidance not to do so.

Meanwhile, Congolese authorities reopened Bunia’s airport on Tuesday for domestic flights, requiring passengers to undergo temperature checks and respect strict sanitary measures.

The International Organization for Migration on Tuesday urged governments to strengthen cross-border coordination instead, warning that border closures could drive people's movement underground and increase transmission risks.

“Viruses do not stop at borders, and neither should our response,” said Ugochi Daniels, IOM deputy director-general for operations. “When borders close, people often continue moving through informal routes where health screening and surveillance are limited.”

The Congo-Uganda border has numerous footpaths beyond formal border posts.

Before the outbreak, the region already faced one of the world's most severe food crises, because of an ongoing conflict that has displaced millions of people as government forces fight rebels. The United Nations has warned that might complicate efforts to manage the spread of the virus among an already wary population.

“Ebola is an additional crisis on top of a crisis,” said Olivier Nkakudulu, who heads the World Food Program in Ituri province.

WFP is facing a critical choice as aid cuts by the U.S. and other major partners have disrupted operations in the vulnerable region. Efforts to contain the disease, which WHO has deemed a public health emergency of international concern, have been hampered.

Meanwhile, attacks by suspicious residents on health workers and the slow delivery of aid because of the conflict have been challenging.

Responders say they have ensured patients' nutritional demands are met as “comfort food” takes on a more significant meaning.

“Today we need to increase the amount because the number of patients has gone up,” said Esther Bao, a nurse and one of the volunteers. She worried about patients who, because of their health situation, “don't eat just any meal.”

Among the rare signs of optimism, at least five people have recovered in the outbreak, which continues to spread.

More than 400 meals have been served since the food assistance began on Thursday, according to Nkakudulu.

But "without more funding, we might not be able to prioritize every suspected case,” Nkakudulu said. "We might have to focus on some and not have food to give to others."

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Adetayo reported from Lagos, Nigeria. Geir Moulson in Berlin and Mark Banchereau in Dakar, Senegal, contributed to this report.

Michelin didn’t hand out any of its coveted stars to local establishments, but nine restaurants were recognized with recommendations:

• Salt, Amelia Island
• Bearded Pig, San Marco
• Rue Saint Marc, San Marco
• Eggboy, Atlantic Beach
• Bar Citra, St.Augustine
• Sunday, St. Augustine
• Lotus Noodle Bar, St. Augustine
• Asado Life, St. Augustine
• Afternoon, Gainesville

For the full story, click here.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has escalated Moscow’s aerial campaign in recent weeks in an apparent bid to take advantage of Ukraine’s shortage of U.S.-made air defense systems and persuade an increasingly pessimistic audience at home that Moscow is prevailing in the 4-year-old war.

Emergency rescue crews digging through the wreckage of apartment buildings pulled out the bodies of a 3-year-old child as well as those of a woman and her 8-year-old son in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, officials said.

The attack stretched past dawn, with explosions reverberating across cities. Officials said 16 people were killed in Dnipro and six in Kyiv.

Residents of the capital have been on edge for days after Russia warned last week that a massive aerial attack was coming and told foreign diplomats to leave. None appeared to heed the call and no embassies immediately reported damage Tuesday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appealed for more U.S. and European support, describing the massive overnight attack as “an explicit statement by Russia: If Ukraine is not protected from ballistic missiles and other missile strikes, those strikes will continue.”

Putin has stepped up his aerial campaign against Ukraine, with Russian forces recently launching another of their powerful hypersonic Oreshnik ballistic missiles. Ukraine's shortage of air defense systems, in part because of depleted U.S. stocks from the Iran war, has left civilians especially vulnerable to ballistic missiles, even as Kyiv's defenses stop most of Moscow's drones.

A mother and daughter shelter in a bathtub

At least 81 people were wounded in the capital, said Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv City Military Administration. Iryna Salikova, 37, spent the night lying in a bathtub for protection with her 3-year-old daughter, as blasts reverberated across the city.

“Our window was broken. A cobblestone flew into the children’s room,” Salikova said, although they weren't hurt. “Thank God we’re alive. Today we’re alive, today we’re lucky.”

Russia unleashed 73 missiles and 656 drones across Ukraine, according to the country’s air force, with the main targets including Kyiv, Dnipro and the eastern cities of Poltava, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia. Ukrainian air defenses destroyed or suppressed 40 missiles and 602 drones.

Dnipro Mayor Borys Filatov proclaimed Wednesday would be a day of mourning for the dead in his city. That announcement came 20 minutes before Filatov said another drone had struck a residential building there about 2:40 p.m.

Putin seeks to change the narrative of the war

Putin is keen to generate some positive news from the conflict that began with Russia’s February 2022 invasion of its neighbor and hasn’t gone according to plan.

