Trump

Oct. 17 (UPI) — President Donald Trump refiled a dismissed federal lawsuit accusing The New York Times of defaming him during the 2024 election cycle and seeking $15 billion.

The president refiled the lawsuit on Thursday after U.S. District Court for Middle Florida Judge Steven Merryday in September dismissed the original filing.

The judge ruled the initial 85-page filing was too wordy and took too long to detail any formal complaints against the news outlet, The New York Times reported.

Merryday gave Trump 28 days to refile his lawsuit, which the president did on Thursday in the same federal court.

Trump’s revised filing is 40 pages long and accuses The Times’ reporters Peter Baker, Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig of writing “false, malicious and defamatory statements” against him in two news articles, according to NBC News.

Baler and Buettner also wrote a book titled “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success.”

Trump’s legal team argues that he asked The Times to retract defamatory and false information, which its leadership refused, The Hill reported.

“Defendants rejected President Trump’s reasonable demands for retraction and instead doubled down and expanded on the malicious and defamatory falsehood,” the legal team says.

“These breaches of journalistic ethics are further proven by The Times’ enthusiastic aiding and abetting of the partisan effort to falsely link Russian interference to President Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election,” Trump’s filing says.

The claims of Russian interference on behalf of Trump “is well on its way to becoming one of the most profoundly disturbing criminal political scandals in American history,” Trump’s legal team argues.

Officials for The New York Times in a statement on Friday said the lawsuit lacks merit.

“Nothing has changed today,” the statement said. “This is merely an attempt to stifle independent reporting and generate [public relations] attention.”

The Times’ executive editor Joseph Kahn previously said the news outlet will not settle the case, which other news outlets have done to end similar cases filed by the president.

Oct. 17 (UPI) — A nine-year, $335 million restoration of the U.S. Air Force Academy Chapel has President Donald Trump calling for a federal investigation into the matter.

The president in a social media post on Thursday called the cadet chapel in Colorado Springs, Colo., a “construction disaster” since it was built in 1962 and said the current renovation is projected to be finished in 2028.

“The earlier stories are that it leaked on day one, and that was the good part,” Trump said on Truth Social.

“Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent,” he explained. “The renovation, which essentially has been going on since the day it was built, is now projected to go on until 2028.”

He said a newly revised budget adds $90 million to the renovation cost, which now is $335 million from its prior $247 million budget.

“This mess should be investigated,” Trump added. “Very unfair to the cadets — a complete architectural catastrophe!”

The Defense Department in August awarded a contract that exceeds $88 million to the JE Dunn Construction Co. to renovate the chapel, which is projected to be finished in November 2028, The Hill reported.

Officials at the Air Force Civil Engineer Center are overseeing the renovation project and said the additional funds will cover additional costs after encountering unexpected problems.

The chapel has been closed since October 2019 as the restoration project began, but the discovery of asbestos and other issues has delayed the renovation and greatly raised its cost from an original estimate of $158 million, according to KOAA-TV.

The current construction cost estimate is nearly half the cost to renovate the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, which was completed twice as fast.

The latest nearly $90 million project allocation from the Defense Department boosted the total cost by 36% from $247 million.

The project “ensures the long-term structural integrity and watertightness of the Cadet Chapel and will resolve issues that have plagued the building since its opening 60 years ago,” the AFCEC said.

The facility leaked water from the moment it opened in 1962 and underwent numerous “Band-Aid fixes” over the years, USAFA architect Duane Boyle said during an April 2024 news conference.

The 150-foot-tall, 52,000-square-foot chapel is comprised of 17 triangular spires that give it an aircraft-like appearance.

It was one of the first modernist-style structures built in the United States and is “one of the most seminal pieces of modern architecture in the United States,” Neal Evers, Colorado University-Boulder Environmental Design Department professor, told KOAA-TV.

He said the chapel was designed and built when modernist-style architecture “was really taking off in the ’50s.”

Evers said it’s unfair to compare the project’s cost and time to other restoration projects, but he acknowledged it is a “problem” when the initial five-year timeline is extended to nearly 10.

WASHINGTON — President Trump is hosting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for talks at the White House on Friday, with the U.S. leader signaling he’s not ready to agree to sell Kyiv a long-range missile system that the Ukrainians say they desperately need.

Zelensky arrived with top aides to discuss the latest developments with Trump over lunch, a day after the U.S. president and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a lengthy phone call to discuss the conflict.

At the start of the talks, Zelensky congratulated Trump over landing last week’s ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza and said Trump now has “momentum” to stop the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

“President Trump now has a big chance to finish this war,” Zelensky added.

In recent days, Trump had shown an openness to selling Ukraine long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, even as Putin warned that such a move would further strain the U.S.-Russian relationship.

But following Thursday’s call with Putin, Trump appeared to downplay the prospects of Ukraine getting the missiles, which have a range of about 995 miles.

“We need Tomahawks for the United States of America too,” Trump said. “We have a lot of them, but we need them. I mean we can’t deplete our country.”

Zelensky had been seeking the weapons, which would allow Ukrainian forces to strike deep into Russian territory and target key military sites, energy facilities and critical infrastructure. Zelensky has argued that the potential for such strikes would help compel Putin to take Trump’s calls for direct negotiations to end the war more seriously.

But Putin warned Trump during the call that supplying Kyiv with the Tomahawks “won’t change the situation on the battlefield, but would cause substantial damage to the relationship between our countries,” according to Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy adviser.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said that talk of providing Tomahawks had already served a purpose by pushing Putin into talks. “The conclusion is that we need to continue with strong steps. Strength can truly create momentum for peace,” Sybiha said on the social platform X late Thursday.

Ukrainian officials have also indicated that Zelensky plans to appeal to Trump’s economic interests by aiming to discuss the possibility of energy deals with the U.S.

Zelensky is expected to offer to store American liquefied natural gas in Ukraine’s gas storage facilities, which would allow for an American presence in the European energy market.

He previewed the strategy on Thursday in meetings with Energy Secretary Chris Wright and the heads of American energy companies, leading him to post on X that it is important to restore Ukraine’s energy infrastructure after Russian attacks and expand “the presence of American businesses in Ukraine.”

It will be the fourth face-to-face meeting for Trump and Zelensky since the Republican returned to office in January, and their second in less than a month.

Trump announced following Thursday’s call with Putin that he would soon meet with the Russian leader in Budapest, Hungary, to discuss ways to end the war. The two also agreed that their senior aides, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, would meet next week at an unspecified location.

Fresh off brokering a ceasefire and hostage agreement between Israel and Hamas, Trump has said finding an endgame to the war in Ukraine is now his top foreign policy priority and has expressed new confidence about the prospects of getting it done.

Ahead of his call with Putin, Trump had shown signs of increased frustration with the Russian leader.

Last month, he announced that he believed Ukraine could win back all territory lost to Russia, a dramatic shift from the U.S. leader’s repeated calls for Kyiv to make concessions to end the war.

Trump, going back to his 2024 campaign, insisted he would quickly end the war, but his peace efforts appeared to stall following a diplomatic blitz in August, when he held a summit with Putin in Alaska and a White House meeting with Zelensky and European allies.

Trump emerged from those meetings certain he was on track to arranging direct talks between Zelensky and Putin. But the Russian leader hasn’t shown any interest in meeting with Zelensky and Moscow has only intensified its bombardment of Ukraine.

Trump, for his part, offered a notably more neutral tone about Ukraine following what he described a “very productive” call with Putin.

He also hinted that negotiations between Putin and Zelensky might be have to be conducted indirectly.

“They don’t get along too well those two,” Trump said. “So we may do something where we’re separate. Separate but equal.”

Madhani writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump is showing little urgency to broker a compromise that would end the government shutdown, even as Democrats insist no breakthrough is possible without his direct involvement.

Three weeks in, Congress is at a standstill. The House hasn’t been in session for a month, and senators left Washington on Thursday frustrated by the lack of progress. Republican leaders are refusing to negotiate until a short-term funding bill to reopen the government is passed, while Democrats say they won’t agree without guarantees on extending health insurance subsidies.

For now, Trump appears content to stay on the sidelines.

He spent the week celebrating an Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal he led, hosted a remembrance event for conservative activist Charlie Kirk and refocused attention on the Russia-Ukraine war. Meanwhile, his administration has been managing the shutdown in unconventional ways, continuing to pay the troops while laying off other federal employees.

Asked Thursday whether he was willing to deploy his dealmaking background on the shutdown, Trump seemed uninterested.

“Well, look, I mean, all we want to do is just extend. We don’t want anything, we just want to extend, live with the deal they had,” he said in an exchange with reporters in the Oval Office. Later Thursday, he criticized Democratic health care demands as “crazy,” adding, “We’re just not going to do it.”

Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that Democrats must first vote to reopen the government, “then we can have serious conversations about health care.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune echoed that approach before leaving for the weekend, saying Trump is “ready to weigh in and sit down with the Democrats or whomever, once the government opens up.”

Thune said he’d also be willing to talk, but only after the shutdown ends.

“I am willing to sit down with Democrats,” Thune posted on social media Friday.

“But there’s one condition: End the Schumer Shutdown. I will not negotiate under hostage conditions, nor will I pay a ransom,” he added.

Frustration is beginning to surface among rank-and-file Republicans, with bipartisan conversations breaking out on the Senate floor as members look for ways to move things forward. Still, even those Republicans admit little happens in Congress without Trump’s direction.

Leaving the Capitol on Thursday, GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski said, “We’re not making much headway this week.” For things to progress, Murkowski acknowledged Trump may need to get more involved: “I think he’s an important part of it.”

“I think there are some folks in his administration that are kind of liking the fact that Congress really has no role right now,” she added. “I don’t like that. I don’t like that at all.”

Trump has not been slowed by the shutdown

While Congress has been paralyzed by the shutdown, Trump has moved rapidly to enact his vision of the federal government.

He has called budget chief Russ Vought the “grim reaper,” and Vought has taken the opportunity to withhold billions of dollars for infrastructure projects and lay off thousands of federal workers, signaling that workforce reductions could become even more drastic.

At the same time, the administration has acted unilaterally to fund Trump’s priorities, including paying the military this week, easing pressure on what could have been one of the main deadlines to end the shutdown.

Some of these moves, particularly the layoffs and funding shifts, have been criticized as illegal and are facing court challenges. A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked the administration from firing workers during the shutdown, ruling that the cuts appeared politically motivated and were carried out without sufficient justification.

And with Congress focused on the funding fight, lawmakers have had little time to debate other issues.

In the House, Johnson has said the House won’t return until Democrats approve the funding bill and has refused to swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva. Democrats say the move is to prevent her from becoming the 218th signature on a discharge petition aimed at forcing a vote on releasing documents related to the sex trafficking investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.

So far, the shutdown has shown little impact on public opinion.

An AP-NORC poll released Thursday found that 3 in 10 U.S. adults have a “somewhat” or “very” favorable view of the Democratic Party, similar to an AP-NORC poll from September. Four in 10 have a “somewhat” or “very” favorable view of the Republican Party, largely unchanged from last month.

Democrats want Trump at the table. Republicans would rather he stay out

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries have said Republicans have shown little seriousness in negotiating an end to the shutdown.

“Leader Thune has not come to me with any proposal at this point,” Schumer said Thursday.

Frustrated with congressional leaders, Democrats are increasingly looking to Trump.

At a CNN town hall Wednesday night featuring Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders, both repeatedly called for the president’s involvement when asked why negotiations had stalled.

“President Trump is not talking. That is the problem,” Sanders said.

Ocasio-Cortez added that Trump should more regularly “be having congressional leaders in the White House.”

Democrats’ focus on Trump reflects both his leadership style — which allows little to happen in Congress without his approval — and the reality that any funding bill needs the president’s signature to become law.

This time, however, Republican leaders who control the House and Senate are resisting any push for Trump to intervene.

“You can’t negotiate when somebody’s got a hostage,” said South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds, who added that Trump getting involved would allow Democrats to try the same tactic in future legislative fights.

Trump has largely followed that guidance. After previously saying he would be open to negotiating with Democrats on health insurance subsidies, he walked it back after Republican leaders suggested he misspoke.

And that’s unlikely to change for now. Trump has no plans to personally intervene to broker a deal with Democrats, according to a senior White House official granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. The official added that the only stopgap funding bill that Democrats can expect is the one already on the table.

“The President is happy to have a conversation about health care policy, but he will not do so while the Democrats are holding the American people hostage,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said Thursday.

A product of the Congress Trump has molded

In his second term, Trump has taken a top-down approach, leaving little in Congress to move without his approval.

“What’s obvious to me is that Mike Johnson and John Thune don’t do much without Donald Trump telling them what to do,” said Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.

His hold is particularly strong in the GOP-led House, where Speaker Mike Johnson effectivelyowes his job to Trump, and relies on his influence to power through difficult legislative fights.

When Republicans have withheld votes on Trump’s priorities in Congress, he’s called them on the phone or summoned them to his office to directly sway them. When that doesn’t work, he has vowed to unseat them in the next election. It’s led many Democrats to believe the only path to an agreement runs through the White House and not through the speaker’s office.

Democrats also want assurances from the White House that they won’t backtrack on an agreement. The White House earlier this year cut out the legislative branch entirely with a $4.9 billion cut to foreign aid in August through a legally dubious process known as a “pocket rescission.” And before he even took office late last year, Trump and ally Elon Musk blew up a bipartisan funding agreement that both parties had negotiated.

“I think we need to see ink on paper. I think we need to see legislation. I think we need to see votes,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “I don’t accept pinky promises. That’s not the business that I’m in.”

Both parties also see little reason to fold under public pressure, believing they are winning the messaging battle.

“Everybody thinks they’re winning,” Murkowski said. “Nobody is winning when everybody’s losing. And that’s what’s happening right now. The American public is losing.”

Cappelletti and Kim write for the Associated Press. AP writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to visit Hungary in the very near future, where he will meet United States counterpart Donald Trump for a second summit on ending the war in Ukraine. The first – in Alaska in August – failed to result in any agreement.

But, with an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant issued in 2023 for Putin’s arrest over the alleged illegal deportation of Ukrainian children during Russia’s war with Ukraine, how will the fugitive from justice make it to the negotiating table?

Signatories of the 1998 Rome Statute, which established the Hague-based court in 2002, are required to arrest those subject to warrants as soon as they enter their territory – which theoretically includes airspace, which is also considered sovereign territory under international law.

Hungary, which recently stated its intention to withdraw from the agreement – making it a safe space for Putin – is surrounded by countries which would be bound by this.

However, the ICC, which has 125 member states, has no police force and hence no means of enforcing arrests.

So what awaits Putin on his upcoming jaunt?

Isn’t Hungary technically an ICC member, too?

On paper, yes. But it’s on the way out.

In April, right-wing populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban announced the country would be ditching the ICC’s founding document when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid a visit. Netanyahu is also on the ICC’s most-wanted list for Gaza war crimes – his arrest warrant was issued earlier this year.

The Hungarian parliament approved a bill back in May to trigger the withdrawal process, which becomes official one year after the United Nations Secretary-General receives a written notification of the decision.

Given Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto’s comments on Friday on the “sovereign” country’s intent to host the president with “respect”, ensuring he has “successful negotiations, and then returns home”, Putin seems safe from any arrest on Hungarian soil.

What about airspace? Could he be intercepted mid-air?

As Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday, “many questions” need to be resolved before Putin sets off on his journey. One of those questions is likely to regard the president’s flight path.

Putin will probably want to avoid the Baltic states after recent violations of Estonia’s airspace by Russian jets, which have put the region on high alert for a potential overspill from the Ukraine war. The Baltics could well force a hard landing.

Friendly Belarus might provide a convenient corridor between the Baltics and Ukraine further south, but this would set the president on course for Poland, which has historically strained relations with the Kremlin and recently warned Europe to prepare for a “deep” Russian strike on its territory. Russian drones have also recently breached Polish airspace.

Slovakia, which is led by Moscow-leaning populist Robert Fico, is still guzzling Russian energy in defiance of Trump’s orders to European countries to stop oil and gas imports, and may be more accommodating. Indeed, Fico is on a collision course with fellow EU members over sanctions against Moscow. But Putin would still need to cross Poland before reaching Slovakia.

Putin’s direct route to Budapest, therefore, appears littered with obstacles.

What about a more circuitous route?

Putin may be inspired by fellow ICC fugitive Netanyahu, wanted for crimes including using starvation as a weapon of war against Palestinian civilians in war-ravaged Gaza, who avoided several European countries on his way to the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York last month.

The Israeli Prime Minister’s Wing of Zion plane briefly flew over Greek and Italian territory, but then ducked south, entirely avoiding French and Spanish airspace before heading over the Atlantic, according to FlightRadar24.

Flying south could be an option for Putin as well. Georgia, whose Georgian Dream governing party suspended Tbilisi’s bid to join the European Union, is a signatory to the Rome Statute but could potentially be relied on to turn a blind eye.

And Turkiye, which is not a party to the Rome Statute, but which has long walked a tightrope between Russia and NATO and hosted previous attempts between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators on ending the war, could be amenable to allowing the Russian president to pass.

