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Category: Associated Press

  • Holdout juror in Clancy trial didn’t have ‘any doubts’ that she was responsible for killing her kids

    Holdout juror in Clancy trial didn’t have ‘any doubts’ that she was responsible for killing her kids

    BOSTON — The lone juror who wanted to convict Lindsay Clancy of murder for killing her three children said he was certain of her guilt, but that other jurors wouldn’t listen to him, according to a statement released by his lawyer Friday in his first public comments on the case.

    Eleven of 12 jurors were ready to clear Clancy of criminal responsibility, with the majority feeling that the Massachusetts mom was in the grip of a rare condition called postpartum psychosis when she strangled her kids. But juror Michael Desronvil sided with the prosecutors, who had argued that Clancy knew what she was doing.

    “I didn’t have any doubts,” Desronvil said in a statement released on X by his lawyer, Edward Paltzik.

    The jury’s foreperson had claimed in an earlier media interview that Desronvil had admitted having “reasonable doubt” about Clancy’s guilt, but wanted to convict her anyway. Desronvil said that wasn’t true.

    “As I tried to explain different possible theories during deliberation, I kept getting cut off as if I had doubts based on the evidence presented,” he wrote. “Based on all the physical evidence, key witnesses, and what the prosecution presented, I thought it was enough proof that she (Clancy) knew exactly what she was doing and planned.”

    The jury’s deadlock forced the judge to declare a mistrial on Sept. 4, leaving the case unresolved. The Plymouth County district attorney has yet to say whether he’ll seek to put Clancy on trial again.

    Neither side disputed that Clancy strangled her children, Cora, Dawson, and Callan, in the family’s home in 2023 before trying to end her own life. But her attorney said she was a loving mother experiencing deep delusions and other mental health problems, for which she had been getting treatment.

    Since the trial ended, Desronvil has been both publicly praised and scorned for his actions, and his personal life and past financial and legal problems have become the subject of scrutiny by the news media and amateur sleuths.

    Among the public revelations: He had a restraining order against him at the time of jury selection and was facing eviction from his apartment due to over $12,000 in unpaid rent. He also was accused of domestic violence in 2021, a charge that was later dismissed.

    Some of the opinion has fallen along political lines, with Desronvil being praised by some conservative pundits as a hero.

    Paltzik, whose past clients have included President Donald Trump and Martin Shkreli, said on X that Desronvil was in “an undisclosed secure location” in a rural part of northern New England and would not be giving interviews.

    “As a devoted father and man of God, he will not be defeated or shattered by the wicked who wish harm upon him,” Paltzik wrote.

    A fundraiser to cover what organizers say are costs of “security, lawyers, and lost work” for Desronvil has raised over $289,000.

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has rolled out the welcome mat for him, saying that if he is being harassed, “Florida will provide asylum.”

    “I’m sure he’d be welcomed and appreciated,” DeSantis wrote on X.

  • MS NOW, CNN, and Politico say their journalists were denied access to White House after Trump ban

    MS NOW, CNN, and Politico say their journalists were denied access to White House after Trump ban

    NEW YORK — Reporters from three major news organizations — CNN, MS NOW, and Politico — were denied access to the White House on Saturday, a day after President Donald Trump said he was barring them because of reporting he found to be “fake news.”

    The actions were a clear escalation of Trump’s long-running efforts — in the courts and through administrative action — to restrict news coverage by journalists he finds objectionable, and the latest test of First Amendment protections in the United States. Trump had said Friday he would ban all three outlets because of coverage he disliked.

    White House reporters from the two cable networks — Betsy Klein of CNN and Akayla Gardner of MS NOW — both went live to report they’d been turned away when arriving for their jobs at the White House. Soon after, Politico said its White House reporter Cheyenne Haslett was also denied entry and had her badge confiscated.

    Politico editor-in-chief Jonathan Greenberger said in a statement to the Politico newsroom: “We stand by her and all reporters here covering the White House. … We will vigorously defend our First Amendment rights.”

    CNN and MS NOW issued similar statements. “We will not be deflected from our duty to hold the government and other public bodies to account,” CNN said.

    “The White House belongs to the American people and the decisions made inside are funded by our tax dollars,” MS NOW said in its statement. “MS NOW intends to take any and all steps necessary to defend our First Amendment rights and the essential role of independent journalism in our democracy.“ ‘

    In his second term, Trump and his administration have upped the ante and punished certain media outlets, both in the courtroom and through regulatory action. Trump has also lashed out at individual reporters in person or over social media, sometimes in strikingly personal terms — insulting them in briefings, or in his recent speech at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

    CNN and MS NOW correspondents are turned away

    Network correspondents are usually present on the weekends when the president is in Washington or at nearby Camp David. Trump is at the presidential retreat in Maryland this weekend.

    MS NOW’s Gardner reported that she had walked through two gates successfully, but once she got to where her badge needed to be scanned, an officer told her it was disabled and asked her to hand it over. He said the decision “was above him,” she reported. An MS NOW producer was able to get in, but a photographer’s badge was also disabled, Gardner said.

