Inquirer.com – Zurich DR

Category: Wires

  • Donors were misled by Trump-backed Freedom 250, House Democrats allege

    Some donors who intended to give money to a bipartisan effort to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary were, instead, steered to a White House-backed initiative under false pretenses, House Democrats allege in a report released Thursday morning, citing whistleblower interviews and newly obtained documents.

    The donors meant to give money to America250, a congressionally chartered initiative to celebrate the nation’s semiquincentennial, according to Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee. They instead were given routing and account numbers that directed their funds to Freedom 250, which President Donald Trump established last year to organize anniversary events, the report says.

    The report does not identify the donors. In interviews, Democrats said they needed to protect the identity of whistleblowers who worked with the panel. But they said their report — which includes other allegations of Freedom 250 officials and allies explicitly steering money away from America250 and toward projects shaped by Trump — shows how the president transformed a bipartisan celebration of the nation’s anniversary into an initiative that benefited him and his allies.

    “I’m a lawyer, and I know better than to pronounce that a crime has been committed,” said Rep. Jared Huffman (D., Calif.), who oversaw the report as the committee’s top Democrat. “But I do know the elements of fraud, and there is evidence of all those elements here.”

    The White House referred questions to Freedom 250, which denied that donors had been misled by its fundraising activities and criticized Democrats for the timing of their report.

    “This so-called ‘report’ is nothing more than a partisan smear from politicians who would rather manufacture division than celebrate America’s 250th birthday alongside the rest of the country,” Freedom 250 spokesperson Danielle Alvarez said in a statement.

    Alvarez also criticized America250, saying that the bipartisan organization — which Congress established in 2016 — “had nothing to show” for its 10 years of planning and spending.

    “Freedom 250 was created because the American people deserved better,” Alvarez said.

    America250 declined to comment on the specific allegations in Democrats’ report.

    “America250 will continue to focus on the values-based programming approved by our bipartisan Commission at the local, state, national and international levels, including once-in-a-lifetime celebratory moments during the 4th of July weekend,” Rosie Rios, who chairs America250, said in a statement. “We are supportive of the many other organizations planning events for the 250th at the federal, state and local level, so all Americans have ample opportunities to join in the celebration.”

    Trump has extolled Freedom 250 in public remarks, saying that the initiative has organized multiple special events. The public-private partnership, which the White House launched in December, has overseen a flurry of high-profile announcements, including some from the Oval Office.

    “We’ll have a Freedom 250 Grand Prix right here in Washington around the Capitol,” the president said last week in remarks kicking off the Great American State Fair on the National Mall — another Freedom 250-backed event.

    The Trump-backed initiative has overtaken some efforts led by America250, which is directed by a bipartisan board created by Congress a decade ago.

    America250 originally applied for and received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services for so-called Freedom Trucks, mobile museums inspired by the American Freedom Train that crisscrossed the country from 1975-1976. The institute is a federal agency that provides financial support for museums and libraries.

    Officials have said the grant was later voluntarily transferred to Freedom 250, which is now operating Freedom Trucks that provide a sanitized version of the nation’s founding, according to administration critics.

    America250 officials have said they reoriented their initiative to organize events outside Washington, while Freedom 250 focuses on events in the nation’s capital. But the dueling organizations and approaches have confused some corporate leaders and lawmakers, and tensions between the groups have grown, the Washington Post reported earlier this year.

    The Democratic lawmakers’ report offers further examples of how the two groups have come into conflict.

    Some donors and sponsors interested in donating to America250 were told by the Trump administration that they lacked a “green light” to do so, according to the Democrats. The report also claims that administration officials pressured donors to redirect donations from the bipartisan effort to Freedom 250, with the Trump-backed group conducting outreach to America250 sponsors with donation requests.

    Some corporate executives did not understand the difference between the two organizations and were confused by this process, the report says.

    Freedom 250 officials also worked to deprive America250 of money, the Democrats charge, citing new examples of Trump allies pressuring donors to reallocate funds away from the bipartisan initiative. They also allege that Trump allies worked to shift public financial support away from America250, including $75 million of congressionally allocated funds that America250 leaders were expecting to receive. The remaining funds are likely to be kept by the White House, the report says.

    The reduced funding posed challenges for America250 to execute planned programming, according to the report, including grants, educational initiatives, and volunteer programs. Redirected federal funding created “significant headwinds” for this programming, the Democrats said, though the group still sought to execute all planned events through additional private fundraising.

    Though America250 is still organizing anniversary celebrations in large cities across the country, its programming has been overshadowed by that of Freedom 250. The Trump-backed group helped organize last month’s UFC fight on the White House lawn, this week’s opening of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota, and a Trump rally and fireworks show scheduled for the evening of Independence Day.

    Freedom 250 also employs many former U.S. DOGE Service officials and harvested users’ data for political purposes, according to the report.

    Huffman said that if Democrats retake the House this fall — and obtain the power to issue subpoenas — they will open broader investigations into Freedom 250.

    “If and when we have more tools at our disposal to do investigation and oversight, perhaps in the next Congress you will see a lot more information on this, I’m sure,” he said.

