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  • Jay Maisel, photographer of Miles Davis and much more, dies at 95

    Jay Maisel, photographer of Miles Davis and much more, dies at 95

    Jay Maisel, a masterly photographer whose dark and moody portrait of jazz great Miles Davis performing at the Apollo Theater appeared on the cover of his landmark 1959 album, Kind of Blue — Mr. Maisel’s best-known work in a long and varied career — died on Aug. 20 at his home in Brooklyn, N.Y. He was 95.

    His daughter, Amanda Maisel, said the cause was cancer.

    While not necessarily his best photograph — he wished it had been sharper — the Davis picture became part of a portfolio of remarkable depth that included coal miners silhouetted in an eerie glow a mile beneath the earth, the Statue of Liberty surrounded in a mist, and Sports Illustrated swimsuit models.

    Mr. Maisel was impossible to ignore: He was 6-foot-1, barrel-chested, charismatic, and profane, with a Brooklyn accent. He smoked cigars and collected stuff to the point of hoarding.

    And he spoke passionately — and practically — about his art. “The drama in light exists not only in what is in the light, but also in what is left dark,” he wrote in Light Gesture & Color, his 2015 book. “If the light is everywhere, the drama is gone. When I see light that moves me, that I cannot explain, I won’t leave until I figure it out.”

    More simply, he said, in a documentary: “I think that my entire motivation and execution and philosophy can be two words: ‘Hey, look.’”

    Mr. Maisel’s picture of Davis reveals him in a splash of light and shows his fingers moving in a blur on his trumpet. Mr. Maisel had taken it for himself; months later, Columbia Records asked if he had any photos of Davis that could be used for Kind of Blue, which music historian Ashley Kahn, writing in the New York Times in 1999, said “floats above jazz history in an ether all its own.”

    The Davis photo came early in Mr. Maisel’s color photography career, but he would go on to produce many memorable shots, like a man in a blue uniform, his face unseen, dragging a heavy white and purple rope, against a red wall in Singapore; and a shirtless New York City cabdriver, sunbathing from the open driver’s side door, as if he’d just let out a fare and stripped down.

    His many other shots included two men silhouetted against a red wall near the World Trade Center while a street sign says, “Don’t Walk,” and two doves, one white, one black, perched in different sections of a window frame, surrounded by a bright blue wall in Portugal.

    “I think of him as being extraordinarily versatile and visually restless,” said John Paul Caponigro, a visual artist and writer who taught in the same workshop programs with Mr. Maisel. “His work was a constellation of ideas,” he said, adding, “His books aren’t exactly how-to manuals. They’re about seeing.”

    Mr. Maisel was a freelancer who worked for magazines, advertising agencies, and corporations. He photographed the covers of New York magazine’s first two issues in 1968, including its inaugural skyline image, and five covers of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue.

    He collected his photos in several books, including Bearing Witness (2011), pictures taken at ground zero two weeks after the World Trade Center was destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001. At the time, he lived and worked in a 19th-century, six-story, former bank building on the Bowery, not far from the towers.

    For American Barrick Resources (now Barrick Mining), a corporate client, Mr. Maisel descended a mile into a coal mine. Believing that the strobe lights he had in the mine would not produce quality photos, he found an alternative in the natural lighting of the miners’ headlamps. But first, he asked his client to fire up machines that raised as much dust as possible.

    The final image is of two silhouetted miners — backlit by two others behind them — surrounded by an aura of golden dust. The headlamps of the two miners in front emit crisscrossing beams of light. It appeared on the cover of the company’s 1987 annual report.

    “It took all of two minutes, we coughed our way out and that was the shot they used,” Mr. Maisel wrote in his 2014 book, It’s Not About the F-Stop.

    Mr. Maisel’s honors include the 1987 Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography and induction into the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame (now the Creative Hall of Fame) in 1995.

    Jay Nathan Maisel was born on Jan. 18, 1931, in Brooklyn. His father, Lester, was a clothing salesperson, and his mother, Eva (Levine) Maisel, managed the home.

    In high school he focused on graphic design and painting; during three years at Cooper Union in Manhattan, he also studied drawing and architectural design while pursuing photography on the side.

    At Yale, he studied color theory under painter Josef Albers and continued to pursue photography, which provided him with the immediate gratification that painting did not. He also worked with other students on geodesic structures with engineer and philosopher R. Buckminster Fuller.

    Although he graduated in 1953 with a bachelor of fine arts degree in painting, he decided that he wanted to be a photographer. He started shooting in black and white, mostly street scenes in New York City. He also captured a distant-looking Marilyn Monroe in close-up at the after-party for the film East of Eden, and evangelist Billy Graham preaching at night in Times Square in 1957 lit by a cluster of neon signs for Budweiser, Canadian Club whisky, and the Capitol Theater.

    In addition to the cover of Kind of Blue, Mr. Maisel shot the covers of albums by Harry Belafonte, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, and Count Basie. But he was most enthralled by an assignment to photograph Indian sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar.

    “He asked what I wanted him to do,” Mr. Maisel told the interviewer Dave Dye in 2018 for the advertising blog Stuff From the Loft. “I said, ‘Play.’ He played for two or three hours. I shot to my tapping feet’s delight.”

    For a dozen years, Mr. Maisel worked out of a studio at 122 Second Ave. Then his rent went up, prompting him to buy the abandoned Germania Bank building at 190 Bowery for $102,000 in 1966. Forty-nine years later, he sold it to a developer for $55 million.

    The 35,000-square foot building with 72 rooms was more than Mr. Maisel’s studio and home: It contained his gallery, his basketball court, his archives (he took about 4 million photos over the course of his career), his workshop, and a hoarder’s bounty that included gadgets, antique tools, rocks, mannequin body parts, bells, gears, screws, rocks, table legs, and pieces of wood.

