DAMASCUS, Syria — A Syrian court sentenced ousted Syrian President Bashar Assad along with his younger brother to death in absentia on Tuesday for crimes against humanity and war crimes during Syria’s 14-year conflict that left about half a million people dead.
The sentences at the Fourth Criminal Court in Damascus are the first against Assad or members of his inner circle since the Assad family’s five decades in power came to an end 20 months ago.
“Bashar Assad used state agencies to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity,” said judge Fakhareddine al-Aryan during a court session that was aired live on state TV.
Also sentenced to death in the same case was Assad’s maternal cousin Atef Najib, who was convicted of overseeing a crackdown in the southern province of Daraa that led to the uprising and later the civil war.
Amid tight security, Najib stood inside a cage wearing a prisoner’s uniform as the judge read the sentence. A crowd of people gathered outside the courthouse in central Damascus to hear the verdict.
Assad and his brother Maher fled to Russia after the government’s fall in December 2024 and received political asylum. Syria’s new rulers have asked Russia to hand the Assads over.
Najib, who was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in April 2011, was later detained and is one of the highest-ranking officials to be put on trial.
Najib is a former Syrian army brigadier general who was head of the Political Security Branch in southern Syria’s Daraa province under Assad in 2011.
During his tenure, more than a dozen teenagers who scrawled anti-government graffiti on a school wall in Daraa were arrested and tortured. The case became a catalyst for mass protests against the repressive policies of Assad’s security forces.
The protests were met by a brutal government crackdown and spiraled into a 14-year civil war that ended with Assad’s ouster in a lightning rebel offensive.
Maher Assad was a former commander of the Syrian military’s 4th Armored Division — which Syrian opposition activists have accused of killings, torture, extortion and drug trafficking, in addition to running its own detention centers.
Two Republican senators on Monday released the first in a trove of text messages from Anthony S. Fauci’s former government cell phone, including a discussion with health officials about whether the COVID vaccine posed a risk for pregnant women.
The messages were released by Sens. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) and Rand Paul (R., Ky.), who lead panels investigating Fauci, the longtime infectious-disease scientist who left government at the end of 2022 after becoming a highly visible official helping lead the pandemic response.
The texts appear to show an exchange between Fauci and top health officials in January 2021 related to the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine for pregnant women.
In one message, according to screenshots the senators released, Fauci wrote: “Since many people have significant cytokines storm and fever after the 2nd dose. this theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester.”
“Definitely a good point, esp after dose two,” then-Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky responded.
In a news release, the senators pointed to several subsequent public statements from Fauci and other administration officials in which they said the benefits of pregnant women getting vaccinated appeared to outweigh the risks.
In February 2021, for instance, Fauci said the Food and Drug Administration has “found, thus far — and we’ve got to be careful — but thus far, no red flags about that, about pregnant women.”
Some of the statements cited by Johnson and Paul occurred after the CDC officially recommended pregnant women get the vaccine in August 2021, citing an agency analysis that found no increase in miscarriage in pregnant women.
In a statement, Johnson said the release of the texts “could have an immediate impact on public health.” He added that “you don’t wait a day, months, or years, to inform the public of potential dangers.”
The CDC states that with more than a million pregnant women vaccinated globally, studies have not shown increased risk for complications like miscarriage, preterm delivery, and more. Health officials have said such past exchanges reflect the evolving nature of the science and debate at the time.
Fauci declined to comment on the released messages. Walensky and Vivek H. Murthy, at the time a member of President Joe Biden’s COVID advisory board who was also included in the texts, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Pregnant women are historically excluded from clinical trials, including those for the coronavirus vaccine. But it became clear that contracting the virus during pregnancy could be associated with increased risk of preterm birth and other adverse outcomes, and so health officials concluded that the benefits of vaccination appeared to outweigh the risks, according to a former public health official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly.
The senators said the texts are among more than 34,000 recovered from a copy of Fauci’s former iPhone. It also contains 522 voicemails, they said. The phone was obtained from the Department of Health and Human Services, now led by fellow Fauci critics, including Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“Now that we have the documents and Fauci’s government-issued phone, my investigation has only just begun,” Johnson, the chairperson of the Senate’s permanent subcommittee on investigations, wrote Monday on social media.
As part of Paul’s investigation of Fauci, HHS also turned over years of Fauci’s personal diary entries that were collected from government servers.
Last week, a Senate committee that Paul chairs voted along party lines to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress after he declined to answer its questions and accused Paul of trying to wrongly entrap him. The Justice Department, which is not obligated to prosecute Fauci, said it received Paul’s letter referring the matter but did not confirm whether it planned to pursue any criminal charges.
In April 2021, a New England Journal of Medicine article written by CDC officials stated that preliminary findings “did not show obvious safety signals” among pregnant women who received the vaccines — meaning there wasn’t an unusual number of adverse events — but added that more follow-up was needed.
“Our societies [American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine] were strongly recommending and advocating for pregnant women to have access to COVID vaccines in the earliest stages of the pandemic because those of us who were dealing withCOVID in pregnancy were seeing exceptionally high rates of complications,” said Neil S. Silverman, a member of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine’s Infectious Disease and Emerging Threats Committee and maternal-fetal medicine faculty at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
Fauci has faced numerous legal threats from Republicans, including Paul and Johnson, who accuse him of covering up his agency’s funding of risky coronavirus research in Wuhan, China, before the virus was first detected there. Fauci has dismissed those claims as “preposterous.”