    Klein, senior White House reporter at CNN, also said her badge had been deactivated. It was confiscated, and she was handed back the clear plastic case. She said she was referred to the White House press office for further information.

    Amy Kristin Sanders, a professor at Pennsylvania State University and an expert in media law, said it has “become pretty clear that this administration is not interested in playing by traditional First Amendment rules and norms.

    “The second Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on press freedom and delegitimize independent journalism far exceed those of any other modern American president,” Sanders said. ”It is not an exaggeration to say his hostile actions toward news organizations and individual reporters have a chilling effect on freedom of expression around the world.”

    CNN media analyst Brian Stelter called the move “a direct threat to press freedom in the United States.”

    “It’s so much bigger than CNN,” Stelter said. “This is a free speech test in America.”

    Trump calls these and other outlets ‘fake news’

    The president wrote on his social media site Friday that effective immediately, “I am banning” CNN, MS NOW, and Politico “from the White House as a result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!” Minutes later, speaking at an event in the Oval Office, Trump was asked to explain his statement.

    “Because they’re fake news,” he said. “You get so tired of reading and seeing fake news. When you look at CNN, it’s just fake. That’s why their ratings are no good. When you look at MS NOW … it’s fake news.”

    “And when you look at Politico … the stories they wrote are fake. So there’s a lot of news and there may be others to join them, and maybe they can get better,” he said. “But our country has to have honest news.”

    The move follows the president’s decision last year to bar Associated Press reporters from the Oval Office, Air Force One, and other events in retaliation for the news outlet’s decision not to follow his lead in changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico, which lies partially in Mexican and other waters. The AP said that it would note when appropriate that Trump had ordered it renamed the “Gulf of America.”

    The AP filed suit and the case is ongoing. Since returning to office, Trump has pursued other legal action against a variety of different outlets, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the BBC. His administration is also involved in a long-simmering confrontation involving ABC over renewal of its broadcast licenses.

    The AP said Saturday it supported the news organizations banned this week. In a statement, it said: “No news organization — or person — should be retaliated against by the government over the words they use.”

  • Judge isn’t swayed by government’s claims that plans for an ‘anti-weaponization fund’ are dead

    Judge isn’t swayed by government’s claims that plans for an ‘anti-weaponization fund’ are dead

    ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A federal judge who blocked the creation of a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” for compensating President Donald Trump’s political allies wasn’t swayed by a government attorney’s assurances Friday that the administration has abandoned the concept.

    U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Virginia didn’t rule from the bench on the government’s request for her to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the fund’s formation and operation. But the judge rejected the notion that the case’s claims are moot because the Trump administration says the fund is dead and won’t go forward.

    “The issues that underlie this case are still alive and kicking, in my view,” Brinkema said.

    The fund for compensating Trump’s political allies encountered a fierce bipartisan backlash and threatened to derail Attorney General Todd Blanche’s Senate confirmation. On Aug. 2, Blanche issued a formal order terminating the fund after negotiating for weeks with two Republican senators who wanted to see the promise in writing before they endorsed his nomination.

    “The case is moot,” Justice Department attorney Andrew Block told Brinkema. “The mootness has been addressed at every stage.”

    But the judge noted that Blanche’s assurances have been undercut by the president and other administration officials. Trump, a Republican, continued to publicly express support for the fund even as Blanche insisted it was dead.

    “They contradict themselves all the time,” Brinkema said.

    The administration created the settlement fund to resolve Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns. The plan stoked outrage over the notion that Trump supporters who attacked police officers while storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, could be eligible for payments.

    Attorneys from the legal advocacy group Democracy Forward sued in May, asking the Alexandria, Va., court to suspend the fund’s implementation temporarily and stop the Trump administration from disbursing any payouts. Plaintiffs’ attorneys argued the government can’t divert taxpayer money to a slush fund for enriching Trump’s allies.

    Brinkema, who was nominated to the bench by Democratic President Bill Clinton, agreed in June to extend an order blocking the fund until further notice from the court.

    Democracy Forward attorney Pooja Boisture told the judge on Friday that the administration will most likely move forward with the fund — “either in its current iteration or a new one” — if her order is lifted.

    The Virginia lawsuit’s plaintiffs include a fired prosecutor and a college professor acquitted of assaulting federal agents at a protest. Also named as plaintiffs are the government watchdog Common Cause; the city of New Haven, Conn.; and the National Abortion Federation, an association of abortion providers.

    “This scheme is an unprecedented, unlawful, and corrupt attempt to manipulate the legal process and laws intended to prevent political interference to achieve benefits that President Trump and his political allies could not have obtained lawfully,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote.

    Justice Department attorneys argue the plaintiffs don’t have a legal basis for claims challenging a fund that “has never existed and will not exist.”

    “The time has come to stop this inquisition,” they wrote.

  • Hundreds of thousands attend Iran’s biggest government-organized rally since the war began

    Hundreds of thousands attend Iran’s biggest government-organized rally since the war began

    CAIRO — Hundreds of thousands of Iranians rallied Friday in a government-organized show of defiance after months of war, pledging their readiness to take up arms in the biggest such demonstration since the United States and Israel attacked in February.

