WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court said Monday it will decide on reversing a 90-year precedent that has protected independent agencies from direct control by the president.
The court’s conservative majority has already upheld President Trump’s firing of Democratic appointees at the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board. And in a separate order on Monday, it upheld Trump’s removal of a Democratic appointee at the Federal Trade Commission.
Those orders signal the court is likely to rule for the president and that he has the full authority to fire officials at independent agencies, even if Congress said they had fixed terms.
The only hint of doubt has focused on the Federal Reserve Board. In May, when the court upheld the firing of an NLRB official, it said its decision does not threaten the independence of the Federal Reserve.
The court described it as “a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States.” Trump did not share that view. He threatened to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell during the summer because he had not lowered interest rates.
Trump’s lawyers sent an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court last week seeking to have Cook removed now.
Long before Trump’s presidency, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. had argued that the president has the constitutional power to control federal agencies and to hire or fire all officials who exercise significant executive authority.
But that view stands in conflict with what the court has said for more than a century. Since 1887, when Congress created the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate railroad rates, lawmakers on Capitol Hill believed they had the authority to create independent boards and commissions.
Typically, the president would be authorized appoint officials who would serve a fixed term set by law. At times, Congress also required the boards have a mix of both Republican and Democratic appointees.
The Supreme Court unanimously upheld that understanding in a 1935 case called Humphrey’s Executor. The justices said then these officials made judicial-type decisions, and they should be shielded from direct control by the president.
That decision was a defeat for President Franklin Roosevelt who tried to fire a Republican appointee on the Federal Trade Commission.
In recent years, the chief justice and his conservative colleagues have questioned the idea that Congress can shield officials from direct control by the president.
In Monday’s order, the court said it will hear arguments in December on “whether the statutory removal protections for members of the Federal Trade Commission violate the separation of powers and, if so, whether Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, 295 U. S. 602 (1935), should be overruled.”
Justice Elena Kagan has repeatedly dissented in these cases and argued that Congress has the power to make the law and structure the government, not the president.
Joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, she objected on Monday that the court has continued to fire independent officials at Trump’s request.
“Our emergency docket should never be used, as it has been this year, to permit what our own precedent bars,” she wrote. “Still more, it should not be used, as it also has been, to transfer government authority from Congress to the President, and thus to reshape the Nation’s separation of powers.”
These are dark times, the average cynic might argue.
But do not despair.
If you focus on the positive, rather than the negative, you’ll have to agree that the United States of America is on top and still climbing.
Yes, protesters gathered Thursday outside “Jimmy Kimmel Live” in Hollywood to denounce ABC’s suspension of the host and President Trump’s threat to revoke licenses from networks that criticize him, despite repeated vows by Trump and top deputies to defend free speech.
You can call it hypocrisy.
I call it moxie.
And by the way, demonstrators were not arrested or deported, and the National Guard was not summoned (as far as I know).
Do you see what I mean? Just tilt your head back a bit, and you can see sunshine breaking through the clouds.
Let’s take the president’s complaint that he read “someplace” that the networks “were 97% against me.” Some might see weakness in that, or thin skin. Others might wonder where the “someplace” was that the president discovered his TV news favorability rating stands at 3%, given that he could get caught drowning puppies and cheating at golf and still get fawning coverage from at least one major network.
But Trump had good reason to be grumpy. He was returning from a news conference in London, where he confused Albania and Armenia and fumbled the pronunciation of Azerbaijan, which sounded a bit more like Abracadabra.
It’s not his fault all those countries all start with an A. And isn’t there a geography lesson in it for all of us, if not a history lesson?
We move on now to American healthcare, and the many promising developments under way in the nation’s capital, thanks to Trump’s inspired choice of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as chief of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Those who see the glass half empty would argue that Kennedy has turned the department into a morgue, attempting to kill COVID-19 vaccine research, espousing backwater views about measles, firing public health experts, demoralizing the remaining staff and rejecting decades worth of biomedical advances despite having no medical training or expertise.
But on the plus side, Kennedy is going after food dyes.
It’s about time, and thank you very much.
I’m not sure what else will be left in a box of Trix or Lucky Charms when food coloring is removed, but I am opposed to fake food coloring, unless it’s in a cocktail, and I’d like to think most Americans are with me on this.
Also on the bright side: Kennedy is encouraging Americans to do chin-ups and pushups for better health.
Are you going to sit on the radical left side of your sofa and gripe about what’s happened to your country, or get with the program and try to do a few pushups?
OK, so Trump’s efforts to shut down the war on cancer is a little scary. As the New York Times reported, on the chopping block is development of a new technique for colorectal cancer prevention, research into immunotherapy cancer prevention, a study on improving childhood cancer survival rates, and better analysis of pre-malignant breast tissue in high-risk women.
But that could all be fake news, or 97% of it, at least. And if it’s not?
All that research and all those doctors and scientists can apply for jobs in other countries, just like all the climate scientists whose work is no longer a national priority. The more who leave, the better, because the brain drain is going to free up a lot of real estate and help solve the housing crisis.
Thank you, President Trump.
Is it any wonder that Trump has been seen recently wearing a MAGA-red hat that says “TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!”
Well, mostly everything.
Climate change appears to be real.
The war in Ukraine didn’t end as promised.
The war in the Middle East is still raging.
Grocery prices did not go down on day one, and some goods cost more because of tariffs.
As for the promise of a new age of American prosperity, there’s no rainbow in sight yet, although there is a pot of gold in the White House, with estimates of billions in profits for Trump family businesses since he took office,
But for all of that, along with an approval rating that has dropped since he took office in January, Trump exudes confidence. So much so that he proudly wears that bright red hat, which he was giving out in the Oval office, and which retails for $25.
It’s another ingenious economic stimulation plan.
And there’s an important lesson here for all of us.
Never admit defeat, and when things don’t go your way, stand tall, adjust your hat, and find someone to blame.
We should all have our own hats made.
Doctors could wear hats saying they’ve never gotten a diagnosis wrong.
Dentists could wear hats saying they’ve never pulled the wrong tooth.
TV meteorologists could wear hats saying — well, maybe not — that they’ve gotten every forecast right.
I’m having hats made as you read this.
LOPEZ IS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!
Please don’t have me fired, Mr. President, if you disagree.
As for Jimmy Kimmel, I’m offering this idea free of charge:
If you ever get your job back, you, your sidekick Guillermo, and the entire studio audience should be wearing hats.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris revealed details of a phone conversation she held with President Donald Trump after conceding the 2024 presidential election.
Newsweek reached out to the White House via email Thursday night for comment.
Why It Matters
Harris’ concession, her phone call with Trump and the new memoir carry political and historical significance.
The book documents the end of a 107-day campaign that placed the sitting vice president atop the Democratic ticket after former President Joe Biden withdrew, and offers an inside account of strategic decisions that shaped the race—notably Harris’ choice of running mate and calculations on electability and coalition-building.
These decisions, and how she recounts them, could shape how Democrats assess strategy moving forward.
What To Know
According to excerpts reviewed by The New York Times, Harris said that during her concession phone call, she asked Trump to help bring the country together but knew in the moment it was “a lost cause.”
According to the Times, Trump said, “I am going to be so nice and respectful.”
“You are a tough, smart customer, and I say that with great respect. And you also have a beautiful name. I got use of that name, it’s Kamala,” Trump said, per the Times.
Harris said that Trump also pronounced her name correctly on the call after mispronouncing it while campaigning, the outlet added.
The former vice president also highlighted her selection of a running mate, saying she felt the world was not ready for a Black woman and a gay man on one ticket, so she did not choose former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
“He would have been an ideal partner,” Harris wrote, “if I were a straight white man. But we were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man. But knowing what was at stake, it was too big of a risk,” per an excerpt reported by the Times.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the Emerge 20th Anniversary Gala in San Francisco on April 30. (Photo by CAMILLE COHEN/AFP via Getty Images) Former Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the Emerge 20th Anniversary Gala in San Francisco on April 30. (Photo by CAMILLE COHEN/AFP via Getty Images)
What People Are Saying
Conservative commentator Scott Jennings, on X Thursday: “Kamala Harris claims she couldn’t pick Pete Buttigieg as her VP because he’s gay, so she settled for buffoon Tim Walz. So to her, being gay is a bigger liability than endorsing taxpayer-funded sex changes for minors?! This logic is incoherent. Voters made the right choice.”
This is a developing story that will be updated with additional information.
WASHINGTON — At a banquet table fit for a king, but set specially for him, President Trump called his state visit to the United Kingdom this week “one of the highest honors of my life.”
He then proceeded to tell guests at the white tie event that the United States was “a very sick country” last year before becoming “the hottest” again under his rule.
During a news conference with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the Chequers estate Thursday, hailing a bilateral deal on artificial intelligence investments said to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars, Trump called America’s relationship with Britain “unbreakable,” bigger than any single esoteric policy disagreement.
But he quickly pivoted from magnanimity on the world stage, denying the results of his 2020 election defeat and calling exclusively on conservative reporters, who asked questions about Britain’s Christian nature and his predecessor’s alleged use of an autopen.
It was a familiar study in contrasts from the president, who routinely mixes diplomacy with domestic politics in his meetings with foreign leaders. Yet the sound of Trump engaging in fractious political discourse — not at the White House or a political event in Florida or Missouri, but inside Britain’s most revered halls — struck a discordant tone.
The Mirror, a national British tabloid aligned with Starmer’s Labour Party, wrote that Trump’s “wild … political rant” at Windsor Castle alongside King Charles III “seriously broke royal protocol.”
On Wednesday evening, as the formal banquet concluded, Trump took to his social media platform to designate a far left-wing political movement called Antifa as “a major terrorist organization,” describing the group as “A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER.”
President Trump appears with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at a news conference Thursday at Chequers near Aylesbury, England.
(Evan Vucci / Associated Press)
The move prompted a question to Starmer at the Chequers news conference from a right-ring reporter on whether he would consider taking similar action against leftist British groups.
“We obviously will take decisions for ourselves. I don’t want to comment on the decisions of the president,” Starmer said. “But we take our decisions ourselves.”
In another exchange, Trump repeated dramatically exaggerated figures on the number of undocumented migrants who entered the United States during the Biden administration, as well as false claims about the 2020 presidential election.
“I don’t want to be controversial, but you see what’s happened, and you see all the information that’s come out,” Trump said. “We won in 2020, big. And I said, let’s run. We gotta run. Because I saw what’s happening.”
The Royal Family went beyond its own rule book to show Trump extraordinary hospitality, honoring the president’s arrival with a 41-gun salute typically reserved for special, domestic occasions, such as the king’s birthday.
King Charles was hosting Trump for an unprecedented second state visit — a gesture never before extended to an American president — after the king’s mother, Queen Elizabeth II, greeted him at Windsor in 2019.
“That’s a first and maybe that’s going to be the last time. I hope it is, actually,” Trump said in his banquet speech, prompting the king to chuckle and balk.
At the stunning dinner, along a table seating 160 people in St. George’s Hall, guests were offered a 1912 cognac honoring the birth year of the president’s Scottish-born mother, as well as a whiskey cocktail inspired by his heritage. The president, for his part, does not drink.
First Lady Melania Trump, left, President Trump, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Lady Victoria Starmer watch the Red Devils parachute display team at Chequers, the country home of the British prime minister, on Thursday.
(Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)
But it is unclear whether the king’s soft-power diplomacy helped shift Trump closer to London’s priorities on foreign affairs. A growing chorus in Britain opposes Israel’s continued military operations in Gaza, and major U.K. parties are aligned on a moral and strategic need to support Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.
“Our countries have the closest defense, security and intelligence relationship ever known,” Charles said at the dinner. “In two world wars, we fought together to defeat the forces of tyranny.
“Today, as tyranny once again threatens Europe, we and our allies stand together in support of Ukraine, to deter aggression and secure peace,” the king added.
A king’s request for Europe
Trump’s reciprocal remarks did not mention Ukraine. But at Chequers, the president repeated his general disappointment with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the ongoing war, a conflict Putin has escalated with attacks on civilians and the British Council building in Kyiv since meeting with Trump in Alaska a month ago.
“He’s let me down. He’s really let me down,” said Trump, offering no details on what steps he might take next.
Starmer, pressing to leverage the pomp of Trump’s state visit for actionable policy change, said that a coordinated response to Putin’s aggression would be forthcoming and “decisive.”
“In recent days, Putin has shown his true face, mounting the biggest attack since the invasion began, with yet more bloodshed, yet more innocents killed, and unprecedented violations of NATO airspace,” Starmer said, referencing Russia’s Sept. 9 drone flights over Poland. “These are not the actions of someone who wants peace.”
“It’s only when the president has put pressure on Putin,” Starmer added, “that he’s actually shown any inclination to move.”
WASHINGTON — President Trump appealed to the Supreme Court on Thursday seeking to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook from the independent board that can raise or lower interest rates.