Kennedy, his allies, and some Republicans in Congress have expressed concerns about vaccine safety.
Kennedy, the founder of a prominent anti-vaccine group, has been an outspoken critic of mRNA-based shots, and once called the coronavirus shots “the deadliest vaccine ever made.” Medical experts say COVID-19 vaccines are effective at protecting people from getting seriously ill, being hospitalized, and dying.
Last year, Kennedy sought to no longer recommend the coronavirus vaccine for healthy pregnant women. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said it was “concerned” and “extremely disappointed” by the move, and the medical society has continued to recommend the shot for pregnant women.
On Monday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that called for cutting the number of recommended childhood vaccines, spacing out those shots and making other changes that would upend decades of federal guidance on vaccines for children.
Speaking in the Oval Office, the president reiterated his long-held claim that childhood vaccines have led to a rise in U.S. autism cases, an idea that outside researchers have largely debunked.
Over the past few weeks, President Donald Trump has made it clear that he will not take Supreme Court decisions as the final word on some of his most cherished priorities.
The president has introduced new tariffs, renewed efforts to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, and issued new executive orders to limit birthright citizenship. While experts said the moves do not signal outright defiance of the high court, they nonetheless push the limits of the rulings that Trump lost earlier this summer.
“Without question, President Trump is challenging the bounds of the court’s opinions,” particularly regarding Cook’s firing and birthright citizenship, said Richard Lazarus, a law professor at Harvard University.
The high court’s opinion affirming that nearly everyone born in the United States is a citizen does not allow Trump to create exceptions like some set out in his recent executive orders, Lazarus said. Those orders say children are ineligible for birthright citizenship if born to “alien enemies,” foreign terrorists, foreign lobbyists, or people who fraudulently request tourist visas in order to give birth in the U.S.
In signing the orders, Trump referred to the Supreme Court decision on birthright citizenship, saying, “We’re ending it a different way.”
The Trump administration has always followed court orders, said White House spokesperson Lauren Bis. “All actions taken by the president since the recent Supreme Court rulings are consistent with the holdings and analysis set forth by the court,” she said.
As for Cook, the justices ruled that she deserved notice and a chance to respond before being fired, and Trump’s latest move seeks to provide that. The White House sent a letter to Cook last week renewing the threat to fire her, giving her 21 days to respond, and directing her to submit any response to the White House by Aug. 26.
“The Supreme Court’s ruling on the Cook case required notice and an opportunity for a hearing in considering whether the president should take certain adverse employment actions,” Bis added. “The president’s notice sent to Fed. Governor Cook offers exactly that within the precise structure enunciated by the Court.”
Still, Trump’s underlying rationale for dismissing Cook — that she engaged in mortgage fraud — remains unproved, and she has not been charged. While the renewed push to fire her does not “repudiate” the Supreme Court’s opinion, Lazarus said, it “certainly confronts it by challenging its limits.”
Trump is not the first president to look for ways around adverse Supreme Court rulings. Most recently, when President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive student loan debt was struck down by the Supreme Court, Biden within hours announced a separate plan to forgive the debt.
Two decades earlier, President George W. Bush wrestled with the court over procedures for detainees seeking freedom from the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
But such instances appear to be historical exceptions rather than the rule, said David Super, a professor at Georgetown Law.
“Most presidents treated Supreme Court rulings as dispositive of the issues involved rather than as technical documents to be evaded,” Super said.
That includes an earlier version of Trump. During his first term, the president was more willing to accept losses at the Supreme Court and move on, Super said. He cited rulings against Trump’s efforts to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and to add a question on citizenship status to the 2020 Census.
“The second-term President Trump appears to have much less regard for the other branches of the federal government than the first-term one did,” Super said.
Similarly, the Trump administration last month imposed new tariffs on U.S. imports from 60 economies under an authority different from the one the Supreme Court rejected in February. The new duties, imposed under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, purport to penalize countries that fail to curb imports produced by forced labor.
That does not directly go against the Supreme Court’s decision. But critics call the forced-labor rationale a pretext for reimposing the sweeping tariffs struck down by the court, and small businesses have sued to block them for that reason.
Some experts say Trump, far from challenging the Supreme Court, is working within the bounds of the justices’ rulings.
“The court ruled against Trump in these three big cases, and all of them sort of left openings to do something else — and in all three cases he did something else,” said Josh Blackman, a law professor at South Texas College of Law at Houston.
“Trump is more aggressive because he views rulings as political,” Blackman added. “He’s willing to push back, especially with conservative judges, three of whom he appointed.”
Still, Trump has added to the sense that he is challenging the court by using heated rhetoric against it.
After the court overturned his tariff regime in February, the president called the conservative justices who ruled against him “fools and lapdogs.” Last week, when Trump introduced his new birthright measure, he called the court’s decision “a bad decision, very unfair decision,” saying the “country suffers because of it.”
President Barack Obama criticized the court in his 2010 State of the Union address, though he did so in a more genteel manner. “With all due deference to the separation of powers,” Obama said in criticizing the Citizens United decision (which lifted limits on independent political expenditures by corporations and unions), the court has “reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests.”
The Trump administration has also had a tense relationship with the federal judiciary more broadly.