    Iran’s government has sought to rally the people and stress national unity, even as the economy worsens under a U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports and new U.S. sanctions. On Friday, it claimed another attack on a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway it has sought to control since the start of the war.

    Estimates varied of the number of people volunteering to receive limited military training and defend the country in an effort described as “Janfaday-e Iran,” or the “ones who sacrifice their lives for Iran.” They marched through downtown Tehran in combat uniform, carrying flags, as onlookers cheered.

    For days, state media have encouraged Iranians to join the campaign, saying training with assault rifles would begin soon. The volunteers would be an additional layer of security to the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and the Basij militia, which has played a key role in quashing anti-government protests.

    Rally seeks to project strength under U.S. pressure

    Tehran’s Guard chief, Gen. Hassan Hassanzadeh, told the state broadcaster that over 600,000 people had registered to participate, with over 1 million expected to take part in the training. On Friday morning, the broadcaster estimated over 300,000 people were on the streets.

    The new head of the Basij, Hossein Taeb, declared in a speech as the rally began that the volunteers will be ready for “full-fledged defense” and similar rallies will take place in other cities soon.

    The new trainees will make a “nightmare” for Iran’s enemies, Taeb added, as President Masoud Pezeshkian, military commanders, and other senior officials watched the march.

    Some participants trampled flags of the U.S. and Israel. Others chanted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”

    “I am here to tell (U.S. President Donald) Trump that we Iranians have no fear about his threats against our homeland,” said Marzieh Afaghi, 24, who attended the rally with her toddler and husband. “No one in history could invade Iran and remain there.”

    The rally was also a chance for Iran to show off military hardware. Anti-aircraft batteries were on display, while female Guard members in black headscarves sat with truck-mounted machine guns.

    Iran says it attacked another tanker in the Strait of Hormuz

    The Guard displayed drones that have been used against ships in the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran’s attacks and threats have severely affected the Gulf region’s shipments of oil and natural gas to the rest of the world.

    Iran said it had attacked a Togo-flagged oil tanker, the Trend, for what it called an “illegal attempt” to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, the state broadcaster reported. The U.K. Maritime Trade Operations center said a tanker was hit by a projectile, sparking a fire on board that was extinguished.

    The UKMTO in a separate update said ship transits facilitated by the U.S. military off Oman have averaged 24 a day over the past week but overall traffic remains about 90% lower than before the war.

    Iran’s new volunteers could help suppress future dissent

    Friday’s events also suggested that hard-liners like Taeb among Iran’s leadership will be more prepared to suppress any future demonstration against the theocracy.

    In January, shortly before the war, Iran saw some of its largest nationwide protests in history, which began over the struggling economy and turned to wider grievances. Activists have said a crackdown killed over 7,000 people and saw tens of thousands detained.

    In May, government officials said more than 30 million people in Iran — which has a total population of some 90 million — had volunteered via an online form or at public gatherings to lay down their lives for the theocracy. The Associated Press could not independently confirm that.

  • Trump says he is banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House

    Trump says he is banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House

    President Donald Trump said on Friday that he would ban CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House, although it was unclear how such a prohibition would be enforced or legally defended.

    The president’s abrupt proclamation, which he said was “effective immediately,” came in a post on Truth Social, the social media platform he owns.

    Journalists from those news outlets were still working as usual on the White House grounds on Friday afternoon, and there were no immediate signs that they were being evicted.

    Speaking later with reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said he announced a ban “because they’re fake news. You get so tired of reading and seeing fake news.” He added, “You get sick of it.”

    Asked exactly what he meant by a ban, the president replied: “A very simple ban. I don’t want them in my office. I don’t want them here. I would say the ban would go as far as you can. And if they could straighten themselves out, I’d love it.”

    Asked if his ban could survive a court challenge, Trump replied, “I don’t think that a court should allow fake news to be written day after day after day.”

    CNN said in a statement that Trump’s ban would be “an illegal assault” on a “fundamental and constitutionally-protected right.”

    “We have a right under the U.S. Constitution to do that reporting without hindrance or interference from the government,” the network said.

    A spokesperson for MS NOW declined to comment. A spokesperson for Politico did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An inquiry to the White House Correspondents’ Association was not immediately returned.

    A prospective ban would open yet another front in Trump’s ever-expanding battles with the news media, whose output he has increasingly attempted to control using a variety of bureaucratic levers and intimidation tactics. The president has filed lawsuits and used government tools like subpoenas to target newspapers, late-night talk show hosts, corporate media conglomerates, and journalists whose reporting he dislikes.

    In his social media post on Friday, Trump warned that he might add other organizations to his prospective ban, writing, “Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow.”

    Trump expanded on his feelings at his Oval Office appearance, echoing the usual protestations about the media that he unspools at rallies, news conferences, and in interviews. “They purposely write negative news,” the president said. “And they do that because they want to try and diminish the Republicans and a Republican administration.”

