The first domino in a growing national redistricting battle is likely to fall Wednesday as the Republican-controlled Texas legislature is expected to pass a new congressional map creating five new winnable seats for the GOP.

The vote follows prodding by President Donald Trump, eager to stave off a midterm defeat that would deprive his party of control of the House of Representatives, and weeks of delays after dozens of Texas Democratic state lawmakers fled the state in protest. Some Democrats returned Monday, only to be assigned round-the-clock police escorts to ensure their attendance at Wednesday’s session. Those who refused to be monitored were confined to the House floor, where they protested on a livestream Tuesday night.

Furious national Democrats have vowed payback for the Texas map, with California’s legislature poised to approve new maps adding more Democratic-friendly seats later this week. The map would still need to be approved by that state’s voters in November.

Normally, states redraw maps once a decade with new census figures. But Trump is lobbying other conservative-controlled states like Indiana and Missouri to also try to squeeze new GOP-friendly seats out of their maps as his party prepares for a difficult midterm election next year.

In Texas, Democrats spent the day before the vote continuing to draw attention to the extraordinary lengths the Republicans who run the legislature were going to ensure it takes place. Democratic state Rep. Nicole Collier started it when she refused to sign what Democrats called the “permission slip” needed to leave the House chamber, a half-page form allowing Department of Public Safety troopers to follow them. She spent Monday night and Tuesday on the House floor, where she set up a livestream while her Democratic colleagues outside had plainclothes officers following them to their offices and homes.

Dallas-area Rep. Linda Garcia said she drove three hours home from Austin with an officer following her. When she went grocery shopping, he went down every aisle with her, pretending to shop, she said. As she spoke to The Associated Press by phone, two unmarked cars with officers inside were parked outside her home.

“It’s a weird feeling,” she said. “The only way to explain the entire process is: It’s like I’m in a movie.”

The trooper assignments, ordered by Republican House Speaker Dustin Burrows, was another escalation of a redistricting battle that has widened across the country. Trump is pushing GOP state officials to tilt the map for the 2026 midterms more in his favor to preserve the GOP’s slim House majority, and Democrats nationally have rallied around efforts to retaliate.

House Minority Leader Gene Wu, from Houston, and state Rep. Vince Perez, of El Paso, stayed overnight with Collier, who represents a minority-majority district in Fort Worth.

On Tuesday, more Democrats returned to the Capitol to tear up the slips they had signed and stay on the House floor, which has a lounge and restrooms for members.

Dallas-area Rep. Cassandra Garcia Hernandez called their protest a “slumber party for democracy,” and she said Democrats were holding strategy sessions on the floor.

“We are not criminals,” Houston Rep. Penny Morales Shaw said.

Collier said having officers shadow her was an attack on her dignity and an attempt to control her movements.

Burrows brushed off Collier’s protest, saying he was focused on important issues, such as providing property tax relief and responding to last month’s deadly floods. His statement Tuesday morning did not mention redistricting, and his office did not immediately respond to other Democrats joining Collier.

“Rep. Collier’s choice to stay and not sign the permission slip is well within her rights under the House Rules,” Burrows said.

Under those rules, until Wednesday’s scheduled vote, the chamber’s doors are locked, and no member can leave “without the written permission of the speaker.”

To do business Wednesday, 100 of 150 House members must be present. The GOP plan is designed to send five additional Republicans from Texas to the U.S. House. Texas Democrats returned to Austin after Democrats in California launched an effort to redraw their state’s districts to take five seats from Republicans.

Democrats also said they were returning because they expect to challenge the new maps in court.

The director of the agency that produces the nation’s jobs and inflation data is typically a mild-mannered technocrat, often with extensive experience in statistical agencies, with little public profile.

But like so much in President Donald Trump’s second administration, this time is different.

Trump has selected E.J. Antoni, chief economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, to be the next commissioner at the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. Antoni’s nomination was quickly met with a cascade of criticism from other economists, from across the political spectrum.

His selection threatens to bring a new level of politicization to what for decades has been a nonpartisan agency widely accepted as a producer of reliable measures of the nation’s economic health. While many former Labor Department officials say it it unlikely Antoni will be able to distort or alter the data, particularly in the short run, he could change the currently dry-as-dust way it is presented.

Antoni was nominated by Trump after the BLS released a jobs report Aug. 1 that showed that hiring had weakened in July and was much lower in May and June than the agency had previously reported. Trump, without evidence, charged that the data had been “rigged” for political reasons and fired the then-BLS chair, Erika McEntarfer, much to the dismay of many within the agency.

Antoni has been a vocal critic of the government’s jobs data in frequent appearances on podcasts and cable TV. His partisan commentary is unusual for someone who may end up leading the BLS.

For instance, on Aug. 4 — a week before he was nominated — Antoni said in an interview on Fox News Digital that the Labor Department should stop publishing the monthly jobs reports until its data collection processes improve, and rely on quarterly data based on actual employment filings with state unemployment offices.

The monthly employment reports are probably the closest-watched economic data on Wall Street, and can frequently cause swings in stock prices.

When asked at Tuesday’s White House briefing whether the jobs report would continue to be released, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the administration hoped it would be.

“I believe that is the plan and that’s the hope,” Leavitt said.

Leavitt also defended Antoni’s nomination, calling him an “economic expert” who has testified before Congress and adding that, “the president trusts him to lead this important department.”

Yet Antoni’s TV and podcast appearances have created more of a portrait of a conservative ideologue, instead of a careful economist who considers tradeoffs and prioritizes getting the math correct.

“There’s just nothing in his writing or his resume to suggest that he’s qualified for the position, besides that he is always manipulating the data to favor Trump in some way,” said Brian Albrecht, chief economist at the International Center for Law and Economics.