Western officials and analysts say Ukrainian drones are pinning down Russian troops on the front line, choking Russian supply lines in occupied regions of Ukraine and disrupting oil facilities deep inside Russia that provide vital revenue for Moscow. That has made the war, which Moscow refers to as a “special military operation,” more visible to Russians and increased pressure on Putin.

U.S.-led peace efforts have fizzled out as the sides made no progress on key differences and after the war in Iran grabbed Washington’s attention. Zelenskyy accepted an unconditional ceasefire demanded by U.S. President Donald Trump but Putin refused.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that Tuesday's bombardment struck military-industrial facilities in the Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, Khmelnytskyi and Sumy regions.

Ukraine said residential, energy and civilian infrastructure was hit but did not confirm or comment on damage to any military-related sites.

Putin signaled that Russia won’t let up its attacks. He said Tuesday that Ukraine’s May 22 drone attack on a college dormitory in Starobilsk in the Russia-controlled Luhansk region of Ukraine that killed 21 had given the war “a whole new dimension.”

Ukraine said the attack in Starobilsk hit a Russian drone pilot training center.

Man hurled from Kyiv apartment by blast

Hits of 30 ballistic missiles, three cruise missiles and 33 drones were recorded in at least 38 locations across Ukraine, according to regional authorities. Debris from destroyed drones fell on 15 locations, the air force said.

Damage was recorded to residential buildings and other civilian infrastructure in eight districts of Kyiv.

Olena Dniprovska, 65, and her husband Yevhen, 64, were wounded in their apartment in Kyiv’s Podilskyi district.

“I went out into the corridor with the phone, and before I understood what happened, everything fell on my head, the glass, and the door blew off,” said Dniprovska, dried blood streaked across her face and a bandage on her chin. “I ran out into the front door and started calling my husband from the room, but he was also blown out by the blast wave.”

“Now I have nowhere to live, the apartment is completely destroyed, no doors, no windows, no balcony. You can step straight from the room out onto the street,” she said.

In Kharkiv, at least 19 people were wounded in residential areas in the past two days — including 11 on Tuesday.

___

Illia Novikov in Kyiv, Katie Marie Davies in Manchester, England, and Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal, contributed.

___

Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

In a 4-3 vote, the Jacksonville Beach City Council approved the change on its second reading.

Mayor Chris Hoffman had previously said the proposal is aimed at easing pressure on local businesses as the Jaguars prepare for the 2026 season while EverBank Stadium undergoes the “Stadium of the Future” renovation project, a plan expected to reduce the number of fans who can attend games. The Jaguars are also scheduled to play in Orlando for the 2027 season.

“I do think some businesses will take advantage of the opportunity to have more fans at their businesses cheering on the Jags,” Hoffman said.

Under the amended ordinance, eligible establishments will have to apply for permits to extend service into approved outdoor areas on game days. Hoffman said the process would include requirements designed to limit impacts on surrounding neighborhoods.

“Our bar and restaurant community has been very positive,” Hoffman said. “There’s still a lot of barriers. It’s not easy. You still have to go through a permitting process.”

As currently written, the pilot would apply only to outdoor areas and only on Jaguars game days, beginning one hour before kickoff and ending one hour after the game.

Businesses would be required to provide added security and submit a parking plan. The ordinance also would not allow additional amplified sound beyond the game broadcast, and existing laws would still apply.

“This does not allow for open container outside of the premises or anything like that,” Hoffman said.

Now that the amendment has been approved, businesses can begin applying for permits ahead of the season.

The company sent notification letters and launched a dedicated webpage on May 27, 2026, to inform impacted customers about the breach.

What happened

On April 14, 2026, Carnival Corporation says its IT security team detected unauthorized activity involving an employee’s account. According to the company, a bad actor used social engineering tactics to deceive an employee and gain access to a limited portion of the company’s IT system.

“The company acted swiftly to block the unauthorized activity and immediately began working with third-party security experts to further strengthen its security and to conduct a thorough investigation,” the company said in a statement.

As part of that investigation, Carnival Corporation determined the unauthorized actor illegally accessed certain personal information.

What information was exposed

The company said it has been conducting a thorough analysis of the impacted data to determine what personal information was involved and to whom it belongs. While the analysis is ongoing and affected data varies by individual, the compromised information may include:

• Name
• Address
• Email address
• Phone number
• Date of birth
• Government-issued identification number, such as a driver’s license number or passport number

What Carnival Corporation is doing

Carnival Corporation is notifying affected individuals via email and is offering U.S. customers two years of complimentary credit monitoring through TransUnion. Notification letters include details about the information involved and contact information for a dedicated TransUnion call center to assist with enrollment and address questions related to the incident.

The company said it has also taken additional steps to strengthen its systems following the breach.

“In addition to the comprehensive security measures the company had in place prior to the incident, it has taken steps to further safeguard its systems, including enhancing its security and monitoring controls,” the company said.