A Washington Post analysis last year found that Trump and his appointees were accused of flouting the courts in more than a third of the 160-plus lawsuits against the administration in which a judge had issued a substantive ruling. The administration has also sparred with the judiciary over Trump’s picks to lead federal prosecutor’s offices.
But Mike Fragoso, a former chief counsel to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), said Trump’s responses to the Supreme Court’s most recent decisions do not appear out of the norm.
Instead, particularly with regard to the new birthright order, Trump appears to be adopting the longtime conservative view that a Supreme Court decision binds the president only to the specific case at issue, not necessarily to its broader reasoning, he said.
Fragoso, now an attorney at Torridon Law, pointed to President Abraham Lincoln’s rejection of the Supreme Court’s logic in its infamous 1857 decision Dred Scott v. Sandford, which held that African Americans were not citizens.
“On birthright, it’s a question testing the limits of what the Supreme Court said” while not being inconsistent with the opinion, Fragoso said, adding that Trump’s actions could be described as “Lincolnian.”
DEAR ABBY: My brother “Earl” and I always had a very bad relationship. When I was 6 and Earl was 13, he molested me. Actually, he took my virginity. My mother caught him but whipped both of us and told me I should have known better than to allow it to happen. Fast-forward to when I was 17. I woke up to find him lying in bed with me, stroking my face. I screamed for my mother, who said, “Oh, he probably came home drunk or something.”
Earl was never nice to me; even on his deathbed he yelled at me for forgetting to take his house keys to my other brother as his daughter asked me to do. A few weeks later, I forgave him for everything he did to me, but the last time I saw him alive, I still felt his hatred toward me.
There is a memorial planned, and I’m not sure I want to attend. I’m the youngest of seven; some of my siblings know the history and have witnessed the animosity between us. Part of me wants to go because Earl was my brother, and part of me is afraid if I don’t, my siblings will hold it against me. Another part of me feels a memorial is to pay your last respects to the deceased, and I have no respect for Earl. I don’t know what to do.
— VICTIMIZED IN GEORGIA
DEAR VICTIMIZED: From what you have written, Earl seems more like an emotional and sexual abuser than a brother. Your siblings have no right to give you a hard time if you skip the memorial. Remind them of how he treated you and how much you suffered for it if that fact has slipped their minds.
You should do whatever makes you comfortable, and if listening to your angry, abusive pervert of a brother eulogized would make you uncomfortable, stay away. Because you didn’t get counseling at the time he assaulted you, you might benefit from discussing your family history with a licensed therapist. To find one, contact an organization called RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network). Its toll-free phone number is 1-800-656-4673 and its website is rainn.org.
** ** **
DEAR ABBY: My 6-year-old is enrolled in a Spanish immersion kindergarten class, and we are getting through it the best we can. We are an English-speaking household, so it is a challenge. The teacher is incredible. Her energy, dedication, spirit and connection with the kids is amazing. However, she is a cringe-worthy singer.
What she sings is nowhere near the melody. I’m not the only person who feels this way. Music is a big part of learning for the kids in this class, so this is a significant problem. As a singer, I can tell you that “tone deafness” is a myth. The ability to carry a tune can be learned.
I would love to offer this teacher singing lessons, for free, of course, but I have no idea how to approach it. A comment on vocal ability could feel similar to a comment on one’s physical appearance. I brought it up to the principal early in the year. She told me she would look into it and get back to me, but never did. Should I let it be, since these teachers, staff and administration have so much on their plates right now? We have been at this for nearly six months, and I really feel it should be addressed.
— IN-TUNE MOMMY
DEAR MOMMY: Because the principal promised to get back to you and never did, it is possible that your kind offer fell through the cracks. Contact the principal again and ask how the teacher reacted to your proposition. If the response was negative, do not pursue it further. If she showed an interest, follow through.
ARIES (March 21-April 19). New Moon Focus: Small steps create big success. Choose just one focus to apply the principle — a project, an area that needs improvement, a habit or a relationship. Brainstorm what those steps would be.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20). New Moon Focus: Being comfortable in your skin. Your authenticity is what earns respect, but since you contain multitudes, you sometimes wonder which ones you should bring to task. Reflect on how you’d like to move through the world.
GEMINI (May 21-June 21). New Moon Focus: Hope. Hope fuels perseverance. Hope overturns seemingly impossible circumstances. Indeed, hope has altered the course of nations. Hope starts small. Articulate your hopes and the small actions you can take to nurture them.
CANCER (June 22-July 22). New Moon Focus: Read people before you lead people. The more you pick up on, the more influential you become. What keeps you from observing better? Having too much to do in the moment? Being in a rush? How can you make it easier to be a better listener?
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22). New Moon Focus: Adapt and thrive anywhere. Confidence isn’t knowing exactly what will happen. It’s trusting yourself to respond well to whatever does. Think of a place, role or challenge where greater flexibility would serve you. What helps you land on your feet?
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). New Moon Focus: Trusting your own impeccable timing. Good timing comes from paying attention. Consider the opportunities you’ve hesitated over and the ones you’ve rushed. How can you create more moments to notice when it’s truly time to act?
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23). New Moon Focus: Loving complexity. It’s so much easier to categorize things with black-and-white thinking, but your artistry and maturity won’t have it. What complexity can you embrace? Which contrasting ideas can you hold at once?
SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 21). New Moon Focus: The right question. Some questions end conversations. Others begin them. Some are asked for information; others reveal character. Think of an issue you’ve been circling. What question would change the entire discussion?
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21). New Moon Focus: The ethical shortcut. You have a gift for spotting unnecessary steps. Efficiency isn’t about rushing. It’s about removing the parts that aren’t pulling their weight. Consider trimming elements that may have outlived their usefulness.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19). New Moon Focus: Becoming unforgettable. People remember how you made them see themselves. They remember surprises, inside jokes and stories they’ll repeat later. Which of your gifts do you want to linger in someone’s mind long after you’ve left?
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18). New Moon Focus: Discernment. Every project has one change that transforms it and 50 that don’t matter. Every argument has one point worth addressing and several worth ignoring. Where could a sharper filter save time and energy?
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20). New Moon Focus: Inventing tomorrow. Every invention sounded strange before it became ordinary. Every movement began with one brave person imagining a different future. What are your dreams of tomorrow that feel too early, too ambitious or too unusual?
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY (Aug. 11). It’s your Year of the Masterpiece. Your long hours, multitudes of drafts and specific choices add up to results that are as unique as they are stunning. It’s not just about physical works. Relationships, your style and physique — it’s all an art. More highlights: You’ll visit favorite destinations. A partnership doubles your reach and augments your income. Family news, celebrations and harmony. Libra and Cancer adore you. Your lucky numbers are: 9, 19, 4, 11 and 28.
An Iranian assassination threat against President Donald Trump prompted an extraordinary operation last month in which he flew secretly from Turkey on an alternate military aircraft while the White House said he was aboard Air Force One, the Washington Post has learned.
The clandestine mission, which has not been reported previously, was carried out unbeknownst to journalists and some White House staff members who believed they were on the same plane as the president, according to material reviewed by the Post, a U.S. official familiar with the operation, and another person with knowledge of the president’s travel. These people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the matter.
The administration has claimed that Trump departed Turkey on July 8 on the former Air Force One. Trump announced on social media that he would use the “former Air Force One” rather than the plane that flew him there, a newer Boeing 747-8 gifted to the United States by Qatar. The security of the Qatar-provided aircraft has been called into question, and Trump said last month after the trip that it would undergo additional upgrades.
In Ankara, Trump boarded the old Air Force One jumbo jet in view of television cameras. He was secretly shuttled minutes later to a smaller plane — an Air Force C-32A — via an airport catering truck typically used to load meals and other supplies preflight, according to the U.S. official and corroborating material reviewed by the Post. That made Air Force One a “decoy” with media and some White House staff aboard, the official said.
Trump had been in Ankara for a NATO summit with world leaders. The operation occurred a night after U.S. forces renewed military strikes on Iran at Trump’s direction following a breakdown of negotiations between Washington and Tehran to end their monthslong war.
The maneuver meant that Trump’s actual location was concealed from the American public and many senior U.S. officials for hours. Weeks later, it remains unclear how widely the administration has disclosed the operation.
The Post provided the White House with the details from its reporting, along with a list of questions. In response, White House communications director Steven Cheung issued a statement defending the jet gifted by Qatar.
“The new Air Force One is a state-of-the-art aircraft that has been fitted with high-level security protocols that ensure the safety of the President and his staff,” Cheung’s statement said. “As the President has said recently, there are many enemies of America who have their sights on him, and we use every tool at our disposal to address those threats.”
A spokesperson for the Pentagon referred questions to the White House. A Secret Service spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Air Force One sits on the tarmac as President Donald Trump switches planes at U.S. Air Force Base, RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk Eastern England, on his way back to Washington from the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey ,Wednesday, July 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)Alex Brandon
Publicly, the White House has repeated its account that the president left Turkey on the legacy blue-and-white Boeing 747 that served as Air Force One before Trump began using the former Qatari jet.
For decades, it has been rare for U.S. presidents to travel without members of the White House press corps accompanying them in their roles as proxies for the American public. Journalists have traveled into war zones with numerous presidents, including Trump, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush.
In the first hours after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Bush administration officials did not immediately disclose the president’s whereabouts, saying only that he had been taken to an “undisclosed location.” But they did not say he was somewhere he was not, and within hours officials revealed that he had been flown to a military facility in Nebraska.
The Trump operation unfolded quite differently, highlighting the depth of concern that U.S. security officials had about his safety leaving Turkey amid hostilities with Iran. Turkey, a key U.S. ally and member of the NATO military alliance, shares a border with Iran.
A credible threat to Trump involving Iran set the “deception operation” in motion, the U.S. official said. The New York Times and CBS News reported last month that intelligence officials flagged a specific threat of an attack on the president or his jet, triggering additional precautions.
There are decades-old concerns in the U.S. government of Iranian terrorism plots against American officials, including Trump. Those fears have escalated recently as a result of Washington’s role in the killing of Iranian military and political leaders.
The operation, and the Iranian threat, came days after the president began using the newer Boeing 747-8 gifted by Qatar for use as Air Force One. Trump flew to Turkey on that aircraft after the red, white, and blue jet underwent upgrades costing hundreds of millions of dollars. It was fielded by the Air Force in July but lacks some of the defensive countermeasures included in the legacy Air Force One.