    “He did a lot of dumpster diving,” Amanda Maisel said in an interview. “I didn’t want to walk home with him while he was pulling out pieces of wood and metal.”

    The ephemera — not much of which found its way into his photos — were part of her father’s “obsession with how things worked/the beauty of functional things and arranging them,” she added, in a text.

    In addition to his daughter, Mr. Maisel is survived by his wife, Linda (Adam) Maisel, whom he married in 1989. His marriages to Sarah Linder and Suzanne Housman ended in divorce.

    Mr. Maisel stopped commercial work in 1995 — when “the whole thing turned to crap,” he told Stuff From the Loft — and focused on teaching, personal photography, and his books.

    After he sold his building, he moved to a town house in Brooklyn he bought for $15.5 million. At the time, it was the highest price ever paid for a residence in the borough. Nearly all his stuff is now in a storage facility near his home.

    The move formed the narrative spine of Jay Myself, a 2018 documentary directed by photographer Stephen Wilkes, one of Mr. Maisel’s former associates.

    Near the end of the film, Mr. Maisel said: “There’s a quiz I give people. Do you like photographing or do you like photographs? Choose one. And you learn a lot about yourself by choosing one or the other. Some people like photographs. I like photographing.”

    He added: “The act of photographing is what it’s all about.”

    This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

  • The new threat election officials fear: Trump’s federal government

    The new threat election officials fear: Trump’s federal government

    The activists staking out the ballot drop boxes in suburban Phoenix wore body armor and face coverings. With guns at their sides, they recorded residents as they deposited their votes during the last midterm elections.

    Voting-rights groups sued, and a federal judge put a stop to them, ruling they had to stay at least 250 feet away while armed to ensure voters were not intimidated.

    Four years later and 100 miles to the south, Pima County Attorney Laura Conover is treating the 2022 incident as a lesson on the importance of moving quickly this fall if anyone — including Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents — tries to interfere with the election’s administration. For her county along the U.S.-Mexico border, Conover has drawn up court papers so she can immediately file litigation to protect the vote.

    “When it comes to preparing for elections, we are on overdrive,” she said.

    In 2022, one of the greatest threats to elections came from activists like the armed men and women looming near drop boxes and questioning America’s voting procedures. This year, Conover and other officials across the nation are preparing for the possibility that the most serious risks may come from President Donald Trump, his agencies, and allies — including many now in power at the federal, state, and local levels. Election officials are contemplating ideas that once sounded outlandish, such as troops seizing voting machines, the president dictating last-minute election rules, or rogue officials blocking the certification of results.

    For the last year and a half, Trump and his administration have disparaged long-standing voting practices, dismantled federal agencies that protect elections, impounded ballots from past elections, amplified conspiracy theories, threatened to prosecute election officials, tried to limit mail ballots, and pushed to require proof of citizenship to register to vote.

    Their efforts have touched on nearly every stage of voting and could affect control of Congress, as Republicans try to retain their slim majority. A Democratic takeover of the House would stall Trump’s agenda, block funding for his initiatives, trigger a flood of investigations, and mire his administration in congressional hearings.

    The high stakes seem top of mind for the president. “I’m going to be impeached,” he warned supporters at a South Carolina rally last month.

    With seven weeks until Election Day and some ballots already in the mail, the White House and election administrators are clashing over nearly every aspect of the midterms, from who is eligible to vote to whether absentee ballot envelopes must have barcodes on them.

    Agents, troops, and monitors

    Last month, former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon told the audience of his popular MAGA podcast that the president should send an “up-armored ICE presence at these polling booths.”

    Critics might call that intimidation, Bannon said, and they would be right. “It’s an intimidation if you’re a foreigner,” he said. “It should be intimidating.”

    In Maine, the Republican nominee for governor also said he’d ask the administration to send ICE agents to the polls. Georgia’s Republican gubernatorial nominee spoke favorably of using National Guard troops. The GOP candidate for governor in Michigan said he’s talked to the head of the FBI about agents having a presence in the state ahead of Election Day. All three states are key in determining which party will control Congress and, after 2028, the presidency.

    Federal law makes it a felony to station troops or armed agents where an election is being held. But the statute carves out an exception for repelling enemies of the United States, and Trump’s critics worry he could invoke that provision by arguing without evidence that noncitizens could try to vote.

    Even a brief appearance by troops at the polls — and the inevitable online clips of them there — could dissuade voters from casting ballots, election officials and experts worry.

    The talk of troops and federal authorities at the polls has pushed local officials into preparation mode. This year, 10 Democratic prosecutors from around the country, including Conover in Arizona’s Pima County, formed a group to push back on the administration on elections and other matters.

    They call their group Fight Against Federal Overreach — or FAFO, after the slang term for messing around and finding out. They trade tips every two weeks on video calls.

    “With this president, you have to prepare for anything and everything,” Conover said.

    Mary Moriarty, the top prosecutor in Minnesota’s Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, said she’ll be watching for ICE agents at the polls.

    “They certainly know we’ve charged two ICE agents already and that we take this seriously,” said Moriarty, a member of FAFO who filed charges against agents for incidents during the federal agency’s enforcement surge in the Twin Cities.

    Most worrisome to local leaders is the possibility that federal officials could seize ballots or voting equipment.

    They don’t consider the prospect theoretical. In January, Trump told the New York Times he regretted not having troops take possession of voting machines after he lost the 2020 election. The FBI later took 2020 ballots in Georgia and obtained electronic images of 2020 ballots in Arizona. And the MAGA-aligned sheriff of Riverside County, Calif., confiscated ballots from a 2025 redistricting referendum.