What affected customers can do

Carnival Corporation is encouraging impacted individuals to enroll in the complimentary credit monitoring services being offered at no charge. The company is also urging customers to take the following precautions:

• Remain vigilant against identity theft or fraud
• Regularly review account statements and credit histories for signs of unauthorized activity
• Contact local police if they suspect they are a victim of identity theft or fraud

U.S. customers are entitled to one free credit report annually from each of the three major credit bureaus. Free reports can be requested at annualcreditreport.com or by calling 1-877-322-8228.

Customers may also contact the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for information on fraud alerts, security freezes, and identity theft protections at consumer.gov/idtheft or by calling 1-877-382-4357.

How to get help

Carnival Corporation has established a dedicated call center to answer questions about the cybersecurity event and the TransUnion services being offered. Customers can call the TransUnion call center at 1-844-593-8310, available 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. ET, Monday through Friday, excluding major U.S. holidays.

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Minneapolis-based General Mills said in a statement late Monday that the deal will allow the buyers to exclusively sell the Häagen-Dazs brand in ice cream shops and gifting businesses across mainland China. General Mills will continue to sell Häagen-Dazs ice cream to Chinese retail and food service operations.

Financial terms of the deal weren't disclosed. The deal is expected to close by the end of this year.

General Mills didn't immediately respond Tuesday when asked how many Häagen-Dazs stores it has in China. In its latest annual report, General Mills said it operated 332 ice cream parlors worldwide.

Ningji operates around 3,000 retail tea outlets in China. It opened its chain of stores in 2021 and has received funding from ByteDance, the Beijing-headquartered creator of TikTok, and Shunwei Capital.

Yaling Jiang, an independent Chinese consumer analyst, said Häagen-Dazs has been charging premium prices in China “without delivering sufficient product value or cultural relevance.”

Its line of products — traditional ice cream with higher fat content — has “passed its peak" in China at a time when low-fat, airy gelato options are becoming more common, she said.

Foreign businesses have also been shifting ownership of their operations toward Chinese investors as Chinese consumer confidence has stagnated and economic growth has slowed.

Starbucks said in November that it would form a joint venture with Chinese private equity firm Boyu Capital in a deal worth about $4 billion that allows Boyu to hold up to a 60% stake in its operations in China.

In February, Toronto-based Restaurant Brands International — the parent of U.S. fast food chain Burger King — said it had formed a joint venture with Chinese investment firm CPE to operate and expand the Burger King restaurant chain in China.

CPE invested about $350 million into the joint venture under the deal terms, and owns approximately 83% of the business.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport’s latest ruling in a series of Mexico vs. FIFA appeal cases over more than 10 years comes ahead of the men's national team hosting South Africa on June 11 in the storied Azteca Stadium where the chant is often heard.

The chant, a one-word slur that literally means male prostitute in Spanish, usually occurs when the opposing goalkeeper is taking a goal kick.

It went viral in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil and was heard again at the next editions in 2018 in Russia and 2022 in Qatar. Mexico fans have defied requests and education programs by the federation aiming to control the abuse.

The latest case at CAS followed FIFA prosecutions of incidents at games in 2024 against Bolivia, Uruguay, Brazil and the United States. The chant was heard by anti-discrimination monitors who also will work for FIFA at the World Cup's 104 games in Mexico, the U.S. and Canada.

CAS said its judges upheld FIFA-imposed fines totaling 140,000 Swiss francs ($178,000). They lifted a sanction of closing part of a stadium at a FIFA-organized game such as the World Cup.

The court said its judges at a hearing in Miami in March weighed the Mexican federation mitigation that it had “put measures in place since 2015 to educate, prevent and eradicate the chant.”

“They (the judges) observed that the conduct of the fans was collective and widespread, and not merely a one-off occurrence,” CAS said in a statement.

Noting the “unique nature” of the challenge facing Mexican soccer officials, the court said the federation should not escape liability.

Mexico will also host World Cup group-stage games against South Korea in Guadalajara and the Czech Republic at Azteca.

___

AP World Cup: https://apnews.com/hub/fifa-world-cup

“Every two minutes, I'd check,” Blair said.

Friday, nothing. Saturday, nothing. Sunday was mostly gone and Blair was driving home from a weekend visit to his parents' home in Virginia. As he pulled into his driveway, he realized that he had missed a phone call.

The caller was Albert Sanders Jr., the executive vice president and head of referee operations for the NBA. Turns out, that call was the email that Blair had waited years to get.

Blair called Sanders back and got the news: For the first time, he'll work a game in the NBA Finals. He's the only first-time selection in this year's group of 12 referees who will officiate the title series that starts Wednesday between the San Antonio Spurs and New York Knicks.