From there, the main obstacle would be Greece, providing a route through the Balkan states to Orban’s respectful welcome.

Has Putin made other trips since becoming an internationally wanted war criminal?

Putin has clearly limited his travels since the ICC warrant was issued.

Last year, he hopped over the border to ICC member Mongolia, where he was treated to a lavish ceremony featuring soldiers on horseback by Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh.

Mongolia has very friendly relations with Russia, on which it depends for fuel and electricity. The country has refrained from condemning Russia’s offensive in Ukraine and has abstained during votes on the conflict at the UN, so it was little surprise to see the red carpet being rolled out.

Flying to Alaska for a bilateral with Trump last August was easy since the president could completely avoid hostile countries, flying over his country’s huge land mass over the Bering Strait to the US, which is not a signatory to the Rome Statute.

Similarly, this year’s visit to “old friend” and neighbour Xi Jinping for a huge military parade and a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation posed no problems since China is not a party to the ICC.

This month, the Russian president met Central Asian leaders with whom he is eager to bolster ties in Tajikistan, which has signed up to the Rome Statute.

Will Putin ever be arrested?

The arrest warrants mark the first step towards an eventual trial, although the capture of Russia’s president is almost inconceivable.

Only a few national leaders have ended up in The Hague.

The former Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, surrendered to The Hague earlier this year to face charges of crimes against humanity. The charges pertain to extrajudicial killings committed during his widely condemned “war on drugs”, which killed thousands of people.

The former Liberian president and warlord, Charles Taylor, was convicted in 2012 by the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, which held proceedings in The Hague. He was found guilty of 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Would a future Russian leader decide to forcibly hand Putin over, as was the case with Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic, extradited to The Hague after his removal in 2000, for atrocities committed in the former Yugoslavia wars?

That would necessitate a seismic shift in the Kremlin’s power dynamic, which seems unlikely for the time being.

Widespread regional anger over Israel’s war on Gaza, and beyond, will likely prove a major obstacle to any further signatories to the accords.

United States President Donald Trump has said he expects an expansion of the Abraham Accords soon and hopes Saudi Arabia will join the pact that normalised diplomatic relations between Israel and some Arab states, one week into the all-encompassing and fragile Gaza ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

“I hope to see Saudi Arabia go in, and I hope to see others go in. I think when Saudi Arabia goes in, everybody goes in,” Trump said in an interview broadcast Friday on Fox Business Network.

The US president called the pact a “miracle” and “amazing” and hailed the United Arab Emirates’s signing of it.

The “Abraham Accords” secured agreements between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.

“It’ll help bring long-lasting peace to the Middle East,” Trump claimed with his signature bombast.

But there are several factors at play since the original iteration of the accords, signed with fanfare at the White House during Trump’s first term as president in 2020.

Israel has carried out a two-year genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza, escalated its harsh assault on the occupied West Bank, and beyond Palestine, bombed six countries in the region this year, including key Gulf Arab mediator Qatar, the huge diplomatic fallout from which effectively helped Trump force Israel into a ceasefire in Gaza.

An emergency summit of Arab and Muslim countries held in Doha in September, in the wake of the attack, staunchly declared its solidarity with Qatar and condemned Israel’s bombing of the Qatari capital.

The extraordinary joint session between the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) gathered nearly 60 member states. Leaders said the meeting marked a critical moment to deliver a united message following what they described as an unprecedented escalation by Israel.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vision of a “Greater Israel”, has also been roundly condemned by Arab and Muslim countries, and involves hegemonic designs on Lebanese and Syrian territory, among others. Syrian President al-Sharaa, while welcoming Washington’s moves to end its international isolation, has not been warm to the idea of signing up to the Abraham Accords.

Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Naim Qassem appealed to Saudi Arabia in recent weeks to mend relations with the Lebanese armed group, aligned with Iran, and build a common front against Israel.

An August survey from the Washington Institute, a pro-Israel think tank in the US, found that 81 percent of Saudi respondents viewed the prospect of normalising relations with Israel negatively.

A Foreign Affairs and Arab Barometer poll from June came to similar findings: in Morocco, one of the Abraham Accords signatories, support for the deal fell from 31 percent in 2022 to 13 percent in the months after Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023.

Saudi Arabia has also repeatedly asserted its commitment to the Arab Peace Initiative, which conditions recognition of Israel on resolving the plight of Palestinians and establishing a Palestinian state.

GREENBELT, Md. — John Bolton arrived at a federal courthouse Friday to surrender to authorities and make his first court appearance on charges accusing the former Trump administration national security adviser of storing top secret records at home and sharing with relatives diary-like notes that contained classified information.

The 18-count federal indictment Thursday also suggests classified information was exposed when operatives believed to be linked to the Iranian government hacked Bolton’s email account and gained access to sensitive material he had shared. A Bolton representative told the FBI in 2021 that his emails had been hacked, prosecutors say, but did not reveal that Bolton had shared classified information through the account or that the hackers had possession of government secrets.

The closely watched case centers on a longtime fixture in Republican foreign policy circles who became known for his hawkish views on American power and who served for more than a year in Trump’s first administration before being fired in 2019. He later published a book highly critical of Trump.

The third case against a Trump adversary in the past month will unfold against the backdrop of concerns that the Justice Department is pursuing the Republican president’s political enemies while at the same time sparing his allies from scrutiny.

“Now, I have become the latest target in weaponizing the Justice Department to charge those he deems to be his enemies with charges that were declined before or distort the facts,” Bolton said in a statement.

Even so, the indictment is significantly more detailed in its allegations than earlier cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Unlike in those cases filed by a hastily appointed U.S. attorney, Bolton’s indictment was signed by career national security prosecutors. While the Bolton investigation burst into public view in August when the FBI searched his home in Maryland and his office in Washington, the inquiry was well underway by the time Trump had taken office in January.

Sharing of classified secrets

The indictment filed in federal court in Greenbelt, Maryland, alleges that between 2018 and this past August, Bolton shared with two relatives more than 1,000 pages of information about his day-to-day activities in government.

The material included “diary-like” entries with information classified as high as top secret that he had learned from meetings with other U.S. government officials, from intelligence briefings or talks with foreign leaders, according to the indictment. After sending one document, Bolton wrote in a message to his relatives, “None of which we talk about!!!” In response, one of his relatives wrote, “Shhhhh,” prosecutors said.

The indictment says that among the material shared was information about foreign adversaries that in some cases revealed details about sources and methods used by the government to collect intelligence.

The two family members were not identified in court papers, but a person familiar with the case, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss nonpublic details, identified them as Bolton’s wife and daughter.

The indictment also suggests Bolton was aware of the impropriety of sharing classified information with people not authorized to receive it, citing an April news media interview in which he chastised Trump administration officials for using Signal to discuss sensitive military details. Though the anecdote is meant by prosecutors to show Bolton understood proper protocol for government secrets, Bolton’s legal team may also point to it to argue a double standard in enforcement because the Justice Department is not known to have opened any investigation into the Signal episode.

Bolton’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement that the “underlying facts in this case were investigated and resolved years ago.”

He said the charges stem from portions of Bolton’s personal diaries over his 45-year career in government and included unclassified information that was shared only with his immediate family and was known to the FBI as far back as 2021.

“Like many public officials throughout history,” Lowell said, “Bolton kept diaries — that is not a crime.” He said Bolton “did not unlawfully share or store any information.”

Controversy over a book

Bolton suggested the criminal case was an outgrowth of an unsuccessful Justice Department effort after he left government to block the publication of his 2020 book “The Room Where It Happened,” which portrayed Trump as grossly misinformed about foreign policy.

The Trump administration asserted that Bolton’s manuscript contained classified information that could harm national security if exposed. Bolton’s lawyers have said he moved forward with the book after a White House National Security Council official, with whom Bolton had worked for months, said the manuscript no longer had classified information.

In 2018, Bolton was appointed to serve as Trump’s third national security adviser. His brief tenure was characterized by disputes with the president over North Korea, Iran and Ukraine. Those rifts ultimately led to Bolton’s departure.

Bolton subsequently criticized Trump’s approach to foreign policy and government in his book, including by alleging that Trump directly tied providing military aid to Ukraine to that country’s willingness to conduct investigations into Joe Biden, who was soon to be Trump’s Democratic 2020 election rival, and members of Biden’s family.

Trump responded by slamming Bolton as a “washed-up guy” and a “crazy” warmonger who would have led the country into “World War Six.”

Tucker and Richer write for the Associated Press. Durkin Richer reported from Washington.