    The military’s top officer said last month that the administration has no plans to send troops to polling places in November.

    “I have neither received nor anticipate receiving any unlawful order concerning the role of the Joint Force in the upcoming November 2026 midterm elections,” Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote in a letter to Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D., Mich.).

    He said the military has no plans to use troops to seize ballots, voting machines, or other election material.

    Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has been less categorical, but said this month that ICE would go to polling places only if agents were looking for someone or to respond to a threat. “If we’re serving a warrant, we will be where we need to be,” he said.

    The Justice Department said it will beef up its plans to send election monitors to polls this fall. A top department official has said she would deploy as many as 1,000 of them, but hasn’t said where they will go.

    The approach has drawn objections, including from Republicans. Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon (R) called the conduct of Justice Department attorneys who monitored primaries in his state last month “aggressive” and “irregular” after a county clerk said they asked to examine voting machines.

    “I don’t like the federal government coming in and taking our votes,” Gordon said.

    Rushing to rewrite mail voting rules

    Inside the U.S. Postal Service this summer, software engineers and policymakers scrambled to build something new: a verification system that, according to an anonymous whistleblower, could hold up an untold number of ballots.

    By late August, members of the team realized the rushed schedule would leave them just four days to test the full system. When a member raised concerns about the technology’s quality and the lack of testing, a senior Postal Service official gave little guidance other than saying, “We cannot fail.” The official said everything must work perfectly and there was no other choice, according to the whistleblower disclosure that a federal official submitted to Congress two weeks ago.

    As the deadline approached, multiple officials used profanity to describe the plan as a disaster, calling it a “s— show,” according to the disclosure. The Postal Service was scheduled to launch the technology on Sept. 1, but so far it hasn’t been made available.

    Under the Postal Service plans, election officials would upload lists of voters through an online portal. They would then submit their mail ballots to the post office, sometimes in batches of thousands at a time. If postal clerks found any mismatches — including for voters who moved or got married and changed their names — they would reject the entire batch, according to the whistleblower.

    The Postal Service moved fast, but it did not compromise its work, Postmaster General David Steiner said in a statement. “We stand behind both the rigor of our process and the resulting system,” he said.

    Whether any of the Postal Service’s changes will take effect is unsettled. Trump signed an executive order telling the Postal Service in March to review ballot envelopes and limit who could receive mail ballots. A federal judge blocked the order in June, but last month the Supreme Court cleared the way for it to temporarily go into effect when it found states had sued prematurely. After the Postal Service formally announced its new rules, the judge — hearing the challenge again — blocked those plans. The administration is now again asking the Supreme Court to give it the green light, and a decision is expected soon.

    White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said Trump will keep fighting in court for what she called “common-sense measures to protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans vote in American elections.”

    Time is running out. Local officials in North Carolina and Wisconsin started mailing ballots to voters early this month under existing policies. Other jurisdictions are set to do the same soon.

    “It’s the potential for complete chaos,” said Gerry Cohen, a Democrat on the Board of Elections for Wake County, N.C.

    A recent incident in Leon County, Fla., brought a preview of the confusion Trump’s last-minute rules could bring. The county elections supervisor submitted his ballot envelope to the Postal Service in case the new rules go into effect — only to have the Postal Service reject it because the return address was 0.014 inches too close to another line of text.

    The Postal Service later relented and accepted the envelope, but Mark Earley, Leon’s elections supervisor, said Friday that the incident was a taste of the nationwide “chaos and confusion” possible if the rules go into effect.

    Hunting for noncitizen voters

    Trump’s executive order in March also directed the Department of Homeland Security to assemble a list of citizens for states to check their voter rolls against. And it instructed the attorney general to prioritize prosecuting state officials who issue ballots to ineligible people.

    His plan is premised on debunked claims that voting by noncitizens is rampant. Voting-rights advocates and election officials warn Trump’s agenda could lead to a raft of uncounted ballots from eligible voters.

    The federal government’s citizenship data is often flawed. Anthony Nel of Denton, Texas, learned that last year when he faced the prospect of losing his right to vote.

    Nel, a 29-year-old higher education administrator who said he leans liberal, received a letter telling him he would soon be kicked off the voter rolls because state officials weren’t sure whether he was a citizen. Nel, who was born in South Africa and became a U.S. citizen in his teens, didn’t have time to renew his expired passport before officials removed him from the rolls. He reregistered once he updated his passport but worries voters with less time and money could lose their right to cast ballots.

    Trump’s plans are “being described as voting security,” Nel said. “From what I am seeing, it looks more like voter suppression.”

    Trump continues to spread unsupported claims that voting by noncitizens is partly to blame for his 2020 loss. But court records and independent reviews show noncitizens rarely register to vote or try to cast ballots. Georgia officials determined noncitizens accounted for about 0.002% of the state’s registered voters and a study of voting in 42 jurisdictions in 2016 found one potential noncitizen vote for every 783,000 ballots.

    That hasn’t stopped Trump and his allies, who have pointed to a software glitch in New Jersey that led to the state motor vehicles division inadvertently registering about 6,600 noncitizens in 2023 and 2024. They say that error shows the need for more scrutiny of voter rolls.

    The administration’s approach is meant to protect elections and “ensure states’ voter rolls are accurate, up-to-date and do not include aliens who are not eligible to vote or to be registered to vote,” said Zach Kahler, a spokesperson for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

    The push for emergency powers

    Since Trump returned to office last year, his backers — including Bannon and a lawyer close to Trump — have pressed the president to declare a national emergency that they say would unlock powers for him to rewrite election rules.

