Politics

(WASHINGTON) – President Donald Trump has dismissed Iran’s latest formal proposal as “garbage.” While Iran was said to include some nuclear concessions, Mr. Trump has said he wants to remove highly enriched uranium from the country and prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

With talks between Iran and the U.S. at a standstill during the shaky ceasefire, tensions remain high and threaten to tip the Middle East back into open warfare and prolong the worldwide energy crisis sparked by the conflict.  

Meantime, President Trump says the U.S. is closely monitoring Iran’s nuclear material, highlighting Space Force surveillance that can identify individual approaching storage in real time. He called securing the material at top priority and warned of decisive military action if Iranian forces try to access it, urging Tehran to comply with nuclear agreements. 

That statement comes a bit, stalled negotiations, ongoing Iranian provocations, and US efforts to block Iran’s aggressive maritime activities. 

All of this comes as President Trump has just returned to Washington after meeting the Chinese President Xi Jinping. 

China claims it is actively involved in mediating the conflict in Iran. It is collaborating with Pakistan to propose a peace plan that aims to achieve a ceasefire and reopen critical waterways, particularly the Strait of Hormuz. This initiative reflects China’s desire to play a more prominent role in Middle Eastern diplomacy. 

Iran still has a chokehold on the Streit of our moves, a vital waterway, where a fifth of the world’s oil passed through before the war, and America is blocking Iranian ports.

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WASHINGTON, May 16 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump threatened a primary challenge on Saturday for hardline conservative Representative Lauren Boebert, until now a staunch Trump ally, after she campaigned for maverick Representative Thomas Massie in his Kentucky district.

• “Boebert is campaigning for the Worst ‘Republican’ Congressman in the History of our Country, Thomas Massie, of the Great Commonwealth of Kentucky, and anybody who can be that dumb deserves a good Primary fight!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

• Boebert, a Colorado congresswoman, responded with a post on X: “Yes, I saw the President’s post. No, I’m not mad or offended. I knew the risks when I agreed to stand by my friend Thomas Massie. I was, and will be, America First, America Always, and MAGA.”

• Trump has vowed to unseat Massie, a Republican who has defied the president in Congress over major legislation and the Iran war and led his party’s drive to release government files on the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

• The president’s quest to unseat Massie poses a test for his hold on the Republican Party.

• Trump’s social media post came hours after Boebert made campaign appearances for Massie, who faces Trump-endorsed challenger Ed Gallrein, a retired Navy SEAL, in Tuesday’s Republican primary in Kentucky.

• “Is anyone interested in running against Weak Minded Lauren Boebert in Colorado’s Fourth Congressional District?” Trump posted. “Just let me know, or announce your Candidacy, and I will be there for you!”

(Reporting by David MorganEditing by Rod Nickel)

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BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow advanced to a runoff in Louisiana’s Republican Senate primary Saturday, capitalizing on the power of President Donald Trump’s endorsement in another attempt to purge his party of people he views as disloyal. State Treasurer John Fleming came in second to join her in the next round of voting.

Trump supported Letlow over incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy, one of the few Republican senators who voted to convict him during his second impeachment trial over the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Cassidy, a doctor, has also clashed with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over vaccine policy, though he provided crucial support to help Kennedy get confirmed.

By receiving less than 50% of the vote, Letlow and Fleming, a former U.S. House member and Trump administration official, were unable to avoid the runoff, which will take place June 27. The GOP winner will almost certainly take the November general election because of the state’s Republican leanings.

Trump has been trying to dislodge Cassidy, one of the few Republican senators who voted to convict him during his second impeachment trial over the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The Louisiana primary comes in the middle of a month of campaigns by Trump to exact retribution on politicians who have crossed him. On May 5 he helped dislodge five of seven Indiana state senators who rejected his redistricting plan.

Next Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky will face a Trump-backed challenger, Ed Gallrein, in another Republican primary. Massie angered Trump by opposing his signature tax legislation over concerns about the national debt, pushing for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files and opposing his decision to go to war with Iran.

The president unloaded on Cassidy on Saturday morning, calling him “a disloyal disaster” and “a terrible guy” on social media. In the evening he followed up with: “Congratulations to Congresswoman Julia Letlow on a fantastic race, beating an Incumbent Senator by Record Setting Numbers.”