Oct. 17 (UPI) — A federal appeals court panel rejected the Trump administration’s request to overturn a lower court order blocking deployment of National Guard troops in Illinois.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday said U.S. President Donald Trump‘s plan to deploy National Guard troops to Illinois “likely” violated the U.S. Constitution’s 10th Amendment, which outlines specific state power.

“The facts do not justify the president’s actions,” the 18-page ruling read, adding that “political opposition is not rebellion.”

Roughly 200 federalized National Guardsmen currently sit in Illinois via Texas and more than a dozen from California. Trump federalized an additional 300 troops over the objection of Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, both Democrats.

Trump has repeatedly described Chicago and other Democratic-governed cities as a “war zone.” Pritzker has said there’s no evidence for Trump’s claims and led the state’s legal actions against the White House with other local and state officials.

During an appearance on Politico’s The Conversation podcast — to be aired Sunday — Pritzker said that Trump has “got the biggest platform in the country, the presidency, and he just says things.” He attacked Trump’s “lies” on crime.

“It’s propaganda, again, not true, but he’ll say it over and over and over again, hoping that people will believe him,” the governor said.

On Thursday, the court panel added the administration was unlikely to prove a rebellion against the U.S. government or that Trump as president could not enforce the law using regular federal forces.

The judges wrote in the decision they saw “insufficient evidence of a rebellion or danger of rebellion in Illinois.”

“The spirited, sustained, and occasionally violent actions of demonstrators in protest of the federal government’s immigration policies and actions, without more, does not give rise to a danger of rebellion against the government’s authority,” it continued.

An hearing is scheduled for Wednesday to determined if the temporary restraining order should be extended, which remains in effect until Thursday.

“To Illinoisans: Stay safe, record what you see and post it, and continue to peacefully protest. Make sure that your community members know their rights in times of crisis,” the two-term Pritzker said Thursday night on Bluesky.

Former US National Security Adviser John Bolton is making an initial court appearance as he faces charges in an 18-count indictment of mishandling classified information. Bolton, who served under Donald Trump in his first term, has become a vocal critic of the US president.

It’s almost a year into Trump 2.0 and MAGA has gone full “snowflake.”

You know the word, the one that for the past decade the right has wielded against liberals as the ultimate epithet — you know, because libs are supposedly feelings-obsessed, physically weak, morally delicate and whiny as all get out.

Well, if you’re MAGA in 2025, you should probably embrace the term like Trump hugging an American flag with a Cheshire Cat grin.

Because if you think, among other things, that Portland is “War ravaged” like Trump claims it is and the U.S. of A. has to send in the military, you truly are a snowflake.

It sure wasn’t the left that called for the firing of people who criticized one of their heroes in the wake of their tragic death. Or that revoked visas over it. Or cheered when a late-night talk show host was temporarily suspended after the FCC chairman threatened to punish his network, as Brendan Carr did to ABC when he told a podcaster Disney could mete out punishment to Jimmy Kimmel “the easy way or hard way.”

Which president complains any time someone doesn’t think they’re the greatest leader in human history? Threatens retribution against foes real and imagined every waking second? Whines like he’s a bottle of Chardonnay?

Trump even complained this week about a Time magazine cover photo that he proclaimed “may be the Worst of All Time.”

“They ‘disappeared’ my hair, and then had something floating on top of my head that looked like a floating crown, but an extremely small one. Really weird!” the king of MAGA-dom wrote on Truth Social.

Here’s guessing he’d have complained a little less if the “something” floating on the top of his head looked like a really, super-big crown.

President Trump speaks to reporters before boarding Air Force One prior to departure from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Sunday.

(Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images)

Watch out, Time magazine, Trump might send the Texas National Guard to your newsroom!

This is an administration that is forcing airports to run videos blaming the government shutdown on their opponents? What branch of the government just asked journalists to only publish preapproved information?

And always with the reacting to Democrat-led cities like Portland, Chicago and L.A. as if they’re Stalingrad during the siege.

Kristi Noem, Homeland Security secretary in August: “L.A. wouldn’t be standing today if President Trump hadn’t taken action then. That city would have burned down if left to the devices of the mayor and the governor of that state.”

Trump about Washington, D.C., over the summer as he issued an executive order to take over its police department in the wake of what he characterized as out-of-control crime: “It is a point of national disgrace that Washington, D.C., has a violent crime rate that is higher than some of the most dangerous places in the world.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to military brass he called in from across the world last month to declare the following: “No more beardos. The era of rampant and ridiculous shaving profiles is done.”

Welcome to our Snowflake Government. The way these people’s tough talk turns into waterworks at the slightest provocation, you’d think they were the ski slopes of Mt. Baldy come summertime.

Trump and his lackeys possess scary power and don’t hesitate to use it in the name of punishing enemies. But what betrays their inherent snowflake-ness is how much they cry about what they still don’t dominate and their continued use of brute force to try and subdue the slightest, well, slight.

The veritable pity party gnashes its teeth more and more as the months pass. Trump was so angry at the sight of people causing chaos over a relatively small area of downtown L.A. after mass raids swept Southern California in June — chaos that barely registered to what happens after a Dodgers World Series win — that he sent in the Marines.

His spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, keeps describing any nasty look or bad word thrown at migra agents as proof of them suffering a supposedly unprecedented level of assault despite never offering any concrete proof.

The Southland’s acting U.S. attorney, Bill Essayli, accused an LAPD spokesperson last week of leaking information to The Times after one of my colleagues asked him about … wait for it … an upcoming press conference.

No part of the government melts faster, however, than the agency with the apropos acronym of ICE.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement and their fellow travelers across Homeland Security are Trump’s own Praetorian Guard, tasked with carrying out his deportation deluge. They’ve relished their months in the national spotlight cast by the federal government simultaneously as an unstoppable force and an immovable object. La migra continues to crash into neighborhoods and communities like a masked avalanche of tear gas and handcuffs, justice be damned.

But have you seen how they’re flailing in Chicago?

Illinois State Police clash with demonstrators by the ICE facility in Broadview, Ill., as tensions rise over prolonged protests targeting federal ICE operations in Chicago on Oct. 10.

(Jacek Boczarski / Anadolu via Getty Images)

They’re firing pepper balls at the heads of Presbyterian priests outside detention facilities and tackling middle-aged reporters.

Border Patrol sector chief Gregory Bovino, who thinks he’s Napoleon with a crew cut and an Appalachian drawl, has accused protester Cole Sheridan of causing an unspecified groin injury even though the government couldn’t provide any video evidence during a preliminary court hearing earlier this month.

Agents have set off tear gas canisters without giving a heads-up to Chicago police. They’re detaining people without giving them a chance to prove their citizenship until hours later.

All this because — wah, wah! — Windy City residents haven’t welcomed la migra as liberators.

Bovino and his ICE buddies keep whimpering to Trump that they need the National Guard to back them up because they supposedly can’t do their job despite being the ones armed and masked up and backed by billions of dollars in new funds.

That’s why the government is now pushing tech giants to crack down on how activists are organizing. In the past two weeks, Apple has taken down apps that tracked actions by ICE agents and a Chicago Facebook group that was a clearinghouse for migra sightings at the request of the Department of Justice.

On X, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi bragged that she “will continue engaging tech companies to eliminate platforms where radicals can incite imminent violence against federal law enforcement” despite offering no evidence whatsoever — because who needs facts in the face of Trump’s blizzard of lies?

Since the start of all this madness, I’ve seen the left offer a rejoinder to the snowflake charge: the slogan “ICE Melts,” usually accompanied by a drawing of the action at hand. It’s meant to inspire activists by reminding them that la migra is not nearly as mighty as the right makes them out to be.

That’s clever. But the danger of all these conservative snowflakes turning into a sopping mess the way they do over their perceived victimhood is that the resulting flood threatens to drown out a little thing we’d come to love over many, many, many years.

Democracy.

Oct. 16 (UPI) — President Donald Trump announced a deal Thursday between his administration and a pharmaceutical company that could reduce the cost of some fertility medications.

Administration officials say the deal between the government and EMD Serono will help millions of U.S. women who have trouble conceiving afford the cost of medications that could help.

“In the Trump administration, we want to make it easier for couples to have babies, raise children and start the families they’ve always dreamed about,” Trump said during his Oval Office announcement.

The president said during the announcement that EMD Serono, the world’s largest fertility drug manufacturer, has agreed to provide discounts for the drugs it sells in the United States, including Gonal-f, which is used to treat infertility by men and women.

A fertility drug cycle typically costs between $5,000 and $6,000, the administration said, and only about 30% of families have access to employer insurance that will cover the treatment. Women trying to conceive can require different amounts of the drug.

Trump said his administration is working with employers to make it easier for them to offer supplemental insurance coverage for fertility treatments.