    The idea resurfaced last month, when Trump appeared on a Real America’s Voice program hosted by Wayne Allyn Root. With election legislation stalled in the Senate, Root pressed Trump to declare an emergency that he said would allow him to limit mail ballots and require people to prove their citizenship to register to vote.

    “Let me just say that stranger things have happened, OK?” Trump responded. “I’ll leave it at that.”

    Peter Ticktin, a lawyer and longtime Trump friend who has spent months urging the president to declare an election emergency, called Trump’s answer “definitely a shift.”

    “I’m feeling good about my prospects,” Ticktin said.

    The White House did not answer questions about whether Trump is considering declaring an emergency.

    On legal grounds, the theory that the president can claim power over elections by declaring an emergency is laughable, said Hofstra University law professor James Sample. But Sample is treating it as deadly serious.

    In the weeks after Trump lost the 2020 election, lawyers backing him came up with another theory Sample viewed as preposterous: that Vice President Mike Pence could reject some states’ electoral votes and let Trump claim victory. Pence refused, but the theory set the stage for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

    The Constitution gives states and Congress authority over elections, not the president. A national emergency declaration triggers greater powers under federal law, Sample said, but none of them affect elections.

    The risk, he said, isn’t whether the notion would survive in court. It’s that Trump could use it to take sweeping actions while voting is ongoing and before courts can respond.

    “The idea is simply to do first and say, ‘So what?’” Sample said. “So much of Trump 2.0 is to outrun and outpace the courts.”

    When officials refuse to certify

    Perils lurk even after votes are cast.

    In 2022, commissioners in New Mexico’s Otero County listened as an attorney insisted they were obligated to certify that year’s midterm results.

    This kind of motion was normally a drama-free event. But the three commissioners didn’t see it that way, and they delivered their votes in rapid succession: “Nay,” “Nay,” “Nay.”

    Among other issues, they cited debunked conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems machines that had circulated in MAGA circles since Trump refused to accept his 2020 defeat.

    “I have huge concerns with these voting machines, I really do,” said Commissioner Vickie Marquardt.

    After the attorney told the commissioners that a court would likely force them to certify, Marquardt laughed. “So then what? They’re going to send us to the pokey?” she responded, using another word for jail.

    Certification is the final stage of an election, when local and state officials sign off on vote tallies so the winners can take office. But in recent years, officials in pockets of the country have tried to block results by refusing to certify them — 35 of them in eight states from 2020 to mid-2024, according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a research and advocacy group that has sued the Trump administration over its election policies.

    Those efforts have failed. The Otero County standoff, for example, ended when a court ordered the election certified and Marquardt and another commissioner relented.

    Marquardt doesn’t know what she will do this November. She said she still has “huge concerns” about the security of mail ballots, voting machines, and drop boxes.

    “I would do it again if I felt strongly about it because I don’t think it’s right to certify something you don’t think is right,” she said.

    A refusal to certify results creates legal uncertainty and, even if it fails, can undermine faith in how elections are run. Some fear those who block certification could try to prevent the winners from taking office in Congress. Disputes must be settled quickly because the winners are slated to take office in early January.

    In Nevada’s Washoe County, Commissioner Jeanne Herman has voted against certifying every election since 2020, including her own reelection. Those elections were certified with the approval of others on the commission.

    “Elections need to be fair and honest, and until they are, I’m not going to lie and say this election was great,” she said.

    Similar clashes could emerge elsewhere, with potential hot spots in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Texas, according to the nonpartisan Voting Rights Lab.

    Once local officials question their own results, “the damage has already been done in terms of public confidence,” said Charley Olena, a senior vice president with the nonprofit group.

    One ballot at a time

    Whatever the courts decide, and no matter the moves Trump makes, November’s election will largely depend on thousands of local jurisdictions and the hundreds of thousands of workers staffing them.

    On a recent August afternoon in Madison, Wis., three of them sat around a table to decide whether one person’s vote should count.

    The ballot had come in an envelope that was partially unsealed. Poll workers hadn’t counted it on the night of the gubernatorial primary, citing the possibility that someone could have tampered with it. Now the city’s Board of Canvassers examined the envelope, passing it back and forth and running their fingers along its edge. One corner of the flap wasn’t sealed. The rest of it was.

    “I don’t think you can grab the ballot out,” said Lydia McComas, the city clerk.

    The board counted the ballot and moved on to other quirks and anomalies. At least one voter’s ballot was not counted because of a jam in a voting machine. Another voter was given a ballot for the wrong ward. And one voter was inadvertently issued a ballot in the name of another person with the same name.

    For more than two centuries, officials across America have been carrying out this painstaking work.

    In recent years, Madison — a Democratic bastion in a swing state — has come under fire for mistakes. McComas’s predecessor resigned last year after 193 ballots went uncounted in 2024. In this spring’s contest for a state Supreme Court seat, workers failed to transport 23 absentee ballots to counting sites before polls closed, nearly preventing them from being tallied.

    Local officials make mistakes, McComas said, but they learn from them to make future elections run more smoothly. It’s important to let the public scrutinize their work at every stage, she said, from testing machines to tallying results.

    “If the public’s not confident in our work,” she said, “they’re not confident in democracy.”

  • House Speaker Mike Johnson says Trump’s $5,000 ‘dividend’ needs congressional approval

    House Speaker Mike Johnson says Trump’s $5,000 ‘dividend’ needs congressional approval

    WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s proposal to send $5,000 to every American adult if his Republican Party maintains control of the House and Senate in the November election needs congressional approval, House Speaker Mike Johnson said Sunday, while pledging to try to make it happen.

