Politics

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON, May 22 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Friday that more late-night talk shows will depart after he praised the end of CBS’s “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

Trump has repeatedly pressured the Federal Communications Commission to strip broadcast networks of their licenses, called on Walt Disney to fire ABC late night host Jimmy Kimmel and urged Comcast’s NBC to fire host Seth Meyers.

“Stephen Colbert’s firing from CBS was the ‘Beginning of the End’ for untalented, nasty, highly overpaid, not funny, and very poorly rated Late Night Television Hosts,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Others, of even less talent, to soon follow. May they all Rest in Peace!”

Colbert hosted what has been the top-rated Late Show for 11 seasons. CBS last year said it was cancelling the “Late Show,” citing financial reasons. Late-night television, an American tradition since the 1950s, has been losing viewership and advertising dollars for years.  

NBC, CBS and ABC did not immediately comment on Friday.

CBS announced in July that it was cancelling Colbert’s show just days after the company’s parent agreed to settle a lawsuit Trump filed against the company for $16 million over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Days after that, the FCC approved Paramount’s $8 billion merger with Skydance.

The decision to end the top-rated late-night talk show sparked an outcry, however, from Democrats and other critics who noted that Paramount was seeking approval for its merger with Skydance at the time of the cancellation. Many critics suggested it was done to curry favor with the administration and saw it as a move to silence political satire in violation of the First Amendment’s free speech protection.

Democratic FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez said on Wednesday that Trump has been vocal about trying to get programming he dislikes off the air.

“This administration cannot tolerate any critics, whether it’s late-night comedies, whether it’s ‘The View’,” Gomez said. “They are using every regulatory lever in their arsenal to go after content.”

The FCC is investigating whether ABC’s “The View” violated equal time rules for an interview with Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico of Texas. CBS in February barred Colbert from airing an interview with Talarico, citing an FCC order in January.

“Donald Trump’s administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV, because all Trump does is watch TV,” Colbert said at the time.

Last month, Trump cited a joke from Kimmel as grounds for his dismissal, which Disney declined to do. A day later, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr ordered a highly unusual early license review of the company’s eight ABC television stations. Disney must file its license renewal applications by May 28.

In September 2025, ​Carr pressured broadcasters to take Kimmel off the air. ABC briefly suspended Kimmel’s show over comments he made about the assassination ​of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Carr’s ⁠efforts drew sharp criticism from across the political spectrum.

Carr denied Colbert was forced off the air by government pressure. “He’s just not as popular or as funny as he once was, if he ever was,” Carr told Reuters in March.

When Trump called for NBC’s Meyers to be fired in November, Carr reposted it on X.

(Reporting by David ShepardsonEditing by Bill Berkrot)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Tulsi Gabbard resigned as President Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence on Friday, saying she needed to step away as her husband battles cancer. She is the fourth Cabinet official to depart during Trump’s second term.

In her resignation letter, which she posted on social media, Gabbard said she told Trump she would leave office on June 30. She said her husband had recently been diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer and “faces major challenges in the coming weeks and months.”

“At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle,” she wrote in the letter, which was earlier reported by Fox News.

Trump, in his own social media post announcing her resignation, said “Tulsi has done an incredible job, and we will miss her.” He said her principal deputy, Aaron Lukas, will serve as acting director of national intelligence.

During Trump’s first term, Lukas was as an intelligence aide to the acting director of national intelligence, Ric Grenell, in 2020. A former policy analyst at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, he also served as deputy senior director for Europe and Russia at the National Security Council in the final year of Trump’s previous administration.

There had been rumblings that Gabbard would split with Trump after the president’s decision to strike Iran, which caused some division within his administration. Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, announced his resignation in March, saying he “cannot in good conscience” back the war.

Gabbard, a veteran and former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, built her political name on her opposition to foreign wars. This put her in an awkward position when the U.S. joined Israel in launching attacks on Iran on Feb. 28.

During a congressional hearing in March, her measured comments were notable for their careful non-endorsement of Trump’s decision to strike Iran. She repeatedly dodged questions about whether the White House had been warned of potential fallout from the conflict, including Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Gabbard said in written remarks to the Senate Intelligence Committee that there had been no effort by Iran to rebuild its nuclear capability after U.S. attacks last year “obliterated” its nuclear program. That statement contradicted Trump, who has repeatedly asserted that the war was necessary to head off an imminent threat from the Islamic Republic.

This created several awkward exchanges with lawmakers who asked Gabbard for her opinion on the threat posed by Iran as the nation’s top intelligence official. She repeatedly said it was Trump’s decision to strike, not hers.

“It is not the intelligence community’s responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat,” she said.

Gabbard’s departure follows Trump having ousted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in late March, in the midst of mounting criticism over her leadership of the department — including the handling of the administration’s immigration crackdown and disaster response.

The second Cabinet member to leave was Attorney General Pam Bondi, in response to growing frustration over the Justice Department’s handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein. And Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned in April, after being the target of various misconduct investigations.