Jeanelle Chachere, a 66-year-old nurse, said she considers Cassidy “a phony” and voted for Letlow solely because Trump endorsed her.

“I’m going by what he says, because I like what he does,” she said.

The election was scrambled by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision gutting a part of the Voting Rights Act that affects how congressional maps are drawn. Although the Senate primary is moving forward, Louisiana leaders decided to delay House primaries until a future date to allow them to redo district lines ahead of time, a shift that threatened to cause confusion for voters on Saturday.

Mary-Patricia Wray, who has consulted for Republican and Democratic candidates in Louisiana, said the change could weigh against Cassidy by dampening turnout among voters who are less fervently pro-Trump.

“Suspending the congressional primaries hurts Cassidy,” she said. “Some people believe the Senate primary is canceled.”

Cassidy also complained that a new primary system enacted last year confused voters by requiring them to ask for a partisan ballot instead of the all-party primary previously in place. He said some called his office to say they had been unable to vote for him.

“The process that was set up was destined to be confusing,” Cassidy told reporters Friday.

Dadrius Lanus, executive director of the state Democratic Party, said his team fielded hundreds of calls from voters statewide who said the changes undermined their ability vote as they planned.

“A lot of the information should have gotten to voters well in advance,” Lanus said. “It’s literally been a whirlwind of confusion.”

Cassidy waged an aggressive campaign to convince voters he should not be counted out.

The senator’s campaign was expected to have spent roughly $9.6 million on advertising through May 16, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact. And Louisiana Freedom Fund, a super PAC supporting him, was on track to spend $12.3 million.

By comparison Letlow’s campaign, which launched Jan. 20, spent roughly $3.9 million, while a super PAC backing her, the Accountability Project, spent about $6 million.

Fleming’s campaign spent about $1.5 million.

Cassidy and Louisiana Freedom Fund ran ads attacking Letlow within days of her entering the race for supporting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, which Trump has tried to root out of the federal government.

Letlow, a college administrator before her election to the House, said she supported DEI while interviewing for the position of president of University of Louisiana-Monroe in 2020.

The ads, an attempt to characterize Letlow as a progressive trying to pass as a conservative, were one way Cassidy tried to flip the script in a race where he was on the outs with Trump.

The senator’s vote in favor of convicting the president after his 2021 impeachment has shadowed Cassidy throughout his second Senate term.

John Martin, a 68-year-old retired engineer in south Louisiana, said he would vote for Letlow because he was still upset by Cassidy’s decision. He waved a flyer from Letlow’s campaign showing her standing alongside the president.

“I know a lot more about Cassidy than I do about her,” Martin said. “But if she’s endorsed by Trump, I’m going to believe that.”

Cassidy steered clear of Trump’s ire last year, supporting Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services despite his public reservations about the nominee’s anti-vaccine views.

As chair of the Senate health committee, Cassidy has been more publicly critical of Kennedy, including over funding cuts for vaccine development.

Trump blamed Cassidy for the failed nomination of his second choice for surgeon general, Casey Means, who raised doubts about vaccinating newborns for hepatitis B, a practice Cassidy supports. Trump withdrew the Means nomination and blasted Cassidy.

Letlow considered running last year but only entered the race after Trump announced his endorsement in January.

By that time Fleming, a former House member and Trump administration official who was elected state treasurer in 2023, was already in the race as a Trump devotee. But Landry was looking for a better-known challenger, and he suggested Letlow to the president.

Letlow had an unconventional and tragic entry into politics.

In 2020, while she was a college administrator, her husband Luke was elected to the U.S. House but died of COVID-19 before he could be sworn in. Letlow ran for and won the seat in a March 2021 special election and was reelected in 2022 and 2024.

___

Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa.

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By Brad Brooks

WIGGINS, Colorado, May 16 (Reuters) – Perched behind the cash register at Stubs liquor store, Amy Van Duyn gazed out the window at a red-and-green gasoline price sign, which she said seemed to tick up daily.

The price was $4.34 per gallon – about 50% higher than it was in these parts when President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year.