The appeal “involves yet another case of improper judicial interference with the President’s removal authority — here, interference with the President’s authority to remove members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors for cause,” Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer wrote.
The appeal is the second this month asking the court to give Trump broad new power over the economy.
The first, to be heard in November, will decide if the president to free to impose large import taxes on products coming into this country.
The new case could determine if he is free to remake the Federal Reserve Board by removing a Democratic appointee who he says may have broken the law.
Trump’s lawyers argue that a Fed governor has no legal right to challenge the president’s decision to fire her.
“Put simply, the President may reasonably determine that interest rates paid by the American people should not be set by a Governor who appears to have lied about facts material to the interest rates she secured for herself — and refuses to explain the apparent misrepresentations,” Trump’s lawyer said.
Trump has chafed at the Federal Reserve board for keeping interest rates high to fight inflation, and he threatened to fire board Chairman Jerome Powell, even though Trump appointed him to that post in 2018.
But last month, Trump turned his attention to Cook and said he had cause to fire her.
Congress wrote the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 intending to give the central bank board some independence from politics and the current president.
Its seven members are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, and they serve staggered terms of 14 years, unless “removed for cause by the president.”
The law does not define what amounts to cause.
President Biden appointed Cook in 2023 and she was confirmed to a full term.
In August, however, Bill Pulte, Trump’s director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, alleged Cook committed mortgage fraud when she took out two housing loans in 2021. One was for $203,000 for a house in Ann Arbor, Mich., and the second was for $540,000 for a condo in Atlanta. In both instances, he said she signed a loan document saying the property would be her primary residence.
Typically, borrowers obtain a better interest rate for a primary residence. But lawyers say charges of mortgage fraud are extremely rare if the borrower makes the required regular payments on the loan.
About 30 minutes after Pulte posted his allegations, Trump posted on his social media site: “Cook must resign. Now!!!”
Cook has not responded directly to the allegations, but her attorneys pointed to news reports that said she told the lender her Atlanta condo would be a vacation home.
Trump, however, sent Cook a letter on Aug. 25. “You may be removed, at my discretion, for cause,” citing the law and Pulte’s referrral. “I have determined that there is sufficient cause to remove you from your position,” he wrote.
Cook filed a suit to challenge the decision. She argued the allegation did not amount to cause under the law, and she had not been given a hearing to contest the charges.
U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, a Biden appointee, agreed she made a “strong showing” the firing was illegal and blocked her removal.
She said Congress wrote the “for cause” provision to punish “malfeasance in office,” not conduct that pre-dated her appointment. She also said Cook had been denied “due process of law” because she was not given a hearing.
The U.S. appeals court in Washington, by a 2-1 vote, refused to lift her order Monday.
Judges Bradley Garcia and J. Michelle Childs, both Biden appointees, said Cook had been denied “even minimal process — that is, notice of the allegation against her and a meaningful opportunity to respond — before she was purportedly removed.”
Judge Gregory Katsas, a Trump appointee, dissented. He said the “for cause” removal provision was broader than misconduct in office. It means the president may remove an officer for “some cause relating to” their “ability, fitness, or competence” to hold the office, he said.
And because a government position is not the property of office holders, they do not have a “due process” right to contest their firing, he said.
President Donald Trump on Thursday signed what he called a historic agreement on science and technology with Britain as United Kingdom officials who have gone all out to impress him with royal pageantry during his state visit now try to deliver key trade and business deals that can further their country’s interests.Watch a livestream of a press conference between Trump and Starmer in the video player above.Trump and Prime Minister Keir Starmer held a roundtable with business leaders as they signed the deal. They also had private meetings where the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and tariff rates the U.S. may set on steel imported from Britain were expected to be discussed. A joint news conference was coming up.At the signing ceremony for an agreement meant to promote tech investment in both nations, Starmer referred to the American president as “my friend, our friend” and spoke of “leaders who respect each other and leaders who genuinely like each other.” The event took place at Chequers, a 16th-century manor house northwest of London that serves as a rural retreat for British leaders.The British charm offensive continued after King Charles III and Queen Camilla had feted Trump and first lady Melania Trump at Windsor Castle, on Wednesday. The royals used the first of the Trump’s two-day state visit to offer all the pomp the monarchy can muster: gold-trimmed carriages, scarlet-clad soldiers, artillery salutes, a glittering banquet in a grand ceremonial hall and the biggest military honor guard ever assembled for such a state visit.Trump has seemed grateful for all the attention — so much so that he has largely stuck to script and offered little of his typical off-the-cuff criticism of hosts.Still, he had his moments. Trump joked with his treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, and commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, as he signed the tech deal, “Should I sign this Howard? Scott? If the deal’s no good I’m blaming you.”After bidding goodbye to the king and queen at Windsor — Trump called the monarch “a great gentleman, and a great king” — the Trumps flew by helicopter some 20 miles (32 kilometers) to Chequers. The Republican president was welcomed by ceremonial honor guard complete with bagpipers — a nod to Trump’s Scottish heritage — and shown items from the archive of wartime leader Winston Churchill, who coined the term “special relationship” for the bond between the allies.It’s a point that Trump’s British hosts have stressed, almost 250 years after that relationship endured a rocky start in 1776.Trump told business leaders at a reception at Chequers that the two countries shared an “unbreakable bond.” Starmer said that relationship “is the very foundation of our security, our freedom and our prosperity.”Trans-Atlantic tech partnershipTo coincide with the visit, Britain said U.S. companies had pledged 150 billion pounds ($204 billion) in investment in the U.K, including 90 billion pounds ($122 billion) from investment firm Blackstone in the next decade. Investment will also flow the other way, including almost $30 billion by pharmaceutical firm GSK in the U.S.At the reception, attended by tech bosses including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and U.S. officials such as Lutnick and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Starmer said it was “the biggest investment package of its kind in British history by a country mile.”U.K. officials say the deal will bring thousands of jobs and billions in investment in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and nuclear energy. It includes a U.K. arm of Stargate, a Trump-backed AI infrastructure project led by OpenAI, and a host of AI data centers around the U.K. American companies are announcing 31 billion pounds ($42 billion) in investment in the U.K.’s AI sector, including $30 billion from Microsoft for protects including Britain’s largest supercomputer.British officials say they have not agreed to scrap a digital services tax or water down internet regulation to get the deal, some details of which have yet to be announced.The British government is learning that when it comes to deals with Trump’s team, the devil is in the details. In May, Starmer and Trump struck a trade agreement that reduced U.S. tariffs on Britain’s key auto and aerospace industries.But talks on slashing duties on steel and aluminum to zero from their current level of 25% have stalled, despite a promise in May that the issue would be settled within weeks.The British Chambers of Commerce said failure to cut the tariffs would be “greeted with dismay” by the British steel industry.Difficult discussions on Ukraine, Middle EastIn the private talks, difficult conversations were expected about Ukraine and the Middle East.The British government has grown increasingly critical of Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza and the suffering of Palestinian civilians, calling Israel’s latest Gaza City offensive “utterly reckless and appalling.” Starmer has said the U.K. will formally recognize a Palestinian state this month, potentially within days. Trump has threatened to penalize Canada during trade negotiations for making a similar move.Starmer also has played a major part in European efforts to shore up U.S. support for Ukraine. Trump has expressed frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin but has not made good on threats to impose new sanctions on Russia for shunning peace negotiations. On Tuesday, Trump appeared to put the onus on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saying, “He’s going to have to make a deal.”The king gave Trump a gentle nudge in his state banquet speech on the strength of the trans-Atlantic relationship. Charles noted that “as tyranny once again threatens Europe, we and our allies stand together in support of Ukraine, to deter aggression and secure peace.”Potentially awkward Epstein questionsStarmer will be bracing for awkward questions from the media about Jeffrey Epstein. Days before the state visit, Starmer fired Britain’s ambassador to the U.S., Peter Mandelson, over the envoy’s past friendship with the convicted sex offender, who authorities say killed himself in 2019.Fourteen months after winning a landslide election victory, Starmer’s government is struggling to kickstart Britain’s sluggish economy and his Labour Party is lagging in the polls. Starmer wants a successful state visit to balance weeks of bad news.Leslie Vinjamuri, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, said Trump’s trip was likely to be “a difficult visit for the prime minister, much more so than for the U.S. president.”For Trump, “this plays well at home, it plays well abroad. It’s almost entirely to President Trump’s advantage to turn up to Britain and be celebrated by the British establishment,” she said.
AYLESBURY, England —
President Donald Trump on Thursday signed what he called a historic agreement on science and technology with Britain as United Kingdom officials who have gone all out to impress him with royal pageantry during his state visit now try to deliver key trade and business deals that can further their country’s interests.
Watch a livestream of a press conference between Trump and Starmer in the video player above.
Trump and Prime Minister Keir Starmer held a roundtable with business leaders as they signed the deal. They also had private meetings where the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and tariff rates the U.S. may set on steel imported from Britain were expected to be discussed. A joint news conference was coming up.
At the signing ceremony for an agreement meant to promote tech investment in both nations, Starmer referred to the American president as “my friend, our friend” and spoke of “leaders who respect each other and leaders who genuinely like each other.” The event took place at Chequers, a 16th-century manor house northwest of London that serves as a rural retreat for British leaders.
The British charm offensive continued after King Charles III and Queen Camilla had feted Trump and first lady Melania Trump at Windsor Castle, on Wednesday. The royals used the first of the Trump’s two-day state visit to offer all the pomp the monarchy can muster: gold-trimmed carriages, scarlet-clad soldiers, artillery salutes, a glittering banquet in a grand ceremonial hall and the biggest military honor guard ever assembled for such a state visit.
Trump has seemed grateful for all the attention — so much so that he has largely stuck to script and offered little of his typical off-the-cuff criticism of hosts.
Still, he had his moments. Trump joked with his treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, and commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, as he signed the tech deal, “Should I sign this Howard? Scott? If the deal’s no good I’m blaming you.”
After bidding goodbye to the king and queen at Windsor — Trump called the monarch “a great gentleman, and a great king” — the Trumps flew by helicopter some 20 miles (32 kilometers) to Chequers. The Republican president was welcomed by ceremonial honor guard complete with bagpipers — a nod to Trump’s Scottish heritage — and shown items from the archive of wartime leader Winston Churchill, who coined the term “special relationship” for the bond between the allies.
It’s a point that Trump’s British hosts have stressed, almost 250 years after that relationship endured a rocky start in 1776.
Trump told business leaders at a reception at Chequers that the two countries shared an “unbreakable bond.” Starmer said that relationship “is the very foundation of our security, our freedom and our prosperity.”
Trans-Atlantic tech partnership
To coincide with the visit, Britain said U.S. companies had pledged 150 billion pounds ($204 billion) in investment in the U.K, including 90 billion pounds ($122 billion) from investment firm Blackstone in the next decade. Investment will also flow the other way, including almost $30 billion by pharmaceutical firm GSK in the U.S.
At the reception, attended by tech bosses including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and U.S. officials such as Lutnick and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Starmer said it was “the biggest investment package of its kind in British history by a country mile.”
U.K. officials say the deal will bring thousands of jobs and billions in investment in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and nuclear energy. It includes a U.K. arm of Stargate, a Trump-backed AI infrastructure project led by OpenAI, and a host of AI data centers around the U.K. American companies are announcing 31 billion pounds ($42 billion) in investment in the U.K.’s AI sector, including $30 billion from Microsoft for protects including Britain’s largest supercomputer.
British officials say they have not agreed to scrap a digital services tax or water down internet regulation to get the deal, some details of which have yet to be announced.
The British government is learning that when it comes to deals with Trump’s team, the devil is in the details. In May, Starmer and Trump struck a trade agreement that reduced U.S. tariffs on Britain’s key auto and aerospace industries.
But talks on slashing duties on steel and aluminum to zero from their current level of 25% have stalled, despite a promise in May that the issue would be settled within weeks.
The British Chambers of Commerce said failure to cut the tariffs would be “greeted with dismay” by the British steel industry.
Difficult discussions on Ukraine, Middle East
In the private talks, difficult conversations were expected about Ukraine and the Middle East.
The British government has grown increasingly critical of Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza and the suffering of Palestinian civilians, calling Israel’s latest Gaza City offensive “utterly reckless and appalling.” Starmer has said the U.K. will formally recognize a Palestinian state this month, potentially within days. Trump has threatened to penalize Canada during trade negotiations for making a similar move.
Starmer also has played a major part in European efforts to shore up U.S. support for Ukraine. Trump has expressed frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin but has not made good on threats to impose new sanctions on Russia for shunning peace negotiations. On Tuesday, Trump appeared to put the onus on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, saying, “He’s going to have to make a deal.”
The king gave Trump a gentle nudge in his state banquet speech on the strength of the trans-Atlantic relationship. Charles noted that “as tyranny once again threatens Europe, we and our allies stand together in support of Ukraine, to deter aggression and secure peace.”