“Very emotional moment, very emotional moment for me, because I’ve been right there on the doorstep for so many years," Blair said. "Yeah, very emotional. This is my 18th year and one thing I had to realize going through this journey is that everybody has their own journey. Everybody has their own timetable. You become a referee, become an umpire, you get to the first round, the second round, third round. You just have to worry about yourself and your journey.”

The league released the full list of selections on Tuesday. Scott Foster was picked to work his 19th finals, the most among current referees. The other selections besides Foster and Blair: Tony Brothers (15th finals), Marc Davis (15th), James Capers (14th), Zach Zarba (13th), John Goble (10th), Josh Tiven (7th), James Williams (6th), Courtney Kirkland (5th), Sean Wright (3rd) and Tyler Ford (2nd).

The league typically reveals the crew that will work each game around 9 a.m. EDT on game day.

“Being selected to work the NBA Finals is the highest honor for an NBA official, and I congratulate them on an outstanding and well-earned achievement,” said Byron Spruell, the NBA's president for league operations. “We are grateful for their unwavering dedication to the game and pursuit of excellence in their craft.”

Blair was a second-round pick by the Houston Rockets in 1992, though never played a regular-season game in the league. He played internationally before starting his referee career and has worked more than 1,000 NBA games since 2008.

Finals referees get special white warm-up jackets, only given to those selected to work the title series. Blair already has two of those from 2021 and 2022 when he was an alternate, but the one he gets this time will have much more meaning.

“This is so funny,” Blair said. "One referee called me and he said, ‘I know you got two other white jackets, but they had an asterisk on it. So, you can throw those away. Now you got a real one.’”

___

AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/nba

Ruto said on Monday that the U.S. had a long-standing partnership with Kenya on health matters and that the quarantine facility at Laikipia Air Base was one of 24 facilities that had been established in the event of an Ebola outbreak in the country.

Some Kenyans have opposed the Laikipia facility after the U.S. last week said no American Ebola patient would be allowed to return home and that patients would instead be quarantined at the facility in Kenya. The U.S. intends to commit $13 million to the partnership with Kenya.

The high court on Tuesday extended orders issued Friday suspending the construction of the facility and the arrival of foreign patients. The case had been filed by the Law Society of Kenya and a constitutional watchdog, Katiba Institute, who cited Kenya's fragile health system as unable to handle foreign patients.

Kenyans took to the streets on Monday and Tuesday to protest a plan to quarantine Americans in the country. Protest organizers said two people were killed during Monday’s demonstrations outside Laikipia Air Base.

Speaking for the first time on the matter, Ruto said he agreed to the establishment of the facility based on existing bilateral relations.

“When President Trump asked the government of Kenya to support them by having a center at Laikipia Air Base, I gave the OK because it was an agreement and a partnership with friends who have worked with Kenya for 30-40 years,” he said.

Ruto said the facilities established across the country under the partnership would also benefit Kenyans in the event of an Ebola outbreak.

“We are a responsible government. We know what we are doing. People should relax. Politicians should avoid reckless, unnecessary talk that doesn’t mean anything,” he said.

Kenya has not recorded any Ebola cases, but neighboring Uganda has reported nine cases and one death confirmed. In Congo, 321 cases and 48 deaths had been confirmed as of Tuesday in the Central African nation’s three eastern provinces of Ituri, North and South Kivu, according to the World Health Organization.

Thankfully, there are several ways to reduce that stress, according to mental health experts who have helped people who have experienced disasters. One of the most important things to do is have a plan, they say.

“Preparation is always one of the most powerful tools that I can imagine — not just for safety, but also for mental health,” said Ruben Juarez, a health economist at University of Hawaii professor who directed the Maui Wildfires Exposure Study, which looked at health and social impacts of the deadly 2023 fires.

And when the disaster is over, they say, try to restore a sense of normalcy by seeking out support, returning to routines and helping others.

Kevin Westmoreland, who co-owns The Corner Kitchen in Asheville, North Carolina, learned meditation techniques and breathing exercises to deal with the stresses that the restaurant industry can present. When the remnants of Hurricane Helene unleashed torrents of rain on the state two years ago, water and mud poured into the restaurant and “everything was tossed around inside the building as if it was in a blender,” he recalled.

“All you could do to get through it is try to take a breath and move forward, step by step,” he said.

Plan ahead for unpredictable weather

One way to ease anxiety is to prepare as best you can ahead of time, including hashing out a plan for what to do during a disaster.

Making an evacuation plan and putting together an emergency kit can provide a sense of control, said Melissa Brymer, a psychologist and director of terrorism and disaster programs at the UCLA-Duke National Center for Child Traumatic Stress.

She recommends a step-by-step guide for families at ready.gov/plan. The American Red Cross also has extensive guides for hurricane preparedness. Make sure to consider special preparations for anyone with disabilities, special needs, new mothers and expectant mothers, Brymer advises. Also make sure that pets are included in disaster plans.

Weather is unpredictable, so it helps to accept that there are things you won't be able to control.

