American and Iranian officials are meeting today in Switzerland to discuss U.S. demands for Iran to abandon its nuclear program, amid threats from President Donald Trump and a buildup of American military assets. Trump has warned of using force if a deal is not reached.”I think they want to make a deal. I don’t think they want the consequences of not making a deal. They want to make a deal,” Trump said.Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are in Geneva for a second round of talks over Iran’s nuclear program. Iran has stated that it will respond with an attack of its own if the U.S. initiates military action. The Trump administration insists that Iran must cease uranium enrichment, a process that could lead to the development of nuclear weapons, while Tehran maintains its program is for peaceful purposes.Trump is increasing American military presence near Iran, having recently announced the deployment of the world’s largest aircraft carrier from the Caribbean Sea to the Middle East, where another guided-missile destroyer is stationed.Trump was asked Friday if he wants regime change in Iran. He said it seems like that would be the best thing that could happen, but he did not comment on the specifics of who he wants to take over. Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:
WASHINGTON —
American and Iranian officials are meeting today in Switzerland to discuss U.S. demands for Iran to abandon its nuclear program, amid threats from President Donald Trump and a buildup of American military assets. Trump has warned of using force if a deal is not reached.
“I think they want to make a deal. I don’t think they want the consequences of not making a deal. They want to make a deal,” Trump said.
The Trump administration insists that Iran must cease uranium enrichment, a process that could lead to the development of nuclear weapons, while Tehran maintains its program is for peaceful purposes.
Trump is increasing American military presence near Iran, having recently announced the deployment of the world’s largest aircraft carrier from the Caribbean Sea to the Middle East, where another guided-missile destroyer is stationed.
Trump was asked Friday if he wants regime change in Iran. He said it seems like that would be the best thing that could happen, but he did not comment on the specifics of who he wants to take over.
Keep watching for the latest from the Washington News Bureau:
Kai Trump, a high school senior playing in an LPGA Tour event for reasons beyond her ability to hit a golf ball, went from “definitely really nervous” in the first round to “very calm and peaceful” Friday in the second.
All in all, an impressive improvement.
Still, Trump, 18, didn’t make the cut, not after finishing last among 108 players with a two-round total of 18-over, 27 shots behind leader Grace Kim and 17 away from the projected cut line. The granddaughter of President Trump improved eight strokes to a 75 in the second round of the tournament hosted by Hall of Famer Annika Sorenstam at Pelican Golf Club in Belleair, Fla.
How dramatic was the improvement? Trump had nine bogeys, two doubles and one birdie Thursday. A day later she was briefly under par when she birdied the par-3 third hole, but she bogeyed the fourth and triple-bogeyed the par-4 fifth hole.
Trump rebounded to birdie three of her next six holes. How relaxed was she? She literally laughed off her triple bogey.
“Things are going to happen,” she said. “Once it happens, you can’t go back in time and fix it. The best thing I could do is move on. Like, I told my caddie, Allan [Kournikova], kind of just started laughing, ‘it is what it is.’
“We got that out of the way, so let’s just move on. It was pretty easy to move on after that.”
Especially on the three-par No. 12 where she nearly made the first hole-in-one of her life.
“I hit like a tight little draw into it,” Trump said. “Tried not to get too high because of the wind. Yeah, it was a great shot.”
What would she tell her grandfather about the round? “That I hit a great shot on 18 two days in a row.”
“I did everything I could possibly have done for this tournament, so I think if you prepare right, the nerves can … they’re always going to be there, right?,” she said. “They can be a little softened. So I would just say that.”
Critics among and beyond her nearly 9 million social media followers were relentless in noting her obvious privilege for securing a sponsor invitation. Dan Doyle Jr., owner of Pelican Golf Club, cheerfully acknowledged that Trump’s inclusion had little to do with ability and a lot to do with public relations.
“The idea of the exemption, when you go into the history of exemptions, is to bring attention to an event,” Doyle told reporters this week. “You got to see her live, she’s lovely to speak to.
“And she’s brought a lot of viewers through Instagram, and things like that, who normally don’t watch women’s golf. That was the hope. And we’re seeing that now.”
Trump attends the Benjamin School in Palm Beach and will attend the University of Miami next year. She is ranked No. 461 by the American Junior Golf Assn.
Stepping up to the LPGA, complete with a deep gallery of onlookers and a phalanx of Secret Service agents surrounding her, could have been daunting. Trump, though, said the experience was “pretty cool.”
It was an eventful week for Trump. She played nine holes of a pro-am round Monday with tournament host Sorenstam, who empathized with the difficulty of handling an intense swirl of criticism and support.
“I just don’t know how she does it, honestly,” Sorenstam said. “To be 18 years old and hear all the comments, she must be super tough on the inside. I’m sure we can all relate what it’s like to get criticism here and there, but she gets it a thousand times.”
Sorenstam recalled her own exemption for the Bank of America Colonial in 2003 when she became the first woman to play in a men’s PGA Tour event in 58 years. She made a 14-foot putt at the 18th green to give her a 36-hole total of five-over 145. She hurled her golf ball into the grandstand, wiped away tears and was hugged by her husband, David Esch.