Potentially awkward Epstein questions
Starmer will be bracing for awkward questions from the media about Jeffrey Epstein. Days before the state visit, Starmer fired Britain’s ambassador to the U.S., Peter Mandelson, over the envoy’s past friendship with the convicted sex offender, who authorities say killed himself in 2019.
Fourteen months after winning a landslide election victory, Starmer’s government is struggling to kickstart Britain’s sluggish economy and his Labour Party is lagging in the polls. Starmer wants a successful state visit to balance weeks of bad news.
Leslie Vinjamuri, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, said Trump’s trip was likely to be “a difficult visit for the prime minister, much more so than for the U.S. president.”
For Trump, “this plays well at home, it plays well abroad. It’s almost entirely to President Trump’s advantage to turn up to Britain and be celebrated by the British establishment,” she said.
“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” has been suspended indefinitely by ABC, following his comments about Charlie Kirk’s death.According to an ABC network spokesperson, they are pulling the show indefinitely and plan to air “Celebrity Family Feud” for the next two nights in its place, with future programming to be determined.Nexstar was first to announce that it would no longer air Kimmel’s late-night show on its 23 ABC affiliates across the country. There was no immediate comment from Kimmel, whose contract is up in May 2026.In his monologue on Tuesday, Kimmel said that “we hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.” Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr appeared on a podcast Wednesday, where he suggested that local affiliates should pull Kimmel from the air.Later in the day, Carr posted on X, saying, “I want to thank Nexstar for doing the right thing. Local broadcasters have an obligation to serve the public interest. While this may be an unprecedented decision, it is important for broadcasters to push back on Disney programming that they determine falls short of community values. I hope that other broadcasters follow Nexstar’s lead.” Trump celebrated ABC’s move on the social media site Truth Social, writing: “Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done.”He also targeted two other late-night hosts, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, and said they should be canceled too, calling them “two total losers.” In July, after CBS canceled “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” Trump wrote on his social media platform: “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert!” Like Colbert, Kimmel has been consistently been critical of Trump and many of his policies.Kimmel’s show pulled as audience waited for tapingAn audience was lined up outside the theater where “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” tapes when they were told Wednesday’s show was canceled.“We were just about to walk in — interestingly enough, they waited to pull the plug on this right as the studio audience was about to walk in,” Tommy Williams, a would-be audience member from Jacksonville, Florida, told The Associated Press outside the theater. “They didn’t tell us what had happened. They just said that the show was canceled.”Williams said he was worried someone had been injured — until he saw that ABC had announced nearly at the same time online that the preemption was indefinite. Williams hadn’t been aware of Kimmel’s comments on Kirk, but sought them out after the announcement.
“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” has been suspended indefinitely by ABC, following his comments about Charlie Kirk’s death.
According to an ABC network spokesperson, they are pulling the show indefinitely and plan to air “Celebrity Family Feud” for the next two nights in its place, with future programming to be determined.
Nexstar was first to announce that it would no longer air Kimmel’s late-night show on its 23 ABC affiliates across the country.
There was no immediate comment from Kimmel, whose contract is up in May 2026.
In his monologue on Tuesday, Kimmel said that “we hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr appeared on a podcast Wednesday, where he suggested that local affiliates should pull Kimmel from the air.
Later in the day, Carr posted on X, saying, “I want to thank Nexstar for doing the right thing. Local broadcasters have an obligation to serve the public interest. While this may be an unprecedented decision, it is important for broadcasters to push back on Disney programming that they determine falls short of community values. I hope that other broadcasters follow Nexstar’s lead.”
Trump celebrated ABC’s move on the social media site Truth Social, writing: “Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done.”
He also targeted two other late-night hosts, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, and said they should be canceled too, calling them “two total losers.” In July, after CBS canceled “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” Trump wrote on his social media platform: “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert!” Like Colbert, Kimmel has been consistently been critical of Trump and many of his policies.
Kimmel’s show pulled as audience waited for taping
An audience was lined up outside the theater where “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” tapes when they were told Wednesday’s show was canceled.
“We were just about to walk in — interestingly enough, they waited to pull the plug on this right as the studio audience was about to walk in,” Tommy Williams, a would-be audience member from Jacksonville, Florida, told The Associated Press outside the theater. “They didn’t tell us what had happened. They just said that the show was canceled.”
Williams said he was worried someone had been injured — until he saw that ABC had announced nearly at the same time online that the preemption was indefinite. Williams hadn’t been aware of Kimmel’s comments on Kirk, but sought them out after the announcement.
“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” has been suspended indefinitely by ABC, following his comments about Charlie Kirk’s death.According to an ABC network spokesperson, they are pulling the show indefinitely and plan to air “Celebrity Family Feud” for the next two nights in its place, with future programming to be determined.Nexstar was first to announce that it would no longer air Kimmel’s late-night show on its 23 ABC affiliates across the country. There was no immediate comment from Kimmel, whose contract is up in May 2026.In his monologue on Tuesday, Kimmel said that “we hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.” Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr appeared on a podcast Wednesday, where he suggested that local affiliates should pull Kimmel from the air.Later in the day, Carr posted on X, saying, “I want to thank Nexstar for doing the right thing. Local broadcasters have an obligation to serve the public interest. While this may be an unprecedented decision, it is important for broadcasters to push back on Disney programming that they determine falls short of community values. I hope that other broadcasters follow Nexstar’s lead.” Trump celebrated ABC’s move on the social media site Truth Social, writing: “Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done.”He also targeted two other late-night hosts, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, and said they should be canceled too, calling them “two total losers.” In July, after CBS canceled “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” Trump wrote on his social media platform: “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert!” Like Colbert, Kimmel has been consistently been critical of Trump and many of his policies.Kimmel’s show pulled as audience waited for tapingAn audience was lined up outside the theater where “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” tapes when they were told Wednesday’s show was canceled.“We were just about to walk in — interestingly enough, they waited to pull the plug on this right as the studio audience was about to walk in,” Tommy Williams, a would-be audience member from Jacksonville, Florida, told The Associated Press outside the theater. “They didn’t tell us what had happened. They just said that the show was canceled.”Williams said he was worried someone had been injured — until he saw that ABC had announced nearly at the same time online that the preemption was indefinite. Williams hadn’t been aware of Kimmel’s comments on Kirk, but sought them out after the announcement.
“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” has been suspended indefinitely by ABC, following his comments about Charlie Kirk’s death.
According to an ABC network spokesperson, they are pulling the show indefinitely and plan to air “Celebrity Family Feud” for the next two nights in its place, with future programming to be determined.
Nexstar was first to announce that it would no longer air Kimmel’s late-night show on its 23 ABC affiliates across the country.
There was no immediate comment from Kimmel, whose contract is up in May 2026.
In his monologue on Tuesday, Kimmel said that “we hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr appeared on a podcast Wednesday, where he suggested that local affiliates should pull Kimmel from the air.
Later in the day, Carr posted on X, saying, “I want to thank Nexstar for doing the right thing. Local broadcasters have an obligation to serve the public interest. While this may be an unprecedented decision, it is important for broadcasters to push back on Disney programming that they determine falls short of community values. I hope that other broadcasters follow Nexstar’s lead.”
Trump celebrated ABC’s move on the social media site Truth Social, writing: “Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done.”
He also targeted two other late-night hosts, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, and said they should be canceled too, calling them “two total losers.” In July, after CBS canceled “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” Trump wrote on his social media platform: “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert!” Like Colbert, Kimmel has been consistently been critical of Trump and many of his policies.
Kimmel’s show pulled as audience waited for taping
An audience was lined up outside the theater where “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” tapes when they were told Wednesday’s show was canceled.
“We were just about to walk in — interestingly enough, they waited to pull the plug on this right as the studio audience was about to walk in,” Tommy Williams, a would-be audience member from Jacksonville, Florida, told The Associated Press outside the theater. “They didn’t tell us what had happened. They just said that the show was canceled.”
Williams said he was worried someone had been injured — until he saw that ABC had announced nearly at the same time online that the preemption was indefinite. Williams hadn’t been aware of Kimmel’s comments on Kirk, but sought them out after the announcement.
President Donald Trump will arrive in the United Kingdom on Tuesday for a state visit during which the British government hopes a multibillion-dollar technology deal will show the trans-Atlantic bond remains strong despite differences over Ukraine, the Middle East and the future of the Western alliance.State visits in Britain blend 21st-century diplomacy with royal pageantry. Trump’s two-day trip comes complete with horse-drawn carriages, military honor guards and a glittering banquet inside a 1,000-year-old castle — all tailored to a president with a fondness for gilded splendor.King Charles III will host Trump at Windsor Castle on Wednesday before talks the next day with Prime Minister Keir Starmer at Chequers, the British leader’s rural retreat.Starmer’s office said the visit will demonstrate that “the U.K.-U.S. relationship is the strongest in the world, built on 250 years of history” — after that awkward rupture in 1776 — and bound by shared values of “belief in the rule of law and open markets.” There was no mention of Trump’s market-crimping fondness for sweeping tariffs.The White House expects the two countries will strengthen their relationship during the trip and celebrate the upcoming 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, according to a senior White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity. It was unclear how the U.K. was planning to mark that chapter in their shared history.“The trip to the U.K. is going to be incredible,” Trump told reporters Sunday. He said Windsor Castle is “supposed to be amazing” and added: “It’s going to be very exciting.”Trump’s second state visitTrump is the first U.S. president to get a second state visit to the U.K.The unprecedented nature of the invitation, along with the expectation of lavish pomp and pageantry, holds dual appeal to Trump. The president has glowingly praised the king’s late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, and spoken about how his own Scotland-born mother loved the queen and the monarchy.Trump, as he left the White House on Tuesday, noted that during his past state visit he was hosted at Buckingham Palace.“I don’t want to say one is better than the other, but they say Windsor Castle is the ultimate,” Trump said.He also called the king “an elegant gentleman” and said “he represents the country so well.”The president is also royally flattered by exceptional attention and has embraced the grandeur of his office in his second term. He has adorned the normally more austere Oval Office with gold accents, is constructing an expansive ballroom at the White House and has sought to refurbish other Washington buildings to his liking.Foreign officials have shown they’re attuned to his tastes. During a visit to the Middle East this year, leaders of Saudi Arabia and Qatar didn’t just roll out a red carpet but dispatched fighter jets to escort Trump’s plane.Starmer has already shown he’s adept at charming Trump. Visiting Washington in February, he noted the president’s Oval Office decorating choices and decision to display a bust of Winston Churchill. During Trump’s private trip to Scotland in July, Starmer visited and praised Trump’s golf courses.Efforts to woo the president make some members of Starmer’s Labour Party uneasy, and Trump will not address Parliament during his visit, like French President Emmanuel Macron did in July. Lawmakers will be on their annual autumn recess, sparing the government an awkward decision.The itinerary in Windsor and at Chequers, both well outside London, also keeps Trump away from a planned mass protest against his visit.“This visit is really important to Keir Starmer to show that he’s a statesman,” said Leslie Vinjamuri, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “But it’s such a double-edged sword, because he’s going to be a statesman alongside a U.S. president that is not popular in Europe.”Troubles for StarmerPreparations for the visit have been ruffled by political turmoil in Starmer’s center-left government. Last week, Starmer sacked Britain’s ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson, over his past friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.Mandelson had good relations with the Trump administration and played a key role in securing a U.K.-U.S. trade agreement in May. His firing has put Epstein back in British headlines as Trump tries to swerve questions about his own relationship with the disgraced financier.Mandelson’s exit came just a week after Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner quit over a tax error on a home purchase. A senior Starmer aide, Paul Ovenden quit Monday over tasteless text messages he sent years ago. Fourteen months after winning a landslide election victory, Starmer’s position at the helm of the Labour Party is fragile and his poll ratings are in the dumps.But he has found a somewhat unexpected supporter in Trump, who has said Starmer is a friend, despite being “slightly more liberal than I am.”Starmer’s government has cultivated that warmth and tried to use it to get favorable trade terms with the U.S., the U.K.’s largest single economic partner, accounting for 18% of total British trade.The May trade agreement reduces U.S. tariffs on Britain’s key auto and aerospace industries. But a final deal has not been reached over other sectors, including pharmaceuticals, steel and aluminum.As he left the White House on Tuesday, Trump said U.K. officials wanted to continue trade negotiations during his visit.“They’d like to see if they can get a little bit better deal, so we’ll talk to them” he said.Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are expected to be among the business leaders in the U.S. delegation. Trump and Starmer are set to sign a technology partnership – which Mandelson was key to striking – accompanied by major investments in nuclear power, life sciences and Artificial Intelligence data centers.The leaders are also expected to sign nuclear energy deals, expand cooperation on defense technology and explore ways to bolster ties between their financial hubs, according to the White House official.Ukraine on the agendaStarmer has also tried to use his influence to maintain U.S. support for Ukraine, with limited results. Trump has expressed frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin but has not made good on threats to impose new sanctions on Russia for shunning peace negotiations.Last week’s Russian drone incursion into NATO member Poland drew strong condemnation from European NATO allies, and pledges of more planes and troops for the bloc’s eastern flank. Trump played down the incident’s severity, musing that it “ could have been a mistake.”Starmer also departs from Trump over Israel’s war in Gaza, and has said the U.K. will formally recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations later this month.Vinjamuri said Starmer “has kept the United States speaking the right language” on Ukraine, but has had little impact on Trump’s actions.“On China, on India, on Israel and Gaza and Hamas, and on Vladimir Putin – on the really big important things – the U.K. hasn’t had a huge amount of influence,” she said.