A veteran but without any intelligence experience, Gabbard was a surprising choice to head the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies. She ran for president in 2020 on a progressive platform and her opposition to U.S. involvement in foreign military conflicts.

Citing her military experience, she argued that U.S. wars in the Middle East had destabilized the region, made the U.S. less safe and cost thousands of American lives. Gabbard later dropped out of the race and endorsed the ultimate winner, President Joe Biden.

Two years later she left the Democratic Party to become an independent, saying her old party was dominated by an “elitist cabal of warmongers” and “woke” ideologues. She subsequently campaigned for several high-profile Republicans and became a contributor to Fox News.

She later endorsed Trump, who also was a strong critic of past U.S. wars in the Middle East and campaigned on a pledge to avoid unnecessary wars and nation-building overseas.

But friction with the president started soon after he began his second term and tapped Gabbard to lead ODNI, which was set up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to improve coordination between the nation’s intelligence agencies.

Shortly after taking on the job, Gabbard testified before lawmakers that there was no intelligence suggesting Iran was seeking to develop nuclear weapons. After Trump launched attacks on Iranian nuclear sites in June he said Gabbard was wrong and that he didn’t care what she said.

She appeared to be back in Trump’s good graces when she took a lead role in Trump’s effort to relitigate his 2020 election loss to Biden, whom Gabbard had endorsed. She appeared at an FBI search of election offices in Fulton County, Georgia, even though her office was created to focus on foreign espionage, not state elections.

Earlier this week, however, she testified to lawmakers during an annual threats hearing that last year’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites had “obliterated” their nuclear program and that there had been no subsequent effort to rebuild.

The statement seemed to complicate Trump’s repeated assertions that Iran posed an imminent threat and created several awkward exchanges with lawmakers who asked Gabbard for her opinion on Iran’s threat as the nation’s top intelligence official. She repeatedly said that it was Trump’s decision to strike, not hers.

“It is not the intelligence community’s responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat,” she said at one of this week’s hearings.

Gabbard vowed to eliminate what she said was the politicization of intelligence by government insiders. But she quickly used her office to support some of Trump’s most partisan of arguments — that he won the 2020 election.

She also worked to undermine the results of earlier investigations into Trump’s ties to Russia.

In her year on the job, Gabbard oversaw a sharp reduction in the intelligence workforce, as well as the creation of a new task force that she charged with considering big changes to the intelligence service.

Earlier this year an intelligence sector whistleblower filed a complaint that Gabbard was withholding intelligence for political reasons, a complaint that prompted calls from Democrats for Gabbard’s resignation.

Gabbard, 44, was born in the U.S. territory of American Samoa, raised in Hawaii and spent a year of her childhood in the Philippines. She was first elected as a 21-year-old to Hawaii’s House of Representatives but had to leave after one term when her National Guard unit deployed to Iraq.

As the first Hindu member of the House, Gabbard was sworn into office with her hand on the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu devotional work. She was also the first American Samoan elected to Congress.

During her four House terms she became known for speaking out against her party’s leadership. Her early support for Sen. Bernie Sanders ’ 2016 Democratic presidential primary run made her a popular figure in progressive politics nationally.

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May 22 (Reuters) – The Trump administration is temporarily moving immigration lawyers to the Justice Department to speed up efforts to strip citizenship from naturalized Americans, Axios reported on Friday.

Reuters could not immediately verify the report.

(Reporting by Angela Christy in BengaluruEditing by Tomasz Janowski)

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By Erin Banco, Jonathan Landay and Alexandra Alper

WASHINGTON, May 22 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s election-security czar last year sought to ban voting machines used in more than half of U.S. states by asking whether the Commerce Department could declare their components national-security risks, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.

White House adviser Kurt Olsen, a lawyer Trump has tasked with proving widely debunked election-rigging conspiracy theories, pushed the plan to target Dominion Voting Systems machines. The idea emerged, the sources said, as Olsen and other officials brainstormed about how the federal government could take control over elections from U.S. states, an idea publicly aired by Trump.

Olsen wanted a national system of hand-counted paper ballots, the sources said, a frequent Trump demand some election-security experts say would be less accurate and potentially riskier than the current system of machines with auditable paper trails that almost all cities and states use.

The plan to exclude the machines, reported here first, got far enough that in September, Commerce Department officials began exploring what grounds could be invoked to execute it, three additional sources said. It eventually collapsed, however, because Olsen and other administration staffers working with him failed to provide evidence to justify such a move, two of the sources said.

The episode is part of a far-reaching Trump administration push to encroach on state and local governments’ authority to run elections – which is granted to them in the U.S. Constitution to prevent the executive branch from seizing power. Olsen is working with the nation’s top intelligence and law enforcement agencies to chase voting-rigging claims. 

A Reuters investigation earlier this month found administration officials and investigators in at least eight states have sought confidential records, pressed for access to voting equipment and re-examined voter-fraud cases that courts and bipartisan reviews have rejected. Trump and Republican allies are also pursuing unprecedented plans to redraw election districts earlier than usual to secure advantages in the November midterm congressional elections.