“I used to fill my tank for $36,” said Van Duyn, 42. “Now $36 gets me half a tank.”

Her co-worker Tonyah Bruyette said when it’s time to buy groceries, she’s left wondering where all her money went: “We’re putting it in the tank rather than on our table.” 

Like most people in and around Wiggins, a farming town of 1,400 people in northeast Colorado, Van Duyn and Bruyette remain ardent supporters of the president, who won surrounding Morgan County by 49 percentage points in 2024.  

Nationally, Trump’s political fortunes appear to be waning. His war with Iran has sent fuel prices soaring past $4.50 a gallon nationwide, and a Reuters/Ipsos poll last month found nearly 8 in 10 Americans hold the president responsible for higher gasoline prices.   

Trump was asked this week if people’s economic woes were motivating him to reach a deal with Tehran. “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation,” he responded. “The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran, they can’t have a nuclear weapon.”

Democrats seized on the comments as evidence of an administration losing touch with an anxious public. Only 30% of U.S. adults approved of Trump’s handling of the economy as of a May Reuters/Ipsos poll, an issue that had long been one of his political strengths.

But in two dozen recent interviews along Colorado’s Highway 52 — a two-lane blacktop road punctuated by grain elevators, feedlots and oil pumpjacks — Trump voters echoed the president’s logic. 

Across Morgan and Weld counties, which haven’t voted for a Democrat in a presidential election since 1964, voters were willing to pay more for gas if it meant eliminating a possible Iranian nuclear threat. Energy prices had also spiked under President Joe Biden, many said.

Some begrudgingly stood by Trump because of their distaste for Democrats; others expressed faith the president had a plan to bring costs down. It was a testament to the durable, personal bond Trump has built with his base, allowing him to weather multiple crises across his two terms.

“It feels like he hears us,” said Bruyette, “that he is fighting for us.” 

‘WILLING TO SACRIFICE’

About 25 miles southwest of Wiggins, Jim Miller was elbows-deep in the engine of his ailing Dodge pickup.

A 65-year-old retired commodities broker raised in the liberal city of Boulder who now lives in tiny Prospect Valley, Miller considers himself “half-hippie, half-cowboy.” 

He said enduring the momentary pain of high gas prices was worth preventing Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon. 

Miller recalled stories of American resilience during World War II, when goods were rationed and households lived with less. 

“I struggle, like everybody else does, but I’m willing to sacrifice a little,” Miller said. “That’s been totally lost in this country, people’s willingness to sacrifice.”

In the unincorporated town of Roggen was Mike Urbanowicz, a 66-year-old trader with multiple college degrees whose farming cooperative moves 150 truckloads of grain each day.  

He voted three times for Trump, but like many interviewed by Reuters, he considers himself a political independent, saying he distrusts the Republican Party nearly as much as their Democratic foes.

Gas prices were hurting his industry, he said, and Trump was “naive” to think he could quickly solve the issue. He expected prices would remain high into the fall, even if there was a breakthrough in stalled U.S.-Iran peace talks.  

But he preferred the status quo to Democrats, whom he saw as moving towards “full-blown socialism.”

“I voted for Trump because the alternative is so bad,” he said. 

‘ALL ON BOARD’

In Fort Morgan, Lexys Siebrands, 22, lay prone on a table inside the Bad Medicine Inkporium tattoo parlor, smiling through the pain in her left calf, where there were images of a wanted poster, a stagecoach and other Western-themed designs. 

A gay woman who recently found Christianity, Siebrands once considered herself a Democrat, but started to think of herself as a Republican around 2022 — citing what she called the hypocrisy of liberals around identity politics — and voted for Trump. 

She saw war with Iran as inevitable. “Something was going to happen eventually, whether it was Iran doing something to us or us doing it to them.” 

Sitting next to her daughter was 49-year-old Jyl Siebrands. She grew up as a political independent but later gravitated towards Republicans. 

She said she hated high gas prices, but feared the prospect of a nuclear-armed Tehran even more. “It’s just where we are with this war,” she said. “People just have to give it time.” 

Did she have any red lines? Anything that might shake her faith in Trump’s handling of the war or the economy?

“No,” she said. “I’m all on board.”