    Any prospective ban on journalists from specific news outlets would almost certainly prompt a legal challenge.

    Trump has tried to bar some news organizations from parts of the White House in the past. During his first term, he revoked a White House pass for Jim Acosta, the former CNN journalist. CNN succeeded in restoring Acosta’s press credentials in court.

    This term, Trump has attempted to bar Associated Press journalists from parts of the White House, including the Oval Office and Air Force One. The AP has sued to restore its access, but that case remains in litigation; in the meantime, AP photographers have had continued access to the Oval Office. Its print journalists have had more limited access.

    His administration has also taken command of the daily White House press pool, a small, rotating group of reporters who relay the president’s daily activities to the public. Previously, the Correspondents’ Association chose which outlets participated; now, the administration handpicks the news outlets that are included.

    Jameel Jaffer, the executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said that the ban floated by Trump on Friday is clearly unconstitutional because it would punish news organizations for the content of their reporting.

    “If President Trump means to expel these news organizations from the White House press pool, his action is doubly unconstitutional because the press pool is a ‘public forum’ under the First Amendment, which means the president can’t exclude journalists from it on the basis of their viewpoints,” Jaffer said.

  • Early voting begins in US midterm elections that could flip control of Congress

    Early voting begins in US midterm elections that could flip control of Congress

    HENRICO, Va. — In-person voting for this year’s midterm elections began Friday, ushering in the final six weeks for Americans to decide which party they trust to lead Congress through a cost-of-living crisis, a prolonged war in Iran, and other pressing issues.

    Election administrators say they are prepared and confident the vote will be accurate and secure. Nevertheless, President Donald Trump has continued efforts to denigrate certain voting methods and reshape how elections are run, through court challenges, a federal hunt for noncitizen voters, and a pressure campaign to force election officials to share sensitive voter data.

    Friday was the start of early voting in Virginia. Voters in a few other states, including Minnesota and South Dakota, can cast absentee ballots in person, typically at a local election office or voting center. More expansive early voting is scheduled to begin in those and other states in the coming weeks.

    At a voting location in Fairfax, Va,. 18-year-old college student Sanya Singhal was among the first to vote early in person Friday morning, arriving well before the site opened to get in line.

    “Why not just have a little fun in life, you know, try to be the first early voter?” she asked. “I really want to participate in my democracy.”

    At a voting location in suburban Richmond, a poll worker rang a bell as the building opened and about a dozen voters in line began to file in. Stephen Gura was excited to be the first.

    “This election is critical. We need to stop the Trump agenda,” said Gura, who added that he voted for U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat, and Shannon Taylor, the Democratic nominee against Republican incumbent Rob Wittman in the 1st Congressional District.

    The Nov. 3 election includes votes for governor and state legislature in most states and will determine whether Republicans maintain control of the U.S. House and Senate. If Democrats retake Congress, it will alter the trajectory of the final two years of Trump’s term, most likely leading to investigations and other oversight efforts.

    Votes underway after redistricting, Trump’s bid to control elections

    At the suburban Richmond voting center, a steady stream of voters flowed in and out. William Curry, a 74-year-old retiree who described himself as a libertarian-leaning independent conservative, voted for Warner’s Republican challenger, Bert Mizusawa, and Wittman. Curry said he generally approves of the job Trump has done, apart from the war with Iran.

    “He’s in a mess he can’t get rid of,” Curry said of the conflict.

    On a rainy day in Sioux Falls, S.D., Bill Goehring, 67, said he voted early at the county office because he will be traveling later. He voted for a mix of Democrats and independents, and said Trump’s “dictatorial tendencies are bad for America.”

    John Thomas, a conservative retired police officer at the Sioux Falls office, said his biggest concerns were public safety and election integrity. He said he doesn’t want to see votes in federal elections from immigrants living in the country illegally. Such fraudulent voting has been found to be extremely rare.

    Trump’s immigration agenda is “spot on,” the 77-year-old said.

    “We wouldn’t be a country that much longer if it had stayed the same for another four years,” he said.

    The start of early voting comes at a time of deep angst and division among many Americans about issues including rising gas and grocery prices, the war in Iran, the looming risks of artificial intelligence, and Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement campaign.

    It also follows an unprecedented spate of mid-decade redistricting for the House that began when Trump urged the Republican-controlled legislature in Texas to redraw its congressional map to help the party. California and other states followed.

    The changes affect millions of people: Research shows 1 in 10 Americans this fall is a resident of a different congressional district than in 2024.

    Those partisan efforts are expected to continue before the 2028 elections after a landmark ruling this year from the U.S. Supreme Court weakened the federal Voting Rights Act’s protections against racially discriminatory redistricting.

    As the start of early voting approached, Trump was focused on efforts to assert federal control over election administration, even as the Constitution bestows the power to run elections on the states and, in some cases, Congress. The nation’s highest court this week rejected Trump’s bid to restrict mail ballots, but several of his administration’s other efforts to influence the voting process and investigate state voter lists continue.