Olsen, who Democratic senators are seeking to remove from his post, aimed to invalidate Dominion voting machines before the midterms, the two sources said. 

Others involved in the deliberations included Paul McNamara, a senior aide of Trump’s spy chief Tulsi Gabbard, and Brian Sikma, a special assistant to Trump who works on his Domestic Policy Council, according to one of the two sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Olsen has worked closely with Gabbard’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

Early last summer, McNamara asked officials in the Commerce Department to consider the potential designation of Dominion chips and software as a national security risk, the two sources said. 

At the time, McNamara headed an ODNI task force that worked with officials across the administration to investigate vulnerabilities in the nation’s voting machines. The two sources said McNamara spoke about the issue to senior officials at the U.S. Commerce Department, which is run by Secretary Howard Lutnick.

Reuters could not determine whether Lutnick was involved in or aware of those discussions.

A Commerce Department spokesperson said Lutnick never met or discussed election-integrity issues with McNamara and did not “engage in the topic at all.” The spokesperson declined to comment on whether Lutnick’s office or other officials were involved.

Olivia Coleman, a spokesperson for Gabbard’s agency, said ODNI, including McNamara, “did not brief on nor coordinate a plan with the Department of Commerce to take actions to ban Dominion voting machines.”

Olsen, McNamara and Sikma did not respond to requests for interviews. Responding to this story, Democratic U.S. Senator Alex Padilla said Olsen should be fired, calling him a threat to democracy in a post on X. 

WORRIES ABOUT MORE ELECTION CHAOS

Democrats and election-integrity experts worry that, with Republicans expected to suffer losses in the midterms, the administration aims to suppress voting and pave the way to challenge losses with more baseless claims of election fraud.

More than 98% of U.S. election jurisdictions already produce a paper record for every vote, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission said last year. Those votes are mostly cast on machines that print a paper record, or hand-marked but counted by electronic readers. Election-security experts broadly support the current combination of technology and paper ballots, which provides a voter-verified trail for post-election audits.

Proponents of hand-marked, hand-counted ballots argue they eliminate hacking concerns. But they pose different risks, said Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan computer-science professor, including counting mistakes and ballot-box stuffing.

“Changing to hand counting would be chaotic,” he said, “and it might facilitate cheating.”

White House spokesman Davis Ingle characterized the reporting for this story as selectively leaked and called it misinformation.

SCOURING VOTING MACHINES FOR TRACES OF ‘FOREIGN ADVERSARIES’

U.S. supply chain rules give the commerce secretary powers to restrict transactions with technology companies from nations designated “foreign adversaries,” including China, Russia, and, specifically, the government of Venezuela’s former President Nicolas Maduro, who the U.S. military unseated from power in January.

A main focus of Olsen’s efforts to find evidence of foreign hacking is the debunked theory that Dominion machines were infected with code controlled by Venezuelans to steal the 2020 election from Trump, the two sources said.

Repeated investigations and lawsuits since 2020 have produced no evidence Dominion machines were hacked. In 2023, Fox News paid Dominion $787 million in a defamation case over false election-rigging claims.

In 2024, at least 27 states used Dominion machines, similar to the number in 2020. Denver-based Dominion was purchased last October by Liberty Vote USA of Colorado. Liberty did not respond to a request for comment. 

Yet Trump continues to repeat the allegations, most recently on May 12 when he reposted a six-year-old clip of a host on the far-right One America News network making the false claim that Dominion machines deleted millions of votes. 

In May, 2025, Olsen helped lead a federal mission that seized Dominion machines that Puerto Rico used in its 2024 gubernatorial election. An analysis of the machines by cyber contractor Mojave Research Inc. produced later that summer found some known-about vulnerabilities, but no Venezuelan-origin code or evidence of hacking. 

Around the time McNamara’s conversation took place with Commerce Department officials, Olsen’s team took apart some of the Puerto Rico machines, believing that they would find components manufactured by countries designated as foreign adversaries, the two sources said.

The team found one chip packaged in China by U.S. company Intel. Such chips are not generally considered a threat to U.S. national security. Other chips were packaged in Japan, South Korea and Malaysia, the two sources said. Olsen’s report on the teardown, they said, described the chips as ‘East Asian,’ which they believe was intended to obscure the failure to find any security risks.

A September White House meeting convened to discuss the machines included cyber experts at the National Security Council, two of the sources said. The group, which included Olsen’s team, discussed whether Dominion’s equipment contained traces of Venezuelan code, one of the sources said.

Following the meeting, a Commerce Department political appointee asked the department’s office that assesses foreign national-security risks to tech supply chains to consider options to address any risks posed by voting machines, according to the three additional sources. 

The office considered the matter but took no action, two of the sources said.

(Reporting by Erin Banco, Jonathan Landay and Alexandra Alper in Washington; Additional reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Don Durfee)

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PHOENIX (AP) — As Sandra Ramirez watched footage of immigration officers cracking down on migrants over the past year, she knew her 2024 vote for Donald Trump was a mistake.