(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Colorado; Editing by Jesse Mesner-Hage and David Gaffen;)

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By Ahmed Aboulenein

WASHINGTON, May 15 (Reuters) – The Trump administration moved on Friday to strip hundreds of senior U.S. Department of Health and Human Services employees of civil service job protections, according to an email reviewed by Reuters.

HHS employees at several agencies received the email, which said members of their teams would have their jobs reclassified. The change means they can be fired at will. Previously, they could only be fired for cause and had appeal rights.

The move is in line with an overhaul announced by the administration in February of the government’s civil service system.

The overhaul gives the president more power to hire and fire up to 50,000 career federal employees who are being reclassified from Schedule F to Schedule Policy/Career.

An HHS official confirmed the email’s authenticity but did not respond to questions about how many staff would be affected and their agencies and positions. The category of employees involved, GS-15, usually consists of senior technical experts, managers, high-level policy staff and supervisors.

The email said that initially “a relatively modest number…on the order of hundreds not thousands” of HHS personnel in that category would be affected by the reclassification.

The email said “additional tranches” of conversions would follow. The official said there would be no mass layoffs at the department beyond those previously announced.

Trump pledged in his campaign to strip job protections from federal workers deemed by his team to be “influencing” government policy. Governance experts say the change will make it easier to carry out more mass layoffs.

Unions representing federal workers have challenged the move in federal court.

The Trump administration has sought to shrink ​the federal workforce and make civil servants and historically independent boards and commissions more accountable to the White House.

(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by David Gregorio and Cynthia Osterman)

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By David Morgan

May 16 (Reuters) – U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican moderate targeted for retribution by President Donald Trump, will find out whether he can survive a primary election in Louisiana on Saturday against two popular rivals, including a Trump-backed challenger, or become the first elected Senate incumbent to lose renomination in more than a decade. 

Cassidy, a physician who first earned the president’s ire by voting for his conviction in Trump’s second Senate impeachment trial in 2021, entered the Republican primary in third place behind Trump-backed U.S. Representative Julia Letlow and Louisiana Treasurer John Fleming, a former congressman who served in Trump’s first administration, according to polling data compiled by the website RealClearPolitics.com.

Trump, in a Truth Social post on Saturday, called Cassidy a “disloyal disaster.”

“Bill Cassidy is a sleazebag, a terrible guy, who is BAD FOR LOUISIANA,” Trump wrote. “Now he’s going to get CLOBBERED, hopefully, in today’s BIG election, by two great people!!!”

Cassidy’s chances of victory seem narrow in a state where Trump received more than 60% of the vote during the 2024 presidential election. But in a closely fought three-way battle that is likely to end in a June 27 runoff election, Trump could also risk embarrassment if Letlow, whom Cassidy has sought to brand as a “liberal,” is ultimately bested by Fleming, a former Navy physician who has strong backing within the state Republican Party.

“Dr John Fleming is the only conservative candidate in the race,” said Christy Haik, a member of the powerful Republican State Central Committee and president of the conservative group Louisiana State Republican Assembly.

TRUMP RETRIBUTION CAMPAIGN

The Louisiana primary is the latest venue for an ongoing Trump retribution campaign that delivered primary defeats this month against at least five of seven Republican state legislators in Indiana, who opposed the president’s push for a mid-decade congressional redistricting plan to protect the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Next week, Trump’s campaign moves to Kentucky, where the president hopes to see his hand-picked primary challenger Ed Gallrein defeat Republican U.S. Representative Thomas Massie, a Trump critic and leading voice in the campaign to release government files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, an erstwhile friend of the president. 

In Louisiana, Letlow, 45, won Trump’s Senate endorsement before she had even announced her candidacy. She entered Congress after her husband Luke died of a COVID infection after being elected to the House in 2020. She ran to replace him in a special election and succeeded with Trump’s endorsement. Cassidy has targeted her support for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives when she worked for the University of Louisiana at Monroe. She has responded with ads calling Cassidy and Fleming “Never Trumpers” and emphasizing her presidential endorsement. 