    Virginia’s Democratic attorney general warned Thursday that Trump’s administration may have violated the state’s laws after a whistleblower accused federal employees of misrepresenting themselves on voter lookup tools to hunt for noncitizen voters.

    Trump for years has raised the specter of widespread noncitizen voting in U.S. elections, and this year is no exception. But research continues to show noncitizen voting is exceptionally rare.

    David Becker, executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said he wouldn’t be surprised if the Republican president continues “his disinformation campaign and his attack on election officials.” But he said he thinks “the process will hold as it has in past years.”

    At least a few Friday voters were motivated to vote early in part because of Trump’s actions.

    In Minneapolis, 47-year-old business processing engineer Dragan Colakovic said he didn’t want to wait until Election Day for fear of being stopped by immigration agents. He said Trump’s surge of agents to Minnesota in an immigration crackdown earlier this year terrified him. He is a naturalized U.S. citizen who moved from Bosnia in 1997 and saw the horrors of war in the former Yugoslavia.

    “This echoed what I saw in Bosnia,” he said of the heavily armed immigration agents who repeatedly swept through his neighborhood, which has many immigrants.

    “These were my neighbors, my friends,” being arrested, he said.

    Democratic voter Laura Bland, 63, in Virginia’s Henrico County said she cast a ballot early to send “a signal that we’re still here” despite Trump’s efforts to curtail mail voting.

    “Regardless of whether you vote for a Democrat, Republican, people are not going to be stopped or intimidated from participating in our elections,” Bland said, nearly moved to tears.

    Advocates suggest voters cast their ballots early

    Voting rights advocates have encouraged voters this year to cast mail ballots early, in part because of concerns about recent changes in U.S. Postal Service operations that could delay the application of postmarks to ballots.

    Voting early “gives voters options, eases lines on Election Day, and can even mean faster results,” said Hannah Fried, co-founder and CEO of the voting rights group All Voting Is Local.

    The top official at the U.S. Postal Service also encouraged voters who cast ballots by mail to get them in a week before they’re due.

    “Everything is solved if people vote early,” Postmaster General David Steiner said in an interview.

    In a news briefing Thursday, Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon urged people not to be swayed by stories they might have seen or read that cast doubt on election operations. They would be able to vote “just like they always have,” he said.

    “I just want to reaffirm that Minnesota’s elections are fundamentally free, fair, accurate, honest, and secure,” he said.

  • Trump refers to Black man from racially offensive 1988 campaign ad while stumping in North Carolina

    Trump refers to Black man from racially offensive 1988 campaign ad while stumping in North Carolina

    As President Donald Trump tries to convince voters that Democrats have let crime run amok, he’s digging into the country’s political past to cite one of the most controversial campaign advertisements — one that relied heavily on racist tropes.

    During a campaign stop Wednesday in Gastonia, N.C., to stump for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Michael Whatley, Trump resurrected a 1988 George H.W. Bush presidential campaign ad featuring Willie Horton, a Black man convicted of rape and assault after his release through a Massachusetts prison furlough program.

    A grainy black-and-white prison photo of Horton was used in the ad targeting then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, who was ahead of Bush in the polls. On Wednesday, Trump evoked the Horton ad in an effort to convince voters Democratic former Gov. Roy Cooper, Whatley’s opponent in the Senate race, is soft on crime.

    “Willie Horton was a bad guy, really bad guy,” Trump said, before comparing Dukakis’ release of Horton to the pretrial release of a Black man who faces a murder charge for last year’s killing of a white Ukrainian refugee in Charlotte, N.C.

    But Cooper was not the governor when the man was released or when he was later charged with killing the refugee.

    “Same thing as this, same as, same exact thing,” the president told the crowd in Gastonia.

    It’s the second time Trump has invoked Willie Horton while campaigning for his party. Last month during a speech in Las Vegas, Trump called the Charlotte killing a “Willie Horton — modern day” tragedy.

    “After the Willie Horton ad dropped, Bush established a lead in the polls and never looked back,” said Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University outside Atlanta. “They showed the picture, and you ascribed race onto it. It wasn’t sufficiently condemned as racism.”

    A spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, which organized the Gastonia campaign rally, defended Trump’s reference to Horton.

    “Roy Cooper emptied prisons and released thousands of violent monsters onto North Carolina streets,” RNC National Press Secretary Natalie Baldassarre said in a statement to the Associated Press. “The results had deadly consequences, and every Democrat who supports abolishing or defunding the police, paroling criminals, and implementing lax bail policies will have to answer for their dangerous records in November.”

    Trump paints North Carolina as a ‘dangerous state’

    Wednesday’s rally cited the Aug. 22, 2025, killing of white 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska on a commuter train in Charlotte.

    Decarlos Brown Jr., who is Black, faces murder and other charges in Zarutska’s stabbing, which was captured on video. Court records showed that at the time of the attack, Brown had 14 prior cases in Mecklenburg County, including serving five years for robbery with a dangerous weapon. Doctors had diagnosed him with schizophrenia.