  • Venezuelan security guard pulled alive from building basement 8 days after twin quakes

    CATIA LA MAR, Venezuela — Rescuers pulled a 43-year-old security guard alive from a collapsed basement early Thursday, ending a grueling dayslong operation that became a symbol of hope after the devastation of twin earthquakes that struck Venezuela eight days earlier.

    Hernán Alberto Gil Flores emerged to safety atop a stretcher surrounded by helmet-clad rescue workers after being trapped since June 24 under rubble in the basement of the Galerías Playa Grande shopping center in the coastal town in La Guaira.

    Rescuers, who initially made contact with him over the weekend, worked for more than 100 hours to free him — navigating a highly unstable structure, torrential rain, and persistent aftershocks to tunnel down to the survivor.

    Teams carrying flags from around the world cheered as rescuers carried Gil Flores, wearing an oxygen mask and covered in an orange tarp, through throngs of people to an ambulance.

    One Chilean rescuer carrying his stretcher pumped his fist in joy. A group of men in red Costa Rican Red Cross uniforms embraced and laughed in relief. Others broke out into applause.

    “When we found him, he asked us not to tell his wife that he was alive, just in case he wouldn’t make it,” Costa Rican Red Cross rescuer Minyar Collado told the Associated Press, but she added “We were never going to leave him here.”

    The rescue was considered a small miracle cutting through a week of tragedy. By supplying Gil Flores with food and water while they excavated the concrete, rescue teams were able to keep him alive far longer than the 48- to 72-hour threshold most operations give to find survivors in disasters.

    Gil Flores, who worked as a night-shift security guard at the complex, was inside his small security cabin when the first violent tremor struck. While the surrounding concrete structure collapsed around him, his cabin held ground, shielding him from crushing debris and creating a vital pocket of air.

    A specialized team from the Costa Rican Red Cross first detected signs of life and established contact with him Sunday.

    His wife, Gusbimar González, told the AP that she grappled with despair for days before hearing that rescuers made contact.

    “When I learned he was alive, I saw a ray of light in the darkness,” she said. The couple has two children, ages 8 and 10.

    The operation was coordinated by an urban search and rescue team of Chilean firefighters, who worked around the clock with specialized teams from the United States, Portugal, Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Venezuela.

    Acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez celebrated the rescue on social media at a time that her government has come under fire for what many Venezuelans say has been an inadequate crisis response.

    “We celebrate the greatness of humanity, when it is united for a single purpose: to save another. Thank you to our rescuers and to the support of the international rescuers,” she wrote on a post on X.

    Teams used a telescopic camera to help maintain constant contact with Gil Flores, passing water and liquid nutrients through a narrow shaft to keep him hydrated during the final three days of the rescue.

    María Paz Campos, a veteran firefighter from Chile, talked him through the entire operation and kept him calm during the final excruciating hours Thursday.

    In a video published by Chilean firefighters in the hours before the rescue, Gil Flores is seen drawing, seemingly to pass the time. Campos then gently tells him to look at the camera and to wear protective goggles.

    “I need you to keep the goggles on, for the small particles that are falling, to avoid them getting into your eye,” Campos told the Venezuelan survivor.

    The collapse of the building was triggered by two back-to-back earthquakes on June 24 that registered magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5, respectively. The shallow, violent tremors damaged or destroyed tens of thousands of buildings across northern Venezuela, killing more than 2,200 people, injuring over 11,000 and leaving La Guaira state as the hardest-hit region in the country.

  • 6 ways to shift your stress mindset to dial down daily anxiety

    6 ways to shift your stress mindset to dial down daily anxiety

    To deal with a stressful world, many of us try to avoid and reduce the stress. But what we believe about stress may have just as important a role in helping us deal with it.

    Psychologists call this our “stress mindset” — our belief that stress can debilitate us or enhance us and have positive consequences.

    Research from the past decade shows that these beliefs can affect our psychology and physiology; people who are more inclined to see the positives of stress are more likely to experience improved performance, boosted mood and, in fact, reduced stress.

    Importantly, you can change your stress mindset, experts say.

    “If somebody perceives that stress has benefits for them, they’re likely to engage in a stressful situation much more adaptively,” said Sarah Williams, a sport and performance psychologist and associate professor at the University of Birmingham in England.

    Having a stress-is-enhancing mindset is less about “Pollyannaish” positive thinking or toxic positivity and more about acknowledging that a stressful experience can “lend itself to growth, to opportunities,” said Alia Crum, an associate professor of psychology at Stanford University who first developed a psychological measure for stress mindsets in 2013.

    “So rather than trying to remove stresses and calm everybody down, it’s about trying to help people understand the benefits of when they feel stressed, what those responses can do for them, how they can fuel them to perform better,” Williams said.

    In other words, stress — and how we think about it — may actually help us thrive.

    What our mind does to stress

    The negative effects of stress are still real. Stress, especially if it is chronic, can cause physical and mental illnesses or premature aging.

    But the true nature of stress is more complex.

    “The body’s stress response was not designed to kill us,” Crum said. “It was designed evolutionarily to help our bodies, brains, and minds rise to the occasion and meet the challenges and threats that we are faced [with].”

    (When most people say “stress,” they are usually referring to “distress,” the negative side of stress. Eustress, by contrast, is what researchers consider motivating and energizing stress.)

    There are four ways that our mindsets change how stress affects us, Crum said.