“As a result of these actions, the per-cycle cost of drugs used in IVF will fall by an estimated 73% for American consumers, and the numbers are going to actually be very substantially higher as time goes by when it really kicks in,” Trump continued during the announcement.

Trump blamed inflated fertility drug prices as a reason for the high cost of IVF treatment, and claimed the cost for the procedure is 700% times more expensive in the United States than in the rest of the world.

Seroni said in its statement that IVF patients will be able to buy Gonal-f at an 84% discount.

It was a major talking point in the final months of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign: If re-elected, the Republican leader pledged to make in vitro fertilisation (IVF) free for those seeking to get pregnant.

“Under the Trump administration, we are going to be paying for that treatment,” Trump told NBC News last year, adding that his plans would cover “all Americans that get it, all Americans that need it”.

“We’re going to be paying for that treatment. Or we’re going to be mandating that the insurance company pay.”

While that campaign promise remains unrealised, the Trump administration took a step on Thursday to make the procedure more accessible.

Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump announced a collaboration with the company EMD Serono, a subsidiary of the pharmaceutical giant Merck, to offer lower-priced fertility drugs on his upcoming prescription marketplace, TrumpRx.

“ EMD Serono, the largest fertility drug manufacturer in the world, has agreed to provide massive discounts to all fertility drugs they sell in the United States, including the most popular drug of all, the IVF drug Gonal-F,” Trump told reporters.

Expanding TrumpRx project

The announcement marks the third major pharmaceutical company to agree to provide discounted products on TrumpRx, a direct-to-consumer website slated to launch in 2026.

Trump had threatened drug companies in September with a 100-percent tariff on their products unless they started to build manufacturing facilities in the US.

But that tariff was postponed after the pharmaceutical manufacturer Pfizer announced a deal with TrumpRx on September 30, a day before the tax hike was slated to hit. AstraZeneca, another power player in the industry, followed suit last week.

In Thursday’s news conference, Trump once again credited his tariff threats with bringing the companies to heel.

“They’ll bring a significant portion of their drug manufacturing back to the United States,” Trump said of EMD Serono. “That’s for a lot of reasons, but primarily because of the election result, November 5th, and maybe most importantly because of the tariffs.”

In addition to the forthcoming discounts from EMD Serono, Trump indicated he would encourage insurance companies to expand coverage for IVF treatments.

In the US, laws vary by state as to whether health insurance must cover fertility treatments like IVF. Trump touted the guidance as a breakthrough in making reproductive healthcare more accessible and affordable.

“Effective immediately, for the first time ever, we will make it legal for companies to offer supplemental insurance plans specifically for fertility,” Trump said.

“ Americans will be able to opt in, do specialised coverage, just as they get vision and dental insurance.”

Those plans typically come at an extra fee, on top of regular health insurance rates. That raises questions about how effective the new insurance guidance will be.

More than 26 million Americans – roughly 8 percent of the population – are uninsured, according to US census data. Even more lack access to supplemental policies for dental and vision care.

The American Dental Association, an industry professional group, estimates more than 22 percent of US adults lacked dental insurance as of 2021.

Trump seemed to acknowledge gaps in coverage during his remarks, but he maintained that the new government guidance would offer some adults a pathway to parenthood.

“They’re going to get fertility insurance for the first time,” he continued. “So I don’t know.  I don’t know how well these things are covered.”

A campaign-trail controversy

The Republican leader also credited a 2024 court decision with propelling him to focus on IVF treatments.

IVF involves removing eggs from a patient’s ovaries and fertilising them in a laboratory environment. These eggs are then inserted into the patient’s uterus or frozen for future use.

The use of such treatments is on the rise in the US: In 2023, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine found that 95,860 babies were born as the result of an IVF procedure.

But in February the following year, a ruling from the Alabama Supreme Court prompted fears about whether IVF would remain widely available.

In a novel decision, the court – located in a strongly conservative state – ruled that embryos created through IVF could be considered children under state law, thereby making the destruction of such embryos potentially a criminal act.

The decision sent shockwaves throughout the IVF industry, with clinics in Alabama temporarily suspending services. Discarding embryos is standard practice in IVF: Generally, more eggs are collected than will ultimately be used, and not all fertilised eggs will be suitable to start a pregnancy.

Within weeks, the Alabama state legislature stepped in to shield IVF providers from prosecution. But the ruling created lingering concerns that IVF could be targeted by anti-abortion rights advocates.

On Thursday, Trump revisited that controversy, which happened in the midst of his re-election bid. He called the court’s ruling a “bad decision” and credited it with helping to make him aware of IVF.

“I wasn’t that familiar with it,” Trump said. “Now I think I’ve sort of become the father.”

Senator Katie Britt, who represents the state of Alabama, echoed that evaluation, praising Trump for taking steps to protect IVF.

Thursday was not the first time Trump has gestured at lowering costs for the fertility procedure. In February, he also issued a presidential order calling on his administration to start “protecting IVF access and aggressively reducing out-of-pocket and health plan costs”.

“ Mr President, this is the most pro-IVF thing that any president in the history of the United States of America has done,” Britt told Trump on Thursday. “You are the reason why the Republican Party is now the party of parents.”

Addressing the US birthrate

Trump, who previously called himself the “fertilisation president”  during a Women’s History Month event, also framed the new measures as progress towards increasing the US birthrate.

In April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that fertility remained at a historic low, rising slightly in 2024 to 1.6 births per woman.

Those numbers have fuelled a push within the Republican Party to ignite a new baby boom, with right-wing figures like tech billionaire Elon Musk going so far as to call the low birthrate “the biggest danger civilization faces by far”.

At Thursday’s meeting, top figures in the Trump administration echoed those concerns, including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.

“We are below replacement right now,” he said, referencing the number of births needed to outpace deaths in the US. “That is a national security threat to our country.”

Mehmet Oz, who serves under Kennedy as the administrator for Medicaid services, took a more positive approach, framing the new IVF guidance as the beginning of a reversal of that downward trend.

“There are going to be a lot of Trump babies,” Oz quipped. “I think that’s probably a good thing. But it turns out the fundamental creative force in society is about making babies.”

But it remains to be seen if insurance companies and employers will follow through with Trump’s guidance to offer supplemental fertility benefits for adults seeking to get pregnant.

Most Americans receive health insurance as part of their workplace benefits. Senator Britt argued the guidelines would put employers “in the driver’s seat”, allowing them to shape the benefits they offer to their workers.

“Employers are going to be able to decide how to cover the root causes of infertility, things like obesity and metabolic health, and other things that are impacting infertility,” she said. “We want employers to be the ones that can make those decisions, not the government.”

But for Democrats, the guidance fell far short of what Trump promised on the campaign trail.

“Donald Trump lied when he pledged to make IVF available to every family for FREE,” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts posted afterwards on social media. “It’s insulting – a broken promise.”

A federal grand jury in Maryland has indicted John Bolton, United States President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, over his handling of classified documents, charging him with retaining and transmitting national defence information.

The indictment, filed in federal court in Maryland on Thursday, charges Bolton with eight counts of transmission of national defence information and 10 counts of retention of national defence information, all in violation of the Espionage Act.

Each count is punishable by up to 10 years in prison if Bolton is convicted, but any sentence would be determined by a judge based on a range of factors.

Bolton’s lawyer Abbe Lowell said in a statement that his client “did not unlawfully share or store any information.”

Bolton served as US ambassador to the United Nations as well as White House national security adviser during Trump’s first term before emerging as one of the president’s most vocal critics. He described Trump as unfit to be president in a memoir he released last year.

The charges come two months after FBI agents searched Bolton’s home and office, seeking evidence of possible violations of the Espionage Act, which makes it a crime to remove, retain or transmit national defence records, according to partially unsealed search warrants filed in federal court.

In his Maryland home, agents seized two cellphones, documents in folders labelled “Trump I-IV” and a binder labelled “statements and reflections to Allied Strikes”, according to court documents.

In Bolton’s office, agents found records labelled “confidential”, including documents that referenced weapons of mass destruction, the US mission to the United Nations, and other materials related to the government’s strategic communications, according to court records.

The indictment levied Thursday alleges Bolton transmitted confidential information via personal email, used private messaging accounts to send sensitive documents that were classified as top secret and illegally retained intelligence documents in his home, according to the Department of Justice.

Bolton is accused of sharing more than 1,000 pages of information about government activities with relatives, according to the indictment.

The indictment says the notes Bolton shared with the two people included information he gleaned from meetings with senior government officials, discussions with foreign leaders, and intelligence briefings.

Prosecutors said a “cyber actor” tied to the Iranian government hacked Bolton’s personal email after he left government service and accessed classified information. A representative for Bolton told the government about the hack but did not report that he stored classified information in the email account, according to the indictment.