Being informed can also give people a sense of control in extreme weather. Focus on facts by gathering information from trusted sources and stay up-to-date on weather watches and warnings.

Share your fears and concerns with friends, relatives, a therapist or others who can give you support, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America.

How to talk to children about storms without alarming them

Parents should consider talking to children in a matter-of-fact way, explaining that storms are normal. Children might be afraid of storms, but many are interested in learning more about them.

It's OK to acknowledge that it's a stressful time, Brymer said. But adults should limit some conversations to only other adults to avoid overly worrying children.

“Kids kind of register our panic, and then they’re going to panic if we’re starting to panic,” she said. “We don’t want them to start worrying for us."

Keep track of your mental health

One of the Maui wildfires study's findings was that mental health affects rippled through the entire community and were found in many people who weren't in the burned area, Juarez said. It's a reminder to be aware that your mental health could be affected by disasters that strike your community, even if they don't directly affect your home or neighborhood.

Westmoreland said one of things that helped him cope after Helene was to try and put things in perspective.

“We try to look at it like it's just a business and equipment — as long as our employees are safe, those are the important things,” he said.

The restaurant, built around 1895 by American industrialist George Vanderbilt in the Biltmore Village section of Asheville, has since reopened after major renovations and repairs.

The Anxiety and Depression Association has more tips, including:

— Find a positive activity such as donating blood, preparing care packages or volunteering to help others. That can offer a sense of purpose to counteract the feelings of being powerless.

— Seek support from others dealing with the same issues.

— Be aware that if your symptoms persist for several weeks, it may be a sign of post-traumatic stress disorder and you should seek help.

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Martin is a former Associated Press reporter.

Programmers at the American Cinematheque, a nonprofit arts group that curates for several historic theaters in Los Angeles, heard the cries for comedies and thought, well, what if they did the opposite? Bleak Week, which would conveniently coincide with the city’s June Gloom, could be the art house version of Shark Week.

“We didn’t know how it was going to go,” said Grant Moninger, the group's artistic director. “People may like this … or people may look at it and somehow be offended.”

In 2022, he and Chris LeMaire programmed wall-to-wall selections of world cinema’s most austere offerings, from Elem Klimov’s anti-war epic “Come and See” to Béla Tarr’s 439-minute “Sátántangó.” LA-based film critic Katie Walsh was one of the early champions of the concept. When it was announced she remembered tweeting the “sickos” meme.

“I was just like, yes, this is for me, this for the sickos,” Walsh said. “We were really enthusiastic about it online. I think that they were like, OK, great, this is like a concept that is going to translate.”

From niche experiment to global footprint

Five years later, Bleak Week has gone global. Across June, there will be Bleak Weeks taking place in 100 theaters in 73 cities spanning eight countries, from the United Kingdom and Canada to Puerto Rico and Latin America. In the United States, it’s not just the biggest cities either: There are versions in Columbia, Missouri (Ragtag Cinema), Pittsburgh (Row House Cinema), Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, (Cinema Art Theatre), Brookline, Massachusetts (Coolidge Corner Theatre) and Albuquerque, New Mexico, (Guild Cinema), to name a few.

“Although Bleak Week sounds depressing, it’s really a celebration of the human experience,” Moninger said. “It’s really what cinema is about: empathy and understanding the world.”

Ennui at the movie theater wasn't niche after all. Those nearly 7 ½-hour showings of “Sátántangó” regularly sell out. It’s not uncommon to see famous people both on the stage and in the audience ( Sean Baker and Mikey Madison were spotted at a screening one year of “In a Glass Cave,” about an ex-Nazi pedophile). Even Tarr, the great Hungarian filmmaker who died earlier this year and once said he’d never come back to the United States, made an exception and attended Bleak Week in year two. Expansion soon followed to The Paris Theatre in New York and The Prince Charles Cinema in London.

“The thing about cinema is that you get to experience all the colors of human experience,” said Walsh, who has both attended and served as a moderator over the years. “Bleak Week offers a chance to kind of like revel in this specific feeling in a lot of ways. I just really love it. I see stuff that I would never ever see elsewhere.”

At the end of the movies, Walsh said, “I usually have to go stare at a wall for like 30 minutes.”

Over 300 movies at Bleak Week 2026

The fifth edition is already underway in Los Angeles at the Egyptian Theatre, the Aero Theatre and the Los Feliz 3. On the schedule are appearances by the likes of Isabelle Huppert, who will do Q&As for several films, including “The Piano Teacher” and “Heaven’s Gate,” filmmaker Ari Aster, showing his director’s cut of “Midsommar” and Denis Villeneuve on behalf of his breakout film “Incendies.”

One of the most liberating aspects about the concept is that there’s no genre stranglehold on the idea of bleak cinema. It can be wartime. It can be interpersonal drama. It can be fantasy. It can even be family friendly. They’ve empowered local programmers to make their own selections; This year there are over 300 movies being shown globally.