    First, what we believe changes what we pay attention to. Believing that stress is inherently harmful can cause people to overly fixate on the bad and “freak out or check out” as a result, Crum said.

    Second, our stress mindset changes what we are motivated to do. When people believe stress can be enhancing, they are more likely to engage with it in appropriate ways.

    Third, what we believe changes our emotions. “Something I always tell people is often the detrimental thing is not the stress,” Williams said. “It’s the stressing about the stress.” Conversely, believing that stress is enhancing can boost positive emotions, research shows.

    And fourth, there is evidence that mindset can change our body’s physiological response to stress, including by decreasing levels of salivary cortisol, our body’s principal stress hormone.

    Research shows that having a more stress-is-enhancing mindset is linked to better mental health outcomes in the long run, including higher resilience, more optimism, and lower anxiety and depressive symptoms, Williams said.

    Crum said she has tested stress mindsets in different groups of people — students, athletes, workers — across different cultures, and, on average, all groups fell more on the stress-is-debilitating side of the scale.

    The one exception she has found? Candidates working to become Navy SEALs. “These are people who are literally choosing to go into one of the most stressful experiences, professions that exist on the planet,” Crum said. “So they must have a belief that stress can serve them.” (Nevertheless, Navy SEAL candidates who had greater stress-is-enhancing mindsets were more likely to persist through training, have faster obstacle course times, and have fewer negative evaluations from their peers or instructors.)

    This is not to say that the stressor, whether it’s a big job interview, getting an F on an exam, or a tough relationship conversation, is necessarily a good thing or something we enjoy.

    But the stressor is distinct from our experience of the stress.

    “You’re only stressed about things that matter to you,” Crum said. We should “welcome stress” because stress is “a sign that there’s something you care about.”

    Malleable mindsets

    Shifting stress mindsets — and reaping the benefits — is possible for anybody, even for those with the deepest struggles, researchers say.

    Early research found that presenting people with evidence of the benefits of stress could shift their mindset and confer psychological and physiological benefits.

    In a 2017 study published in the journal Anxiety, Stress, & Coping, Crum and her colleagues presented 113 participants with a three-minute video that emphasized either the enhancing or debilitating properties of stress. Afterward, participants took part in a mock job interview — a typically stressful activity — and received either positive or negative feedback.

    Participants who learned that stress is enhancing experienced more improvements to their positive emotions regardless of whether they were told they performed well or poorly. They also exhibited more cognitive flexibility, which is the ability to adapt our thinking and behavior to different contexts. Conversely, participants who learned that stress is debilitating had worse cognitive and emotional outcomes.

    But more recently, Crum and colleagues found that giving a more holistic perspective of stress and emphasizing the power of mindsets may be even more effective, according to a 2023 study in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. This “metacognitive” approach improved self-reported physical health symptoms and work performance compared with people who were wait-listed for the training.

    And compared with participants who learned only about the positive benefits of stress, those who received the metacognitive approach were more able to maintain the stress-is-enhancing mindset even when presented with evidence of negative effects of stress a week or two later.

    People who can imagine themselves succeeding in a stressful situation may further shift their belief that stress can be enhancing, according to a 2023 study conducted by Williams and colleagues. “We’re almost training the brain to connect the responses to stress with that positive outcome,” Williams said.

    Researchers are careful to note that just because our stress mindset matters, it doesn’t mean it’s “all that matters,” Crum said. “It’s just one piece of the puzzle to help us live happier, healthier, more productive lives.”

    How to shift your stress mindset

    Here are steps experts say you can take to shift your stress mindset.

    Acknowledge the stress. Instead of denying it or trying to suppress it, say what is stressing you aloud. Notice your physiological responses — elevated heart rate, sweatier palms — and remind yourself that “this is my body preparing for me to perform,” Williams said.

    Welcome the stress. It is a sign that there’s something you care about, which can be focusing and energizing if you allow it to be.

    Use the stress response. Instead of expending effort and resources trying to avoid the stress, “utilize the narrowed focus, the increased arousal and energy that happens in the body in order to meet the goals that you have,” Crum said.

    Fuel your stress mindset. Think about a time in your life when you’ve excelled or grown the most. “Anytime you want to, you know, level up, there’s usually some stress involved,” Crum said. “So we just need to remember that is evidence to fuel and sustain the belief.”

    Try stress-mindset micropractices. Take moments to reflect on what stresses you have and what you care about most. This is something Crum says she does when she makes the transition going up the stairs into her workplace and again when returning home.

    Complement with other stress management strategies. More research needs to be done about what contexts and scenarios call for different approaches to stress, experts say. But strategies such as reframing negative experiences and slowing our breath also can help alleviate stress and improve mood.

  • Victor Willis, who fronted the Village People and co-wrote ‘Y.M.C.A.,’ dies at 74

    WASHINGTON — Victor Willis, who helped make the Village People one of the most enduring groups of the disco era, singing lead and co-writing hits including “Y.M.C.A.” and “Macho Man,” died June 30, a day before his 75th birthday.

    His wife, Karen Huff-Willis, announced the death in a statement on social media, saying that Mr. Willis suffered from a “short, but aggressive illness.” Additional details were not immediately available.