“There are a lot of people who are being harassed for the color of their skin, and that’s not right,” said Ramirez, who broke from her Democrat-voting family to cast a ballot for Trump.

“I’ll never go Republican again,” she said.

Trump made inroads with Latino voters like Ramirez during the 2024 elections, earning support that helped propel him to a second term in the White House.

As Republicans gear up for midterms this fall and look ahead to presidential elections in 2028, all eyes are on whether they can hold on to that key support or whether the administration’s sweeping immigration crackdown and an economy beset by high prices may drive Latino voters away.

In a sign of looming danger, recent polling from the Pew Research Center shows support for Trump falling fast among that electorate.

Latino voters have historically been largely aligned with the Democratic Party but during the 2024 election, they shifted significantly toward Trump. A majority still supported Democrat Kamala Harris for president, but Trump made big gains: 43% of Latino voters nationally voted for him, compared with 35% in the 2020 presidential election, a change attributed in part to their concerns about the economy.

Trump returned to office pledging to crack down on immigration, a promise that prompted arrest sweeps, often against Latino migrants, in homes, workplaces and schools, among others. According to an AP-NORC poll, more than half of Latino adults report knowing someone impacted by the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement.

More than a year into Trump’s second term, polling suggests a significant drop in support for the president among Latinos who voted for him in 2024, although a majority still supports him.

According to a Pew Research Center poll conducted in April, support for the president fell among non-Latino voters from 95% to 79% between February of last year and April of 2026. But among Latino voters who cast their ballot for Trump, the drop-off was more dramatic: 66% approved of his job performance in April compared with 93% at the beginning of his second term.

That national drop could prove crucial in a tight election in swing counties like Maricopa, the largest battleground county in the nation, which encompasses Phoenix and its suburbs. A third of Maricopa County residents are Latino, and one in four of them is an immigrant, according to the Latino Data Hub at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Arizona, which also saw a slight increase in Latino support for Trump in 2024, has been a flashpoint in the immigration debate for years. Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio conducted high-profile raids in Latino communities and, later, the state saw large influxes of migrants during the Biden administration.

On a warm afternoon in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of south Phoenix, a vendor at a street fair sold shirts imprinted with phrases like “Lowriders Sunday” while car club members polished their Chevrolets. The parking lot of the nearby Catholic church was full of parishioners attending Spanish-language Sunday Mass.

Albert Rodriguez, a Phoenix tattoo artist, said he once supported Trump. But then he saw how the administration was carrying out enforcement operations in Chicago, Minneapolis and Los Angeles.

He said the president promised to go after immigrants who were criminals, but instead Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been “hitting the paleta man,” referring to ordinary people trying to make a living from selling frozen treats.

“Big time, I regret it,” Rodriguez said of his 2024 vote for Trump.

Phoenix resident Ronnie Martinez, an Army veteran, backs Trump’s effort to stem crossings at the southern border.

“The border is only a hop, skip and a jump to our south. And I don’t want illegal alien criminals coming from Guatemala, Venezuela, Central America,” he said.

He didn’t like some of the images he’d seen of ICE arresting people in front of their children. But he was also sympathetic to ICE officers, who he said were doing the best they could in difficult situations, and he blamed Democratic officials who weren’t cooperating with immigration enforcement. He also cited economic initiatives as a reason for his continued support for the president, including the removal of taxes on tips and overtime.

Guadalupe Alaffa, another Phoenix resident, blamed President Joe Biden’s policies for prompting Trump’s immigration crackdown.

“He left that damn border wide open,” said Alaffa.

The growing influence of Latino voters is one of several factors that have eroded the GOP’s decades-long dominance in Arizona, putting the state at the center of congressional and presidential elections. Both of Arizona’s senators are now Democrats, along with the top three state officials.

Winning back some of the Latinos who shifted to Trump will be crucial to the reelection prospects of Gov. Katie Hobbs, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes and Attorney General Kris Mayes, all Democrats first elected in 2022.

Democrats in Maricopa County have benefited from more than a decade of political organizing among Latinos mobilizing against hard-line immigration enforcement. The Republican-controlled Legislature in 2010 passed a state law known as SB1070, which required police to check the immigration status of anyone they suspected of being in the country illegally.

Around the same time, Sheriff Arpaio was building a national profile on the right with immigration sweeps in largely Latino neighborhoods.

Some activists see the nationwide crackdown on immigrants as an extension of what Latinos in Arizona endured under Arpaio.

“We were the lab where they implemented a lot of this with Sheriff Joe and now it’s all over the United States,” said Salvador Reza, a longtime activist in Phoenix who advocates for the rights of day laborers.

For over two decades, Arpaio was repeatedly elected while his department faced accusations of racially profiling Latino drivers and conducting sweeps in Latino neighborhoods and day labor areas. Deputies often stopped residents for traffic violations and turned noncitizens over to ICE, according to rights groups.

In 2013, a federal judge ruled his office had illegally profiled and detained Latinos, and a 2011 Justice Department report found widespread discrimination. After losing reelection in 2016, Arpaio was convicted of criminal contempt for defying court orders. He was later pardoned by Trump.