“These charges stem from portions of Amb. Bolton’s personal diaries over his 45-year career – records that are unclassified, shared only with his immediate family, and known to the FBI as far back as 2021,” Bolton’s lawyer Abbe Lowell said in an emailed statement. “Like many public officials throughout history, Amb. Bolton kept diaries – that is not a crime.”

Trump, who campaigned for the presidency on a vow of retribution after facing a slew of legal woes once his first term in the White House ended in 2021, has dispensed with decades-long norms designed to insulate federal law enforcement from political pressures.

In recent months, he has actively pushed Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Justice Department to bring charges against his perceived adversaries, even driving out a prosecutor he deemed to be moving too slowly in doing so.

Asked by reporters at the White House about the Bolton indictment on Thursday, Trump said: “He’s a bad guy.”

Bolton served as national security adviser during Trump’s first term from 2018 to 2019. In that time, he clashed with the president over Iran, Afghanistan and North Korea before getting fired in 2019.

He has subsequently criticised Trump’s approach to foreign policy and government, including in a 2020 book titled The Room Where it Happened, which portrayed the president as ill-informed on foreign policy.

The search warrant affidavit said a National Security Council official had reviewed the book manuscript and told Bolton in 2020 that it appeared to contain “significant amounts” of classified information, some at a top-secret level.

Earlier this month, New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led a legal case against Trump over alleged fraud in his businesses, was charged with lying on a mortgage application, drawing accusations of political vindictiveness by the White House.

Former FBI Director James Comey was indicted on September 25 on charges of making false statements and obstructing a congressional investigation, which he denies. Trump has feuded with Comey since the Russia investigation, which examined possible ties between Trump’s 2016 election campaign and Moscow.

The Justice Department has also launched investigations into US Senator Adam Schiff and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. Schiff and Cook have not been charged, and both reject any suggestion of wrongdoing.

WASHINGTON — President Trump confirmed Wednesday that he has authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela and said he was weighing carrying out land operations on the country.

The acknowledgement of covert action in Venezuela by the U.S. spy agency comes after the U.S. military in recent weeks has carried out a series of deadly strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean. U.S. forces have destroyed at least five boats since early September, killing 27 people, and four of those vessels originated from Venezuela.

Asked during an event in the Oval Office on Wednesday why he had authorized the CIA to take action in Venezuela, Trump affirmed he had made the move.

“I authorized for two reasons, really,” Trump replied. “No. 1, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America,” he said. “And the other thing, the drugs, we have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela, and a lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in through the sea.”

Trump added the administration “is looking at land” as it considers further strikes in the region. He declined to say whether the CIA has authority to take action against President Nicolás Maduro.

Trump made the unusual acknowledgement of a CIA operation shortly after the New York Times published that the CIA had been authorized to carry out covert action in Venezuela.

Maduro pushes back

On Wednesday, Maduro lashed out at the record of the U.S. spy agency in various conflicts around the world without directly addressing Trump’s comments about authorizing the CIA to carry out covert operations in Venezuela.

“No to regime change that reminds us so much of the [overthrows] in the failed eternal wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and so on,” Maduro said at a televised event of the National Council for Sovereignty and Peace, which is made up of representatives from various political, economic, academic and cultural sectors in Venezuela.

“No to the coups carried out by the CIA, which remind us so much of the 30,000 disappeared,” a figure estimated by human rights organizations such as the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo during the military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983). He also referred to the 1973 coup in Chile.

“How long will the CIA continue to carry on with its coups? Latin America doesn’t want them, doesn’t need them and repudiates them,” Maduro added.

The objective is “to say no to war in the Caribbean, no to war in South America, yes to peace,” he said.

Speaking in English, Maduro said: “Not war, yes peace, not war. Is that how you would say it? Who speaks English? Not war, yes peace, the people of the United States, please. Please, please, please.”

In a statement, Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday rejected “the bellicose and extravagant statements by the President of the United States, in which he publicly admits to having authorized operations to act against the peace and stability of Venezuela.”

“This unprecedented statement constitutes a very serious violation of international law and the United Nations’ Charter and obliges the community of countries to denounce these clearly immoderate and inconceivable statements,” said the statement, which Foreign Minister Yván Gil posted on his Telegram channel.

Resistance from Congress

Early this month, the Trump administration declared drug cartels to be unlawful combatants and pronounced the United States is now in an “armed conflict” with them, justifying the military action as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States.

The move has spurred anger in Congress from members of both major political parties that Trump was effectively committing an act of war without seeking congressional authorization.

On Wednesday, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said while she supports cracking down on trafficking, the administration has gone too far.

“The Trump administration’s authorization of covert CIA action, conducting lethal strikes on boats and hinting at land operations in Venezuela slides the United States closer to outright conflict with no transparency, oversight or apparent guardrails,” New Hampshire’s Shaheen said. “The American people deserve to know if the administration is leading the U.S. into another conflict, putting servicemembers at risk or pursuing a regime-change operation.”

The Trump administration has yet to provide underlying evidence to lawmakers proving that the boats targeted by the U.S. military were in fact carrying narcotics, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The officials, who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the administration has only pointed to unclassified video clips of the strikes posted on social media by Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and has yet to produce “hard evidence” that the vessels were carrying drugs.

Lawmakers have expressed frustration that the administration is offering little detail about how it came to decide the U.S. is in armed conflict with cartels or which criminal organizations it claims are “unlawful combatants.”

Even as the U.S. military has carried out strikes on some vessels, the U.S. Coast Guard has continued with its typical practice of stopping boats and seizing drugs.

Trump on Wednesday explained away the action, saying the traditional approach hasn’t worked.

“Because we’ve been doing that for 30 years, and it has been totally ineffective. They have faster boats,” he said. ”They’re world-class speedboats, but they’re not faster than missiles.”

Human rights groups have raised concerns that the strikes flout international law and are extrajudicial killings.

Madhani writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Jorge Rueda in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this report.

GREENBELT, Md. — Former Trump administration national security advisor John Bolton was charged Thursday in a federal investigation into the potential mishandling of classified information, a person familiar with the matter told the Associated Press.

The investigation into Bolton, who served for more than a year in President Trump’s first administration before being fired in 2019, burst into public view in August when the FBI searched his home in Maryland and his office in Washington for classified records he may have held onto from his years in government.

The existence of the indictment was confirmed to the AP by a person familiar with the matter who could not publicly discuss the charges and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

Agents during the August search seized multiple documents labeled “classified,” “confidential” and “secret” from Bolton’s office, according to previously unsealed court filings. Some of the seized records appeared to concern weapons of mass destruction, national “strategic communication” and the U.S. mission to the United Nations, the filings stated.

The indictment sets the stage for a closely watched court case centering on a longtime fixture in Republican foreign policy circles who became known for his hawkish views on American power and who after leaving Trump’s first government emerged as a prominent and vocal critic of the president. Though the investigation that produced the indictment began before Trump’s second term, the case will unfold against the backdrop of broader concerns that his Justice Department is being weaponized to go after his political adversaries.

It follows separate indictments over the last month accusing former FBI Director James Comey of lying to Congress and New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James of committing bank fraud and making a false statement, charges they both deny. Both of those cases were filed in federal court in Virginia by a prosecutor Trump hastily installed in the position after growing frustrated that investigations into high-profile enemies had not resulted in prosecution.

The Bolton case, by contrast, was filed in Maryland by a U.S. attorney who before being elevated to the job had been a career prosecutor in the office.

Questions about Bolton’s handling of classified information date back years. He faced a lawsuit and a Justice Department investigation after leaving office related to information in a 2020 book he published, “The Room Where it Happened,” that portrayed Trump as grossly uninformed about foreign policy.

The Trump administration asserted that Bolton’s manuscript included classified information that could harm national security if exposed. Bolton’s lawyers have said he moved forward with the book after a White House National Security Council official, with whom Bolton had worked for months, said the manuscript no longer contained classified information.

A search warrant affidavit that was previously unsealed said a National Security Council official had reviewed the book manuscript and told Bolton in 2020 that it appeared to contain “significant amounts” of classified information, some at a top-secret level.

Bolton’s attorney Abbe Lowell has said that many of the documents seized in August had been approved as part of a pre-publication review for Bolton’s book. He said that many were decades old, from Bolton’s long career in the State Department, as an assistant attorney general and as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

The indictment is a dramatic moment in Bolton’s long career in government. He served in the Justice Department during President Reagan’s administration and was the State Department’s point man on arms control during George W. Bush’s presidency. Bolton was nominated by Bush to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, but the strong supporter of the Iraq war was unable to win Senate confirmation and resigned after serving 17 months as a Bush recess appointment. That allowed him to hold the job on a temporary basis without Senate confirmation.