    Mr. Willis rose to fame in the late 1970s as the front man of the Village People, donning flamboyant costumes while becoming a camp favorite of nightclubs and dance halls. Most often dressed as a police officer, he shared the stage with a parade of macho male archetypes — bandmates who dressed as a naval officer, a cowboy, a biker, a construction worker, or a Native American in a headdress – while performing upbeat hits including “Macho Man,” the group’s first Top 25 single, and “In the Navy,” a military spoof.

    The Village People’s biggest hit, 1978’s “Y.M.C.A.,” remains a mainstay of weddings, sporting events, and party playlists, bringing listeners to their feet with its joyous horn blasts, four-on-the-floor drum groove, and sing-along chorus. The song was inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry in 2020.

    “Everybody knows ‘Y.M.C.A.’,” said Mr. Willis, who drew inspiration for the song from his trips to New York’s 63rd Street Y as a newcomer to the city. “Everywhere I go, people tell me their little children know ‘Y.M.C.A.’ They don’t know Village People, but they know ‘Y.M.C.A.’”

    President Donald Trump has regularly played “Y.M.C.A.” at his rallies, and Mr. Willis and the Village People performed the song last year at an event that was part of Trump’s second inauguration.

    “He was a great and happy guy,” the president wrote in a Truth Social post Wednesday, adding that “we will think of Victor every time YMCA is played, like today, and all throughout this July Fourth Birthday week.”

    Ahead of the inauguration, Mr. Willis and the group took to social media to say that their performance was not intended as an endorsement of Trump. Their “preferred candidate” had been Kamala Harris, the group wrote in a lengthy Facebook post, adding that they believed that “Y.M.C.A.” had the power to bridge partisan divides.

    “We’re trying to make people come together and unite the country,” Mr. Willis told NPR. “And regardless if you didn’t vote for him —basically, I’m a Democrat. We lost, so we have to put that aside, and it was time for everybody to get behind the president-elect.”

    Mr. Willis’ decision to participate in inauguration ceremonies polarized the group’s fans, including gay listeners who had embraced the Village People’s macho image and subtly suggestive lyrics for decades.

    The group’s shifting lineup included gay and straight musicians, although Mr. Willis dismissed labels about the band and its music, going so far as to threaten to sue news organizations that described “Y.M.C.A.” — with its lyrics about hanging out “with all the boys” and doing “whatever you feel” — as a gay anthem.

    “The group performs a masculine show. Gay people like us, straight people like us,” he told Rolling Stone in 1979. “But we’re not a gay group.”

    Mr. Willis was born in Texas on July 1, 1951, and grew up in San Francisco, singing at a Baptist church where his father served as minister. By age 15, he was singing in a local group, the Ballads, that had opened for the Temptations.

    After moving to New York, he performed in Broadway productions of Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Wiz, including while serving as an understudy for some of The Wizard of Oz adaptation’s lead characters.

    Amid the disco craze of the movie Saturday Night Fever and the Studio 54 nightclub, Mr. Willis was asked in 1977 to front a group being developed by Henri Belolo, a music executive, and Jacques Morali, a songwriter.

    “I had a dream that you sang lead vocals on an album I produced and it went very, very big,” Morali told him, according to an online history of the Village People. “I have four tracks. I can’t pay you much right now, but if you agree, I’ll make you a star.”

    Mr. Willis agreed, leading to the release of the Village People’s self-titled debut later that year. He continued to record and perform with the group until 1979, when he left as Belolo and Morali prepared to release a film about the group, the critically reviled Can’t Stop the Music.

    “I just felt the ship sinking, and I didn’t want to be on it when it went down,” Mr. Willis told the San Diego Union-Tribune in 2015, “because I felt I had a little more life in me.”

    Mr. Willis recorded an album, Solo Man, that went unreleased until 2015. (He said it had been blocked by Belolo and Morali, who were angry by his decision to leave the group.) He also “got kind of drugged out,” in his telling, and struggled with addiction before entering rehab in 2006 at the Betty Ford Center in California. He said his recovery was aided by Huff-Willis, a lawyer, whom he married in 2007.

    An earlier marriage to actress Phylicia Rashad, who appeared with him in The Wiz and later starred as Clair Huxtable on the television show The Cosby Show, ended in divorce. Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.

    With Huff-Willis’s encouragement, Mr. Willis won a 2012 copyright case to regain control over the Village People’s biggest hits. He rejoined the group after reaching a settlement in 2017 with Belolo’s production company.

  • Venezuelan medics fear infections from quake injuries as search for untold dead continues

    Venezuelan medics fear infections from quake injuries as search for untold dead continues

    CARACAS, Venezuela — A week after Venezuela’s historic twin earthquakes, doctors on Wednesday said the biggest dangers now facing survivors were untreated wounds and infectious diseases.

    Thousands of displaced Venezuelans are sleeping in crowded shelters or outside without access to clean water amid dismal sanitary conditions following the June 24 earthquakes. Aid workers said the aftermath has become a major medical crisis that, unless quickly controlled, would take more lives in the days and weeks ahead.

    “The issue we foresee just around the corner are the infections that patients who have been exposed to the disaster for the longest time might bring,” said Eugenio Cova, the head of the trauma unit at Hospital del Oeste Dr. José Gregor Hernández in Caracas, the capital.