LONDON —
President Donald Trump will arrive in the United Kingdom on Tuesday for a state visit during which the British government hopes a multibillion-dollar technology deal will show the trans-Atlantic bond remains strong despite differences over Ukraine, the Middle East and the future of the Western alliance.
State visits in Britain blend 21st-century diplomacy with royal pageantry. Trump’s two-day trip comes complete with horse-drawn carriages, military honor guards and a glittering banquet inside a 1,000-year-old castle — all tailored to a president with a fondness for gilded splendor.
King Charles III will host Trump at Windsor Castle on Wednesday before talks the next day with Prime Minister Keir Starmer at Chequers, the British leader’s rural retreat.
Starmer’s office said the visit will demonstrate that “the U.K.-U.S. relationship is the strongest in the world, built on 250 years of history” — after that awkward rupture in 1776 — and bound by shared values of “belief in the rule of law and open markets.” There was no mention of Trump’s market-crimping fondness for sweeping tariffs.
The White House expects the two countries will strengthen their relationship during the trip and celebrate the upcoming 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, according to a senior White House official who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity. It was unclear how the U.K. was planning to mark that chapter in their shared history.
“The trip to the U.K. is going to be incredible,” Trump told reporters Sunday. He said Windsor Castle is “supposed to be amazing” and added: “It’s going to be very exciting.”
Trump’s second state visit
Trump is the first U.S. president to get a second state visit to the U.K.
The unprecedented nature of the invitation, along with the expectation of lavish pomp and pageantry, holds dual appeal to Trump. The president has glowingly praised the king’s late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, and spoken about how his own Scotland-born mother loved the queen and the monarchy.
Trump, as he left the White House on Tuesday, noted that during his past state visit he was hosted at Buckingham Palace.
“I don’t want to say one is better than the other, but they say Windsor Castle is the ultimate,” Trump said.
He also called the king “an elegant gentleman” and said “he represents the country so well.”
The president is also royally flattered by exceptional attention and has embraced the grandeur of his office in his second term. He has adorned the normally more austere Oval Office with gold accents, is constructing an expansive ballroom at the White House and has sought to refurbish other Washington buildings to his liking.
Foreign officials have shown they’re attuned to his tastes. During a visit to the Middle East this year, leaders of Saudi Arabia and Qatar didn’t just roll out a red carpet but dispatched fighter jets to escort Trump’s plane.
Starmer has already shown he’s adept at charming Trump. Visiting Washington in February, he noted the president’s Oval Office decorating choices and decision to display a bust of Winston Churchill. During Trump’s private trip to Scotland in July, Starmer visited and praised Trump’s golf courses.
Efforts to woo the president make some members of Starmer’s Labour Party uneasy, and Trump will not address Parliament during his visit, like French President Emmanuel Macron did in July. Lawmakers will be on their annual autumn recess, sparing the government an awkward decision.
The itinerary in Windsor and at Chequers, both well outside London, also keeps Trump away from a planned mass protest against his visit.
“This visit is really important to Keir Starmer to show that he’s a statesman,” said Leslie Vinjamuri, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. “But it’s such a double-edged sword, because he’s going to be a statesman alongside a U.S. president that is not popular in Europe.”
Troubles for Starmer
Preparations for the visit have been ruffled by political turmoil in Starmer’s center-left government. Last week, Starmer sacked Britain’s ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson, over his past friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Mandelson had good relations with the Trump administration and played a key role in securing a U.K.-U.S. trade agreement in May. His firing has put Epstein back in British headlines as Trump tries to swerve questions about his own relationship with the disgraced financier.
Mandelson’s exit came just a week after Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner quit over a tax error on a home purchase. A senior Starmer aide, Paul Ovenden quit Monday over tasteless text messages he sent years ago. Fourteen months after winning a landslide election victory, Starmer’s position at the helm of the Labour Party is fragile and his poll ratings are in the dumps.
But he has found a somewhat unexpected supporter in Trump, who has said Starmer is a friend, despite being “slightly more liberal than I am.”
Starmer’s government has cultivated that warmth and tried to use it to get favorable trade terms with the U.S., the U.K.’s largest single economic partner, accounting for 18% of total British trade.
The May trade agreement reduces U.S. tariffs on Britain’s key auto and aerospace industries. But a final deal has not been reached over other sectors, including pharmaceuticals, steel and aluminum.
As he left the White House on Tuesday, Trump said U.K. officials wanted to continue trade negotiations during his visit.
“They’d like to see if they can get a little bit better deal, so we’ll talk to them” he said.
Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are expected to be among the business leaders in the U.S. delegation. Trump and Starmer are set to sign a technology partnership – which Mandelson was key to striking – accompanied by major investments in nuclear power, life sciences and Artificial Intelligence data centers.
The leaders are also expected to sign nuclear energy deals, expand cooperation on defense technology and explore ways to bolster ties between their financial hubs, according to the White House official.
Ukraine on the agenda
Starmer has also tried to use his influence to maintain U.S. support for Ukraine, with limited results. Trump has expressed frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin but has not made good on threats to impose new sanctions on Russia for shunning peace negotiations.
Last week’s Russian drone incursion into NATO member Poland drew strong condemnation from European NATO allies, and pledges of more planes and troops for the bloc’s eastern flank. Trump played down the incident’s severity, musing that it “ could have been a mistake.”
Starmer also departs from Trump over Israel’s war in Gaza, and has said the U.K. will formally recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations later this month.
Vinjamuri said Starmer “has kept the United States speaking the right language” on Ukraine, but has had little impact on Trump’s actions.
“On China, on India, on Israel and Gaza and Hamas, and on Vladimir Putin – on the really big important things – the U.K. hasn’t had a huge amount of influence,” she said.
Former Ivory Coast First Lady Simone Gbagbo has gone from hiding in a bunker in an attempt to avoid arrest to defiantly announcing she will run for president.
In an extraordinary comeback, the controversial 76-year-old was this week surprisingly allowed to contest October’s elections, calling on supporters to help “build a new nation”.
For years, Gbagbo worked side-by-side with her ex-husband Laurent, and was considered to be the power behind his throne.
Now, with a criminal conviction and a divorce behind her, she takes centre stage as a presidential candidate in her own right.
Gbagbo was Ivory Coast’s first lady from 2000 to 2011 and was dubbed “the iron lady” due to her reputation for toughness.
While her supporters fondly called her “maman” (French for “mum”), Gbagbo was feared within the party she set up with her husband, the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI).
“All the ministers respect me. And they often consider me above them,” she told French magazine L’Express during her husband’s presidency.
At rallies, Gbagbo often invoked her evangelist Christian faith, firing off spirited, eloquent speeches in support of her husband.
Gbagbo met Laurent in 1973, at a time when both were powerful figures in Ivory Coast’s trade union movement.
Gbagbo had degrees in history and linguistics, and as a teacher, was a key member of various educators’ unions.
The couple’s relationship was also built on the struggle against then-president Félix Houphouët-Boigny.
The Gbagbos protested against Houphouët-Boigny’s autocracy, which lasted for 33 years, calling for multi-party democracy.
Simone Gbagbo gave passionate speeches in support of her husband – next month she herself will take centre stage [AFP via Getty Images]
As a result of their activism, the pair were jailed several times.
“I engaged in political struggle against the former regime alongside men,” Gbagbo recalled In her l’Express interview.
“I spent six months in prison, I was beaten, molested, left for dead. After all those trials, it’s logical that people don’t mess with me.”
In 1982 the pair co-founded the FPI. That same year, Laurent fled to France following harassment from Houphouët-Boigny’s security forces and Gbagbo was left to raise the couple’s twin daughters alone.
After six years apart, Laurent returned and the pair married in an intimate ceremony, with less than 10 guests present.
The Gbagbos soon had further cause for celebration. In 1990 Houphouët-Boigny finally caved in, allowing the first national elections in Ivory Coast since independence three decades earlier.
Laurent decided to run for president, his wife a key figure in his campaign.
“Laurent had the good-natured gab, Simone the uncompromising discourse,” French newspaper Le Monde said of the Gbagbos’ political partnership.
In less flattering terms, Ivorian opposition newspaper Le Patriote wrote: “Laurent Gbagbo – expansive, warm, and devious… his wife, Simone Ehivet-Gbagbo – enigmatic, cold, and secretive.”
In an election marred by allegations of widespread rigging, Laurent lost the presidential race to Houphouët-Boigny by a landslide.
He did, however, win a seat in the National Assembly and five years later, his wife gained one too.
Gbagbo campaigned for her husband once again when he ran for president in 2000. This time, he won, after all other opposition candidates had been excluded by the military leaders who had seized power.
But, once a champion of democracy, the new president began adopting draconian measures to stifle political dissent. His backing of the concept of Ivoirité, or Ivorieness, pushed soldiers in the north to take up arms and the country was divided in two.
It is thought his wife had huge influence over the security forces, who were used by the administration to silence opposition voices.
Furthermore, presidential elections slated for 2005 were postponed six times, with Laurent saying he needed to establish control of the whole country before he could hold elections, although he eventually agreed to them in 2010.
In a surprise result, he lost to Alassane Ouattara – Ivory Coast’s current president – but refused to accept the result. This attempt to stay put sparked another devasting civil war in which more than 3,000 people died.
After the vote, Gbagbo fiercely defended her husband’s decision to stay on, dubbing Ouattara a “bandit leader”.
“The time for debates about the elections between Gbagbo and the ‘bandit leader’ is over,” she said in an address to supporters.
“Our president is firmly established in power and he is working.”
Eventually, as pro-Ouattara forces backed by French troops advanced on the presidential residence, the couple took refuge in a bunker. They were arrested there, and hauled off to a hotel in Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s main city, effectively ending the five-month conflict.
After they were captured, photos of the fallen Gbagbos circulated amongst Ivorians [Reuters]
At her trial five years later, Gbagbo described her detention at the hotel.
“I myself arrived with my buttocks exposed, my nudity exposed. I was subjected to several attempted rapes in broad daylight, all in the presence of French soldiers who were filming,” she told the court.
Gbagbo was sentenced to 20 years for “attempting to undermine the security of the state”, disturbing public order and organising armed gangs during the civil war.
However, just three years later, President Ouattara granted Gbagbo an amnesty in what he said was a move to foster reconciliation. This is why she was allowed to stand in next month’s election, despite her conviction.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) pursued separate charges against Gbagbo in 2012, also relating to the civil war, but they were later dropped.
The ICC went after Laurent too – they charged him with crimes against humanity and he spent seven years in custody at The Hague.
The couple have long maintained their innocence, rejecting all charges against them as politically motivated.
Laurent was eventually acquitted by the ICC and returned home to Ivory Coast in 2021.
But there would be no tear-jerking reunion with his wife – days after landing on Ivorian soil, the former president filed for divorce, having fostered a relationship with journalist Nady Bamba.
Gbagbo hit back at her husband – through her lawyer, she accused Laurent of “blatant and well-known adultery” and “abandonment of the marital home”.
Laurent Gbagbo’s refusal to step down after the 2010 elections triggered a bloodbath [AFP via Getty Images]
The former first lady has since been quietly and methodically rebuilding her political base, following her break from the FPI.
She founded a new party, the leftist Movement of Capable Generations (MGC) and in her campaign for next month’s election pledges a “modernised” and “prosperous” Ivory Coast.
Gbagbo’s candidacy is not only politically significant but symbolically powerful in a country where women remain largely underrepresented in national leadership.
Only 30% of Ivorian parliamentarians are women, and few have held senior roles in government.
Gbagbo’s reputation for activism and democracy has been tainted, but she is still seen as one of the strongest challengers to Ouattara in next month’s poll.
A political veteran with powerful rhetoric, she looks set to gain the backing of her husband’s supporters, after he was barred from running himself.
But in this election, the spotlight will be firmly on Simone Gbagbo. And should she win the presidency, the “iron lady” would make history as Ivory Coast’s first female president – yet another milestone in a turbulent, four-decade long political career.
Additional reporting by Nicolas Negoce in Abidjan
More Ivory Coast stories from the BBC:
[Getty Images/BBC]
Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.