“They know their audience. They know what films will resonate,” said LeMaire. “It’s fun for us to see all the different approaches.”

The Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago is focusing on animation, playing movies like Hayao Miyazaki’s “Princess Mononoke,” Martin Rosen’s “Watership Down” and Michael Schaack’s “Felidae.” The Argentina program will include both local films and a retrospective of Aster’s works. At Vancouver’s historic Park Theatre, selections were made by local filmmakers and “friends of the venue.” Actor Finn Wolfhard elected “The Celebration,” “Sinners” cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw chose “The Deer Hunter” and “Anora” producer Samantha Quan picked “The Virgin Suicides.”

The most programmed film this year is Isao Takahata’s animated “Grave of the Fireflies,” about a boy and his sister fighting for survival in post-World War II Japan after losing their parents. One movie they make a point to show every year is “Come and See,” which Moninger said is “the bleakest of the bleak experience.”

The concept is open to interpretation, as long as it’s a narrative film. The one thing it can’t be is a documentary.

“There’s something still yet triumphant about taking horrible experiences or someone’s personal tragedy and being able to turn it into art,” Moninger said. “That’s really one of our only rules is that we just don’t do docs.”

When it’s all said and done, at least in Los Angeles, they make sure to close with something sweet: The three “Paddington” movies. It’s what they like to call a “marmalade chaser.”

The process could grind to a halt, however, after the Trump administration said Friday that it intended to appeal a federal judge’s order to allow all companies that paid the invalidated duties to seek refunds, not just the ones that filed lawsuits.

Until the Department of Justice informed the judge of its planned appeal, the refund system overseen by U.S. Customs and Border Protection had worked fairly smoothly. Refunds reached the bank accounts of the first successful applicants on May 12, about three weeks after importers and their customs brokers could start submitting claims, according to CBP.

Applications for refunds totaling $85 billion — more than half of the $166 billion the agency estimated the government owes to companies that paid the tariffs on imported goods — were accepted for processing as of May 22, CBP reported in a legal filing earlier in the week. It said it had so far directed the Treasury Department to issue $20.6 billion in refunds.

The administration revealed its appeal preparations while objecting to a demand by Judge Richard K. Eaton for CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott to appear in the U.S. Court of International Trade on June 9. The judge said he wants to know how long it would take to repay all 330,000 importers that might be eligible for refunds and whether he should require the government to speed up the process.

Justice Department lawyers asked Eaton to allow Scott's deputies to appear in his place, arguing that as a high-ranking presidential appointee, the CBP chief could not be compelled to testify. They also argued that Eaton exceeded his authority when he determined that the Supreme Court's ruling entitled “all importers of record’’ to refunds.

“For that reason, defendants intend to appeal the court’s universal injunction," the lawyers wrote, adding that CBP would continue to move “as quicky as it can to process refunds in a phased approach” for businesses that filed legal complaints asserting their rights to refunds.

Eaton responded that he needed to hear directly from Scott whether the government would return all of the money it collected between April 2025, when Trump put what he called “reciprocal” tariffs on most countries, the Supreme Court's decision in late February.

“It is undisputed that the remedy for this unlawful collection is for the United States government to refund the unlawfully collected duties," the judge wrote.

Refunds coming in phases

Customs and Border Protection is handling refund claims in phases, focusing first on payments that weren't finalized before the Supreme Court handed down its 6-3 decision. CBP officials said those later, estimated payments were simpler to process because they remained open in its system.

In Friday’s filing, the Justice Department said the agency required technological upgrades to its refund portal and “importer-specific orders” in each lawsuit that businesses filed before it could recalculate the final tax bills for older “liquidated” accounts.

More than 1,000 companies filed lawsuits in the trade court to recoup their tariff costs. It was not immediately clear how many importers that paid the tariffs did not sue and might not receive refunds if an appeal of Eaton's blanket order succeeds.

Ryan Majerus, a partner on the international trade team at law firm King & Spalding, said he thinks "it’s definitely a fraction of the total in terms of folks who paid” the defunct duties. An appeal would likely affect only imported merchandise that was in the U.S. for 314 days, a time when CPB issues its official determination of the duties owed, he said.

“This doesn’t cover everybody, only those really old entries,” Majerus said about a potential appeal.

But filing an appeal could slow the refund process even if the government “already lost the war” before the Supreme Court, according to Barry Appleton, a professor at New York Law School and managing partner of Appleton & Associates International Lawyers.

“If the government can freeze the refund machinery while it litigates, it buys months, and every month of delay is a month the Treasury keeps the money,” Appleton said.

Price cuts promised

Some national retail chains said they planned to use their tariff refunds refunds to lower customer prices on some items. Walmart Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey told analysts last week that the company would implement price cuts even though the maximum refund it might be eligible for represented less than half of 1% of Walmart’s annual U.S. sales.