    The hospital has treated scores of severely injured people since the earthquakes, despite a shortage of crucial medical equipment. Cova said the public hospital, parts of which are now inaccessible because of possible earthquake damage, lacks screws and plates needed for orthopedic surgery and medicated gauze to prevent infections.

    According to the government, the earthquakes damaged or otherwise compromised 38 hospitals nationwide.

    “We’ve already gone through the period of complex trauma — which will continue to occur — but now it’s complicated by infections,” Cova added.

    Even as the window of opportunity narrowed in the search for survivors trapped under the rubble, expert teams from more than two dozen countries pressed on Wednesday with rescue operations. Against the odds — the window for survival when trapped under rubble is typically 48 to 72 hours — teams are continuing to find a small number of survivors, including a toddler on Tuesday who had been trapped for six days.

    The United States, which took control of Venezuela’s oil industry after seizing then-leader Nicolás Maduro in January, has scaled up its assistance in recent days, with 900 military personnel supporting relief and rescue efforts as of Wednesday, Steven McCloud, a U.S. Southern Command spokesman, told the Associated Press.

    An additional 100 people from the U.S. State Department were deployed to help aid work on the ground, he said.

    Venezuelan officials have counted over 1,900 deaths from the earthquakes as of Tuesday, a figure that continues to rise. Many more thousands remain missing, adding ambiguity to the temblors’ complete toll and leaving families in an agonizing limbo as they wait days by collapsed buildings, hoping for the bodies of their loved ones to surface.

    One non-governmental digital database where families can register missing loved ones showed more than 40,600 people unaccounted for as of Wednesday.

  • Trump’s income topped $2 billion in 2025, boosted by crypto, coin ventures

    WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s reported income soared to more than $2.2 billion in 2025, as the president took in more than $1.4 billion from cryptocurrency, digital tokens and related partnerships, according to his latest financial disclosure forms.

    The 927 pages of disclosuresindicated that Trump’s income substantially increased after he reentered the White House last year.

    Overall, Trump reported assets worth at least $2.4 billion and income of more than $2.2 billion. His assets are almost certainly worth more, since the federal disclosure forms require only that asset values be reported in ranges that top out at “over $50 million,” which leaves the full value of the president’s holdings unclear.

    In his 2024 financial disclosure, filed a year ago, Trump reported assets worth more than $1.6 billion and income of over $600 million.

    In addition to income from crypto ventures, Trump reported over $620 million in real estate, hotel and golf-related income.

    The president also reported receiving $86.5 million from settlements in five separate lawsuits against ABC, CBS, YouTube, Meta, and the social media platform X.

    The 2025 disclosure, released Tuesday, includes $635 million in royalties from a license agreement with Celebration Coins; at least $525 million in proceeds from token sales by World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency project founded by Trump and his sons; $65 million in proceeds from World Liberty Financial’s equity sale; and $196 million in net proceeds from a stablecoin transaction.

    Trump also saw increased income from his golf clubs and resorts. He reported $121 million from Trump National Doral in 2025, up from $110 million a year earlier, and $77 million from Mar-a-Lago, up from $56 million.

    In response to a request for comment about Trump’s significant increase in income from crypto and similar ventures, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said that Trump had “proudly made the United States the crypto capital of the world through executive actions, supporting legislation like the GENIUS Act, and other commonsense policies to drive innovation and economic opportunity for all Americans.”

    “Neither the President nor his family has ever engaged — or will ever engage — in conflicts of interest,” Kelly continued, saying any suggestion otherwise is a “tired, false narrative.”

    Trump’s disclosures are in stark contrast to Vice President JD Vance’s filing, which came in at 17 pages. Vance, however, also saw a boost in at least one category of income: royalties for his memoir Hillbilly Elegy, released in 2016.

    Vance reported earning $50,000 to $100,000 from the book in 2024. Last year, that range shot up to $1 million to $5 million, he disclosed.

    This month Vance published a second book, Communion, which he has promoted on an extensive media tour over the last two weeks.

  • Belarus’ authoritarian leader pardons 28 political prisoners to ease ties with the West

    Belarus’ authoritarian leader pardons 28 political prisoners to ease ties with the West

    TALLINN, Estonia — Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko on Wednesday pardoned 28 political prisoners, the latest of his efforts to improve relations with the West.

    Lukashenko’s decree marking the country’s Independence Day celebrated Friday announced that 28 convicts serving prison terms for “extremist crimes,” a term used by the authorities’ in their sweeping crackdown on dissent, were pardoned on “humanitarian” grounds.

    More than 800 political prisoners remain jailed in the country, according to a rights organization in Belarus.

    Lukashenko has ruled the nation of 9.5 million with an iron fist for more than three decades, and the country has been sanctioned repeatedly by Western countries — both for its crackdown on human rights and for allowing Russia to use its territory in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

    Lukashenko’s rule was challenged after a 2020 presidential election, when hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest a vote they viewed as rigged. In an ensuing crackdown, tens of thousands were detained, with many beaten by police. Prominent opposition figures fled the country or were imprisoned.

    Five years after the mass demonstrations, Lukashenko won a seventh term last year in an election that the opposition called a farce.

    Since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to the White House, Lukashenko has released hundreds of political prisoners in a series of U.S.-mediated deals that also lifted some U.S. sanctions.