    Trump made the unusual pitch at the party’s midterm convention in Dallas last week, promising a “Trump Dividend” if voters keep the GOP in power on Capitol Hill. The president later told CBS News Texas that he did not think Congress would need to authorize the payments, though he did not explain how he could spend more than $1 trillion without lawmakers’ authorization.

    But Johnson (R., La.) said congressional approval is needed. “I would assume, yes, he’d need Congress to act, and that’s a creative idea,” he said.

    He also said he would work to get Trump’s proposal through Congress despite a small Republican margin.

    “He’s the big ideas president. We’re going to try to implement everything we can,” he said. “I commit that Congress will work through it and find consensus on that like they have to do everything else.”

    Johnson appeared on CNN’s State of the Union and NBC’s Meet the Press.

    The dubious election-year gambit could cost more than $1 trillion, putting further strains on the country’s nearly $1.8 trillion annual budget deficit and exacerbating concerns of inflation. The economy is confronted by persistent inflation and increasing interest rates, a tough combination for governing Republicans as they seek to hold on to control of Congress.

    The president argues that payments would be possible because of the strong economy, but consumer sentiment is weak as gasoline prices rise because of the war with Iran and wages struggle to keep pace with inflation.

    In Ireland, where the president was attending a golf tournament at a course he owns, Trump said the payments would be “easy enough” because the United States has a strong economy.

    “We can easily handle that because we’re taking in so much money,” he said. “We’ve never done better.”

    “I made the pledge. I always keep my pledge,” Trump said.

    Just one-third of U.S. adults approve of how Trump is handling the presidency, according to a July poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That compares with 37% in June and 42% who approved of his work when he took office. Majorities also disapprove of his handling of the economy and immigration, issues that were central to Trump’s election in 2024.

    On Sunday, Trump said the gas price will “drop like a rock” but indicated no deal any time soon with Iran to end the conflicts and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

  • Trump calls on Ukraine to halt strikes on Russian diesel fuel, saying attacks causing a shortage

    Trump calls on Ukraine to halt strikes on Russian diesel fuel, saying attacks causing a shortage

    KYIV, Ukraine — U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to halt strikes on Russian oil refineries and other infrastructure used to produce and distribute diesel, saying the attacks are causing a global shortage. He spoke after diesel prices in the U.S. hit a record on Friday, soaring past $6 a gallon on average.

    Ukraine has for months been targeting Russia’s oil and gas industry with long-range strikes, prompting fuel rationing across the country and causing Moscow to ban diesel exports in July, removing supplies from the already tight global market.

    But the global crunch also came after the war on Iran curtailed oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.

    Fuel prices are weighing on Americans as they prepare to vote in midterm elections in November.

    Trump was asked by a reporter if he had spoken with Zelensky following his recent conversation with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. He responded by calling on Zelensky to halt strikes against Russia.

    “Mr. Zelensky has to do one thing. He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia,” Trump told reporters on the sidelines of the Irish Open, which was being played at his Doonbeg golf club.

    “We spoke to Mr. Zelensky about it. There are plenty of other targets. Don’t hit diesel fuel, because that’s hurting, that’s hurting the world,” he said.

    Diesel exports from Gulf countries way down since Iran war began

    According to a report published Friday by the International Energy Agency, net exports of diesel and gas oil from the Gulf countries in August stood at “just over a quarter” of what they were before the war on Iran began in February.

    “Disruptions to Russia’s refining system and a near-halt to product exports following intensified Ukrainian attacks have compounded these losses,” the IEA wrote. It added that in February, combined next exports of diesel and gas oil from the Gulf and Russia “accounted for almost 45% of global seaborne trade.”

    Kyiv says Russia’s oil industry both funds and directly fuels Moscow’s more than four-year-old invasion of Ukraine.

    Russia has ramped up its air campaign against Ukraine in recent weeks, using ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones to pierce Ukraine’s defenses. Moscow’s attacks have targeted Ukraine’s power grid ahead of winter in what officials say is damage meant to demoralize civilians.

    Civilians were killed and injured overnight into Sunday as Russia and Ukraine exchanged large-scale drone strikes.

    Two people were killed and 14 more wounded near an oil and industrial hub in Russia’s Tatarstan, according to local officials, while Ukrainian authorities reported on Russian drones pummeling the Black Sea port of Odesa and starting a fire near a border crossing with Poland.

    Ukraine targets more Russian oil facilities

    The two Russian civilians died after a drone slammed into a tree near their parked car in the city of Nizhnekamsk, according to the office of regional head Rustam Minnikhanov. Nizhnekamsk houses a key cluster of oil refineries and other industrial plants. Mayor Radmir Belyaev said that a fire had broken out at an unspecified “enterprise.”

    Ukraine also claimed to have hit a major oil refinery in Slavyansk-on-Kuban, in Russia’s Krasnodar region near Crimea. The Defense Intelligence of Ukraine (DIU) agency said its drones struck a key oil processing unit and the refinery’s tank farm overnight into Sunday.

    Krasnodar authorities said the strike on “an enterprise” in Slavyansk-on-Kuban injured three people and damaged an oil pipeline.

    Russian forces shot down 389 Ukrainian drones during the night, Russia’s defense ministry said Sunday.

    Russia targets Odesa and western Ukraine

    In Ukraine, at least nine people were injured in a “massive” Russian nighttime attack on Odesa, according to Serhii Lysak from the city’s military administration. Odesa is home to Ukraine’s main port hub on the Black Sea and has faced sustained drone and missile strikes, with Kyiv accusing Moscow of trying to choke off its exports.

    A Russian drone attack on Saturday struck a residential high-rise in Odesa, killing two people and injuring 26 others, Ukrainian officials said.