“To have a great nation you have to have religion,” Trump said at the second meeting of the Religious Liberty Commission at the Museum of the Bible Monday morning.
Trump honored students whose religious liberties had reportedly been violated at public school.
A young boy named Shane spoke about being required to read a book about transgender ideology at school. His parents complained, and the boy was bullied at school.
“I believe kids like me should be able to live our faith at school without being forced to go against what we believe,” he said. “I hope no other family has to go through what mine did.”
He also honored a high schooler named Hannah who was punished for praying at school for an injured classmate.
The crowd cheers as @POTUS takes the stage at the meeting of the Presidential Religious Liberty Commission.
“America was founded on faith…When faith gets weaker, our country seems to get weaker. When faith gets stronger…good things happen for our country.” pic.twitter.com/XiYlt6gFsm
Trump also slammed Sen. Tim Kaine for his comments last week that rights come from government, rather than God.
“The ineffectual senator from Virginia, man named Tim Kaine, stated that the notion our rights come from our creator is, quote, ‘extremely troubling to him,’” Trump said.
“But as everyone in this room understands, it is tyrants who are denying our rights and the rights that come from God, and it’s this Declaration of Independence that proclaims we’re endowed by our creator with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” the president added. “The senator from Virginia should be ashamed of himself.”
🚨REJECTING THE DECLARATION
This week, Sen. Tim Kaine flipped the central principle of the Declaration of Independence on its head.
Trump invited Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner to take the stage. He announced the administration’s new “America Prays” initiative, which calls on Americans to dedicate time every week to pray for the country.
“What if believers all across this great nation got together with 10 people, friends, family members, colleagues, work associates, 10 people each week to pray for our country and for our fellow citizens?” Turner said.
Turner invited all Americans to pray for the renewal of the country.
“Think about the miracles that would take place over the next year,” he continued. “Think about the transformation that you and I could witness in communities all across the land: sons returning to their fathers, daughters returning to their mothers, families coming back together, health being restored, financial needs being met, mountains being moved.
🙏‼️@sturnerofficial announces America Prays initiative to a cheering crowd.
“What if believers all across this great nation got together with 10 people, friends, family members, colleagues, work, associates, 10 people each week to pray for our country and for our fellow… pic.twitter.com/i0S5Zbq090
Federal immigration arrests in Colorado surged this summer as the Trump administration charged ahead with its plans to mass-deport undocumented immigrants.
But as arrests have spiked, law enforcement agencies increasingly have detained people without any prior criminal convictions or charges, internal data show.
Between June 11 and July 28, ICE arrested 828 people in Colorado, according to a Denver Post analysis of data obtained by the Deportation Data Project at the University of California, Berkeley. That amounted to more than 17 arrests per day, a more than 50% increase from the first five months of the Trump administration, through June 10, a period covered in a previous Post story. The rate from this summer was also more than five times higher than the daily arrest average from the same time period in 2024.
Of those detained over the summer, only a third had prior criminal convictions noted in the records. Another 18% had pending charges, indicating that nearly half had been neither convicted nor charged with a crime and that their only violation was immigration-related.
That, too, is a shift: In the earlier months of President Donald Trump’s second term, two-thirds of the 1,639 people arrested in Colorado had either been convicted of a crime (38%) or charged with one (29%).
“That tracks with what we would have expected (and) what we’ve been hearing from community sources,” said Henry Sandman, the co-executive director of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition. “The data and the reality disproves ICE’s talking points that they’re going after criminals. We’re seeing tactics increase. They’re trying to increase arrest numbers as high as possible, whatever the reason may be for detaining folks.”
Steve Kotecki, a spokesman for Denver’s ICE field office, did not respond to a request for comment late last week.
The data, obtained directly from ICE by the UC Berkeley researchers through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, offers the clearest look at immigration enforcement activities available, as ICE doesn’t post recent information online. For this analysis, The Post examined arrests that occurred in Colorado; arrests that were listed in the dataset as occurring in Wyoming but which took place in a Colorado city; and arrests lacking a listed state but which occurred in a Colorado town or county.
The Post removed several apparent duplicate arrests and a similarly small number of arrests in the region that did not have a specific location listed. The analysis also included a handful of people who appeared to have been arrested twice in the span of several months.
When listing a detainee’s criminal background, the data provides no details about the criminal charges or prior crimes. Illegally entering the country is typically treated as a civil matter upon first offense, but a subsequent entry is a felony criminal offense.
More info about July operation
The newly released data includes the same nine-day period in July during which ICE has said it arrested 243 immigrants without proper legal status “who are currently charged with or have been convicted of criminal offenses after illegally entering the United States.” The arrests, the agency said, all occurred in metro Denver.
But the data published by the UC-Berkeley researchers does not fully match ICE’s public representations.
During the same time frame, the agency arrested 232 people, according to the data. Most of those arrested during that time had never been convicted or charged with a crime, at least according to what’s in the records. Sixty-six people had a previous criminal conviction, and 34 more had pending charges.
Kotecki did not respond to questions about the July operation.
The Post previously reported that ICE falsely claimed that it had arrested a convicted murderer in Denver as part of the July operation. The man had actually been arrested at a state prison facility shortly after his scheduled release, state prison officials said last month.
While ICE claimed the man had found “sanctuary” in the capital city — a shot taken at Denver’s immigration ordinances — The Post found that state prison officials had coordinated his transfer directly to ICE. He was then deported to Mexico, and information matching his description is reflected in the UC Berkeley data.
It’s unclear if all of ICE’s arrests are fully reflected in the data, making it difficult to verify ICE’s claims. The researchers’ data is imperfect, experts have told The Post. The records likely represent the merging of separate datasets before they were provided by the government, increasing the likelihood of mistakes or missing data.
Some arrests in Colorado were listed as occurring in other states or had no state listed at all. Other arrests were duplicated entirely, and researchers have cautioned that ICE’s data at times has had inaccurate or missing information.
The anonymized nature of the data, which lacks arrestees’ names but lists some biographical information, also can make it difficult to verify. When ICE announced the results of the July operation, it named eight of the people it had arrested. Court records and the UC Berkeley data appear to match up with as many as seven of them.
The eighth, Blanca Ochoa Tello, was arrested on July 14 by ICE’s investigative branch in a drug-trafficking investigation, court filings show. But it’s unclear if she appears in the ICE data, as she was arrested in La Plata County and no woman arrested in that county was listed in the data.
To verify ICE’s July operation claims, The Post examined arrest data in Colorado and Wyoming, which jointly form the Denver area of operations for the agency. The Post also searched for arrests in every other state to identify any arrests that may have occurred in a Colorado area but were errantly listed under other states.
Federal agents detain a man as he exits a court hearing in immigration court at the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building on July 30, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Nationally, immigration authorities had their most arrest-heavy months this summer, according to data published by researchers at Syracuse University. Immigration officials arrested more than 36,700 people in June, its highest single-month total since June 2019, during Trump’s first term. More than 31,200 were arrested across the country in July.
The Trump administration has also set out to increase its detention capacity to accommodate the mass-deportation plans.
As of late July, ICE planned to triple its detention capacity in Colorado, according to documents obtained last month by the Washington Post. That plan includes opening as many as three new facilities and the expansion of Colorado’s sole existing facility in Aurora.
DHS officers watch from the parking lot as protesters gather at the entrance to the ICE Colorado Field Office on Aug. 30, 2025, in Centennial. (Photo By Kathryn Scott/Special to The Denver Post)
Over the course of this year, ICE arrested people in Colorado who were originally from more than 60 countries, according to the data. That included 10 Iranians arrested in late June or early July. Six of those people were arrested on June 22, the day after the U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear facilities. Three more were arrested over the next 48 hours.
The vast majority of the undocumented immigrants who were arrested and deported were returned to their home countries, though roughly 50 were sent somewhere else, the data show. Nine Venezuelans were sent to El Salvador in the first two weeks of the Trump administration, when alleged gang members were dispatched to a notorious prison there.
ProPublica identified roughly a dozen Coloradans who were sent to that prison. It reported that several were arrested in late January, which matches information listed in the ICE data published by UC Berkeley.
Advocates’ fears of continued arrests have escalated as ICE’s funding has surged. On Aug. 30, several immigration advocates picketed outside an ICE field office in Centennial after a number of immigrants received abrupt notices to check in at the facility.
Four people were detained, said Jordan Garcia, the program director for the American Friends Service Committee’s immigrant-rights program in Colorado.
Among them, he said, was an older Cuban man with dementia. Garcia and other advocates spoke with the man and his son before they entered the facility. The son later came out, Garcia said, and said that his father had been detained.
President Donald Trump attended the U.S. Open on Sunday and briefly stepped out from a luxury box to wave at a main court crowd mostly still arriving for the men’s final. He drew mixed cheers and boos.Arthur Ashe stadium was only partially full and Trump’s waves weren’t announced beforehand. They were also brief enough so that some of those in attendance didn’t notice them.The president attended as a guest of Rolex despite imposing steep tariffs on the Swiss watchmaker’s home country, and organizers were seeking to keep booing of him from being seen on the TV broadcast.Trump has built the bulk of his second term’s domestic travel around attending major sports events rather than hitting the road to make policy announcements or address the kind of large rallies he so relished as a candidate.Because of extra security screening, the final between second-seeded Carlos Alcaraz, a 22-year-old Spaniard, and No. 1 seed and defending champion Jannik Sinner, 24, of Italy, was pushed back half an hour — meaning Trump arrived more than 45 minutes before the new start time. The president was watching from Rolex’s suite, and his acceptance of Rolex’s invitation comes mere weeks after the Trump administration imposed a whopping 39% tariff on Swiss products.The levy is more than 2 1/2 times higher than the one the Trump administration agreed to for European Union goods exported to the U.S. and nearly four times higher than on British exports to the U.S. It has raised questions about Switzerland’s ability to compete with the 27-member bloc that it neighbors.The White House declined to comment on Trump accepting a corporate client’s invitation at the tournament, but the president has had few qualms about blurring lines between political and foreign policy decisions and efforts to boost the profits of his family business.That includes tirelessly promoting cryptocurrency interests and luxury golf properties around the country and the world that bear his name. He announced Friday that the U.S. will use its turn hosting the Group of 20 summit in December 2026 to stage the sweeping event at Trump National Doral in South Florida.Any negative reaction to Trump’s presence won’t be shown on ABC’s national telecast, per standard policy, the U.S. Tennis Association says.”We regularly ask our broadcasters to refrain from showcasing off-court disruptions,” the organization said in a statement.As heavy rains began mostly clearing, and throngs of fans arrived for the match, no major street protests against the president could be seen from the touranment’s main stadium. Attendees also steered clear of wearing any of the president’s signature “Make America Great Again” caps, though.A 58-year tennis fan originally from Turin, Italy, came from her home in the Boston area to watch the final and said that when she bought a U.S. Open cap, she went with a fuchsia-hued one so it wouldn’t be mistaken for the signature darker color of MAGA hats.”I was careful not to get the red one,” said the fan, who declined to give her name because of her employer’s rules about being publicly quoted.Attending with Trump were White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, special administration envoy Steve Witkoff and Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff.Elsewhere in the crowd were a slew of celebrities — some of whom publicly backed then-Vice President Kamala Harris during last year’s election against Trump. Among them were Pink, Bruce Springsteen, Shonda Rhimes, Michael J. Fox, Sting, Shaggy, Ben Stiller and Courtney Cox.Trump came back to the press cabin on Air Force One during the flight to New York to note that the plane would be flying over Ashe stadium, but didn’t offer any further comment.Trump was once a U.S. Open mainstay, but hasn’t attended since he was loudly booed at a quarterfinals match in September 2015, months after launching his first presidential campaign.The Trump Organization once controlled its own U.S. Open suite, which was adjacent to the stadium’s television broadcasting booth, but suspended it in 2017, during the first year of Trump’s first term. The family business is now being run by Trump’s sons with their father back in the White House.Trump was born in Queens, home of the U.S. Open, and for decades was a New York-area real estate mogul and, later, a reality TV star. Attending the tournament before he was a politician, he usually sat in the suite’s balcony during night matches and was frequently shown on the arena’s video screens.In recent years, however, including between his presidential terms, Trump primarily lived at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.Alcaraz said before the final that having Trump on-hand would be a privilege and “great for tennis,” but also suggested that such sentiment went for any president watching from the stands. “I don’t want myself to be nervous because of it,” he said.The president has also frequently attended sporting events — where the roar of the crowd sometimes features people booing him while others cheer him.Since returning to the White House in January and prior to Sunday’s U.S Open swing, Trump went to the Super Bowl in New Orleans and the Daytona 500, as well as UFC fights in Miami and Newark, New Jersey, the NCAA wrestling championships in Philadelphia and the FIFA Club World Cup final in East Rutherford, New Jersey.Having a sitting president attend the U.S. Open hasn’t happened since Bill Clinton went to the 2000 tournament, though former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, attended the event’s opening night in 2023.___Associated Press writer Brian Mahoney contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump attended the U.S. Open on Sunday and briefly stepped out from a luxury box to wave at a main court crowd mostly still arriving for the men’s final. He drew mixed cheers and boos.