The GOP is at risk of losing some of the Latinos that Trump won over, said former Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, who signed the controversial 2010 bill. She cited economic concerns as a possible reason for the drop in support.

“With the inflation and the cost of living and the gasoline and the wars, I don’t know if they can afford to be a Trump Republican,” Brewer said.

Earl Wilcox, a longtime activist and restaurant owner in Phoenix, said between affordability issues and immigration enforcement, he believes Latino support for Trump is waning. Wilcox’s restaurant hosted Biden in 2024 when he launched an initiative meant to rally Latino support for the Democratic ticket.

“I don’t think the Republican Party will have the support it did the second time around,” Wilcox said, “and I think it started with the raids.”

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Associated Press writers Jonathan J. Cooper and Amelia Thomson DeVeaux contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The day arrived when the Senate just said, No.

President Donald Trump’s political revenge tour met its potential match this week as angry, upset Republican senators, pushed to a breaking point by his seemingly insatiable and outlandish demands — particularly a $1.776 billion fund for Jan. 6 rioters and others he believes were wrongly prosecuted — did the unthinkable.

They simply refused, closed up shop, and went home.

The moment was as rare as it was daring, a sudden flex from the Congress that has become a shell of its former self as a coequal branch, the Republican majority almost always more willing to accommodate the Republican president than to confront him.

The result left in shambles, for now, the GOP’s top priority of passing a roughly $70 billion budget package that would fuel Trump’s immigration and deportation operations for the remainder of his presidential term, into 2029. The voting was postponed until Congress resumes next month, blowing Trump’s June 1 deadline to have it on his desk.

Trump, asked during an event at the Oval Office if he was losing control of the Senate, shrugged.

“I really don’t know,” the president said.

It all caps a bruising week after the president swept midterm primary elections, taking down one Republican after another — Sen. Bill Cassidy in Louisiana and Rep. Thomas Massie in Kentucky, and endorsing the challenger to Sen. John Cornyn in Texas — turning the might of his Make America Great Again movement against those who have stuck to their own views, rather than yield to his.

And it wasn’t just the Senate. In the Republican-led House, for the first time this year, enough GOP lawmakers broke ranks to signal support for a war powers resolution from Democrats designed to halt Trump’s military action in Iran. House Speaker Mike Johnson postponed voting until he could ensure an outcome that avoids confronting the president.

The endgame leaves Trump and the party exposed in new ways.

While the president is winning with his handpicked candidates, many are untested heading into general elections this fall. Trump’s own approval rating sits at a low point, and he is spending his political capital, alienating his would-be allies and threatening to derail GOP priorities as they try to persuade voters to keep them in office.

Trump’s announcement of nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund for those the president believes were wrongly prosecuted came with little warning, and less support, blindsiding senators already fuming over his push for $1 billion to provide security for his new White House ballroom.

The audacity of the arrangement — Trump negotiating a settlement to his own lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service that would set up the compensation fund for those perceived to be wrongly prosecuted — proved too toxic for the Senate to bear.

“Under what circumstances would it ever make sense to provide restitution for people who were either pled guilty or were found guilty in a court of law?” steamed Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C.

Tillis derided the White House move as “stupid on stilts” and a “payout for punks.” Trump fired back Friday morning, accusing Tillis of “screwing the Republican Party” in a lengthy social media post.

GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former majority leader, who tends to keep his own counsel, issued his own a statement in the aftermath.

“So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong — Take your pick,” McConnell said.

The political calculations were becoming apparent: The more Trump bullies and badgers the Congress, the more they are left questioning what they have to gain, or lose, from trying to appease him, especially for those already heading for the exits.

“I think it’s hard to divorce anything that happens here from what’s happening in the political atmosphere around us,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche met for hours behind closed doors with senators over the compensation fund, but left without a resolution.

Afterward, Thune said the discussion likely left the administration’s team with “an appreciation for the depth of feeling on the issue.”

While Trump-backed candidates defeated Republican incumbents in the House and Senate this week, showing his command of the party faithful, some in Congress saw the defeats of their colleagues differently.

“You don’t want to have a totally loyal party that’s in the minority. And that’s maybe where we’re headed,” said Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, who is retiring at the end of his term.

It began Saturday, when Cassidy, who voted to convict Trump in his Senate impeachment trial after Jan. 6, lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger in Louisiana. He returned to Washington days later noticeably more eager to criticize Trump — and more willing to vote against him.

“Congress should hold the executive branch accountable,” Cassidy said Monday. A day later, he joined Democrats in voting to rein in the war in Iran.

Then came Trump’s endorsement of Ken Paxton over Cornyn in Texas, a move many Republicans viewed as both personal and politically reckless. Trump said Cornyn “was not supportive of me when times were tough.”

“There’s a lot of folks in our conference that are disappointed because we appreciate working with John Cornyn,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D.

Others worried the divisive Texas primary could jeopardize a seat Republicans cannot afford to lose.