    Russian overnight strikes also pounded western Ukraine, though there were no immediate reports of casualties. One drone set fire to a gas station near the Yahodyn-Dorohusk border crossing with Poland, according to Ukraine’s top diplomat and a spokesperson for the local customs force.

    “This is Putin’s terror ‘knocking’ directly on the doors of the EU and NATO. Russian barbarians are at your gate, dear partners,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on X.

    Ukraine’s border crossings with Poland are a conduit for much of the military and humanitarian aid sent by Western allies.

    Valentyna Chernysh, a spokesperson for the Volyn Customs Office, told the Associated Press that the Yahodyn crossing was intact and no one was harmed.

    Earlier this week, two people died when Russian drones hit the Starokozache border crossing between Ukraine and Moldova on Tuesday. The following day a “direct threat” to a Polish-Ukrainian crossing point was avoided due to the cooperation between Warsaw and Kyiv, according to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

    Ukraine’s air force said its air defenses shot down or suppressed 409 Russian drones of various types overnight, including a newer jet-powered version that is faster and more difficult to intercept. It said Russia had attacked Ukraine with 453 drones in total.

  • Turkish authorities launch crackdown on LGBTQ+ and HIV support groups

    Turkish authorities launch crackdown on LGBTQ+ and HIV support groups

    ISTANBUL — Turkish authorities cracked down on multiple LGBTQ+ groups and individuals early Sunday morning, detaining dozens of members, breaking into association offices, and raiding popular hangouts.

    In an escalation of decade-long hostility toward LGBTQ+ groups, particularly in the lead-up to elections, simultaneous police raids beginning at 1 a.m. took place in the major cities of Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Aydin, and Mersin.

    Justice Minister Akin Gurlek announced on social media that the investigation into 162 suspects, nine associations, and 13 businesses was to “protect children, the institution of the family, and public order” in line with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s 10-year executive order relating to families and children.

    “As per the duty to protect families and children given to the state by the constitution, no criminal organization, abuse network, or illegal activity which targets children, youths, or families will be tolerated!” Gurlek said.

    The raids targeted both current and former members of multiple prominent LGBTQ+ rights and HIV awareness groups. The organizations’ websites were also blocked.

    Gurlek also noted that such associations were found to receive significant funding from international sources and agencies.

    The Human Rights Association condemned the raids. “This is not a judicial investigation; it is a political operation aimed at forcing society into a monolithic family model and purging LGBTI+ and independent civil society under the guise of protecting the family and children,” it said.

    “To include unrelated charges such as ‘forming a criminal organization,’ ‘drugs,’ ‘prostitution’ and ‘obscenity’ serves not to reveal the truth but to incriminate the entire community.”

    The religious conservative Justice and Development Party has been increasingly vocal against LGBTQ+ groups to play up to the more conservative elements of its base. In 2015, it banned Istanbul Pride, which had tens of thousands of attendees in previous years. Since then, authorities have violently dispersed any attempted gatherings for Pride.

    This summer, an LGBTQ+ cruise ship that tours the Mediterranean and has docked in Turkey multiple times in the past was refused permission to dock there.

    The Ottoman Empire, predecessor to the modern republic of Turkey, decriminalized homosexuality in 1858; however, there is still significant social discrimination.

  • At BRICS, India’s Modi warns geopolitical tensions and supply chain shocks threaten global stability

    At BRICS, India’s Modi warns geopolitical tensions and supply chain shocks threaten global stability

    NEW DELHI — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday warned that rising geopolitical tensions, supply chain disruptions, and climate crises are increasingly affecting people worldwide and called for strengthened cooperation and support across the Global South.

    Addressing the BRICS summit of leading developing nations on its second day in New Delhi, Modi also warned that the “weaponization of technology and critical minerals” could hinder global development and shared prosperity.

    Founded in 2006 by Brazil, Russia, India, and China, BRICS has expanded to 11 members representing about half the world’s population and a significant share of global economic output. It has sought greater representation for developing countries in global institutions and promoted alternatives to Western-dominated financial systems.

    “The number of conflicts and tensions in the world is continuously increasing, and this is having an increasingly negative and far-reaching impact on the lives of ordinary people,” Modi said, alongside bloc leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

    “Pandemics, climate disasters, and supply-chain disruptions have shown that in today’s interconnected world, no crisis remains confined to a single region,” Modi said, while announcing that the bloc agreed to establish an integrated early warning system for infectious diseases, aimed at boosting preparedness and response to future outbreaks.

    In his closing remarks at the summit, Modi urged the bloc nations to convert the summit’s agreements into tangible and time-bound action and move them from “files to real-life impact.”

    The discussions over the past two days, he said, reinforced the belief that “BRICS is not merely a group of countries, but an ecosystem of solutions.” He wished China success as it takes over the BRICS chair for the next term.

    The group in a joint declaration Saturday had expressed concern over escalating tensions in the Middle East and Sudan, and called for disputes to be resolved through dialogue and diplomacy.

    The bloc reiterated support for a multipolar world order and reforms to the United Nations, including its Security Council, as well as global financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

    The leaders opposed unilateral sanctions and coercive economic measures and criticized sanctions not authorized by the U.N. They also criticized rising tariffs and nontariff barriers, saying they undermine global trade and supply chains.

    The bloc backed greater use of local currencies in trade and stronger cross-border payment systems, while calling for cooperation on food security, energy, digital infrastructure, artificial intelligence, and climate action.

    The declaration was a significant breakthrough, as forging consensus among Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates — which hold competing positions on key regional and geopolitical issues — posed a complex diplomatic challenge amid ongoing conflicts and heightened tensions.