Cassidy, a 68-year-old doctor who specialized in the treatment of liver disease and helped found a Baton Rouge clinic that serves low-income patients, served in the Louisiana Senate and the U.S. House before unseating former Democratic U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu in 2014 to become the first Republican to capture the seat since 1883. He now chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. He was reelected in 2020 with nearly 60% of the vote. 

With backing from Senate Majority Leader John Thune and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, he entered the final phase of the primary campaign with $5.5 million in cash, compared with $1.6 million for Letlow, according to documents filed to the Federal Election Commission. Fleming, 74, had nearly $1.4 million in cash left from a campaign that he has largely self-financed.

CASSIDY VOTED TO IMPEACH TRUMP

But that financial firepower has not propelled his campaign after a series of conflicts with Trump beginning with his role in 2021 as one of seven Republicans who supported Trump’s impeachment after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. He is now one of only three still in office. 

Cassidy later called on Trump to drop out of the 2024 presidential race after his indictment for allegedly mishandling classified documents and declined to endorse Trump after he won the Republican nomination.

Since Trump’s return to the White House, Cassidy has tried to work his way back into the president’s good graces by supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination for U.S. health secretary. 

But Cassidy’s support for Trump health policy has been short-lived, with him expressing open skepticism for Kennedy’s bid to overhaul U.S. vaccine policy and joining fellow Republican Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski to slow the health secretary’s agenda in Congress. 

 The most recent break came last month when Trump accused Cassidy of blocking the nomination of Casey Means as U.S. surgeon general, forcing the president to name radiologist and Fox News contributor Nicole Saphier as his third pick for the job.

Independent political analysts say Cassidy could still emerge from Saturday’s primary to face either Letlow or Fleming in a run-off. Whoever ultimately emerges as the victor, the seat is expected to remain in Republican hands.

Former Republican Senator Richard Lugar was the last elected incumbent to lose his bid for renomination in 2012.  

(Reporting by David Morgan. Additional reporting by David Hood-Nuño and Blake Brittain. Editing by Michael Learmonth, Alistair Bell and Mark Potter)

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By John Kruzel

WASHINGTON, May 15 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday rejected a bid by Virginia Democrats to revive a voting map designed to help their party wrest control of the U.S. House of Representatives from President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans in November’s midterm elections.

The justices declined to halt a ruling by Virginia’s top court that blocked a voter-approved pro-Democratic map for the midterms, denying a request by Democrats in the state. The court’s action came in a brief and unsigned order that provided no rationale. No justice publicly dissented.

Democrats pursued the revised electoral map – crafted to flip four Republican-held U.S. House of Representatives seats to Democrats – as part of a nationwide political battle initiated last year by Trump to redraw the boundaries of U.S. electoral districts for partisan benefit.

The conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court acted in the Virginia case after clearing the way on Monday for Alabama Republicans to pursue a congressional voting map more favorable to their party ahead of the midterms.

Control of Congress is at stake in the midterms, with Republicans holding slim majorities in the House and Senate. Virginia has 11 seats in the 435-member House.

The Virginia Supreme Court in a 4-3 decision on May 8 threw out the state’s voter-approved map, ruling in favor of Republicans who challenged it. The court found that Democratic lawmakers had not followed proper procedures last year when they rushed to approve the referendum in the state legislature in time to put the ballot initiative before voters ahead of the midterms.

Don Scott, the speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, and other Democratic legislators asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to halt the ruling by the state’s top court, saying it had “deprived voters, candidates and the Commonwealth (Virginia) of their right to the lawfully enacted congressional districts.”

They cited a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that stated that state courts “may not transgress the ordinary bounds of judicial review such that they arrogate to themselves the power vested in state legislatures to regulate federal elections.”

The Virginia referendum was the final step in a complicated legislative maneuver to sidestep a state constitutional amendment that was passed by voters in 2020 to put redistricting in the hands of a bipartisan commission.

Virginia Senate Republican Leader Ryan McDougle, one of the plaintiffs in the case, welcomed the court’s ruling on Friday.

“The Supreme Court of the United States has affirmed what we always knew: you cannot violate the Constitution to change the Constitution,” McDougle said.

Virginia voters approved the Democratic-backed electoral map in an April 21 special election by a 51.7% to 48.3% margin, with about 3.1 million votes cast. 