    As part of a deal in March that Washington helped broker, Lukashenko ordered the release of 250 political prisoners, while the U.S. agreed to lift sanctions from two Belarusian state banks and the country’s Finance Ministry, and to remove the top Belarusian potash producers from a sanctions list.

    Another deal in April released prominent journalist Andrzej Poczobut in a swap with Poland that saw a total of 10 people freed.

    Belarus still has 864 political prisoners, including 21 journalists, according to the Viasna human rights center in Minsk, the capital of Belarus.

    In a report released earlier this week, the U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus, Nils Muižnieks, warned that despite the release of several hundred political prisoners over the past year, there has been no overall improvement in the human rights situation in the country.

    “Sustainable progress requires an end to politically motivated repression and accountability for past violations,” he said.

    Belarus opposition leader-in-exile Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya told the Associated Press that although the release of 28 political prisoners will bring relief to their relatives, “we mustn’t forget that hundreds of political prisoners remain in Belarusian jails, and all of them must be released.”

  • Defying Pope Leo XIV, traditionalists go ahead with bishop consecrations in Switzerland

    ECONE, Switzerland — A group of traditionalist Catholics directly defied Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday by consecrating four bishops without his consent, dismissing the resulting excommunications and break with the Holy See by saying it was necessary to defend the Catholic faith.

    The Society of St. Pius X, which opposes modernizing reforms in the Catholic Church, conducted the five-hour ceremony at its seminary in Econe, Switzerland, despite an appeal by Leo to call it off.

    The American pope warned in a letter Tuesday that consecrating bishops without his approval amounted to a “sin of extreme gravity” that will actually harm their faithful.

    The consecrations amounted to a crisis for Leo, who has prioritized church unity and healing tensions with traditionalists that worsened during the Pope Francis pontificate.

    The SSPX, as the society is known, represents a parallel, ultra-Catholic faith to the Holy See. It now has six bishops, 751 priests, 264 seminarians training in five seminaries, 145 religious brothers, 88 oblates, and 250 religious sisters representing 50 nationalities, according to SSPX statistics.

    Bells tolled through the misty Alpine mountain valley as hundreds of priests walked two-by-two to the altar under a tent to start the service and then again at the end. An estimated 16,500 faithful who prefer the traditional Latin Mass over modern liturgies attended, sitting in a field through a downpour alongside their children who were too numerous for organizers to count.

    The Mass, rich in velvet and gold-trimmed vestments, chanting, and incense, was livestreamed on the society’s YouTube channel, with simultaneous explanations in several languages. The highly organized religious extravaganza underscored the society’s international reach, despite its schismatic outsider status, and its appeal to conservative, traditionalist Catholics wary of the modern, secular world.

    At the start of the Mass, a priest read aloud a statement justifying the consecrations as a necessary “sacred duty” and dismissing the resulting penalties. “We consider every punishment and censure brought to bear against this step will have no validity,” he said.

    In the consecration rite, Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta, who himself was excommunicated after being consecrated without papal consent in 1988, placed his hands on the head of each of the four new bishops. The ritual confers the Holy Spirit from one bishop to another and recalls Christ’s gesture to his apostles. After they received their miter hats, gloves, and pastoral staffs, the four made a procession through the crowd, blessing the faithful as bishops.

    According to church law, consecrating a bishop without a papal mandate incurs the harshest penalty in the Catholic Church: automatic excommunication for the four new bishops and the bishop administering the rite. It also amounts to a schismatic act, an intentional rupture of church unity.

    The society was founded in opposition to Vatican II

    French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre founded the SSPX in opposition to the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Among other things, the 1960s meetings known as Vatican II revolutionized the church’s relations with other Christians, Jews, and people of other faiths, and allowed Mass to be celebrated in the vernacular rather than Latin.

    In 1988, Lefebvre consecrated four bishops without papal consent. The Vatican promptly excommunicated him and the four bishops and declared the consecrations a “schismatic act.” Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 lifted the excommunications, but the SSPX today has no legal standing in the church.

    The SSPX has accused the church of being rife with heresies and errors and said that only it is upholding the true faith of Christ. It has justified the consecrations, citing a “state of necessity” to minister to its faithful.

    It identified the new bishops as Pascal Schreiber of Switzerland, Michael Goldade of the United States, Michel Poinsinet de Sivry of France, and Marc Hanappier, also of France.

    Catholic faithful don’t incur penalties for attending SSPX services, but they also can attend Latin Masses celebrated by priests in communion with the Vatican.

    The Vatican didn’t immediately comment on the consecrations and it wasn’t clear how or if it would declare the excommunications or any other penalties. The SSPX acknowledged in a statement late Wednesday that the consecrations did not have papal approval.

    The ritual had a joyous air

    Everything about Wednesday’s ceremony had the air of a joyous celebration. Participants received a baseball cap with the “Econe2026” seal on it.

    And in perhaps the most obvious sign of a celebration, registered participants could buy a souvenir set of wine to commemorate the “historic” event for 75 Swiss francs ($92.50). The “Cuvee des Sacres” gift box featured pinot noir, syrah, Petit Arvine, and Fendant, each bottle with a label depicting a bishop’s miter, his ring, a cross or crozier staff.