    Republicans and other influential voices in Trump’s Make America Great Again movement claimed the attack showed how Democratic elected leaders in large cities across the U.S. failed to protect residents, while some conservative commentators suggested Democrats were ignoring an unfounded “black-on-white” crime problem.

    “He should have been locked up for many, many years,” Trump said Wednesday of Brown.

    “Nobody used to think of North Carolina as a dangerous state, criminally dangerous,” Trump added while blaming Cooper. “It was apple pie, right? Now, it’s one of the most violent, one of the worst in the whole nation.”

    According to 2024 FBI crime data, North Carolina ranked 19th for statewide violent-crime rates in a 50-state comparison.

    During the Gastonia rally, a mosaic of mug shots was displayed on a large screen for the crowd. Trump claimed Cooper had cut a deal with “radical activists” to release “some of the worst criminals in the nation into North Carolina.”

    “He released these people. This is just a small group of them,” the president said, pointing to the mug shots that overwhelmingly featured Black people.

    Although it is unclear under what circumstances the people in the mug shots were released, state corrections officials have said Brown was not released early from prison or under Cooper’s COVID-era prisoner-release settlement that Trump referenced.

    Before fatally stabbing Zarutska, according to court records, Brown had been on a pretrial release over a misdemeanor offense that was ordered by a magistrate after Cooper left office.

    ‘Tapping into anger’

    Republicans are under pressure to win over swayable voters as the November midterms approach with Democrats pushing to gain control of the House, the Senate, or both. Some political strategists say part of the ploy of adding Horton to the North Carolina Senate campaign is to rile up Trump’s base.

    “He’s tapping into the anger to remind Republican voters of what he thinks their first principles are in hopes that will be successful for Republican candidates,” Gillespie said.

    “He’s doing this to try and divert attention away from criticism of how he’s governing at the moment,” she added. “Democrats want to make the story of this election Trump’s low approval numbers, the war in Iran, inflation, being preoccupied with things that don’t make a whole lot of sense when there are really serious things going on in the country.”

    Dewey Clayton, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Louisville, said Trump and other Republicans may be thinking that what worked before in the 2016 and 2024 elections presumably will work again in this year’s midterms.

    “It was very effective,” Clayton said. “You do not necessarily have to look at it as racial, in and of itself, although (race) clearly becomes a component. In 2026, talking about ads going back in the 1980s? I’m sure he had consultants that were basically saying this is tried and true.”

    The GOP may need the push in November, Gillespie warns. “I think the motivation by going back to these old strategies is there is real concern about Republican enthusiasm and you might see lower Republican turnout,” she said.

    Rhetoric attempts to divert voters’ attention from rising costs

    The tactic speaks to desperation by Trump and the Whatley campaign, according to Morgan Jackson, a partner with Nexus Strategies in Raleigh.

    “Trump brings up Willie Horton to stoke racial division, something he’s used for the last 10 years,” said Jackson, who is chief strategist for Cooper’s campaign. “It is very clear from the president’s speech last night their only goal is to sow division and hate and lies. Michael Whatley doubles down in support of that effort.”

    Jackson also said Trump and Whatley are trying to change the election’s message of “rising inflation and the cost of everything.”

    “They want to use inflammatory rhetoric, hate speech and lies to sow division in a chance to win an election,” he said. “By referencing Willie Horton, they are showing their hand very clearly.”

    The AP sent an email Thursday seeking comment from Whatley’s Senate campaign.

  • Trump withdraws Lance Schroyer, a former Oklahoma state trooper, as his nominee to lead ICE

    Trump withdraws Lance Schroyer, a former Oklahoma state trooper, as his nominee to lead ICE

    WASHINGTON — The White House said Thursday that it was withdrawing its nomination of Lance Schroyer, a former Oklahoma state trooper, to lead U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ensuring that an agency at the forefront of President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda will remain without a Senate-confirmed leader for at least a while longer.

    Schroyer, who has little experience in immigration, is close to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, a former U.S. senator from Oklahoma.

    The White House offered no comment in a brief statement.

    The latest setback comes as the agency remains under withering scrutiny over its handling of enforcement operations. Critics have question how ICE has recruited and trained officers as it raced to hire thousands to carry out Trump’s promise of mass deportations. Officers have shot and killed multiple people, including two American citizens in Minneapolis earlier this year.

    Sen. Rand Paul, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, had refused to hold a hearing on the nominee until DHS provided him with information he had been seeking about civilian deaths during ICE enforcement operations.

    “I don’t have a concern with who the nominee was. I had asked them to give me an update on the internal investigation into civilian deaths,” Paul (R., Ky.) told the Associated Press.

    “And I’m still waiting.”

    When Mullin took over DHS in March, he pledged a lower-profile approach to immigration enforcement, pulling back on the aggressive, tumultuous crackdown on the streets of large cities that sparked widespread public condemnation.

    Arrests have continued to accelerate, reaching nearly 51,000 in August, the highest single monthly arrest total during the second Trump administration.

    Paul said he intended to hold a hearing on Schroyer’s nomination but it never came to that. He only heard about the nomination being withdrawn when the White House made it public Thursday.