To transport the president out of Turkey, U.S. officials relied in part on a technique that has occasionally become public knowledge. One such mission occurred in March 2000, when President Bill Clinton visited Pakistan. With television cameras recording in Islamabad, Clinton disembarked from a plain white jet that followed the blue-and-white Air Force One, clarifying where he had been.
There have been other times in the last 30 years when Air Force One served as a decoy for the president because of a serious threat or because he was flying to a dangerous location, another U.S. official said, declining to elaborate. The legacy jet is highly secure, but also highly visible, so putting the president on an alternate plane instead can be considered safer, that former official said.
Ronald L. Rowe Jr., a former acting director of the Secret Service, said that the president’s protection is paramount and that the details of his movements are shielded for good reason.
“We need to keep the ‘secret’ in Secret Service,” said Rowe, now with the Chertoff Group, a security advisory firm. “The public should know what the president is doing on a daily basis, but when it comes to the methods by which the Secret Service keeps the president safe, that should remain out of public view.”
When Trump first announced that he would leave Turkey on the legacy Air Force One, he touted the decision on social media as an opportunity for U.S. troops stationed in Britain to see the former Qatari aircraft. He would instead take “the former Air Force One” from Turkey for “old time’s sake,” Trump posted.
But that did not happen, according to the material reviewed by the Post and the U.S. official. Numerous people participated in the deception, some unwittingly, and journalists who thought they were traveling with the president aboard the legacy Air Force One were not notified that he had changed aircraft or made aware of the extent of the threat on Air Force One, the U.S. official said.
The new Air Force One jet gifted by Qatar departed Turkey first, early in the evening of July 8. Trump then boarded the legacy blue-and-white Air Force One at dusk, waving goodbye on camera.
To exit that plane without being seen by those uninvolved in the operation, Trump and several aides stepped aboard an airport catering truck, which was elevated planeside using hydraulics and positioned at a door on the opposite side of Air Force One’s entrance, according to the U.S. official and other corroborating material.
Imagery captured by the news media at the Turkish airport shows a staircase on one side of the legacy Air Force One and the catering truck on the other, with its container elevated to the level of the plane. Trump arrived in a limousine, climbed the staircase and waved toward the tarmac as he boarded, video shows.
A few minutes later, as members of the White House press corps boarded near the back of the plane, a man in a suit entered the catering truck’s cab, according to media pool video of the departure process. The container was lowered into the bed of the vehicle, which then pulled away from Air Force One and drove to the smaller C-32A nearby, the video appears to show. The truck is out of view for about 40 seconds when the camera pans away and is briefly hidden while behind the C-32A’s engines.
Catering trucks are parked at Air Force One on the tarmac as the motorcade carrying U.S. President Donald Trump arrives on the tarmac to depart following the NATO summit at Ankara International Airport in Ankara, Turkey, Wednesday, July 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)Alex Brandon
The video shows that the container was lifted to the level of the plane for several minutes. After the container was lowered, a person in a suit stepped out of the truck’s cab, which remained at ground level, and ascended the stairs leading up to the C-32A, disappearing from the camera’s view.
The blue-and-white C-32A, a modified Boeing 757 used to transport U.S. government officials, had been flown to Turkey along with the legacy Air Force One and the former Qatari jet to support the president’s visit, the U.S. official said. Like Air Force One jumbo jets, it is emblazoned with the words “United States of America” and can be used to transport the president or vice president. But it typically does so with the “Air Force One” or “Air Force Two” call sign, not a nondescript moniker.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth boarded the C-32A separately using external stairs, part of an attempt to make the flight appear typical, according to the U.S. official and other materials reviewed by the Post. Hegseth flew with Trump to Britain on the same plane, this person said.
As journalists boarded the legacy Air Force One, White House staff directed them to close their window shades, according to a media pool report.
The New York Times reported last month that the former Qatari jet lacks the defensive capabilities of legacy U.S. presidential transport jets. That report prompted the Trump administration to take the unusual step of issuing subpoenas to several journalists in a bid to learn the identities of their confidential sources.
Administration officials cast the government’s actions against the New York Times as necessary to investigate a national security breach, while the Times described the move as an effort to avoid transparency, intimidate journalists, and scare their sources. The administration later withdrew the subpoenas, acknowledging missteps in the case.
In deflecting criticism of the new jet, the White House also released a statement from the Air Force.
“The aircraft is safe, secure, and equipped with the most advanced technologies necessary to meet requirements of the presidential mission,” the statement said. “Those requirements were carefully crafted to prioritize mission over aesthetics, leaving much of the previous head of state interior layout minimally changed.”
“No risk was taken in security, safety, or mission communications, but the collective team made trades on some of the less commonly used mission sets that Boeing must deliver to support the next 40 years,” the statement added.
Though the 747 jumbo jets that carry the president are commonly referred to as “Air Force One,” the term is technically an air-traffic-control call sign for any plane which the president is aboard.
In this instance, however, the president’s whereabouts were obscured on the C-32A flight to Britain using the nondescript call sign “Reach 18” or “RCH18,” according to a person familiar with the mission and other material reviewed by the Post.
The aviation account “Thenewarea51″ noted the C-32A’s arrival in Britain and its call sign, reporting that night that systems allowing for the aircraft to be easily tracked while in the air had been switched off. “Reach” call signs are often used for personnel transport flights and those that haul military equipment, according those familiar with the mission.