Arthur Ashe stadium was only partially full and Trump’s waves weren’t announced beforehand. They were also brief enough so that some of those in attendance didn’t notice them.
The president attended as a guest of Rolex despite imposing steep tariffs on the Swiss watchmaker’s home country, and organizers were seeking to keep booing of him from being seen on the TV broadcast.
Trump has built the bulk of his second term’s domestic travel around attending major sports events rather than hitting the road to make policy announcements or address the kind of large rallies he so relished as a candidate.
Because of extra security screening, the final between second-seeded Carlos Alcaraz, a 22-year-old Spaniard, and No. 1 seed and defending champion Jannik Sinner, 24, of Italy, was pushed back half an hour — meaning Trump arrived more than 45 minutes before the new start time. The president was watching from Rolex’s suite, and his acceptance of Rolex’s invitation comes mere weeks after the Trump administration imposed a whopping 39% tariff on Swiss products.
The levy is more than 2 1/2 times higher than the one the Trump administration agreed to for European Union goods exported to the U.S. and nearly four times higher than on British exports to the U.S. It has raised questions about Switzerland’s ability to compete with the 27-member bloc that it neighbors.
The White House declined to comment on Trump accepting a corporate client’s invitation at the tournament, but the president has had few qualms about blurring lines between political and foreign policy decisions and efforts to boost the profits of his family business.
That includes tirelessly promoting cryptocurrency interests and luxury golf properties around the country and the world that bear his name. He announced Friday that the U.S. will use its turn hosting the Group of 20 summit in December 2026 to stage the sweeping event at Trump National Doral in South Florida.
Any negative reaction to Trump’s presence won’t be shown on ABC’s national telecast, per standard policy, the U.S. Tennis Association says.
“We regularly ask our broadcasters to refrain from showcasing off-court disruptions,” the organization said in a statement.
As heavy rains began mostly clearing, and throngs of fans arrived for the match, no major street protests against the president could be seen from the touranment’s main stadium. Attendees also steered clear of wearing any of the president’s signature “Make America Great Again” caps, though.
A 58-year tennis fan originally from Turin, Italy, came from her home in the Boston area to watch the final and said that when she bought a U.S. Open cap, she went with a fuchsia-hued one so it wouldn’t be mistaken for the signature darker color of MAGA hats.
“I was careful not to get the red one,” said the fan, who declined to give her name because of her employer’s rules about being publicly quoted.
Attending with Trump were White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, special administration envoy Steve Witkoff and Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff.
Elsewhere in the crowd were a slew of celebrities — some of whom publicly backed then-Vice President Kamala Harris during last year’s election against Trump. Among them were Pink, Bruce Springsteen, Shonda Rhimes, Michael J. Fox, Sting, Shaggy, Ben Stiller and Courtney Cox.
Trump came back to the press cabin on Air Force One during the flight to New York to note that the plane would be flying over Ashe stadium, but didn’t offer any further comment.
Trump was once a U.S. Open mainstay, but hasn’t attended since he was loudly booed at a quarterfinals match in September 2015, months after launching his first presidential campaign.
The Trump Organization once controlled its own U.S. Open suite, which was adjacent to the stadium’s television broadcasting booth, but suspended it in 2017, during the first year of Trump’s first term. The family business is now being run by Trump’s sons with their father back in the White House.
Trump was born in Queens, home of the U.S. Open, and for decades was a New York-area real estate mogul and, later, a reality TV star. Attending the tournament before he was a politician, he usually sat in the suite’s balcony during night matches and was frequently shown on the arena’s video screens.
In recent years, however, including between his presidential terms, Trump primarily lived at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.
Alcaraz said before the final that having Trump on-hand would be a privilege and “great for tennis,” but also suggested that such sentiment went for any president watching from the stands. “I don’t want myself to be nervous because of it,” he said.
The president has also frequently attended sporting events — where the roar of the crowd sometimes features people booing him while others cheer him.
Since returning to the White House in January and prior to Sunday’s U.S Open swing, Trump went to the Super Bowl in New Orleans and the Daytona 500, as well as UFC fights in Miami and Newark, New Jersey, the NCAA wrestling championships in Philadelphia and the FIFA Club World Cup final in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
Having a sitting president attend the U.S. Open hasn’t happened since Bill Clinton went to the 2000 tournament, though former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, attended the event’s opening night in 2023.
___
Associated Press writer Brian Mahoney contributed to this report.
It’s been more than 60 years since Utah backed a Democrat for president. The state’s last Democratic U.S. senator left office nearly half a century ago and the last Utah Democrat to serve in the House lost his seat in 2020.
Late last month, a judge tossed out the state’s slanted congressional lines and ordered Utah’s GOP-run Legislature to draw a new political map, ruling that lawmakers improperly thumbed their noses and overrode voters who created an independent redistricting commission to end gerrymandering.
It’s a welcome pushback against the growing pattern of lawmakers arrogantly ignoring voters and pursuing their preferred agenda. You don’t have to be a partisan to think that elections should matter and when voters express their will it should be honored.
Otherwise, what’s the point of holding elections?
Anyhow, redistricting. Did you ever dream you’d spend this much time thinking about the subject? Typically, it’s an arcane and extremely nerdy process that occurs once a decade, after the census, and mainly draws attention from a small priesthood of line-drawing experts and political obsessives.
Suddenly, everyone is fixated on congressional boundaries, for which we can thank our voraciously self-absorbed president.
Trump started the whole sorry gerrymandering business — voters and democracy be damned — by browbeating Texas into redrawing its congressional map to try to nab Republicans as many as five additional House seats in 2026. The paranoid president is looking to bolster his party ahead of a tough midterm election, when Democrats need to gain just three seats to win a House majority and attain some measure of control over Trump’s rogue regime.
Meantime, the political race to the bottom continues.
Lawmakers in Republican-run Florida, Indiana, Missouri and Ohio may tear up their congressional maps in favor of partisan gerrymanders, and Democrats in Illinois and New York are being urged to do the same.
When all is said and done, 10 or so additional seats could be locked up by one party or the other, even before a single ballot is cast; this when the competitive congressional map nationwide has already shrunk to a postage stamp-sized historic low.
If you think that sort of pre-baked election and voter obsolescence is a good thing, you might consider switching your registration to Russia or China.
Utah, at least, offers a small ray of positivity.
In 2018, voters there narrowly approved Proposition 4, taking the map-drawing process away from self-interested lawmakers and creating an independent commission to handle redistricting. In 2021, the Republican-run Legislature chose to ignore voters, gutting the commission and passing a congressional map that allowed the GOP to easily win all four of Utah’s House seats.
The trick was slicing and dicing Democratic-leaning Salt Lake County, the state’s most populous and densely packed, and scattering its voters among four predominantly Republican districts.
“There’s always going to be someone who disagrees,” Carson Jorgensen, the chairman of the Utah Republican Party, said airily as lawmakers prepared to give voters their middle finger.
In July 2024, Utah’s five Supreme Court justices — all Republican appointees — found that the Legislature’s repeal and replacement of Proposition 4 was unconstitutional. The ruling kicked the case over to Salt Lake County District Judge Dianna Gibson, who on Aug. 25 rejected the partisan maps drawn by GOP lawmakers.
Cue the predictable outrage.
“Monday’s Court Order in Utah is absolutely Unconstitutional,” Trump bleated on social media. “How did such a wonderful Republican State like Utah, which I won in every Election, end up with so many Radical Left Judges?”
In Gibson’s case, the answer is her appointment by Gov. Gary R. Herbert, a Republican who would be considered a radical leftist in the same way a hot fudge sundae could be described as diet food.
Others offered the usual condemnation of “judicial activism,” which is political-speak for whenever a court decision doesn’t go your way.
“It’s a terrible day … for the rule of law,” lamented Utah’s Republican Sen. Mike Lee, who is apparently concerned with legal proprieties only insofar as they serve his party’s president and the GOP, having schemed with Trump allies in their failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
In a ruling last week rejecting lawmakers’ request to pause her decision, Gibson wrote that “Utah has an opportunity to be different.”
“While other states are currently redrawing their congressional maps to intentionally render some citizen votes meaningless, Utah could redesign its congressional plan with the intention to protect its citizens’ right to vote and to ensure that each citizen’s vote is meaningful.”
That’s true. Utah can not only be different from other states, as Gibson suggested.
WASHINGTON — The F-35 is the most advanced fighter jet on the planet, capable of waging electronic warfare, of dropping nuclear weapons, of evading the surveillance and missile defenses of America’s most fearsome enemies at supersonic speeds.
It is the latest example of the Trump administration using disproportionate military force to supplement, or substitute for, traditional law enforcement operations — first at home on the streets of U.S. cities and now overseas, where the president has labeled multiple drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and has vowed a “tough” response.
On Tuesday, that response began with an inaugural “kinetic strike” targeting a small vessel in the Caribbean allegedly carrying narcotics and 11 members of Tren de Aragua, one of the Venezuelan gangs President Trump has designated a terrorist group. Legally designating a gang or cartel as a terrorist entity ostensibly gives the president greater legal cover to conduct lethal strikes on targets.
The operation follows Trump’s deployment of U.S. forces to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., for operations with dubious justifications, as well as threats of similar actions in San Francisco, Chicago and New Orleans, moves that a federal judge said last week amount to Trump “creating a national police force with the President as its chief.”
Trump has referred to both problems — urban crime and drug trafficking — as interlinked and out of control. But U.S. service members have no training in local law or drug enforcement. And experts question a strategy that has been tried before, both by the United States and regional governments, of launching a war against drugs only to drive leaders in the trade to militarize themselves.
U.S. drug policy “has always been semi-militarized,” said Jeremy Adelman, director of the Global History Lab at Princeton University. Trump’s latest actions simply make more explicit the erasure of a line “that separates law enforcement from warfare.”
“One side effect of all this is that other countries are watching,” Adelman said. “By turning law enforcement over to the military — as the White House is also doing domestically — what’s to stop other countries from doing the same in international waters?
“Fishermen in the South China Sea should be worried,” he added.
The Trump administration has not provided further details on the 11 people killed in the boat strike. But officials said the departure of a drug vessel from Venezuela makes Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s dictatorial president labeled by the White House as a top drug kingpin, indirectly responsible.
“Let there be no doubt, Nicolás Maduro is an indicted drug trafficker in the United States, and he’s a fugitive of American justice,” Marco Rubio, Trump’s secretary of State and national security advisor, said on a tour of the region Thursday, citing a grand jury indictment in the Southern District of New York.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks during a news conference Wednesday in Mexico City.
(Hector Vivas / Getty Images)
The president’s war on drug cartels will continue, Rubio said, adding that regional governments “will help us find these people and blow them up.”
Maduro has warned the strike indicates that Washington seeks regime change in Caracas. The Venezuelan military flew two aircraft near a U.S. vessel in international waters Thursday night, prompting an angry response from Pentagon officials and Trump to direct his Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, to “do what you want to do” in response.
“Despite how dangerous this performance could be, because of its political consequences, it can’t be taken seriously as a drug policy,” said Lina Britto, an expert on Latin America and the Caribbean at Northwestern University with a focus on the history of the drug trade. “It lacks rigorousness in the analysis of how drug trafficking operates in the hemisphere.”
Most drugs entering the U.S. homeland from South America arrive in shipping containers, submarines and more efficient modes of transportation than speedboats — and primarily come through the Pacific, not the Caribbean, Britto said.
Trump has flirted with military strikes on drug cartels since the start of his second term, working with Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, to coordinate drone strikes over Mexican territory for surveillance of cartel activity.
But Sheinbaum has ruled out the use of force against cartels, or the deployment of U.S. forces within Mexico to combat them, warning that U.S. military action would violate Mexican sovereignty and upend collaboration between the two close-knit trade and security partners.
Girls walk in front of a politically charged mural near the Bolivar Square in the center of Caracas, Venezuela, on Aug. 25. The Iranian Forest vessel depicted in the right side of the mural arrived in Venezuela during fuel shortages in 2020.
(Andrea Hernández Briceño / For The Times)
In comparison, Venezuela offers Trump a cleaner opportunity to test the use of force against drug cartels, with diplomatic ties between the two governments at a nadir. But a war with Maduro over drugs could create unexpected problems for the Trump administration, setting off a rare military conflict in a placid region and fueling further instability in a country that, over the last decade, already set off the world’s largest refugee crisis.
Ryan Berg, director of the Americas Program and head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that Trump’s use of foreign terrorist designations changes the rules of engagement in ways that allow for action “where law enforcement solutions failed in the past.”