“He made the wrong pick,” Tillis said. “It’s going to be a lot more expensive to hold that seat.”

In the House there were also signs of Republican discontent.

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., joined Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi in introducing legislation that would block taxpayer dollars from being used for Trump’s proposed “anti-weaponization” compensation fund.

Fitzpatrick also drew Trump’s ire after the president complained publicly that the congressman “likes voting against Trump” and warned, “You know what happens with that?”

But Fitzpatrick insisted the backlash inside the party was driven by policy concerns, not political fear.

“People have the right to free speech in this country,” Fitzpatrick said. “But what we do here is all about policy.”

At the same time, Fitzpatrick and Republican Michigan Rep. Tom Barrett were expected to side with Democrats in voting for the war powers resolution to rein in Trump’s military campaign in Iran.

GOP leaders pulled the measure at the last minute when it became clear Republicans lacked the votes to defeat it.

Bacon, who spent some 30 years on active duty in the Air Force, said he believed much of the Republican pushback to the war could be resolved if Trump consulted Congress more.

“You sit down with somebody, and work with them instead of threatening, bully and yelling,” said Bacon. “It don’t work.”

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WASHINGTON, May 21 (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate is abandoning President Donald Trump’s June 1 deadline for passing immigration enforcement funding, Republican senators said on Thursday.

Senators Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy, both of Louisiana, told reporters the Senate was beginning its Memorial Day recess without passing the bill that was intended to contain $1 billion for Trump ballroom and related security and $72 billion for migrant deportations.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan, Katharine Jackson; Editing by Caitlin Webber)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is heading to a toss-up congressional district in New York on Friday to test his midterm message on the economy, even as voters largely disapprove of his stewardship of it.

Trump will travel to the Hudson Valley area to appear with Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, who is up for reelection in what will be one of the most closely watched House races this November. The focus of the event is to promote the tax law Trump signed last year, particularly the quadrupling of the deduction for state and local taxes, which is critical in a high-tax state like New York.

The White House has been looking for more opportunities to highlight Trump’s economic accomplishments as his approval rating on the economy has slumped. About one-third of U.S. adults approve of how Trump is handling the economy, according to a new AP-NORC poll, down slightly from 40% at the start of Trump’s second term. Trump had promised to bring prices down, but gasoline prices have surged this year due to the war in Iran.

Lawler is just one of three House Republicans who represent a district won by Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in 2024. Unlike the other two — retiring Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon and Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, who’s been a critic of Trump policies — Lawler has chosen to embrace the polarizing president in hopes of not alienating Republican voters who support the party’s leader.

“Look, the people who hate the president — and that’s their sole basis for their vote — are likely never voting for me,” Lawler told The Associated Press in an interview on the sidelines of the White House congressional picnic earlier this week. He described the Trump appearance as a chance to energize supporters.

“Moreover, I have a record in my district that is one I’m very proud of, and a record that appeals to a broad middle,” said Lawler, who was wearing a red ball cap emblazoned with “Mr. SALT,” the acronym for the state and local tax deduction he fought to include in the bill. “I am confident that I will be reelected on my own merits and my own record.”

The president’s remarks at Rockland Community College in Suffern, New York, will “highlight his strong record of making life more affordable for working families,” White House spokesperson Liz Huston said. She added that Trump plans to draw a sharp contrast with Democrats in Congress, who voted against the tax law.

Trump established a SALT cap in 2017 through his Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Last year’s law expanded the SALT deduction to $40,000 from $10,000 after arduous negotiations with Republicans, including Lawler, whose district has high local taxes. The law also raised the average tax refund for New Yorkers to more than $3,800, according to data provided by the White House.

“My constituents were seeing anywhere from $5,000 to $20,000 refund checks, which is pretty massive,” said Lawler, who said he wanted to give Trump one of his “Mr. SALT” ball caps.

Trump formally endorsed Lawler for reelection last year, although it came at a time when the congressman was publicly mulling a run for governor of New York. The endorsement was viewed as a way to keep Lawler in a reelection bid rather than opening up a competitive House seat.

Five Democrats are vying for the party’s nomination to compete against Lawler in the general election. The Democratic primary is June 23.

“Nothing says ‘I don’t understand my district’ quite like Mike Lawler bringing Donald Trump to NY-17 to tout a disastrous economy that’s crushing working families at every turn,” said Riya Vashi, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Richard Hudson disputed that, arguing that Trump’s Friday appearance will “absolutely” help.

“His poll numbers are pretty good in Lawler’s district,” said Hudson, a North Carolina congressman. The NRCC has been polling in competitive districts and Hudson said the “president’s numbers are good. Democratic numbers are tanking.”

The remarks are an official White House event and not a campaign one, said Lawler, who noted that more than 5,000 people registered to attend in the first 12 hours that a sign-up was available.

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Associated Press writer Joey Cappelletti contributed to this report.

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CORONA, Calif. (AP) — No one would call California Trump country. But a vicious U.S. House primary is playing out southeast of Los Angeles where two Republican incumbents wedged into the same district are fighting over their MAGA bona fides and loyalty to the president.