    ICE has not had a Senate-confirmed leader since the Obama administration. David Venturella, a former executive at a private prison operator, returned to the agency as acting director earlier this year after Todd Lyons resigned.

    When Trump nominated Schroyer in June, Trump said on his Truth Social platform that his pick was “a PATRIOT with real operational experience” and a “proven leader with DECADES of experience locking up the worst of the worst.”

    The administration did not indicate when it might announce another pick for the position.

  • Judge orders Kennedy Center to provide 30 days’ notice before making any major physical changes

    Judge orders Kennedy Center to provide 30 days’ notice before making any major physical changes

    WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Kennedy Center to provide 30 days’ notice before making any major physical changes to the building, including demolishing it as President Donald Trump has threatened.

    U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper said his ruling would “avoid any confusion on that score given more recent events,” including the sudden closure of the building to the public on Wednesday.

    Matt Floca, the Kennedy Center’s executive director and chief operating officer, said he closed the iconic performing arts center temporarily due to “acute risks to public safety resulting from continued structural deterioration” of the aging building. The building will be closed for at least seven days to “assess existing safety risks in those portions of the main building exhibiting severe structural deterioration,” Floca said.

    The temporary closure, which occurred without notice Wednesday, is separate from a vote Tuesday by the Kennedy Center’s board to close the performing arts center indefinitely for repairs, Floca and other officials said. The closure was based on an inspection of the roof terrace canopy and a partial ceiling collapse earlier this month, Floca said. The closure may be extended after evaluation next week, he said.

    The announcement of the closure came in response to a court case filed by a Democratic congresswoman who is a trustee and sought an emergency court hearing to prevent what she called the building’s “unlawful closing.”

    Rep. Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat and an ex-officio member of the Kennedy Center board, has led efforts to block President Donald Trump’s name from being added to the building. Beatty had a verbal confrontation with the Republican president Tuesday during a virtual board meeting.

    Beatty’s lawyers said in a court filing Thursday that the board members’ “rationale that they are only temporarily closing the Kennedy Center is a plain pretext to justify shutting down the Center permanently. The facts before the Court are deeply concerning.”

    Cooper denied a request by Beatty’s legal team to hold a hearing to clarify the board’s actions and intent. But he agreed to their request “to make crystal clear” that his order prohibits demolition of the building.

    The Trump-aligned board, chaired by the president, voted to close the center after Cooper blocked the institution from returning Trump’s name to the building.

    Trump, who was named the Kennedy Center’s chairman last year by loyalists on the board, said Wednesday that his efforts to restore the aging building deserve recognition, “because frankly, if we don’t do that, it’s going to close. It’ll end up being ripped down. It’s in very, very bad shape, very dangerous shape.”

    Congress has allocated $257 million to cover the repairs, but Trump said they only would happen if the board was permitted to move forward with plans to add his name to the building.

    On Thursday, Barbra Streisand, a Kennedy Center honoree in 2008, questioned the closing of the center for repairs and called the controversy surrounding its operation “galling and painful to witness.”

    Of Trump’s attempts to add his name to the center, she said in a statement to The Associated Press: “You can easily imagine my indignation at seeing this revered institution become the subject of such a bitter struggle over one man’s name and unchecked ego.”

    The Kennedy Center board voted in August to inscribe Trump’s name on the Kennedy Center’s facade so it would read “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump.” If the Trump Kennedy Center Fund reached $100 million, another inscription would be added reading “Endowed by the Trump Kennedy Center Fund.”

    The plaza in front of the Kennedy Center would also have been renamed in Trump’s honor.

    All of those proposals were shot down Tuesday by Cooper, who ruled that nothing could happen “without Congress’s blessing.”

    Cooper ruled in May that the Kennedy Center illegally added Trump’s name to the building, ordering it removed. The institution’s leaders complied in June but left a tarp and scaffolding in place where Trump’s name was once displayed.

    Streisand told AP she was deeply honored to be included in the 31st annual class of Kennedy Center Honorees, adding, “for me, and for so many artists, that honor represented something larger than a career recognition. It represented a belief in the importance of art to the life of a democracy.”

  • A global AI safety strategy depends on U.S.-China cooperation. They each see the other as the problem

    A global AI safety strategy depends on U.S.-China cooperation. They each see the other as the problem

    HONG KONG — As concern rises over the risks of artificial intelligence, hopes for any kind of global approach depend on cooperation between the U.S. and China — superpowers that seem only to be more skeptical of each other’s AI strategy.

    AI governance is expected to be on the agenda in a meeting planned for next week in Washington between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The topic has gained urgency in both countries, with American tech leaders saying that averting worst-case scenarios for rogue AI depends on a degree of cooperation with China.

    But both countries are vying for a decisive advantage on AI, with Trump warning that any efforts to regulate the technology would help China. That sets up a meeting in which any agreements might be superficial but a possible start to something larger.

    “A formal agreement or consensus may be near impossible, but they do not need to go that far,” said Samm Sacks, a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies’ Institute for America, China, and the Future of Global Affairs. “Trump and Xi just need to create political space by acknowledging AI poses risks to both countries.”