    The field, located under giant power lines, was awash in smiling nuns, priests posing for photos, youths handing out bottled water, black-clad security guards with earpieces, and orange-vested volunteers who occasionally cut short journalists’ interviews with the faithful. During the downpour, priests administered Communion under yellow and white umbrellas, the colors of the Holy See.

    Arlina Onglao, a 71-year-old travel agent from the Philippines, said she wanted to be on hand for the “historic event” and didn’t care about the prospect of excommunications of the bishops. She said the Vatican had “lost credibility.”

    “I don’t think it’s going to scare any of us. Me, I’m not scared,” she said. “I feel like I’m on a safer road to heaven.”

    Many Catholics not in Econe, including conservative and traditional ones, opposed the consecrations as an act of severe disobedience that hurts the church.

    “You can’t serve tradition while disobeying the church and her authority,” said the Rev. Robert Gahl, an ethics expert at the Catholic University of America.

  • ICE’s arrest of nun heading to church fuels bipartisan backlash in South Texas

    SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Sister Leticia “Letty” Ugboaja was walking to Sunday Mass in McAllen, Texas, when federal immigration officers stopped her, confiscated her rosary, and placed her in handcuffs.

    The Catholic nun from Nigeria was released hours later after Democratic and Republican lawmakers intervened. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment about her immigration status, and officials from the Diocese of Brownsville would not give details other than to say she is a nurse who entered the country legally.

    Ugboaja’s arrest was the latest to trigger anger from both sides of the political aisle in South Texas, highlighting how Hispanics in a region that supported President Donald Trump in the 2024 elections are growing wary of his administration’s deportation campaign.

    An unlikely bipartisan consensus has emerged in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley to protest several recent immigration arrests, including those of three teenage mariachi musicians, numerous construction workers, and cases involving children and people who had been granted protection from deportation.

    Rep. Monica De La Cruz, a Republican who flipped her House district that includes the Texas border in 2022, has joined Democrats in the predominantly Mexican American region in calling for the release of immigrants with deep ties to their local communities and no criminal record.

    “As I have repeatedly said, our immigration enforcement should target violent criminals,” she wrote on Facebook. “A Catholic nun on her way to church is not a threat to our community.”

    Trump won 12 of 14 Texas border counties that had long been dominated by Democrats in the last presidential election. The rightward shift was the result of widespread discontent over how the Biden administration handled immigration and inflation.

    Lawmakers and political analysts say border constituents hold nuanced views that the Trump deportation campaign is testing. They support deporting criminals and enhancing border security, but they also say hardworking immigrants with no criminal record should be given a chance. And they are upset by images of people like Ugboaja being detained while going about their daily lives.

    “If the administration said they closed the border and are deporting criminals and stopped there, it would’ve been welcome news,” said Rep. Henry Cuellar (D., Texas). “But they didn’t stop there. They started going after people on the streets, and that part — the overreach by ICE — is turning Hispanics back to other candidates, to Democrats honestly.”

    The diocese said Ugboaja is part of the Daughters of Mary Mother of Mercy congregation headquartered in Nigeria and has worked more than a decade at local Texas hospitals. Ugboaja has not publicly addressed her arrest by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and did not respond to a request for comment.

    ICE did not respond to a request for comment on why she was detained.

    Richard Cortez, a Democrat who is the elected judge, or administrator, of Hidalgo County, is a parishioner at Our Lady of Sorrows, the church that Ugboaja had been walking to when she was arrested. He said he contacted representatives for De La Cruz and Cuellar after a deacon texted him to let him know that a nun had been arrested. The lawmakers then sent frenzied phone calls and text messages to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Tom Homan, the administration’s border czar.

    “Where is she?” Cuellar recalled texting officials in Washington, demanding her swift release. The veteran lawmaker, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, said Mullin and Homan reassured him that Ugboaja would be home by nightfall that same day.

    De La Cruz wrote on Facebook on Sunday that she had “elevated this to the highest levels.”

    The congresswoman is up for reelection and has been walking a careful line in supporting the Trump administration while also advocating for specific immigrants caught up in the deportation campaign. In a statement to the Washington Post, she said there is a “misconception” that Hispanic families want open borders.

    “It simply isn’t true,” she said. “We want a strong, secure border and enforcement that prioritizes violent criminals and real threats to our neighborhoods.”

    Local activists and cultural leaders were also involved in sounding the alarm, including Tejano singer Bobby Pulido, a Democrat challenging De La Cruz in the November general election. “It’s an aggression coming from the top, and they are not targeting bad people,” he said. “Trump voters, friends of mine, are very upset by this.”

    Sister Norma Pimentel, a well-known figure in the region, drove to the El Valle Detention Center in Raymondville, Texas, late Sunday to embrace a tearful Ugboaja as she exited the metal gates.

    De La Cruz ”is arguing for the compassionate release for some but not others,” said political scientist Álvaro Corral of the University of Texas in the Rio Grande Valley. “It puts her in a complicated place. The folks that elected her likely cheered some of this on.”

  • Voters are angry with Washington, and other takeaways from the Colorado primaries

    WASHINGTON — Democrats in Colorado rode a backlash against Washington to victory Tuesday night, as a surge of primary voters picked candidates without ties to Congress.

    The state’s Democratic primary had been closely watched to see whether the wave of democratic socialist victories in New York last week would travel west from coastal, urban terrain into more politically diverse stretches of the country.