  • Fighting in Yemen intensifies, and Houthis launch more attacks on Saudi Arabia

    Fighting in Yemen intensifies, and Houthis launch more attacks on Saudi Arabia

    ADEN, Yemen — The conflict in Yemen intensified on Sunday, as government forces launched attacks against Iran-backed Houthi rebels along the Red Sea and Houthis fired into neighboring Saudi Arabia, which supports Yemen’s government.

    The Yemeni government vowed to send more forces to the Red Sea coast after conceding a “painful” defeat last week when Houthis captured the port city of Mokha and an island on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a crucial shipping alternative to the Strait of Hormuz.

    The escalation — especially Houthi attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure and its shipping in the Red Sea — adds pressure on global oil supplies and prices, and that could give Iran leverage in its war with the United States.

    As Yemen risks descending into another civil war, the United Nations estimated that more than 80,000 people in the impoverished country have been displaced by the fighting since the start of September.

    One woman said a mortar shell fell nearby as she fled in the middle of the night from the town of Khawkha in Hodeida province along the Red Sea, shortly before it was captured by Houthis.

    “I saw with my own eyes cars and buses burning, and bodies of children and women were lying on the road in a horrific scene,” said the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern for her and her family’s safety.

    Houthis claim attacks against Saudi Arabia

    Saudi authorities sounded sirens Sunday afternoon in the southern city of Abha and Khamis Mushait province, warning residents to take shelter from potential incoming fire. Both areas were repeatedly attacked by the Houthis in recent weeks.

    The Houthis claimed to have used drones and missiles to target Saudi Arabia, including a military base just over the border with Yemen. Houthi military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree didn’t provide evidence or say when the attack occurred.

    The Saudi civil defense overnight said a projectile fell in a different area near the border with Yemen along the Red Sea, injuring two people and damaging a mosque and several other buildings. The statement blamed the Houthis.

    Saudi Arabia did not announce any new attacks targeting the Houthis.

    The Houthis are targeting Saudi oil infrastructure and shipping as part of a recently declared blockade. While the Houthis have said they do not intend to threaten other countries’ commercial shipping, markets remain wary and oil prices have risen again.

    Yemen says 500 soldiers killed, vows to fight back

    The National Resistance, a government-allied force that had controlled coastal areas, said more than 500 government fighters were killed on the west coast over the past four weeks — its first comprehensive toll. It said about 1,500 others had been wounded in the fighting since Aug. 9.

    Its statement said more than 1,000 Houthis had been killed in Hodeida and Taiz provinces. A spokesperson for the Houthis didn’t respond to a request for comment.

    Yemen is home to over 40 million people who fear a return to the civil war that killed 150,000 and brought many others to the brink of famine in one of the world’s most sprawling humanitarian crises. Yemen’s internationally recognized government and Saudi Arabia have been battling the Houthis for 12 years. A ceasefire that began in 2022 had mostly halted the fighting.

    A senior government official in Yemen said its forces will return to the Red Sea coast and fight back. People fleeing the Houthi advance told the Associated Press they saw forces withdrawing and urging people to run.

    Sultan al-Arada, a member of the ruling presidential council, described the collapse of government forces in the port city of Mokha and elsewhere on Yemen’s west coast as “painful and regrettable.”

    Al-Arada said in the televised interview aired late Saturday that forces “are currently regrouping and will return to the battle in one form or another.”

    On Sunday, the Yemeni military said it launched airstrikes on Houthi positions in Mokha and the coastal town of Dhubab, and elsewhere in Taiz province. The rebels also reported strikes by the Saudi-backed forces in the province as well as artillery shelling in the province of Saada, the Houthi stronghold on Yemen’s northern borders with Saudi Arabia.

    Advance puts Houthis closer to a major U.S. base in Djibouti

    The Houthis’ advance puts them just 20 miles from the U.S. military base in Djibouti, on the other side of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. It’s the main U.S. base in Africa and one of several foreign military bases in Djibouti, including those of China, France, and Japan.

    The small Horn of Africa nation is already seeing the arrival of displaced Yemenis making the perilous water crossing. More than 2,000 Yemenis have reached Djibouti, the International Organization for Migration said Sunday.

    Djibouti’s Economy and Finance Minister Ilyas M. Dawaleh said on X that the country’s navy, coast guard, and other specialized agencies were conducting rescue operations and providing emergency assistance.

    Yemenis displaced by fighting worry about survival

    The U.N. migration agency said Sunday that more than 82,000 people in Yemen have been displaced since the beginning of September.

    “The displaced people are in a very bad condition,” said Ahmad al-Masawi, the director of the Al Salam camp in the southern port city of Aden, who appealed to international organizations for assistance. “They left their homes quickly without any clothing or anything. They are crammed in camps, houses, and even on roads.”

    Hussein Haydara sat outside a shelter at the camp in a white undershirt, as his children waited to be assigned to a tent. He worried about how far the shelter is from schools, hospitals, and markets, and wondered how they will survive the next weeks or months.

    Haydara had fled his home in Hodeida once before, when the Houthis took it over in 2015. But this time feels more precarious.

    “With the first displacement, we had time to plan things but this time we were forced to escape all of a sudden. One could hardly take their children and the lightest stuff possible,” he said.

  • Russian drone hits train near Ukraine-Poland border soon after visiting dignitaries passed through

    Russian drone hits train near Ukraine-Poland border soon after visiting dignitaries passed through

    KYIV, Ukraine — A Russian drone struck a train near the Ukraine- Poland border on Sunday shortly after senior visiting officials — including the former prime ministers of the U.K. and Sweden — passed through, Ukraine’s state rail operator said.