Rep. Ken Calvert, the longest serving Republican in the state’s House delegation, is running ads calling rival Rep. Young Kim a “traitor” to President Donald Trump and “a liberal and a liar.” His ads resurface past video clips of her criticizing Trump.

After once stressing her independence from the White House, Kim has dubbed herself a “Trump Republican” and aired spots accusing Calvert of “sabotaging President Trump’s agenda” and only “serving himself.” She claimed that he has been in “lockstep with Nancy Pelosi,” the former Democratic House speaker widely reviled by Republicans.

The acidic tone of the advertising in heavy media rotation from two House members who previously were friendly colleagues underscores the stakes in a race neither of them wanted. The June 2 primary is the first since Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed to redraw the California’s congressional map as part of a national redistricting fight, with the goal of winning Democrats five more House seats in the state.

The Republican-versus-Republican contest in one of the few conservative districts left in liberal-leaning California is one example of how the electoral landscape has been reshaped across the country.

The race stands out nationally: Calvert and Kim are the only Republican House incumbents facing each other in the 2026 primaries. In Texas, Democratic Reps. Al Green and Christine Menefee are also facing each other due to redistricting.

The contest is displaying how many Republicans still embrace the president even as his popularity has slipped amid the war in Iran and climbing consumer prices.

Democrats nationally have been encouraged by a string of election results in advance of the midterms, which typically favor the party not holding the presidency. Trump, meanwhile, has reinforced his continuing party clout by ousting several incumbents who ran afoul of the White House. Republicans hold a fragile 217-212 majority in the House, with one independent and five vacancies.

At a recent weekend barbecue hosted by conservative activists in Calvert’s hometown of Corona, retiree and Trump supporter Mike Rutland said he remained undecided amid the torrent of negative advertising from both sides in the race. Mail voting is underway.

“I want my state back,” Rutland said, lamenting years of Democratic control. As for the primary, he added that “we don’t want any RINOs,” using a pejorative term that is an acronym for “Republicans in name only.”

The national battle over for the House continues, with more states maneuvering to reshape districts for partisan advantage following a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that weakened the federal Voting Rights Act and provided grounds for states to try to eliminate voting districts with large minority populations. In California the new House map has shaken the Republican ranks at a time when the outcome in a single district could determine control.

Long-serving GOP Rep. Darrell Issa announced in March that he would retire rather than compete in a redrawn district favoring Democrats. Former Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley became an independent in the face of a tough reelection fight in a Democratic-leaning district. And GOP Rep. David Valadao is seeking another term in his Central Valley district where Democratic registration was pumped up to try to drive him out.

For Calvert and Kim, it’s possible the election in a district that runs through inland Riverside and Orange counties could be a warmup for a one-on-one rematch in November — California law permits the two candidates who receive the most primary votes to advance to the general election, regardless of party. There are five Democrats on the ballot and an independent, but it’s possible that only the two Republicans would advance given the nearly 9-point GOP voter registration edge in the district.

In a state where Republicans have not won a statewide election in two decades, the GOP-leaning district is a vestige from an earlier time — Orange County was once one of the most solidly Republican places in the U.S., dubbed Reagan country for its ties to former Republican President Ronald Reagan.

GOP strategist Jon Fleischman, a former executive director of the California Republican Party, said both candidates are “giving President Trump a very big bear hug.” But if they both advance to November, a key question then will be, “Where do all the Democrats and nonconservative voters end up?”

“I think it’s going to be ugly,” Fleischman said.

In a preview of what could come, voters have been getting mail from Kim’s campaign alleging that Calvert voted to “force taxpayers to fund sex change operations for children,” a claim that Calvert’s camp says is fiction. For its part his campaign is pointing to Kim’s support for a resolution to censure Trump over his role in inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, calling her a “Trump betrayer.”

“I’m not personalizing it. I’m just pointing out somebody’s record,” Calvert said of her support for the resolution during an interview at the barbecue lunch.

Calvert, first elected in 1992, has represented territory that makes up more than half the redrawn district, and he sits on the powerful Appropriations Committee.

Kim was born in South Korea, grew up in Guam and came to California for college. She became a small-business owner and got elected to the state Assembly and then Congress.

Running for the House in 2018, she emphasized her independence from Trump’s White House on issues like trade. “I’m a different kind of candidate,” she told The Associated Press at the time.

Now Kim has vowed on her website to “stand with President Trump.”

“The great American comeback depends on it,” she said.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Kamala Harris “wrote off rural America” during the 2024 presidential campaign and failed to attack Donald Trump with sufficient “negative firepower,” according to a long-awaited post-election autopsy released Thursday by the Democratic National Committee.

But the document’s key findings, the focus of much mystery over the last year, were almost an afterthought among Democratic officials who expressed deep frustration with DNC chair Ken Martin ‘s handling of the situation and the direction of the party’s political machine.

Martin shared the 192-page report only after facing intense internal pressure from Democratic operatives. He originally promised to release the autopsy even before taking over the committee last year, only to keep it under wraps because he worried it would interfere with Democrats’ focus on the November midterms.