Publicly available flight tracking data shows that the former Qatari jet flew to Britain’s Mildenhall air base while bearing the call sign “SAM 33,” using a common abbreviation for “special air mission.” It landed at Mildenhall at 6:26 p.m. local time on July 8, data shows.
The legacy Air Force One plane carrying White House staff and journalists appeared on radar near Istanbul on its way to Britain, initially with no call sign listed. Despite the president not being aboard, it then took the Air Force One call sign, “AF1,” midflight and arrived at Mildenhall about 10:29 p.m. local time, the tracking data shows. A media pool report that night said the flight was “uneventful” with “no visitors to the press cabin.”
No flight tracker data could be found for the C-32A, but videos posted by the YouTube accounts RankUpAviation and Military Aviation Channel show the former Qatari jet landing, followed by a C-32A hours later at about 10:20 p.m. and the legacy Air Force One several minutes later.
Videos show the legacy Air Force One, after landing, coming to a stop in a place where the C-32A had briefly been parked. The hobbyist videos on YouTube do not show Trump exiting the C-32A or entering the legacy Air Force One, as the stairway entries faced away from the plane spotters’ cameras.
It’s not clear how Trump moved from the C-32A to the legacy Air Force One after landing, but he appeared before television cameras and descended external stairs from the legacy Air Force One about 10:56 p.m., according to a media pool report.
After greeting U.S. service members, the president embarked on the newly gifted Air Force One to travel back to Washington, with staff and press aboard after a transfer from the legacy Air Force One, at about 11:01 p.m. A social media post from the White House that night said that Trump had landed at the British base “aboard the former Air Force One,” and included a picture of the legacy plane.
Aboard the new Air Force One, Trump spoke to journalists for about 15 minutes, highlighting the threat Iran poses but not acknowledging the subterfuge that had occurred earlier.
Asked why reporters had been instructed to lower the window shades on the plane in Turkey, Trump said that it was “because you’re probably on a dangerous flight because of the sleaze bags that we have to deal with.” Trump said that he has a “threat all the time” against his life, and that he is “number one” on Iran’s “list.”
“But if I go, you go. Right?” Trump suggested to reporters. “Perhaps someday you want to change professions.”
Canada put its military on standby Monday to help battle deadly wildfires in British Columbia as a local mayor warned that one of the blazes had wreaked huge destruction on his community. A woman has died and some 20,000 people have fled their homes so far.
For days, scores of wildfires have burned across the province, nearly half of them out of control in hot, windy weather and prolonged drought. Thousands have fled on jammed roads as officials said even more communities could be threatened.
The mayor of Summerland — home to about 12,000 people, which was ordered evacuated on Saturday night along with about 8,000 people in and around nearby Peachland — warned that the affected areas remained too dangerous to enter and that it was impossible to determine the scope of the destruction.
The blaze — known as the Bald Range wildfire — remained out of control after racing toward Summerland and other communities along Okanagan Lake over the weekend.
“It’s going to be quite a bit,” Mayor Doug Holmes said of the expected destruction. “We need to brace ourselves for that bad news when it’s time to go back. Everybody will know somebody who has lost a home.”
Defense Minister David McGuinty said the Canadian Armed Forces were in constant contact with provincial and federal officials and were ready to respond if British Columbia formally requested assistance. The federal government has already approved provincial requests for help with shelter and accommodations.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said an 80-year-old woman died while trying to escape the fire near Summerland. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the death was heartbreaking and that the federal government would continue supporting British Columbia.
The British Columbia Wildfire Service said Monday the fire had grown to about 60 square miles from 53 square miles on Sunday. Officials warned clearer skies and direct sunlight could increase fire activity.
Ravi Parmer, British Columbia Minister of Forests, said 19 helicopters were assigned to the Bald Range wildfire but that its intensity made it impossible to halt the blaze.
“We could have put a thousand more helicopters and a thousand more people on the ground, and it wouldn’t have made a difference,” he said.
British Columbia Wildfire Service information officer Nicole Bonnett said the smoke lingering over the Bald Range fire has reduced visibility, limiting the use of air tankers and water-skimming aircraft.
Bonnett said the blaze has been fueled primarily by extremely dry conditions rather than wind, and grew explosively Friday, reaching 19 square miles within three hours.
Evacuated residents face uncertain prospects for return
Holmes, the Summerland mayor, said there was no timetable for when residents would be able to return as power lines had been downed and hazards at the destroyed or damaged buildings would have to be assessed first. He added that residents would eventually return, likely neighborhood by neighborhood.
“The hard part is going home and seeing the devastation,” he cautioned.
Kyla Gaudiuso, a resident of Faulder, a 215-strong community, said her home was likely destroyed as she had gotten a photo showing the ridge where it stood engulfed in flames.
She described the community’s evacuation as “pandemonium” and said she was now staying with a friend in the town of Penticton.
“It doesn’t really seem real,” she said. “I have to see it to believe it.”
Progress made with Washington state fires
Firefighters in Spokane, Wash., have strengthened containment lines around three destructive blazes in recent days, allowing some evacuated residents to return home.
Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson announced emergency proclamations to help those impacted by the fires at a news conference in Spokane on Monday. He suspended waiting periods for unemployment benefits and prohibited evictions, while the state Department of Licensing and Department of Health will help people who lost important documents get them immediately without charge.