    China and the U.S. are increasingly at odds on AI

    Trump has pushed back on calls to strengthen regulation of the technology, claiming that doing so could cause China to eclipse America on AI. He has repeatedly declared that the nation that leads on the technology “wins.”

    “We are leading China, and all others,” Trump said Monday on social media.

    The two countries are moving the technology forward in different ways. U.S. companies are chasing AI frontiers with computing power supported by cutting-edge chips and the country’s rapidly expanding data center infrastructure. China is pursuing wide global adoption of its open-source, more affordable models.

    Chinese AI models have made major advances and gained traction with American companies even as U.S.-led restrictions bar China from getting the world’s most advanced AI chips. While most American frontier models are closed-source, with their design elements kept secret, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday the U.S. needs to develop more open-source models to counter China.

    The U.S. has accused China of “aggressive, malicious” efforts to extract capabilities from American AI systems. China has hit back, accusing the U.S. of trying to suppress Chinese companies so it can build a “monopoly of the AI industry.”

    David Sacks, a top AI adviser to Trump, said that China has “already rejected” slowing down the pace of developing the most advanced forms of AI. He said on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” that unlike the nuclear tensions with the Soviet Union during the Cold War it would be impossible to verify whether China honored any AI commitments.

    “In this case, we don’t have trust and we can’t verify,” Sacks said. “So let’s not be foolish about this and just hand the whole ball game to China.”

    Still, those with ties to the Chinese government see coordination on AI as helpful.

    At an annual security and defense conference in Beijing, Cui Tiankai, a former Chinese ambassador to the U.S., said Tuesday that AI is an area where “we should go ahead and build up” dialogue between Beijing and Washington. “Because there is a need, a growing need, for cooperation,” he told the Xiangshan Forum. “So how can we manage the balance?”

    American AI leaders call for keeping China in check — and cooperating with China

    Two leading American AI companies, Anthropic and OpenAI, each restrict access in China and have said the U.S. has a national security imperative to protect its lead on AI technology. But they also have called for cooperation with China to manage safety.

    In his essay last weekend calling for a slowdown of AI development for safety reasons, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the U.S. should slow China’s progress, including keeping up U.S. restrictions on China’s purchases of the world’s most advanced AI chips.

    He also added, however, that “global pacing will require cooperation with China, the autocratic country with by far the most advanced AI capabilities.”

    His essay quickly drew criticism from Beijing, with China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs saying on Monday that “fearmongering, confrontation, and vicious competition will only disrupt the process of global AI governance which serves no one’s interest.”

    China’s state-run Global Times newspaper went further, calling his remarks “packed with containment provisions targeting China and is, in essence, a ‘Cold War playbook’ for the AI sector.”

    Trump has consulted with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, even calling the maker of the world’s most advanced computer chips in the middle of a Monday podcast interview. Nvidia has generally favored some chip exports to China as a way to create an American ecosystem for the technology and a more open relationship on AI given the number of researchers in China.

    Both countries have been alarmed by emerging AI capabilities

    In both the U.S. and China, AI’s increasingly powerful capabilities have alarmed top officials and policymakers.

    The head of China’s Ministry of State Security, its spy agency, warned in an article Sunday that AI poses many threats to the country, from political and ideological security to cyberattacks.

    In the article, Chen Yixin argued that AI could threaten China’s political and ideological security if used by those “with ulterior motives,” while singling out Anthropic’s and OpenAI’s powerful AI models. It said they could be used to “weaponize” cybersecurity vulnerabilities and threaten China’s critical information infrastructure.

    Several other recent AI-related events were also causing concern in China when it comes to AI governance. That includes a U.S. security firm’s recent discovery of AI vulnerabilities in WeChat, China’s key messaging app that also offers payment services among other functions, said Paul Triolo, a partner at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group.

    While Chinese officials said after Trump’s Beijing summit with Xi in mid-May that China and the United States had agreed to pursue dialogue on AI development and governance, little progress has been made.

    At the same time, China and the U.S. have been working to form AI alliances with like-minded nations.

    In July, China launched the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization, a group with 29 initial founding member countries, including Russia and Pakistan, meant to promote global AI governance. This month, China’s Xi has called on BRICS member countries to accelerate the setting up of a global AI governance framework and establish an open-source AI community.

    Some political observers saw the China-led organization as a response to the U.S.-led Pax Silica initiative, which launched last year focusing on strengthening collaboration with countries including Japan, the U.K., and Australia on AI supply chains.

    Asked about his expectations on AI from the Trump-Xi meeting on AI in an interview with CBS’ Face the Nation, Amodei said “the more long-term thing would be working together to put a speed limit on the rate of AI progress.” But he said it likely would be very difficult.

    In the run-up to the Trump-Xi meeting, a recent social media post by Yuyuantantian, a Chinese state media-linked account, was similarly circumspect.

    “Only after the United States first demonstrates that the safety rules are equally effective for its own model companies can substantive discussions between the U.S. and China take place,” the post said.