Costco intends to return the tariff costs that it passed on to members, CEO Ron Vachris said. How much of its refund the big-box retail chain redistributes, when and in what form, depends on factors such as the size of the refund, when it arrives, and developments in a lawsuit seeking tariff compensation for Costco customers, Vachris told investors Thursday.

Consumers may see refunds first from shipping companies such as FedEx, UPS and DHL, which acted as customs brokers when they delivered products ordered from overseas.

The companies charged either the sellers that shipped the packages or the buyers who received them and submitted the collected tariffs to CBP. All three promised to transmit any refunds they get to the customers that paid the import taxes.

Putting refunds back into the business

The Supreme Court invalidated only the country-by-country tariff rates Trump set by citing the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The president also has moved to introduce new tariffs since the court’s Feb. 20 ruling.

Some smaller companies told The Associated Press that the tariff refunds they’ve received so far would go toward paying remaining or future tariffs or getting back on solid financial footing after more than a year of uncertainty and additional costs.

Jay Foreman, CEO of toy company Basic Fun, said he received about $450,000, or 7% of his total claim, over two consecutive days. He took the repayment as a positive sign but that the pace since then seemed like a “total slow roll.”

“It’s time to release the funds back into the economy, especially given how much we and others need these funds to support our businesses,” Foreman said.

Men’s grooming brand Manscaped has received about 30% of the $12 million in refunds it applied for, President Kevin Datoo said. The San Diego company deferred investments and took on debt to pay tariffs on imports from Indonesia, China and elsewhere in Asia, he said.

“We need to shore up the balance sheet because there’s still a whole second chapter here,” Datoo said.

Melkon Khosrovian, who owns Greenbar Distillery in Los Angeles, said he applied for a tariff refund of about $90,000 for 17 different shipments of herbs, spices and packaging that are hard to find domestically. To date, he said he received $18,000.

Khosrovian invested in automating his bottling system last year to reduce personnel costs while his import expenses grew. He recalled how the White House had argued the tariffs would create more U.S. manufacturing jobs.

The tariffs were “painful,” he said. “Our choices were bad and worse: raise prices and lose customers, or keep prices the same and not make any money.”

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AP writers Anne D’Innocenzio and Stan Choe in New York, and Lisa Leff in London contributed to this report.

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This story was first published on May. 30, 2026. It was updated on Jun. 2, 2026 to correct the name of the law firm where Ryan Majerus is a partner. It’s King & Spalding, not King & Spalding.

Left, who was a securities analyst, trader, and guest commentator on television channels including CNBC and Fox Business, was charged in July 2024 with one count of engaging in a securities fraud scheme, 17 counts of securities fraud, and one count of making false statements to federal investigators. As a short seller, Left would make money betting that stocks would fall.

The Justice Department said Tuesday that Left was convicted of one count of participating in a securities fraud scheme and 12 counts of securities fraud. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Aug. 31. He faces a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison.

“Andrew Left used his expertise to profit at the expense of retail investors, ordinary people who owned the stocks he targeted. He callously boasted that it was like ‘taking candy from a baby,’” Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, said in a statement. “Egregious schemes like this strike at the heart of free, fair and open markets, and warrant prosecution when they involve criminal manipulation. Investors should have confidence that U.S. markets are safe and free from the type of deliberate manipulation that Left engaged in to enrich himself at the expense of American investors.”

The Justice Department previously said that Left conducted business under the name Citron Research, which had a website that published investment recommendations. He published research on companies ranging from Tesla and GameStop to Grand Canyon Education and Peloton.

According to the indictment, Left would comment on publicly traded companies and make recommendations on the shares. The commentary often included sensationalized headlines (“Investors Peddling Themselves into Frenzy”) and exaggerated language to maximize the reaction it would get from the stock market. As alleged, Left knowingly exploited his ability to move stock prices by targeting stocks popular with retail investors and posting recommendations on social media to manipulate the market and make fast, easy money.

The indictment further alleged that before Citron would publish its commentary, Left would create long or short positions in a public company on which he was commenting in his trading accounts and prepared to quickly close those positions after Citron’s publication and take profits on the short-term price movement caused by his commentary.

In a post on social media platform X under the Citron Research handle, Left expressed his opposition to the conviction.

“We disagree with the jury and this does not stop here,” the post said. “We will keep fighting for free, honest speech and opportunity, the backbone of this country. This is not over.”

U.S. employers posted 7.6 million job vacancies in April, the Labor Department reported Tuesday, up from 6.9 million in March and most since May 2024. Economists had forecast just 6.8 million openings.

The department's Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) showed that layoffs fell but so did the number of Americans quitting their jobs - a sign of confidence in their prospects. And the report's measure of gross hiring also dropped in April, suggesting that companies remain reluctant to add new workers even as they hold on to the ones they have.