The state is also working on a request to the federal government for a major disaster declaration that would secure more support, he said.
In California, evacuations have been ordered for areas along the famous Big Sur coast as a wildfire burns in the nearby steep, rugged mountains. The Timber Fire in Monterey County started Sunday and had grown to about 2 square miles by midday Monday, according to Cal Fire.
NEW YORK — The driver of a speedboat that capsized in New York Harbor over the weekend, killing a 27-year-old woman and her infant daughter, was charged Monday with causing their deaths through misconduct or neglect.
Manuel Hernandez, 46, of Manville, N.J., wiped his eyes with his hand as he arrived for his initial appearance in Manhattan federal court, his feet shackled. He was not required to enter a plea and was released on $50,000 bail.
Sara Sanchez and her 5-month-old daughter, Antonella Garcia, died after the 22-foot Yamaha AR210 speedboat overturned late Saturday near the Statue of Liberty in an accident authorities blamed on an overcrowded boat, poor decisions by Hernandez, a lack of appropriate licenses, and the failure to put a life vest on a 5-month-old child. Twelve others were rescued and are in stable condition, authorities said.
As Hernandez left the hearing, his court-appointed attorney, Amy Gallicchio, guided him to a waiting vehicle. Both declined to comment.
The vessel was pulled from the water and taken to the New York Police Department’s harbor unit facility on Randall’s Island.
After state charges were lodged against Hernandez over the weekend, prosecutors said Monday that he will be tried in federal court, not state court. He was transferred to federal custody on Sunday.
In a criminal complaint, federal prosecutors brought two charges alleging that Hernandez, as the boat’s pilot and operator, engaged in negligent actions and omissions that caused the capsizing and deaths in a boat that exceeded its maximum capacity of 10 people, with 14 on board.
They said he also knowingly operated the boat with an infant on board without ensuring that the child was wearing a life vest and with the awareness that the boat didn’t have any child- or infant-sized life vests.
The boat tour, which began at 7 p.m. Saturday, was more than three hours into its journey when Hernandez was piloting the boat toward the Statue of Liberty and made a U-turn that brought it into a swell, possibly caused by a larger passing vessel’s wake, according to the complaint.
Hernandez tried to accelerate to pass through the swell, but the swell swamped the bow of his boat and immediately capsized it, prosecutors wrote.
Hernandez told investigators that he had worked for the company on a freelance or contract basis since last year, starting as a limousine driver, they wrote.
He stated that twice recently he used his personal boat, a slightly larger Yamaha AR250, for charter tours organized by Zeus Luxury Rentals Inc., according to the complaint.
He said that on Saturday, he used a friend’s boat because his own needed repairs, but he didn’t tell the friend that he was using it for a charter tour, prosecutors wrote.
Hernandez admitted to investigators that he had never sought the required licensing and claimed he was unaware it was needed, they wrote. He also admitted that he agreed to conduct the tour with the 5-month-old on board despite the vessel not having any child or infant-sized life vests, prosecutors said.
Police Commissioner Jessica S. Tisch said the “tragedy could have been prevented, and now a family is left to grieve the unimaginable loss of a mother and her 5-month-old daughter because of his negligence.”
In a news release, U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald said Hernandez flouted federal regulations and maritime safety protocols when he transported paying customers on a commercial boat without appropriate licenses.
“We mourn the tragic drowning deaths of the infant and her mother and urge would-be tour operators and the public to observe all safety protocols for commercial vessels,” he said.
Capt. Doreen McCarthy, the Coast Guard Sector New York commander, credited the rescue of survivors to “heroic, swift actions” by those who responded from various agencies, along with a good Samaritan vessel.
Meanwhile, a GoFundMe campaign that began Sunday to help Andres Garcia pay for the funeral and other expenses for his partner, Sanchez, and their daughter had topped $25,000 by Tuesday afternoon. Garcia was also on the boat when it capsized.
Antonio Russo, general manager at Il Punto Ristorante, said Garcia is an “amazing guy” who has been working long hours each week as a waiter, driver, and food-runner to provide for his family here and in Colombia.
Diego Naranjo, a neighbor of Sanchez in Queens, said he first met her last spring when her son threw a ball into their backyard. After recovering the ball, Naranjo invited her son to play on a trampoline with his children.
“They were really nice people. You can see when a person is noble,” Naranjo said.
He said he last saw Sanchez last Tuesday as she brought groceries into her home. He said he was shocked by the deaths.
KENSINGTON, Maryland — The contiguous United States sizzled to its hottest month ever last month, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
July averaged 76.89 degrees Fahrenheit across the Lower 48 states, eclipsing the Dust Bowl’s July 1936 by an eighth of a degree. Records go back to 1895.
“It’s not good when you’re breaking records from the Dust Bowl, which we are in this case,” said meteorologist Jeff Masters of Yale Climate Connections. “And that was a crazy sort of situation where you put tens of millions of people in motion. You had this great migration because of the drought and the heat that hit the center of the U.S. — just a cataclysmic event in U. S. history. If we’re exceeding records from the Dust Bowl, that says that we’re in deep trouble.”