    One key House race proved the theory true: Lawyer and democratic socialist Melat Kiros, 29, ousted Rep. Diana DeGette, a liberal, 30-year incumbent from Denver.

    And in the primary race for governor, ties to D.C. also became too toxic to overcome as Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser decisively beat U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, a three-term incumbent who once held a double-digit lead in polling.

    The most prominent Democratic incumbent to fend off a challenger, Sen. John Hickenlooper, won against a challenger who did not air a single television ad. Hickenlooper, a former two-term governor and Denver mayor who was born outside Philadelphia in Narberth and graduated from the Haverford School, posted the narrowest primary victory of his more than 20 years running for public office in Colorado.

    Here are some takeaways from primary night in Colorado, a once-purple state that saw a surge of Democratic ballots this year.

    Democratic primary voters seek a fighter

    In a campaign built on who would best fight President Donald Trump, Bennet’s early advantage evaporated as Weiser argued that the lawsuits he filed against the administration made him a better antagonist than an 18-year creature of Congress.

    During his second term, the president has moved the U.S. Space Command headquarters out of the state and shut down Colorado’s globally recognized climate research center, among other moves that challengers said D.C.-based politicians did not do enough to stop.

    Bennet is the first sitting senator to lose a gubernatorial primary in 15 years, a loss underwritten by a nearly $1 million personal loan to his campaign and almost twice as much spending on TV ads compared to Weiser.

    Weiser tweaked Bennet for voting to confirm eight of Trump’s Cabinet members. Bennet stood by his votes, except for the one to confirm Energy Secretary Chris Wright. He argued that his support was necessary to help the state secure federal resources.

    Colorado primary voters ultimately decided to leave Bennet in D.C., where he has another two years in his Senate term.

    Democratic socialists can topple liberals

    Kiros’s victory fuels nationwide exuberance of democratic socialists trying to pull the Democratic Party closer to their brand of economic populism and opposition to Israel.

    After three candidates endorsed by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani won their congressional primaries in New York last week, establishment Democrats felt angst. Democratic socialists looked to Colorado, and the money followed.

    “Today, the East Coast, next week the Mountain West,” the Democratic Socialists of America posted on X the night of those NYC victories, along with a photo of Kiros and entreaties to help phone bank and “elect another socialist to Congress.”

    Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) had endorsed her a week earlier.

    Kiros, a first-time candidate, beat Colorado’s most veteran member of Congress, a longtime progressive who supports Medicare-for-all and other causes dear to the left.

    On the campaign trail, Kiros argued that DeGette had become part of the party’s out-of-touch establishment and accepted corporate donations but not doing enough to support the working class. A lawyer and Ph.D. student, Kiros moved back to Colorado from New York after she was fired in 2023 for writing an anti-Israel letter and refusing to retract it.

    Buoyed by her savvy social media campaign, national groups flooded the race with cash in the closing weeks, tapping into the electorate’s growing interest in candidates vowing to upend the political system they seek to join. Establishment groups responded with cash to boost DeGette.

    Outside spending for both candidates exceeded $3.1 million.

    Kiros was not born when DeGette, 68, entered Congress in 1997, and her primary victory in a deeply blue district centered in Denver all but assures she’ll join the small caucus of Gen Z members of the House next year.

    In the swingiest district, a progressive moves toward the middle

    In Colorado’s most competitive House district, currently held by a Republican and stretching from the Denver suburbs north through ranches and farmland, the Democratic winner shifted positions away from those endorsed by democratic socialists — even as he remained the most liberal candidate in the field.

    Manny Rutinel, a 31-year-old first-term state lawmaker, moderated his progressive views as he battled through a three-way primary race, finishing well ahead of his closest challenger, Shannon Bird.

    The district, represented by Gabe Evans, is expected to be one of the country’s most expensive general election races this fall.

    Rutinel is among the most progressive members of the state legislature, but he shifted on enough positions during his campaign that the Denver chapter of the democratic socialist party declined to endorse him. An editor’s note on the DSA’s voting guide added: “Many of our members are concerned that even a Neutral vote is too supportive of this candidate.”

    A Yale-educated lawyer who also worked as an economist for the Army Corps of Engineers, Rutinel declined to support Medicare-for-all, proposing a strong public option instead. He also stopped supporting a fracking ban and ending student debt.

    Colorado Democrats lost a redistricting fight, but they may flip seats anyway

    The surge in Colorado’s Democratic turnout fueled the party’s optimism that losing in court over redistricting won’t matter too much in the end.

    Democratic groups in the state had been planning in recent weeks an effort to redraw their maps ahead of the 2028 election in hopes of countering a string of Republican-run states that gerrymandered to favor the GOP in recent months.

    Currently the state’s delegation is split 4-4 under boundaries drawn by an independent redistricting commission. But Colorado has trended blue for years amid a population explosion, and Democrats believed they could add as many as three seats.

    Three ballot measures proposed by a Democratic-aligned group, Coloradans for a Level Playing Field, would have temporarily suspended the independent redistricting commission and adopt new maps for the 2028 elections. The Colorado Supreme Court ruled Monday that they were unconstitutional because of how they were structured.

    But high turnout among Democrats in Tuesday’s primary has Democrats believing they can gain one or more seats in November, two years earlier than they had originally hoped.