In a process called redistricting, the boundaries of legislative districts across the United States are reconfigured to reflect population changes as measured by the national U.S. census every 10 years. Redistricting traditionally has been carried out by state legislatures at the start of each new decade. 

In the unusual mid-decade redistricting fight now unfolding, Republicans hold a clear advantage. 

At Trump’s urging, Republican-governed Texas redrew its electoral map last year in a bid to flip five Democratic-held U.S. House seats, prompting Democratic-led California to reconfigure its congressional map to target five Republican-held seats. Multiple other states have joined the fray.

Democrats suffered a blow when the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority in April gutted a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, opening the door for Republican-led Southern states to dismantle Democratic-held majority-Black and majority-Latino districts ahead of the November elections. Black and Latino voters tend to support Democratic candidates.

Underscoring the stakes of the Virginia redistricting effort, Democratic- and Republican-affiliated groups spent close to $100 million on the referendum campaign.

The ​referendum has faced multiple legal challenges. In addition to the dispute before the U.S. Supreme Court, a judge in a separate case on April 22 also blocked the pro-Democratic map, acting in a lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee.

(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)

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By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON, May 16 (Reuters) – Democrats hoping to win control of Congress in November’s elections are seizing on Republicans’ support of President Donald Trump’s proposed $400 million White House ballroom to portray his party as out of touch with voters’ cost-of-living concerns.

As Republicans move toward a vote that might include hundreds of millions of dollars for the ballroom, Democrats are pointing to a more than 50% jump in gasoline prices since Trump launched a war with Iran, as well as rising healthcare, fertilizer and electricity costs they say his policies have worsened. 

“It’s a perfect storm of ugly,” Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota told reporters, quoting a farmer in her state.

Outside of Washington, Democratic candidates are portraying the project as a frivolous diversion from working Americans’ concerns.

The ballroom “is a vanity project that we don’t need,” Brian Poindexter, a Democrat running for a House of Representatives seat in northeastern Ohio, said in an interview. “Most of the people I hope to serve … worry about food, utilities, paying the rent.”

His rival, incumbent Republican Representative Max Miller, did not respond to a request for comment.

Some Republicans say the ballroom is a needed improvement for an outdated White House and has nothing to do with the broader economy.

“It’s hard to make that connection there. It doesn’t fit,” said Republican Representative Daniel Webster of Florida.

Others say it’s a bad look ahead of the November elections, when control of the House of Representatives and the Senate is at stake. 

“We’re talking about building a ballroom, and we’re trying to get the economy squared away. Timing is bad,” Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina told CNN.

Republicans are highlighting tax cuts they passed last year as they make the case they have tackled affordability concerns. But Trump himself has not always stuck to that message. 

“I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about ​anybody,” he told reporters on Tuesday when asked about rising costs spurred by the Iran war. He said his main concern was preventing Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon.

White House spokesman Davis Ingle said the administration was working to make healthcare and other costs more affordable.

The funding in question is part of a package that would enable the Secret Service “to properly address the ever growing threats of political violence in this historically heightened threat environment,” Ingle said.   

WASHINGTON MAKEOVER

Trump, a former real estate developer, has already demolished the East Wing of the White House as he forges ahead with the 90,000-square-foot ballroom. It would be capable of hosting large state events that are now held in tents on the South Lawn. It would sit atop a fortified underground military complex.

The scale of the project and the administration’s handling of fundraising ⁠have drawn criticism from watchdog groups who say it raises questions about transparency, donor influence and adherence to longstanding ​ethics norms.

Trump has said roughly $300 million has been raised for the project, though he has not provided details on the source of that money.

The ballroom is one of several efforts Trump has undertaken to overhaul Washington landmarks, including the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and a proposed triumphal arch near Arlington Cemetery.

Trump has insisted the ballroom would not cost taxpayers one cent because of private donations and money out of his own pocket.

But after a gunman tried to storm a black-tie gala featuring Trump in April at a Washington hotel, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called for Congress to approve $323 million in taxpayer money for the ballroom, citing security concerns.

Republicans are now advancing legislation that would include $1 billion for presidential security, including roughly $400 million for the White House complex. A vote in the Senate is possible next week.