In 2018, Bolton was appointed to serve as Trump’s third national security advisor. But his brief tenure was characterized by disputes with the president over North Korea, Iran and Ukraine.

Those rifts ultimately led to Bolton’s departure, with Trump announcing on social media in September 2019 that he had accepted Bolton’s resignation. Bolton subsequently criticized Trump’s approach to foreign policy and government in his 2020 book, including by alleging that Trump directly tied providing military aid to the country’s willingness to conduct investigations into Joe Biden, who was soon to be Trump’s Democratic 2020 election rival, and members of his family.

Trump responded by slamming Bolton as a “washed-up guy” and a “crazy” warmonger who would have led the country into “World War Six.” Trump also said at the time that the book contained “highly classified information” and that Bolton “did not have approval” for publishing it.

Tucker, Durkin Richer and Kunzelman write for the Associated Press. Tucker and Durkin Richer reported from Washington.

Jose Raul Mulino says the visa-removal policy is ‘not coherent’ with the ‘good relationship’ he hopes to have with the US.

Panama President Jose Raul Mulino said that someone at the United States Embassy has been threatening to cancel the visas of Panamanian officials.

His statements come as the administration of US President Donald Trump pressures Panama to limit its ties to China.

Responding to a reporter’s question at his weekly news conference, Mulino said — without offering evidence — that an official at the US Embassy is “threatening to take visas”, adding that such actions are “not coherent with the good relationship I aspire to maintain with the United States”. He did not name the official.

The US Embassy in Panama did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Trump administration has previously declined to comment on individual visa decisions.

But in September, the US Department of State said in a statement that the country was committed to countering China’s influence in Central America. It added that it would restrict visas for people who maintained relationships with China’s Communist Party or undermined democracy in the region on behalf of China.

Earlier this week, the Trump administration revoked the visas of six foreigners deemed by US officials to have made derisive comments or made light of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk last month.

Similar cases have surfaced recently in the region. In April, former Costa Rica President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias said the US had cancelled his visa. In July, Vanessa Castro, vice president of Costa Rica’s Congress, said that the US Embassy told her her visa had been revoked, citing alleged contacts with the Chinese Communist Party.

Panama has become especially sensitive to the US-China tensions because of the strategically important Panama Canal.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Panama in February on his first foreign trip as the top US diplomat and called for Panama to immediately reduce China’s influence over the canal.

Panama has strongly denied Chinese influence over canal operations but has gone along with US pressure to push the Hong Kong-based company that operated ports on both ends of the canal to sell its concession to a consortium.

Mulino has said that Panama will maintain the canal’s neutrality.

“They’re free to give and take a visa to anyone they want, but not threatening that, ‘If you don’t do something, I’ll take the visa,’” Mulino said Thursday.

He noted that the underlying issue — the conflict between the US and China — “doesn’t involve Panama”.

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Thursday warned Hamas “we will have no choice but to go in and kill them” if internal bloodshed persists in Gaza.

The grim warning from Trump came after he previously downplayed the internal violence in the territory since a ceasefire and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas went into effect last week.

Trump said Tuesday that Hamas had taken out “a couple of gangs that were very bad” and had killed a number of gang members. “That didn’t bother me much, to be honest with you,” he said.

The president did not say how he would follow through on his threat posted on his Truth Social platform, and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment seeking clarity.

But Trump also made clear he had limited patience for the killings that Hamas was carrying out against rival factions inside the devastated territory.

“They will disarm, and if they don’t do so, we will disarm them, and it’ll happen quickly and perhaps violently,” Trump said.

The Hamas-run police maintained a high degree of public security after the militants seized power in Gaza 18 years ago while also cracking down on dissent. They largely melted away in recent months as Israeli forces seized large areas of Gaza and targeted Hamas security forces with airstrikes.

Powerful local families and armed gangs, including some anti-Hamas factions backed by Israel, stepped into the void. Many are accused of hijacking humanitarian aid and selling it for profit, contributing to Gaza’s starvation crisis.

The ceasefire plan introduced by Trump had called for all hostages — living and dead — to be handed over by a deadline that expired Monday. But under the deal, if that didn’t happen, Hamas was to share information about deceased hostages and try to hand them over as soon as possible.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel “will not compromise” and demanded that Hamas fulfill the requirements laid out in the ceasefire deal about the return of hostages’ bodies.

Hamas’ armed wing said in a statement Wednesday that the group honored the ceasefire’s terms and handed over the remains of the hostages it had access to.

The United States announced last week that it is sending about 200 troops to Israel to help support and monitor the ceasefire deal in Gaza as part of a team that includes partner nations and nongovernmental organizations. But U.S. officials have stressed that U.S. forces would not set foot in Gaza.

Israeli officials have also been angered by the pace of the return of the remains of dead hostages the militant group had been holding in captivity. Hamas had agreed to return 28 bodies as part of the ceasefire deal in addition to 20 living hostages, who were released earlier this week.

Hamas has assured the U.S. through intermediaries that it is working to return dead hostages, according to two senior U.S. advisors. The advisors, who were not authorized to comment publicly and briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity, said they do not believe Hamas has violated the deal.

Madhani writes for the Associated Press.

BREAKINGBREAKING,

Statement appears to signal about-face from US president, who previously backed Hamas’s crackdown on Gaza gangs.

United States President Donald Trump has threatened to break the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas if the Palestinian group continues to target gangs and alleged Israeli collaborators in Gaza.

“If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the Deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them,” Trump wrote in a social media post on Thursday. “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

The statement appears to signal an about-face from Trump, who earlier this week expressed support for Hamas’s crackdown on gangs in the Palestinian territory.

“They did take out a couple of gangs that were very bad, very, very bad gangs,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday. “And they did take them out, and they killed a number of gang members. And that didn’t bother me much, to be honest with you. That’s OK.”

More to come…

WASHINGTON — President Trump is scheduled to speak with Russia’s Vladimir Putin Thursday as he considers Ukraine’s push for long-range missiles, according to a White House official who was not authorized to comment on the private call and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The call comes ahead of Trump’s meeting on Friday at the White House with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The Ukrainian leader has been pressing Trump to sell Kyiv Tomahawk missiles which would allow Ukrainian forces to strike deeper into Russian territory.

Zelensky has argued such strikes would help compel Putin to take Trump’s calls for direct negotiations between the Russia and Ukraine to end the war more seriously.

With a fragile Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage deal holding, Trump has said he’s now turning his attention to bringing Russia’s war on Ukraine to an end and is weighing providing Kyiv long-range weaponry as he looks to prod Moscow to the negotiating table.

Ending the wars in Ukraine and Gaza was central to Trump’s 2024 reelection pitch, in which he persistently pilloried President Joe Biden for his handling of the conflicts. Yet, like his predecessor, Trump also has been stymied by Putin as he’s unsuccessfully pressed the Russian leader to hold direct talks with Zelensky to end the war that is nearing its fourth year.

But fresh off the Gaza ceasefire, Trump is showing new confidence that he can finally make headway on ending the Russian invasion. He’s also signaling that he’s ready to step up pressure on Putin if he doesn’t come to the table soon.

“Interestingly we made progress today, because of what’s happened in the Middle East,” Trump said of the Russia-Ukraine war on Wednesday evening as he welcomed supporters of his White House ballroom project to a glitzy dinner.

Earlier this week in Jerusalem, in a speech to the Knesset, Trump predicted the truce in Gaza would lay the groundwork for the U.S. to help Israel and many of its Middle East neighbors normalize relations. But Trump also made clear his top foreign policy priority now is ending the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II.

“First we have to get Russia done,” Trump said, turning to his special envoy Steve Witkoff, who has also served as his administration’s chief interlocutor with Putin. “We gotta get that one done. If you don’t mind, Steve, let’s focus on Russia first. All right?”

Trump weighs Tomahawks for Ukraine

Trump is set to host Zelensky for talks Friday, their fourth face-to-face meeting this year.

Ahead of the meeting, Trump has said he’s weighing selling Kyiv long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, which would allow Ukraine to strike deep into Russian territory — if Putin doesn’t settle the war soon. Zelensky, who has long sought the weapons system, said it would help Ukraine put the sort of pressure on Russia needed to get Putin to engage in peace talks.

Putin has made clear that providing Ukraine with Tomahawks would cross a red line and further damage relations between Moscow and Washington.

But Trump has been undeterred.

“He’d like to have Tomahawks,” Trump said of Zelensky on Tuesday. “We have a lot of Tomahawks.”