“That was, at the time, maybe a little bit of a controversial invite,” Sorenstam said. “In the end, I certainly appreciated it. It just brings attention to the tournament, to the sport and to women’s sports, which I think is what we want.”
N.C. State’s Mohamed Diarra slams in two during the second half of the Wolfpack’s 79-73 overtime win against Oakland in the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Saturday, March 23, 2024, at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh, Pa.
Kaitlin McKeown
kmckeown@newsobserver.com
Pittsburgh
The end of regulation, facing overtime in a game N.C. State led almost the entire way and missed a chance to win late, was surely the point where the Wolfpack would finally run out of gas.
No, it was three minutes later, with Oakland in the lead and both Ben Middlebrooks and Mohamed Diarra fouled out, when the needle would finally hit empty for N.C. State. Had to be.
A team with nothing left in reserve but pride, playing its seventh (and a quarter) game in 12 days, had to reach deep into its empty tanks one more time.
And once again found all it needed.
“I don’t think there’s a time when we have nothing left in the tank,” Middlebrooks said. “We’re the type of team, we will keep going as long as it takes to win the game. There is no quit in us at all.”
N.C. State’s improbable postseason lives on. Not even Jack Gohlke’s Steph Curry tribute act could derail this runaway train. When the end came Saturday night, it was Oakland’s shots that started coming up short, as the Wolfpack ran the lead to five. To seven. To nine. To Dallas.
N.C. State head coach Kevin Keatts celebrates with athletic director Boo Corrigan following the Wolfpack’s 79-73 overtime win against Oakland in the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Saturday, March 23, 2024, at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh, Pa. Kaitlin McKeown kmckeown@newsobserver.com
For the first time since 2015, the Wolfpack is going to the Sweet 16, to face either Marquette or Colorado on Friday, after a 79-73 win over the equally resilient Golden Grizzlies.
Duke may join them in Dallas, if it can get past James Madison on Sunday, reminiscent of 2012 in St. Louis when Kansas single-handedly denied a regional final between N.C. State and North Carolina. And a year after being shut out of the Sweet 16, the Triangle accounts for an eighth of it. Maybe more.
The Wolfpack is the least likely of the bunch, an 11 seed that two weeks ago faced the tricky logistics of playing a home NIT game while hosting the first two rounds of the women’s tournament at Reynolds Coliseum.
Instead, a school famished for this kind of basketball in March is now overflowing with it. That it has been so long in coming, and so unexpected, only makes it sweeter.
“They’ve been longing for success, especially in the postseason, for a long time,” Raleigh native D.J. Horne said. “To come in, knowing I only had one year to make it happen, and the fact that it is all unfolding like this?”
The team that keeps asking “Why not us?” keeps finding answers where others might least expect them.
N.C. State’s Michael O’Connell reacts in the second half of the Wolfpack’s 79-73 overtime win in the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Saturday, March 23, 2024, at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh, Pa. Kaitlin McKeown kmckeown@newsobserver.com
Overtime was yet another example of that. While D.J. Burns was the focus, Horne hit a critical jumper. Jayden Taylor hit the 3-pointer that put N.C. State in the lead for good. Casey Morsell defended Trey Townsend, who had a game-high 30, and kept him from hitting a field goal. Everyone had a piece.
That’s been the recipe, the most important of all the ingredients that have gone into this bubbling cauldron of basketball witchcraft. Michael O’Connell hit the bank shot to force overtime against Virginia. Horne had 29 and Diarra had a double-double against UNC. Middlebrooks had a career game against Texas Tech. And everyone contributed against Oakland, with five players in double figures led by Burns’ 24.
Burns was at the center of it all, N.C. State’s own basketball unicorn outplaying Oakland’s. Gohlke, the fifth-year Division II transfer who was one short of an NCAA tournament record with 10 3-pointers against Kentucky, looked like he was on his way again against N.C. State. He missed his final four attempts Saturday. Burns did not, especially when the Wolfpack went to a four-guard lineup out of necessity in the final minutes.
N.C. State’s DJ Burns Jr. is fouled by Oakland’s Blake Lampman during the second half of the Wolfpack’s 79-73 overtime win in the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Saturday, March 23, 2024, at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh, Pa. Kaitlin McKeown kmckeown@newsobserver.com
In those moments, the crowd was squarely behind Oakland, the even pluckier underdog, as the Wolfpack took on the unfamiliar role of favorite, all the neutrals rooting against N.C. State for a change. On this night, in this building, the Wolfpack was the bad guy. It embraced that role as well.
There were so many moments in this one when things could have gone awry. There were so many moments in the past two weeks when one little error, one bad call, one ill-advised shot could have relegated N.C. State to a basketball footnote.
Instead, the Wolfpack continues to make history, extending a streak that was already unprecedented and is starting to take on a life of its own. Every question that is asked, N.C. State has found an answer.
Except one.
“Why not us?” Horne asked, again. “We’re going to keep that running until the wheels come off.”