“I didn’t want to create a distraction,” Martin wrote on Substack. “Ironically, in doing so, I ended up creating an even bigger distraction. And for that, I sincerely apologize.”

He said the report was withheld because it “was not ready for primetime,” and the DNC covered the document with annotations and disclaimers saying it was incomplete and unsubstantiated.

The report’s release did nothing to temper irritation at Martin, and Democratic insiders were exasperated as they spent the day talking about a two-year-old election instead of focusing on Trump’s unpopular war in Iran, surging prices or the backlash against the president’s White House ballroom.

Indeed, the initial reaction to the report was a mix of bafflement and anger over Martin’s handling of the situation.

Democratic strategist Dan Pfeiffer, formerly a senior adviser to President Barack Obama, said Martin “must go.”

“It’s hard to imagine anyone handling anything worse than Ken Martin handled the DNC autopsy,” he wrote on social media. “It was a disaster of his own making, and it’s sufficient evidence that he is not the right person to lead the DNC at this time.”

Although the autopsy criticizes Democrats’ focus on “identity politics,” it sidesteps some of the most controversial elements of the 2024 campaign. The report does not address former President Joe Biden’s decision to seek reelection, the rushed selection of Harris to replace him after he dropped out or the party’s acrimonious divide over the war in Gaza.

“I am not proud of this product; it does not meet my standards, and it won’t meet your standards,” Martin said. “I don’t endorse what’s in this report, or what’s left out of it. I could not in good faith put the DNC’s stamp of approval on it. But transparency is paramount.”

During a conversation with staff Thursday, Martin announced that the report’s primary author, consultant Paul Rivera, was no longer working with the DNC, according to a person on the call not authorized to speak publicly about the private discussion.

A spokesperson for Harris did not respond to a request for comment.

The postelection report, which was first released by CNN, calls for “a renewed focus on the voters of Middle America and the South, who have come to believe they are not included in the Democratic vision of a stronger and more dynamic America for everyone.”

“Millions of Americans are suffering from poor access to healthcare, manufacturing and job losses, and a failing infrastructure, yet continue to be persuaded to vote against their best interests because they do not see themselves reflected in the America of the Democratic Party,” the report says.

The autopsy points to a reduction in support and training for Democratic state parties, voter registration shifts and “a persistent inability or unwillingness to listen to all voters.”

Thursday’s release comes as Martin confronts a crisis of confidence among party officials who are increasingly concerned about the health of their political machine barely a year into his term. Some Democratic operatives have had informal discussions about recruiting a new chair, even though most believe that Martin’s job isn’t in serious jeopardy ahead of the midterm elections.

Few were satisfied with how Martin navigated the report’s release.

“The execution, the rollout and the coverup are indicative of how Ken Martin is fundamentally not up to the task,” said Amanda Litman, who leads the Democratic-allied organization Run For Something. “He will be incapable of rebuilding the trust necessary to facilitate a Democratic primary in 2027-2028.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said the Gaza omission was “notable.” She also declined to back Martin when asked by The Associated Press whether she supports his leadership.

“I’m glad that there’s something out,” she said. “It’s, of course, taken a very long time.”

The report found that Harris and her allies failed to focus enough on Trump’s negatives, especially his felony convictions. This was part of a broader criticism that Democrats’ messaging is too focused on reason and winning arguments, “even in cycles when the electorate is defined by rage.”

“There was a decision in the 2024 Democratic leadership not to engage in negative advertising at the scale required,” the report states. “The Trump campaign and supportive Super PACs went full throttle against Vice President Harris, but there was not sufficient or similar negative firepower directed at Trump by Democrats.”

The report continues: “It was essential to prosecute a more effective case as to why Trump should have been disqualified from ever again taking office. The grounds were there, but the messaging did not make the case.”

The DNC appeared to reject these conclusions, adding annotations like “no sourcing or evidence provided.”

Trump’s attack on Harris’ transgender policies was cited as a key contrast.

Specifically, the report suggested the Democratic nominee was “boxed” in by the Trump campaign’s “very effective” ad that highlighted Harris’ previous statement of support for taxpayer-funded gender-affirming surgeries for prison inmates.

Democratic pollsters believed that “if the Vice President would not change her position — and she did not — then there was nothing which would have worked as a response,” the report said.

The report criticized Harris’ outreach to key segments of America while condemning the party’s focus on “identity politics.”

“Harris wrote off rural America, assuming urban/suburban margins would compensate. The math doesn’t work,” the report says. “You can’t lose rural areas by overwhelming margins and make it up elsewhere when rural voters are a significant share of the electorate. If Democrats are to reclaim leadership in the Heartland or the South, candidates must perform well in rural turf. Show up, listen, and then do it again.”

The report also references Democrats’ underperformance with male voters of color.

“Male voters require direct engagement. The gender gap can be narrowed. Deploy male messengers, address economic concerns, and don’t assume identity politics will hold male voters of color,” it says.

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AP writer Joey Cappelletti in Washington contributed.

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