Although it was unusually cool in Alaska, hotter-than-normal conditions blanketed the Lower 48, with the most excessive heat in the Mountain West, Southwest, Northern Plains, and Southeast. The heat was so widespread that every one of the Lower 48 states was at least 1 degree F warmer than the 20th century average, said Russ Vose, chief of monitoring at NOAA’s National Center for Environmental Information.
The heat in the Dust Bowl years was more concentrated in parts of the Midwest and was aggravated by agricultural practices at the time, Vose said.
What’s happening now is due to the burning of coal, oil, and gas, scientists said.
“Extremely high temperatures across the continental U.S. this summer, along with intense drought and fire conditions, are absolutely consistent with the climate change signal,’ said Katharine Jacobs, a climate scientist at the University of Arizona.
The biggest driver of the record heat was nighttime lows that smashed the old mark for hottest minimums by 0.7 degrees, NOAA said. Hotter nights are a classic sign of human-caused climate change, according to scientists and several studies in peer-reviewed literature. NOAA’s calculation is based on averaging 24 hours of temperature, not just highs or lows.
“If you’re talking heat waves, that nighttime low is incredibly important for determining total heat stress,” Masters said. “So if it doesn’t cool off at night, your body doesn’t have time to readjust to all the heat.”
The years 2021 and 1936 tie for America’s hottest summer, which is June through August. Through July, 2026 is a shade cooler than 2021, which was powered by record heat in June.
Because of climate change, Masters said, “This may be one of the coolest years we’re going to experience for the rest of our lives.”
What’s needed, Masters said, is “to stop burning so many fossil fuels. We also need to be spending money to adapt to the new climate that we’ve put in place.”
Ben Jones, who played the good ol’ boy mechanic in The Dukes of Hazzard TV series and parlayed his fame into a political career and two terms in the U.S. House, has died. He was 84.
Mr. Jones had a heart attack in his home Sunday in Washington, Va., as he was waiting to watch his beloved Atlanta Braves play baseball, his wife, Alma Viator, said on social media. Rappahannock County Sheriff Connie Compton confirmed his death.
Mr. Jones’ fame came from his role as Cooter Davenport, the mechanic who got the Duke boys out of jams as they tried to do the right thing and fight the corrupt Boss Hogg in the fictional Hazzard County, Ga.
After playing Cooter for all seven seasons of the series from 1979 to 1985, Mr. Jones turned to politics and was elected to the U.S. House from a district near Atlanta in 1988. The Democrat served two terms before he was redistricted out of the seat.
Mr. Jones was born in North Carolina and in college got involved in acting and civil rights, he wrote in his autobiography Redneck Boy in the Promised Land: The Confessions of ‘Crazy Cooter.’
Acting took over his life. Mr. Jones performed in numerous stage productions and had a few minor TV and movie roles in Atlanta during the 1970s before his life-defining break came on a TV show Jones defended as a modern-day morality tale and a fine example of Southern values.
For seven seasons, Mr. Jones was one of a small band of friends and family helping Bo and Luke Duke in The Dukes of Hazzard. The brothers were on probation for running moonshine and were constantly trying to clear their names and stop the crooked and powerful Boss Hogg from stealing or cheating.
The Duke boys drove a modified 1969 Dodge Charger called the General Lee with a Confederate flag on its roof. Cooter owned Cooter’s Garage in the town square. Nearly every episode involved a car chase with jumps and stunts and a patrol car badly in need of repairs.
Cooter was often on the CB radio in his pickup truck saying, “Breaker one, Breaker one. I might be crazy but I ain’t dumb. Crazy Cooter coming at you.”
The Dukes of Hazzard was a hit for CBS and its popularity never waned. It went into syndication and later became a prominent fixture on cable’s Nashville Network.
Mr. Jones also credited the series with pulling him out of a self-destructive, alcoholic lifestyle that led to the failure of several marriages.
″It was like being in a Beatles movie,″ Mr. Jones said. ″Our lives changed.″
Tom Wopat, who played Luke Duke, said Mr. Jones was an integral part of making the series work.
“Ben Jones was a fine friend and a fierce advocate of all the best things we can offer in the entertainment business. He will be sorely missed,” Wopat wrote on Instagram.
After The Dukes of Hazzard, Mr. Jones went into politics. He kept his aw-shucks personality, but took the issues seriously. In his four years in Washington, Mr. Jones was known as a Democrat who could buck his party. He was liberal on social issues and conservative on economics.
But even in politics, he made a splash. After losing in 1992 in his redrawn district, Mr. Jones ran for Congress again in 1994. He lost to Newt Gingrich in the elections that elevated the Republican to the Speaker’s Office.
Mr. Jones would file an ethics complaint that Gingrich used tax-deductible donations to fund his partisan college course, leading to a House reprimand and Gingrich’s decision to leave the body.
Mr. Jones always embraced his role as Cooter. After moving to Virginia, he would open at least three Cooter’s country stores in Nashville and Pigeon Forge, Tenn., and near his home. They sold plenty of T-shirts, key chains, and insulated tumblers and included Dukes of Hazzard memorabilia like one of the 300 or so General Lee cars used and abused in the TV series.
The show and Cooter lived on because it was funny, had plenty of action and car chases, and had a good, family-friendly heart, Mr. Jones told the Richmond Times-Dispatch at a 2001 car show where he played in a band, signed autographs, and met fans.
“The show reflects the values of the heartland of America. The good guys always win,” Mr. Jones said.