The American job market has been recovering from a dismal 2025. Last year, companies, nonprofits and government agencies added fewer than 10,000 jobs a month, least outside a recession since 2002.

This year has been better — job growth averaged 76,000 a month from January through April. Big tax refunds — the product of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax cut bill last year — have given the economy a lift this year, offsetting the impact of sharply higher energy prices since the United States and Israel attacked Iran Feb. 28. But the refunds have mostly been paid out and are fading as an economic booster.

The United States also doesn’t need as many new jobs as it used to. Trump’s immigration crackdown and Baby Boomer retirements mean that fewer people are competing for work. As a result, the so-called break-even point — the number of new jobs needed every month to keep the unemployment rate stable — has dropped to near zero from 155,000 a month two or three years ago, according to an April report by Federal Reserve economists Seth Murray and Ivan Vidangos.

On Friday, the Labor Department will issue its job report for May. The numbers are expected to show that employers added 100,000 jobs last month, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet. The unemployment rate is expected to have stayed at a low 4.3%.

Critical to NASA's Artemis moon program, the company's massive New Glenn rocket blew up during an engine-firing test at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. A lightning tower and the transporter-erector used to move and hoist the rocket were destroyed in the blast that sent shock waves across the state.

CEO Dave Limp said the methane, hydrogen and oxygen tanks look to be in good shape. The water tank is also fine and the support tower that's still standing can be repaired in place. A booster and other rocket parts housed nearby were not damaged.

Overall, this was “a bit of good news,” Limp said in an X update, adding: “We will fly again before the end of this year.”

The cause is still under investigation.

Just two days before the accident, NASA awarded a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Blue Origin, choosing New Glenn rockets to launch a pair of rovers to the moon ahead of the arrival of the first Artemis moonwalkers who will drive them. New Glenn also is needed to launch the company's Blue Moon lander that will be used to get astronauts to the lunar surface in the coming years.

NASA is aiming for as early as 2028 for the first moon landing by astronauts since Apollo 17 in 1972.

The space agency will “do all we can” to get the pad back in action as soon as possible “while staying extremely focused on progressing the lander,” Administrator Jared Isaacman said via X.

Blue Origin’s New Glenn line of reusable rockets — named after John Glenn, the first American in orbit — has launched only three times. It’s not nearly as big as SpaceX’s Starship that is making test flights to the fringes of space from Texas. NASA has ordered up Starships, in addition to Blue Moon landers, to get Artemis astronauts to the lunar surface in the years ahead.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

“He transcended boxing into every space you can imagine,” she told The Associated Press this week ahead of the 10-year anniversary of Ali’s death on June 3, 2016, after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease.

“Muhammad lived by this mantra: service to others is the rent we pay for our room here on earth," Lonnie Ali said during an interview at The Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Kentucky. “He showed up every day with kindness and empathy in his heart for people who are in need."

Ali, known as the “Louisville Lip” in his hometown, rose to prominence as a trash-talking world champion boxer in the 1960s and began speaking about civil rights issues as his star was rising. He is widely regarded as the most famous and influential boxer of all time, winning the heavyweight title three times.

The Ali Center is sponsoring a “Day of Compassion” on Wednesday, the 10th anniversary of his death, to promote acts of service and caring. Lonnie Ali, who serves as the center's lifetime director, said the hope is an expanding annual event to highlight works of service and volunteering.

The day will focus on one of "the core values that made up Muhammad Ali” in an increasingly divided country, she said.

“Today, we are in a place where we are losing touch with our humanity and with each other,” she said. “It’s causing rifts, not just in families and communities, but in this nation. We’re becoming increasingly polarized and separated, and sort of retreating to people who think like us, look like us, and not really reaching out.”

She also challenged political leaders to lead with compassion, noting the recent weakening of the 1965 Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court.

“We should always be thinking about how we can uplift a community, not how we can make it harder for them,” Lonnie Ali said. “We want equal representation in this country. You can’t have equal representation when you’re denying people voting rights, you can’t do that.”

But there is hope, she said, and she saw that when the city of Louisville came together for a weeklong celebration of Ali's life in 2016. The week was capped by a funeral procession through the city and past her late husband's modest childhood home near downtown Louisville. Former President Bill Clinton and actor Billy Crystal spoke at his funeral, and Will Smith, who portrayed Ali in a 2001 movie, was a pallbearer.

The outpouring of love for Ali at his hometown funeral service was livestreamed to millions around the world. A decade later, Ali’s face graced a U.S. Postal Service stamp for the first time, showing his enduring influence.

“We’re talking about people who traveled thousands of miles to come here, who had never met the man, never laid eyes on him personally, but wanted to ... give their last respects to him: kings, princes, presidents, heads of state, celebrities, sports figures,” Lonnie Ali said.