“What we are witnessing is a paradigm shift in real time,” Berg said. “Many of Latin America’s most significant criminal organizations are now designated foreign terrorist organizations. The administration is demonstrating that this is not only rhetorical.”
But Paul Gootenberg, a professor at Stony Brook University and author of “Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug,” characterized Trump’s military operation as a “simplistic” approach to complex social problems.
“This is more a performative attack on the Venezuelan regime than a serious attempt at drug policy,” Gootenberg said.
“Militarized drug policy is nothing new — it was tried and intensified in various ways from the mid-1980s through 2000s, oftentimes under U.S. Southern Command,” he added. “The whole range and levels of ‘war on drugs’ was a long, unmitigated policy failure, according to the vast, vast majority of drug experts.”
Times staff writer Ana Ceballos contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump’s administration said Friday that it is exploring whether the federal government can take control of the 9/11 memorial and museum in New York City.The site in lower Manhattan, where the World Trade Center’s twin towers were destroyed by hijacked jetliners on Sept. 11, 2001, features two memorial pools ringed by waterfalls and parapets with the names of the dead, and an underground museum. Since opening to the public in 2014, the memorial plaza and museum have been run by a public charity, now chaired by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a frequent Trump critic.The White House confirmed the administration has had “preliminary exploratory discussions” about the idea, but declined to elaborate. The office noted the Republican pledged during his campaign last year to make the site a national monument, protected and maintained by the federal government.But officials at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum say the federal government, under current laws, can’t unilaterally take over the site, which is located on land owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.The U.S. government shouldering costs and management of the site also “makes no sense,” given Trump’s efforts to dramatically pare back the federal bureaucracy, said Beth Hillman, the organization’s president and CEO.“We’re proud that our exhibitions tell stories of bravery and patriotism and are confident that our current operating model has served the public honorably and effectively,” she said, noting the organization has raised $750 million in private funds and welcomed some 90 million visitors since its opening.Last year, the museum generated more than $93 million in revenue and spent roughly $84 million on operating costs, leaving a nearly $9 million surplus when depreciation is factored in, according to museum officials and its most recently available tax filings.New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, meanwhile, voiced her own concerns about a federal takeover, citing the Trump administration’s recent efforts to influence how American history is told through its national monuments and museums, including the Smithsonian.The takeover idea also comes just months after the Trump administration briefly cut, but then restored, staffing at a federal program that provides health benefits to people with illnesses that might be linked to toxic dust from the destroyed World Trade Center.“The 9/11 Memorial belongs to New Yorkers — the families, survivors, and first responders who have carried this legacy for more than two decades and ensured we never forget,” Hochul said in a statement. “Before he meddles with this sacred site, the President should start by honoring survivors and supporting the families of victims.”Anthoula Katsimatides, a museum board member who lost her brother, John, in the attack, said she didn’t see any reason to change ownership.“They do an incredible job telling the story of that day without sugarcoating it,” she said. “It’s being run so well, I don’t see why there has to be a change. I don’t see what benefit there would be.”The memorial and museum, however, have also been the target of criticism over the years from some members of the large community of 9/11 victims’ families, some of whom have criticized ticket prices or called for changes in the makeup of the museum’s exhibits.Trump spokespersons declined to respond to the comments.In all, nearly 3,000 people were killed when the hijackers crashed jetliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in southwest Pennsylvania during the Sept. 11 attacks. More than 2,700 of those victims perished in the fiery collapse of the trade center’s twin towers.
NEW YORK —
President Donald Trump’s administration said Friday that it is exploring whether the federal government can take control of the 9/11 memorial and museum in New York City.
The site in lower Manhattan, where the World Trade Center’s twin towers were destroyed by hijacked jetliners on Sept. 11, 2001, features two memorial pools ringed by waterfalls and parapets with the names of the dead, and an underground museum. Since opening to the public in 2014, the memorial plaza and museum have been run by a public charity, now chaired by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a frequent Trump critic.
The White House confirmed the administration has had “preliminary exploratory discussions” about the idea, but declined to elaborate. The office noted the Republican pledged during his campaign last year to make the site a national monument, protected and maintained by the federal government.
But officials at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum say the federal government, under current laws, can’t unilaterally take over the site, which is located on land owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
The U.S. government shouldering costs and management of the site also “makes no sense,” given Trump’s efforts to dramatically pare back the federal bureaucracy, said Beth Hillman, the organization’s president and CEO.
“We’re proud that our exhibitions tell stories of bravery and patriotism and are confident that our current operating model has served the public honorably and effectively,” she said, noting the organization has raised $750 million in private funds and welcomed some 90 million visitors since its opening.
Last year, the museum generated more than $93 million in revenue and spent roughly $84 million on operating costs, leaving a nearly $9 million surplus when depreciation is factored in, according to museum officials and its most recently available tax filings.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, meanwhile, voiced her own concerns about a federal takeover, citing the Trump administration’s recent efforts to influence how American history is told through its national monuments and museums, including the Smithsonian.
The takeover idea also comes just months after the Trump administration briefly cut, but then restored, staffing at a federal program that provides health benefits to people with illnesses that might be linked to toxic dust from the destroyed World Trade Center.
“The 9/11 Memorial belongs to New Yorkers — the families, survivors, and first responders who have carried this legacy for more than two decades and ensured we never forget,” Hochul said in a statement. “Before he meddles with this sacred site, the President should start by honoring survivors and supporting the families of victims.”
Anthoula Katsimatides, a museum board member who lost her brother, John, in the attack, said she didn’t see any reason to change ownership.
“They do an incredible job telling the story of that day without sugarcoating it,” she said. “It’s being run so well, I don’t see why there has to be a change. I don’t see what benefit there would be.”
The memorial and museum, however, have also been the target of criticism over the years from some members of the large community of 9/11 victims’ families, some of whom have criticized ticket prices or called for changes in the makeup of the museum’s exhibits.
Trump spokespersons declined to respond to the comments.
In all, nearly 3,000 people were killed when the hijackers crashed jetliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in southwest Pennsylvania during the Sept. 11 attacks. More than 2,700 of those victims perished in the fiery collapse of the trade center’s twin towers.
WASHINGTON — President Trump has asked the Supreme Court for a fast-track ruling that he has broad power acting on his own to impose tariffs on products coming from countries around the world.
Despite losing in the lower courts, Trump and his lawyers have reason to believe they can win in the Supreme Court. The six conservative justices believe in strong presidential power, particularly in the area of foreign policy and national security.
In a three-page appeal filed Wednesday evening, they proposed the court decide by next Wednesday to grant review and to hear arguments in early November.
They said the lower court setbacks, unless quickly reversed, “gravely undermine the President’s ability to conduct real-world diplomacy and his ability to protect the national security and economy of the United States.”
They cited Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s warning about the potential for economic disruption if the court does not act soon.
“Delaying a ruling until June 26 could result in a scenario in which $750 billion-$1 trillion have already been collected and unwinding them could cause significant disruption,” he wrote.
Trump and his tariffs ran into three strong arguments in the lower courts.
First, the Constitution says Congress, not the president, has the power “to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,” and a tariff is an import tax.
Second, the 1977 emergency powers law that Trump relies on does not mention tariffs, taxes or duties, and no previous president has used it to impose tariffs.
And third, the Supreme Court has frowned on recent presidents who relied on old laws to justify bold, new, costly regulations.
So far, however, the so-called “major questions” doctrine has been used to restrict Democratic presidents, not Republicans.
Three years ago, the court’s conservative majority struck down a major climate change regulation proposed by Presidents Obama and Biden that could have transformed the electric power industry on the grounds it was not clearly based on the Clean Air Act of the 1970s.
Two years ago, the court in the same 6-3 vote struck down Biden’s plan to forgive hundreds of millions of dollars in student loans. Congress had said the Education Department may “waive or modify” monthly loan payments during a national emergency like the COVID-19 pandemic, but it did not say the loans may be forgiven, the court said. Its opinion noted the “staggering” cost could be more than $500 billion.
The impact of Trump’s tariffs figures to be at least five times greater, a federal appeals court said last week in ruling them illegal.
In a 7-4 vote, the federal circuit court cited all three arguments in ruling Trump had exceeded his legal authority.
“We conclude Congress, in enacting the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, did not give the president wide-ranging authority to impose tariffs,” they said.
But the outcome was not a total loss for Trump. The appellate judges put their decision on hold until the Supreme Court rules. That means Trump’s tariffs are likely to remain in effect for many months.
Trump’s lawyers were heartened by the dissent written by Judge Richard Taranto and joined by three others.
He argued that presidents are understood to have extra power when confronted with foreign threats to the nation’s security.
Taranto called the 1977 law “an eyes-open congressional grant of broad emergency authority in this foreign-affairs realm” that said the president may “regulate” the “importation” of dangerous products including drugs coming into this country.
Citing other laws from that era, he said Congress understood that tariffs and duties are a “common tool of import regulation.”
Bill Anderson was close to 70 when he first spotted the clock.
It looked like a ship’s wheel, a kitschy bit of decor you might see at a nautically themed bar. But he was drawn to it because of its maker.
Timepieces from Chelsea Clock Co. were renowned for their design and precision. The company’s clocks could once be found on Navy battleships during World War II, and adorned mantels, walls and desks at the White House for presidents ranging from Dwight Eisenhower to Joe Biden.
Anderson, a retired watchmaker and collector, was particularly interested in the base of the Chelsea Comet, which was engraved with the initials “J.F.K.”
John Fitzgerald Kennedy?
Although watch collectors obsess over celebrity ownership, and a Camelot connection counts for a lot, the prospect of a payday was only part of the allure for Anderson.
Retired watchmaker Bill Anderson owns more than 200 timepieces, including a Chelsea Comet with a plaque featuring a “J.F.K.” engraving.
(Courtesy of Bill Anderson)
The mystery of the clock’s provenance — could it possibly be the real deal? — has animated his life for years. This, Anderson said, “is a nice game that I’ve got going here.”
He’d purchased the clock in 1999 from a seller on EBay, a New Hampshire dealer who’d picked it up at an estate sale in Wellesley, Mass., for $280.
In the intervening years, Anderson, who is 95, has plumbed the cloistered world of clock collectors. His hunt would take him to the online message boards of watch and clock aficionados, and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. It would eventually lead to a refrigerated vault 200 feet below ground in a former limestone mine in rural Pennsylvania.
Anderson, who lives in Eugene, Ore., may not use the word “obsession” to describe his interest in his J.F.K. clock, but others do. All those decades he’s spent trying to uncover its backstory are evidence of its almost gravitational pull.
Anderson, whose parents ran a grocery store, grew up in Roseburg, Ore., south of Eugene. In the late 1940s, he left the University of Oregon after just one quarter and enrolled in a watchmaking school run by the Elgin National Watch Co.
Anderson’s maternal grandfather had been in the trade. “I leaned over his watchmaker’s bench and watched him as a little boy,” he explained. “He let me have the insides of an alarm clock … that was the beginning of it.”
In time, Anderson became a retail liquidator, helping to close jewelry and watch stores and sell their remaining inventories. Along the way, Anderson married and started a family. He gained a reputation as an honest broker — and for being able to spot the value in merchandise that others couldn’t sell.
“Bill is like the George Washington of people — you know, ‘I cannot tell a lie,’ that type of thing,” said Errol Stewart, a Maine watchmaker who has known Anderson for about 40 years.
In 1974, Anderson paid $15,000 for the inventory of a jeweler in Baker City, Ore., selling what he could and bringing the leftovers home. Forty years later, he came across them while cleaning out his attic; among the wares was an old football helmet.
It turned out to be a rare Spalding head harness from the early 1900s. No more than 10 are believed to still be in existence, and Anderson sold it for about $14,000.
He has retained more than 200 timepieces for his collection, including several from Chelsea, and has watched the prices for celebrity-owned timepieces surge in the last few decades.
“With Kennedy you get the highest multiplication factor for any political figure,” said Paul Boutros, who heads the U.S. watch business for Phillips, a London-based auction house.
Anderson knew if he could confirm the ownership, it would be a boon — perhaps a capstone to his legacy as a watchmaker and collector. The first thing he did was get in touch with Chelsea to request the clock’s certificate of origin.
When it arrived, the spot for the original buyer’s name was marked “no record.” Could that have been a courtesy extended to a VIP customer? JFK’s father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., had visited the company’s headquarters in Massachusetts — home to the Kennedy clan — where he purchased several items.
Chelsea had published a feature on its website about in-house master clockmaker Jean Yeo that touched on that celebrity connection. She said that she began working at Chelsea in 1951, a time when “all of the Kennedys came in here” and had special praise for the family’s patriarch, calling him a “nice guy” who talked to her about her work.
But Anderson wasn’t sure what to think. The growing allure of watches with A-list history was enticing people to peddle dubious timepieces.