“We want to protect our presidents no matter who they are, what party they’re in,” said Republican Representative Glenn Thompson of Pennsylvania. “I think that this construction project does that.”

Details of the legislation have not yet been publicly released, and it is not clear whether it would fund ballroom construction directly. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said the $1 billion is needed to bolster the Secret Service and harden the White House complex. “The ballroom is being financed privately,” he said.

Democrats say the legislation contains no such guardrails. “If it’s not for the ballroom, they should write that right into the bill,” Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon told Reuters.

While there is no presidential election until 2028, Trump looms large over November’s midterm elections. Polling shows voters disapprove of his handling of the economy, his immigration crackdown, the Iran war — and the ballroom.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll released this month found Americans opposed the ballroom project by 56% to 28%. 

In such an environment, it may be difficult for the security funding to pass the Senate, where Republicans hold a 53-47 majority, and the House, where their 217-212 majority gives them few votes to spare. 

“I have heard from residents all over the district, they don’t want their hard-earned tax dollars going to Donald Trump’s ballroom,” said Bob Harvie, a Democratic candidate running for a Pennsylvania House seat, noting incumbent Republican Representative Brian Fitzpatrick had cast votes supporting the Iran war and Trump’s tariffs. 

Fitzpatrick spokesperson Casey-Lee Waldron said: “Congressman Fitzpatrick is opposed to taxpayer money being used to pay for the ballroom, and he will be voting accordingly.”

(Reporting by Richard Cowan, additional reporting by Steve Holland; editing by Andy Sullivan and Cynthia Osterman)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday rejected Virginia’s bid to restore a congressional map that would have given Democrats a chance to pick up four seats in the closely divided House of Representatives.

The court’s order, issued without any noted dissent, is the latest twist in the nation’s mid-decade redistricting competition. It was kicked off last year by President Donald Trump urging Republican-controlled states to redraw their lines and was supercharged by a recent Supreme Court ruling severely weakening the Voting Rights Act that opened up even more winnable seats for the GOP.

In recent days, the justices have sided with Republicans in Alabama and Louisiana who hope to redo their congressional maps to produce more GOP-leaning seats following the court’s voting rights decision.

But the Virginia situation was different, stemming from a 4-3 ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court that struck down a constitutional amendment that voters narrowly passed just last month.

The state court found that the Democratic-controlled legislature improperly began the process of placing the amendment on the ballot after early voting had begun in Virginia’s general election last fall.

The Supreme Court typically doesn’t intervene in state court proceedings unless they present an issue of federal law. Virginia Democrats had hoped to persuade the justices that the Virginia court misread federal law and Supreme Court precedent that hold that, even if early voting is underway, an election does not happen until Election Day itself.

Virginia’s amendment had been intended as a response to Republican gains in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, and to blunt a new map in Florida that just became law. Once the Virginia amendment passed, it briefly turned the nationwide redistricting scramble into a draw between the two parties.

That was unraveled by the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision.

It’s possible Democrats could use the high court’s rejection of their bid, while also blessing Republican efforts in Alabama and Louisiana, in election-year messaging about a partisan Supreme Court.

The state’s top Democrats disagreed about whether it was even too late for help from the Supreme Court. “Time grows short, but it is not yet too late,” lawyers for the Democratic leaders of the legislature as well as the state told the justices in a brief filed Friday.

A day earlier, the office of Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger already had confirmed that the state will hold this year’s elections under the current districts established in 2021. Last month, Virginia Commissioner of Elections Steve Koski said a court order was needed by this past Tuesday to set the district lines for primary elections on Aug. 4.

The leader of the state’s Republican party said the justices made the right call. “Wisely, the Supreme Court of the United States has confirmed the judgment of the Supreme Court of Virginia,” state party chairman Jeff Ryer said. “This should once and for all put to rest the Democrats’ effort to disenfranchise half of Virginia.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee announced Friday that he is ending his bid for reelection, his career upended by the redistricting battles that are sweeping the country after last month’s Supreme Court decision.

Republicans in Tennessee this month enacted a new U.S. House map that carves up a Cohen’s majority-Black district, reshaping it to the GOP’s advantage as part of President Donald Trump’s strategy to hold on to a slim majority in the November midterm elections.