Agreeing to sell Ukraine Tomahawks would be a splashy move, said Mark Montgomery, an analyst at the conservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington. But it could take years to supply and train Kyiv on the Tomahawk system.

Montgomery said Ukraine could be better served in the near term with a surge of Extended Range Attack Munition (ERAM) missiles and Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS. The U.S. already approved the sale of up to 3,350 ERAMs to Kyiv earlier this year.

The Tomahawk, with a range of about 995 miles (1,600 kilometers), would allow Ukraine to strike far deeper in Russian territory than either the ERAM (about 285 miles, or 460 km) or ATACMS (about 186 miles, or 300 kilometers).

“To provide Tomahawks is as much a political decision as it is a military decision,” Montgomery said. “The ERAM is shorter range, but this can help them put pressure on Russia operationally, on their logistics, the command and control, and its force disbursement within several hundred kilometers of the front line. It can be very effective.”

Signs of White House interest in new Russia sanctions

Zelensky is expected to reiterate his plea to Trump to hit Russia’s economy with further sanctions, something the Republican, to date, has appeared reluctant to do.

Congress has weighed legislation that would lead to tougher sanctions on Moscow, but Trump has largely focused his attention on pressuring NATO members and other allies to cut off their purchases of Russian oil, the engine fueling Moscow’s war machine. To that end, Trump said Wednesday that India, which became one of Russia’s biggest crude buyers after the Ukraine invasion, had agreed to stop buying oil from Moscow.

Waiting for Trump’s blessing is legislation in the Senate that would impose steep tariffs on countries that purchase Russia’s oil, gas, uranium and other exports in an attempt to cripple Moscow economically.

Though the president hasn’t formally endorsed it — and Republican leaders do not plan to move forward without his support — the White House has shown, behind the scenes, more interest in the bill in recent weeks.

Administration officials have gone through the legislation in depth, offering line edits and requesting technical changes, according to two officials with knowledge of the discussions between the White House and the Senate. That has been interpreted on Capitol Hill as a sign that Trump is getting more serious about the legislation, sponsored by close ally Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., along with Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.

A White House official said the administration is working with lawmakers to make sure that “introduced bills advance the president’s foreign policy objectives and authorities.” The official, who was granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations, said any sanctions package needs to give the president “complete flexibility.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Wednesday the administration is waiting for greater buy-in from Europe, which he noted faces a bigger threat from Russian aggression than the U.S. does.

“So all I hear from the Europeans is that Putin is coming to Warsaw,” Bessent said. “There are very few things in life I’m sure about. I’m sure he’s not coming to Boston. So, we will respond … if our European partners will join us.”

Madhani and Kim write for the Associated Press. AP writers Fatima Hussein, Chris Megerian and Didi Tang contributed to this report.

There are few laws President Trump name-checks more frequently than the Insurrection Act.

A 200-year-old constellation of statutes, the act grants emergency powers to thrust active-duty soldiers into civilian police duty, something otherwise barred by federal law.

Trump and his team have threatened to invoke it almost daily for weeks — most recently on Monday, after a reporter pressed the president about his escalating efforts to dispatch federalized troops to Democrat-led cities.

“Insurrection Act — yeah, I mean, I could do that,” Trump said. “Many presidents have.”

Roughly a third of U.S. presidents have called on the statutes at some point — but history also shows the law has been used only in moments of extraordinary crisis and political upheaval.

The Insurrection Act was Abraham Lincoln’s sword against secessionists and Dwight D. Eisenhower’s shield around the Little Rock Nine, the young Black students who were the first to desegregate schools in Arkansas.

Ulysses S. Grant invoked it more than half a dozen times to thwart statehouse coups, stem race massacres and smother the Ku Klux Klan in its South Carolina cradle.

But it has just as often been wielded to crush labor strikes and strangle protest movements. The last time it was invoked, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was in elementary school and most U.S. soldiers had not yet been born.

Now, many fear Trump could call on the law to quell opposition to his agenda.

“The Democrats were fools not to amend the Insurrection Act in 2021,” said Kevin Carroll, former senior counsel in the Department of Homeland Security during Trump’s first term. “It gives the president almost untrammeled power.”

It also precludes most judicial review.

“It can’t even be challenged,” Trump boasted Monday. “I don’t have to go there yet, because I’m winning on appeal.”

If that winning streak cools, as legal experts say it soon could, some fear the Insurrection Act would be the administration’s next move.

“The Insurrection Act is very broadly worded, but there is a history of even the executive branch interpreting it narrowly,” said John C. Dehn, an associate professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law.

The president first floated using the Insurrection Act against protesters in the summer of 2020. But members of his Cabinet and military advisors blocked the move, as they did efforts to use the National Guard for immigration enforcement and the military to patrol the border.

“They have this real fixation on using the military domestically,” Carroll said. “It’s sinister.”

In his second term, Trump has instead relied on an obscure subsection of the U.S. code to surge federalized soldiers into blue cities, claiming it confers many of the same powers as the Insurrection Act.

Federal judges disagreed. Challenges to deployments in Los Angeles, Portland, Ore., and Chicago have since clogged the appellate courts, with three West Coast cases before the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and one pending in the 7th Circuit, which has jurisdiction over Illinois.

The result is a growing knot of litigation that experts say will fall to the Supreme Court to unwind.

As of Wednesday, troops in Oregon and Illinois are activated but can’t be deployed. The Oregon case is further complicated by precedent from California, where federalized soldiers have patrolled the streets since June with the 9th Circuit’s blessing. That ruling is set to be reheard by the circuit on Oct. 22 and could be reversed.

Meanwhile, what California soldiers are legally allowed to do while they’re federalized is also under review, meaning even if Trump retains the authority to call up troops, he might not be able to use them.

Scholars are split over how the Supreme Court might rule on any of those issues.

“At this point, no court … has expressed any sympathy to these arguments, because they’re so weak,” said Harold Hongju Koh, a professor at Yale Law School.

Koh listed the high court’s most conservative members, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., as unlikely to push back against the president’s authority to invoke the Insurrection Act, but said even some of Trump’s appointees — Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — might be skeptical, along with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

“I don’t think Thomas and Alito are going to stand up to Trump, but I’m not sure that Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett and Roberts can read this statute to give him [those] powers.”

The Insurrection Act sidesteps those fights almost entirely.

It “would change not only the legal state of play, but fundamentally change the facts we have on the ground, because what the military would be authorized to do would be so much broader,” said Christopher Mirasola, an assistant professor at the University of Houston Law Center.

Congress created the Insurrection Act as a fail-safe in response to armed mobs attacking their neighbors and organized militias seeking to overthrow elected officials. But experts caution that the military is not trained to keep law and order, and that the country has a strong tradition against domestic deployments dating to the Revolutionary War.

“The uniformed military leadership in general does not like getting involved in the domestic law enforcement issue at all,” Carroll said. “The only similarities between police and military is that they have uniforms and guns.”

Today, the commander in chief can invoke the law in response to a call for help from state leaders, as George H.W. Bush did to quell the 1992 Rodney King uprising in L.A.

The statute can also be used to make an end-run around elected officials who refuse to enforce the law, or mobs who make it impossible — something Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy Jr. did in defense of school integration.

Still, modern presidents have generally shied from using the Insurrection Act even in circumstances with strong legal justification. George W. Bush weighed invoking the law after Hurricane Katrina created chaos in New Orleans but ultimately declined over fears it would intensify the already bitter power struggle between the state and federal government.

“There are any number of Justice Department internal opinions where attorneys general like Robert Kennedy or Nicholas Katzenbach said, ‘We cannot invoke the Insurrection Act because the courts are open,’” Koh said.

Despite its extraordinary power, Koh and other experts said the law has guardrails that may make it more difficult for the president to invoke it in the face of naked bicyclists or protesters in inflatable frog suits, whom federal forces have faced down recently in Portland.

“There are still statutory requirements that have to be met,” said Dehn, the Loyola professor. “The problem the Trump administration would have in invoking [the law] is that very practically, they are able to arrest people who break the law and prosecute people who break the law.”

That may be why Trump and his administration have yet to invoke the act.

“It reminds me of the run-up to Jan. 6,” Carroll said. “It’s a similar feeling that people have, a sense that an illegal or immoral and unwise order is about to be given.”

He and others say an invocation of the Insurrection Act would shift widespread concern about military policing of American streets into existential territory.

“If there’s a bad faith invocation of the Insurrection Act to send federal troops to go beat up anti-ICE protesters, there should be a general strike in the United States,” Carroll said. “It’s a real break-the-glass moment.”

At that point, the best defense may come from the military.

“If a really unwise and immoral order comes out … 17-year generals need to say no,” Carroll said. “They have to have the guts to put their stars on the table.”