In 2005, a Rolex that was said to be a gift from Marilyn Monroe to Kennedy was auctioned for $120,000. The gold Day-Date, allegedly given by the actress to Kennedy in 1962 on the occasion of his 45th birthday, featured an inscription that reads, “Jack / With love as always / from / Marilyn.” But collectors and watch scholars have noted that the timepiece in question featured a serial number that dated it to 1965.
At one point in his search, Anderson had a breakthrough when he discovered an online photograph of the future president and his wife at home in 1954. A clock was positioned on a desk, and it looked just like Anderson’s Comet, but the low-resolution picture was so blurry that any engraving it may have had was impossible to discern.
Then-Sen. John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, at their home in Washington, D.C., in 1954. A Chelsea Comet clock sits on the desk.
(Bettmann Archive)
James Archer Abbott, co-author of “Designing Camelot: The Kennedy White House Restoration and Its Legacy,” said there was no record of the Comet having been displayed at the White House, and cautioned that if it were important to the family, it likely would have been earmarked for Kennedy’s presidential library. A representative of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum said that it has no record of or information on the Comet clock.
But Tony LaChapelle, president of Chelsea, was open to the possibility that it had once been owned by Kennedy.
“Could somebody who had nothing better to do in their life take that photo of JFK, Jackie and that clock, and get a Comet clock and try to capitalize on that? I suppose they could,” he said. “We look at [Anderson’s ] clock and we look at that photo of [Kennedy’s clock] sitting out on the table, and in our opinion it is highly probable” they were one and the same.
Anderson tried to find the original high-resolution image for years but couldn’t turn anything up. No one seemed to know the source of the photo. There were tens of thousands of pictures of Kennedy to comb through online. Or more.
But eventually, after a serpentine, multiyear effort, the whereabouts of the original negative were finally uncovered. It was in a photo archive stored inside a Boyers, Pa., facility known as the Iron Mountain, a formidable place that securely maintains records of all types, including for the federal government.
The Bettmann Archive, which comprises millions of photos and is managed by Getty Images, is housed in a section of the Mountain that’s more than 10 stories underground.
Last year, an archivist located the negative and brought it to one of Bettmann’s labs, where she placed it on a flatbed scanner. Soon, a new, ultra-high-resolution version of the 1954 image glowed on her computer screen. The clarity was remarkable.
The Comet could be clearly seen in the photo, including the clock’s wooden base.
It was blank.
When he heard the news — relayed via telephone — Anderson grew quiet.
But he offered no lamentations and later he said he wasn’t disappointed: “Not a bit.” He’d come to realize how important the hunt had been for him, especially after his wife, Sallie, died in July 2023. She was 93.
“She understood that I loved that kind of stuff,” he said.
The research made a dark time just a little easier.
During a recent interview, Anderson sat at his dining room table, where there was an array of photos of his wife. The Comet was there too. He explained that over the last year or so, he has asked each of his five children to select clocks from his collection that they will inherit when he dies.
Marilyn Monroe, seen in a 1962 photograph, is said to have gifted President Kennedy a Rolex that was later auctioned for $120,000.
(Cecil Stoughton / White House Photographs / John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum / Associated Press)
“I don’t know how many more miles down the road I’ve got,” he said.
But Anderson has yet to offer the Comet. “Why that hasn’t happened yet, I don’t know,” he said.
One of his sons, Mike Anderson, a watchmaker who owns Anderson Jewelers in Corvallis, Ore., has an idea. “There’s no doubt in my mind he wants to link [the clock] to JFK — he wants to believe that that was on his desk,” the younger Anderson said. “That’s what drives him.”
After all these years, Anderson still loves the chase.
More than $250 million down, another $530 million to go.
That’s how much of a projected $783 million state budget hole the Colorado legislature filled by the time a special session called to address the impact of the federal tax bill ended Tuesday afternoon — and the larger amount that still remains. Erasing the rest of the red ink will fall to Gov. Jared Polis, who plans to rebalance this year’s budget in the coming days through a mix of cuts to state funding and a big dip into the rainy-day fund.
Over six days, the legislature’s majority Democrats fulfilled their part of a plan worked out with the governor’s office: to pass legislation that is expected to generate enough revenue to close about a third of the shortfall projected for the state’s budget in the current fiscal year, which began July 1. They ended tax breaks and found other ways to offset declining state income tax revenue, while leaving spending cuts largely for Polis to decide.
“What we did here in this special session is soften the blow,” said Sen. Jeff Bridges, a Greenwood Village Democrat who chairs the legislature’s budget committee. “But when the federal government cuts $1.2 billion in revenue from the state with a stroke of a pen, after we’ve already cut $1.2 billion (from the budget) in the regular session, that’s a tough deficit to come back from in a way that doesn’t impact the people of Colorado.”
The special session ended with 11 bills going to Polis for final approval. Five sought to fill the budget gap, largely by ending tax incentives for businesses and high-income earners.
The single largest revenue-raising measure, House Bill 1004, will auction off tax credits that can be claimed in future tax years for a discount. Backers expected that bill to bring in an additional $100 million to state coffers this year, at the expense of about $125 million in future years.
Together, those measures add up to $253 million in revenue to reduce the projected deficit — money that Democrats say represents averted cuts to Medicaid, schools and hospitals.
“Colorado legislators stepped up and helped protect children’s food access and minimized the devastating cost increases to health insurance premiums across the state, to the best of our ability,” Polis, who signed two of the new bills earlier Tuesday, said in a statement.
The legislature’s Joint Budget Committee expects to meet Thursday to hear Polis’ plan to address the remaining $500 million or so, including mid-year spending cuts.
As part of his call for a special session on Aug. 6, Polis announced a statewide hiring freeze. He said in an interview before the session started that he hoped to avoid cuts to K-12 education, but he has left all other options on the table, including Medicaid program spending.
The plan also factors in a significant use of reserves to offset some of the remaining gap.
Partisan debates
Over the past week, Republicans fought the Democrats’ bills, but strong Democratic majorities in both legislative chambers all but preordained the outcome.
“Not only did we increase taxes, we’re balancing the budget on the back of small businesses,” said Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Brighton Republican on the budget committee.
One of the bills heading to Polis would erase a fee paid by the state to businesses for collecting sales taxes — an outdated subsidy, according to Democrats, and an unnecessary new burden now put on businesses, according to Republicans.
Republicans said before the session that they’d likely challenge several bills in court over allegations that they violate provisions in the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights that require voter approval for tax increases. Kirkmeyer and Rep. Rick Taggart, a Grand Junction Republican who’s also on the budget committee, said bills going to the governor that would eliminate some tax credits and allow the sale of tax credits against future collections seemed particularly vulnerable to a challenge under TABOR.
Debate throughout the special session took a distinctly partisan edge. Democrats laid the cuts on congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump and called the federal tax bill a de facto theft of benefits from the poorest Coloradans to benefit the wealthiest.
Republicans countered that the federal bill delivered much-needed tax cuts, and they said Democrats sought to yank those away instead of cutting partisan priorities.
Legislators begin to gather in the Senate Chambers before the start of another day of the special legislative session at the Colorado State Capitol in Denver on Aug. 26, 2025. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)
Bills on wolves, artificial intelligence
Other bills passed sought to respond to different aspects of the federal bill, formerly known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” as well as other priorities.
Lawmakers stripped general fund money away from the voter-approved program to reintroduce wolves in the state, though releases are expected to continue this winter. They tweaked ballot language for a measure about taxes for universal school meals to allow that money to go to general food assistance, as well, if voters approve it in November.
The legislature also approved a bill allowing state Medicaid program to pay Planned Parenthood for services provided, after the federal government specifically barred federal money from going to the organization.
Polis included in his call of the session that lawmakers address concerns swirling around the state’s first-in-the-nation regulations of artificial intelligence after a similar effort in the spring blew up. The rules now in law go into effect in February.
After days of bruising negotiations, lawmakers punted on any new changes and delayed the existing rules from going into effect until the end of June — giving them time to resume the debate during the next regular legislative session in January.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris’ decision to forgo a run for California governor has created a wide-open race in next year’s election to run the nation’s most populous state, according to a poll released Tuesday by UC Berkeley and the Los Angeles Times.
Nearly 4 in 10 registered voters surveyed said they are uncertain about whom they will support in the 2026 contest to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“It’s very unsettled. Most of the voters, the plurality in this poll, are undecided,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the poll, which was conducted by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times. “They don’t really know much about the candidates.”
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Among those who had a preference, former Democratic Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine had a small edge as the top choice, with the backing of 17%. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican, was the only other candidate who received double-digit support, winning the backing of 10% of respondents.
DiCamillo said Porter’s unsuccessful 2024 U.S. Senate campaign boosted her recognition among California voters, but cautioned that she had a small, early lead more than nine months before the June 2 primary. Bianco’s support was driven by voters focused on crime and public safety, taxes and the budget deficit, perennial concerns among GOP voters, according to the survey.
Other top candidates for governor — former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, former state legislative leader Toni Atkins, current California Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, former state Controller Betty Yee, wealthy businessman Stephen Cloobeck and conservative commentator Steve Hilton — received single-digit support as voters’ first choice in the poll. A few potential candidates also had single-digit support, including billionaire Los Angeles businessman Rick Caruso, former Trump administration official Ric Grenell and former GOP state Sen. Brian Dahle.
The survey is among the first independent public polls since Harris announced in late July that she would not run for governor in 2026, dramatically reshuffling the calculus in a crowded race that the former vice president was widely expected to dominate if she mounted a campaign. The poll also took place after Lt. Gov Eleni Kounalakis dropped out of the contest this month to run for state treasurer instead.
“It’s pretty wide-open,” DiCamillo said. “And when you look at the second-choice preference, first and second together, it’s bunched together.”
When voters were asked to rank their top two choices, Porter received 22% as the first or second choice, Becerra got 18%, Bianco notched 15% and Hilton won 12%, according to the poll.
None of the politicians running are well known by Californians compared with the state’s last three governors: Newsom, the former mayor of San Francisco and lieutenant governor, who during his two terms as governor has positioned himself as a foil to President Trump ; former two-term Gov. Jerry Brown, who along with his father left an indelible imprimatur on California’s history; and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a global celebrity who returned to the Hollywood limelight after he left office, along with launching efforts to fight climate change and support independent redistricting nationwide.
A pressing question is whether anyone else enters the race, notably Caruso, who has the ability to self-fund a campaign. The deadline to file to run for the seat is March 6.
Whoever is elected as California’s next governor will face the difficult task of contending with a hostile Trump administration and an electorate looking to the state’s next leader to address its most pressing concerns.
Economic issues are top of mind among all registered voters, with 36% saying the cost of living is their greatest concern and 25% focusing on the affordability of housing, according to the poll. But there were sharp partisan disparities about other issues. Democrats were more concerned about the state of democracy, climate change and healthcare, while Republicans prioritized crime, taxes and immigration.
Two of California’s most prominent Democrats, Newsom and Harris, are longtime friends grounded in their Bay Area roots and both viewed as potential 2028 presidential candidates.
As a potential White House hopeful, Newsom has an edge over Harris among Californians overall as well as the state’s Democrats, according to the poll.
Roughly 45% of the state’s registered voters said they were very or somewhat enthusiastic about Newsom running, compared with 36% who expressed a similar sentiment about Harris. Additionally, nearly two-thirds of registered voters and 51% of Democrats said Harris should not run for president again after two unsuccessful White House bids — in the primary in 2020 and in the general election in 2024.
“She lost, which is always a negative when you’re trying to run again,” DiCamillo said. “It’s interesting that even after Harris bowed out of the governor’s race, most Californians don’t really think she should run for president.”
While he described Newsom’s support as a “mixed bag” among the state’s registered voters, DiCamillo pointed to his strength among Democrats. Nearly 7 of 10 registered Democratic voters in the state said they are very or somewhat enthusiastic about Newsom running for president, compared with 54% who expressed similar feelings about Harris.
The poll took place during a tumultuous period as Trump’s far-right policies begin to hit their stride.
Drastic cuts to healthcare, nutrition, reproductive rights and other federal safety-net programs are expected to disproportionately affect Californians. The Trump administration‘s aggressive immigration raids in Los Angeles and across the state and country have caused the nation’s partisan divide to widen, driven by the president’s decision to deploy the military and target all undocumented immigrants, including law-abiding workers. Higher-education institutions across the nation have been targeted by the Trump administration, including UCLA, which is being threatened with a $1-billion fine.
Californians were surveyed shortly before Democratic state lawmakers, trying to fight the Trump administration’s agenda, voted Thursday to call a special election in November to redraw the state’s congressional districts. The action was taken to counter gerrymandering efforts in Texas and other GOP-led states as both parties fight for control of Congress in next year’s midterm elections.
The Berkeley IGS poll surveyed 4,950 California registered voters online in English and Spanish from Aug. 11 to 17. The results are estimated to have a margin of error of 2 percentage points in either direction in the overall sample, and larger numbers for subgroups.