Sports columnist Luke DeCock joined The News & Observer in 2000 and has covered seven Final Fours, the Summer Olympics, the Super Bowl and the Carolina Hurricanes’ Stanley Cup. He is a past president of the U.S. Basketball Writers Association, was the 2020 winner of the National Headliner Award as the country’s top sports columnist and has twice been named North Carolina Sportswriter of the Year.
When Representative Mike Johnson arrived in Congress in 2017, he received an important piece of advice from a fellow Louisianan, Representative Steve Scalise. “Be careful about your early alliances that you make,” Scalise told Johnson, as the younger Republican recalled in a C-SPAN interview that year. Avoid getting “marginalized or labeled in any way.”
Six years later, Johnson has followed that advice all the way to the House speakership, reaching a post that is second in line to the presidency faster than any other lawmaker in modern congressional history. Staunchly conservative and closely aligned with former President Donald Trump, the 51-year-old former talk-radio host made few headlines and fewer enemies as he climbed the ranks of his party.
With a 220–209 House vote this afternoon, Johnson was able to forge a consensus that eluded three previous aspirants—including his own mentor, Scalise—to replace Kevin McCarthy. He earned unanimous support from Republican members, who stood and applauded when he clinched a majority of the chamber. His victory ends a weeks-long power struggle that immobilized the House as a war started in the Middle East and a government shutdown loomed.
Johnson’s win was as sudden as it was improbable. Early yesterday afternoon, he lost a secret-ballot vote to become the House GOP’s third speaker nominee in as many weeks. But the winner of that tally, Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, faced immediate backlash from social conservatives and Trump allies over his support for same-sex marriage and his 2021 vote to certify Joe Biden’s election as president. More than two dozen Republicans told Emmer that they would not support him in a public floor vote, putting him in the same perilous position as the previous GOP speaker nominee, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio. While Emmer was trying to win them over, Trump denounced him as “a globalist RINO.” Emmer’s nomination was dead after just four hours.
As the fifth-ranking House GOP leader, Johnson was next in line. Late last night, he captured the nomination in the second round of balloting. His victory was far from unanimous, but rank-and-file Republicans who had initially voted against Johnson, apparently weary after weeks of infighting, decided to support him.
Johnson’s ascent is a product of both the GOP’s ideological conformity and its ongoing loyalty to Trump. His record in the House is no more moderate than Jordan’s, whose preference for antagonism over compromise turned off an ultimately decisive faction of the party. Both Johnson and Jordan served as chairs of the Republican Study Committee—the largest conservative bloc in the House—and played key roles in Trump’s effort to overturn his defeat in 2020. Johnson enlisted Republican lawmakers to sign a legal brief urging the Supreme Court to allow state legislatures to effectively nullify the votes of their citizens. Despite Johnson’s involvement, he won the support of at least one Republican, Representative Ken Buck of Colorado, who had refused to vote for Jordan, because the Ohioan didn’t acknowledge the legitimacy of Biden’s win.
For electorally vulnerable House Republicans, Johnson’s relative anonymity was an asset. They rejected Jordan in large part because they feared that his notoriety and uncompromising style would play poorly in their districts. By contrast, Johnson, who heeded Scalise’s advice to avoid being “marginalized or labeled,” comes across as mild-mannered and polite. He could be harder for Democrats to demonize. Johnson is so little known that operatives at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which sent out a flurry of statements criticizing each successive speaker nominee, were still combing through his record and listening to old recordings of his radio show this morning. “Mike Johnson is Jim Jordan in a sports coat,” a spokesperson, Viet Shelton, told me. “Electing him as speaker would represent how the Republican conference has completely given in to the most extreme fringes of their party.”
The next few weeks will test whether the inexperienced Johnson is in over his head, and just how far to the right Johnson is willing to push his party. “You’re going to see this group work like a well-oiled machine,” Johnson, flanked by dozens of his GOP colleagues, assured reporters after securing the nomination last night. He’ll have plenty of doubters. The new speaker will be leading the same five-vote majority that routinely rebuffed McCarthy, forcing him to rely on Democrats to pass high-stakes legislation.
Congress faces a November 17 deadline to avoid a government shutdown—the result of a five-week extension in funding that ultimately cost McCarthy his job. Johnson has circulated a plan to Republicans that suggested he would support another stopgap measure, for either two or five months, to buy time for the House and Senate to negotiate full-year spending bills.
He’ll also confront immediate pressure to act on the Biden administration’s request for more than $100 billion in aid to Israel and Ukraine. Like Jordan, Johnson has supported aid for Israel but has opposed additional Ukraine funding. “We stand with our ally Israel,” Johnson said last night; he made no mention of Ukraine.
If the GOP holds on to its majority next year, Johnson would have a say in whether the House certifies the presidential winner in 2024. When a reporter asked him last night about his role in helping Trump try to overturn the 2020 election, the Republicans around him, unified and jubilant for the first time in weeks, started to jeer. A few members booed the buzzkill in the press corps. “Shut up!” yelled one lawmaker, Representative Virginia Foxx of North Carolina. Johnson, the conservative without enemies, merely shook his head and smiled. “Next question,” he replied. “Next question.”