“I don’t want to quit. I’m not a quitter. But these districts were drawn to beat me,” Cohen told reporters in his Washington, D.C., office.

Cohen is challenging the state’s redistricting effort in court and said he would reenter the race if that lawsuit succeeded in restoring his old congressional district.

He lamented that Tennessee would likely shift to an entirely Republican congressional delegation after the next election, warning that it could also leave the state out of the loop once Democrats are able to regain the White House.

Tennessee was the first state to pass new congressional districts after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that significantly weakened federal Voting Rights Act protections for minorities. But more Southern states could follow. Republicans in Louisiana, Alabama and South Carolina also have taken steps toward redistricting.

Cohen has represented his Memphis-based district for about two decades, among the last of the white Democrats representing the South. He has been a longtime member of the House Judiciary Committee and has focused on strengthening voting access and civil rights.

“It’s unique in America that an African-American majority district has elected a white guy, and that we’ve got a great relationship, great amount of support,” said Cohen, who is also the first Jewish person to represent Tennessee in Congress.

He was facing a primary challenge from state lawmaker Justin Pearson, a Black progressive who represents much of Memphis in the state’s General Assembly.

“The status quo is failing us,” Pearson told The Associated Press Friday. “It’s time for new energy, new voices, and new ideas to meet this present moment, and that’s why I started to run in the first place.”

Pearson said he still intends to run in Tennessee’s redrawn 9th Congressional District, which now includes multiple rural counties that backed Trump by double-digit margins.

“We’re going to win. It’s going to be harder, but as an ancestor once said, if the mountain was smooth, you couldn’t climb it,” said Pearson. He said his message would not change, but argued his agenda had some appeal to rural, working-class, white conservatives.

But Cohen predicted it would be nearly impossible for Tennessee Democrats to win a seat in Congress with the new districts. He added there was a chance the redistricting effort could “backfire on the Republicans” but that would require an “unbelievable registration effort among Democrats” and a massive vote turnout.

Sitting in his congressional office with staff looking on, Cohen pointed to photos of Memphis and local projects that he had championed during his career and expressed worry that Memphis voters would no longer have a voice in Washington. He also recounted how he had worked with the state’s Republican leaders to win funding during the Biden administration for a larger bridge to cross the Mississippi River into Memphis.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement that Cohen was “a powerful champion for civil rights” and that “the City of Memphis, the Congress and the nation are better because of Steve’s commitment to making a difference.”

Cohen said the Republican’s redistricting effort was being done “for Donald Trump to get one more vote, he thinks, to stop him from being impeached.”

Still, he vowed to use his remaining time in Congress to try to mount opposition to Trump, calling the president “the greatest threat to democracy and to decorum and grace that we’ve ever seen.”

Like many lawmakers, Cohen has often attracted attention with colorful outbursts during congressional debates and hearings. During Trump’s first term, in 2019, Cohen brought a bucket of fried chicken to a House Judiciary Committee hearing at which then-Attorney General William P. Barr was a no-show.

“The message is Attorney General Bill Barr is not brave enough to answer questions from a staff attorney and members of the Judiciary Committee,” he said in a statement at the time.

While Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress tried to certify the results of the presidential election, Cohen screamed angrily at his Republican colleagues to “Call Trump. Call your friend. Tell him to do something.”

Cohen was among the first Democrats to join impeachment efforts for Trump in his first term, and he has signed on to articles of impeachment against Trump this year as well.

Meanwhile, Memphis activists grappled with the new political realities after the Republican-led legislature’s decision to divide the city’s longtime congressional district into three neighboring districts.

Advocates said they believed they could work with — and pressure — any lawmaker who will represent the city.

“Things are going to change. We’re aware of that,” said Tierney Macon, an activist with The Equity Alliance, a local civil rights group.

Macon, who protested at the Tennessee statehouse for days following the unveiling of the redrawn maps, said activists aimed to hold the city’s new representatives in Congress accountable no matter their party.

“We just have to be engaged,” Macon said.

Demonstrations in the statehouse included chants accusing lawmakers of resurrecting Jim Crow, a system of state and local laws that for decades enforced racial segregation and disenfranchisement across the South.

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Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.

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