    According to Ukrzaliznytsia, a diplomatic train carrying Boris Johnson, Carl Bildt, and security advisers from several European Union states had purposely left the station at Yahodyn ahead of schedule. The visitors were on their way back from a security conference in Kyiv.

    “It is highly probable that the Russian drone‘s intended target was in fact the diplomatic train, which had departed the station earlier than scheduled,” the company said in a Telegram post.

    Bildt, the former Swedish PM, shared a video on X of the attack at Yahodyn station, near the Yahodyn-Dorohusk border crossing with Poland.

    “This wasn’t our train, but the one just minutes after us by the Polish border crossing,” Bildt said. “It was evacuated as the Russian drone approached and no one was hurt. Very good safety system. Our train just had an evacuation warning.”

    Bildt, Johnson, and fellow passengers had been in Kyiv for the Yalta European Strategy conference, which is an annual gathering of leaders and experts across politics, business, security, and media.

    Another train, with former CIA Director David Petraeus on board, was still at Yahodyn station when the drone struck, according to Ukrzaliznytsia.

    There were no immediate reports of casualties on any of the trains.

    Ukrzaliznytsia said it “constantly adjusts train schedules” to guard against strikes.

    “I don’t know what warped logic drove Putin to blow up a stationary Ukrainian locomotive on the Polish border this morning,” Johnson wrote in a post on X.

    “What we can say for sure is that this is the kind of random and senseless attack Ukrainians are enduring every day — even on civilian railways,” he added.

    Earlier on Sunday, a Russian drone hit a truck less than a mile from Polish territory, according to border guards, forcing the temporary closure of the Yahodyn-Dorohusk crossing.

  • Judge rules Homeland Security plan to cut FEMA staff in half is unlawful

    Judge rules Homeland Security plan to cut FEMA staff in half is unlawful

    A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration acted unlawfully when it ordered that the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s workforce be cut in half.

    In her ruling on Friday, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston of the Northern District of California wrote that the Department of Homeland Security undercut the agency’s authority with an “arbitrary and capricious” plan to reduce FEMA’s workforce by more than 11,000 agency employees by the end of September. Included in that number were thousands of temporary, full-time federal employees who help communities prepare for and recover from disasters around the country.

    “Frankly, the FEMA staffing plan number appears as if pulled from thin air,” Illston wrote.

    The administration did not ultimately carry out the full 50% reduction, though FEMA’s workforce had already shrunk significantly.

    The American Federation of Government Employees, a labor union, had argued in a lawsuit that the department’s proposed cuts would deeply affect the agency’s ability to respond to emergencies.

    The Homeland Security Department and the labor union did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    A spokesperson for FEMA said on Saturday night that the agency was “ensuring workforce stability and a strong, deployable force for upcoming national events and potential disasters.”

    Those temporary employees, known as Cadre of On-Call Response/Recovery, or CORE, employees, make up about 40% of FEMA’s staff. Their assignments typically last for two or four years and have historically often been renewed, allowing FEMA to adjust its workforce as disasters and recovery needs change. They became a target under Kristi Noem, the former secretary of homeland security who was ousted by President Donald Trump in March.

    A FEMA spokesperson told the New York Times in January that the number of CORE employees was “designed to fluctuate based on disaster activity, operational need, and available funding.”

    The Trump administration has drastically shrunk the workforce across the federal government. Trump himself has said FEMA should “go away.” He has called for the responsibility for disaster response to shift to the states.

    A federal watchdog report found the sharp reductions in staff had limited the agency’s ability to respond to hurricanes and other natural disasters, especially those that occur at the same time. Cameron Hamilton, Trump’s FEMA administrator, acknowledged in June that the reductions posed “challenges” to the country’s disaster readiness.

    The judge ordered the parties to meet and try to reach an agreement on “the scope of relief” by Oct. 9. If they cannot come to an agreement by then, Illston wrote, the court will issue a ruling on the relief.

    This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

  • GOP congressman from Wisconsin swims to safety after plane makes emergency landing in a lake

    GOP congressman from Wisconsin swims to safety after plane makes emergency landing in a lake

    WAUSAU, Wis. — A Republican congressman and candidate for governor said he had to swim to safety after a plane he was traveling in made an emergency landing in a lake late Saturday.

    U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany says he was returning from the La Crosse County Lincoln Day Dinner when the light aircraft lost power as it approached Wausau Downtown Airport. The pilot made an emergency landing in Lake Wausau. Tiffany and the pilot ended up in the water and swam to safety.

    “After landing, we called 911. As the plane began to submerge, we exited the aircraft and swam to a shallow area, where we waited until emergency responders reached us by boat,” he wrote on X.

    The Marathon County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that the emergency landing happened just before 9 p.m. Saturday. Tiffany and the pilot, Leonard Boltz, got out of the plane and called 911. They were rescued by emergency responders in a fire department airboat just after 9 p.m.

    Both men were taken to a nearby hospital, where they were treated for minor injuries and released. Tiffany suffered a cut above his right eye that required stitches, his campaign said in an emailed statement.

    A no-wake buoy was placed near the plane, which remained in the lake, and boaters were being asked to avoid the area until the plane can be removed, the sheriff’s office said. A Federal Aviation Administration spokesperson said the agency would investigate the incident. A National Transportation Safety Board spokesperson said that agency is waiting for the FAA to assess the plane as to whether the damage was substantial enough for it to get involved.

    Tiffany is running for governor on the Republican ticket in Wisconsin and has been endorsed by President Donald Trump.

    David Crowley, the Democratic candidate, wished Tiffany a “quick recovery” in a post on X and lauded the “heroism of the pilot.”

    The plane Tiffany was traveling in was a single-engine, four-seat Beechcraft Bonanza aircraft.