Antoni wrongly claimed in the last year of Biden’s presidency that the economy had been in recession since 2022; called on the entire Federal Reserve board to be fired for not earning a profit on its Treasury securities holdings; and posted a chart on social media that conflated timelines to suggest inflation was headed to 15%.

His argument that the U.S. was in a recession rested on a vastly exaggerated measure of housing inflation, based on newly-purchased home prices, to artificially make the nation’s gross domestic product appear smaller than it was.

“This is actually maybe the worst Antoni content I’ve seen yet,” Alan Cole of the center-right Tax Foundation said on social media, referring to his recession claim.

On a 2024 podcast, Antoni wanted to sunset Social Security payments for workers paying into the system, saying that “you’ll need a generation of people who pay Social Security taxes but never actually receive any of those benefits.” As head of the BLS, Antoni would oversee the release of the consumer price index by which Social Security payments are adjusted for inflation.

Many economists share, to some degree, Antoni’s concerns that the government’s jobs data has flaws and is threatened by trends such as declining response rates to its surveys. The drop has made the jobs figures more volatile, though not necessarily less accurate over time.

“The stock market moves clearly based on these job numbers, and so people with skin in the game think it’s telling them something about the future of their investments,” Albrecht said. “Could it be improved? Absolutely.”

Katharine Abraham, an economist at the University of Maryland who was BLS Commissioner under President Bill Clinton, said updating the jobs report’s methods would require at least some initial investment.

Republicans are encountering early headaches in Senate races viewed as pivotal to maintaining the party’s majority in next year’s midterm elections, with recruitment failures, open primaries, infighting and a president who has been sitting on the sidelines.

Democrats still face an uphill battle. They need to net four seats to retake the majority, and most of the 2026 contests are in states that Republican President Donald Trump easily won last November.

But Democrats see reasons for hope in Republicans’ challenges. They include a nasty primary in Texas that could jeopardize a seat Republicans have held for decades. In North Carolina and Georgia, the GOP still lacks a clear field of candidates. Trump’s influence dials up the uncertainty as he decides whether to flex his influential endorsement to stave off intraparty fights.

Republicans stress that it remains early in the election cycle and say there is still plenty of time for candidates to establish themselves and Trump to wade in. The president, said White House political director James Blair, has been working closely with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.

“I won’t get ahead of the president but look, him and leader Thune have been very aligned. I expect them to be aligned and work closely,” he said.

Trump’s timing, allies say, also reflects the far more disciplined approach by him and his political operation, which are determined for Republicans to gain seats in both the Senate and the House.

Democrats have long dreamed of winning statewide office in this ruby red state. Could a nasty GOP primary be their ticket?

National Republicans and GOP Senate strategists are ringing alarm bells amid concerns that state Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is facing a bevy of personal and ethical questions, could prevail over Sen. John Cornyn for the nomination.

They fear Paxton would be a disastrous general election candidate, forcing Republicans to invest tens of millions of dollars they believe would be better spent in other states.

Texans for a Conservative Majority, a super political action committee supporting Cornyn, a onetime Trump critic, began airing television ads this past week promoting his support for Trump’s package of tax breaks and spending cuts.

Don’t expect the upbeat tone from the pro-Cornyn super PAC to hold long. Paxton was acquitted after a Republican-led impeachment trial in 2023 over allegations of bribery and abuse of office, which also exposed an extramarital affair. His wife, Angela, filed for divorce on July 10, referring to “recent discoveries” in announcing her decision to end her marriage of 38 years “on biblical grounds.”

“Ken Paxton has embarrassed himself, his family, and we look forward to exposing just how bad he’s embarrassed our state in the coming months,” said Aaron Whitehead, the super PAC’s executive director. Trump adviser Chris LaCivita, who comanaged Trump’s 2024 campaign, is advising the group.

But Cornyn has had a cool relationship with Trump over the years, while Paxton is a longtime Trump ally. And Paxton raised more than three times as much as Cornyn in the second quarter, $2.9 million compared with $804,000, according to Federal Elections Commission reports.

Republicans muscled President Donald Trump’s tax and spending cut bill through the House on Thursday, the final step necessary to get the bill to his desk by the GOP’s self-imposed deadline of July 4th.

At nearly 900 pages, the legislation is a sprawling collection of tax breaks, spending cuts and other Republican priorities, including new money for national defense and deportations.

Democrats united against the legislation, but were powerless to stop it as long as Republicans stayed united. The Senate passed the bill, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tiebreaking vote. The House passed an earlier iteration of the bill in May with just one vote to spare. It passed the final version 218-214.

Here’s the latest on what’s in the bill and when some of its provisions go into effect.

GOP bill includes reductions for businesses and new tax breaks

Republicans say the bill is crucial because there would be a massive tax increase after December when tax breaks from Trump’s first term expire. The legislation contains about $4.5 trillion in tax cuts.

The existing tax rates and brackets would become permanent under the bill, solidifying the tax cuts approved in Trump’s first term.

It temporarily would add new tax deductions on tip, overtime and auto loans. There’s also a $6,000 deduction for older adults who earn no more than $75,000 a year, a nod to his pledge to end taxes on Social Security benefits.

It would boost the $2,000 child tax credit to $2,200. Millions of families at lower income levels would not get the full credit.

A cap on state and local deductions, called SALT, would quadruple to $40,000 for five years. It’s a provision important to New York and other high tax states, though the House wanted it to last for 10 years.

There are scores of business-related tax cuts, including allowing businesses to immediately write off 100% of the cost of equipment and research. Proponents say this will boost economic growth.

The wealthiest households would see a $12,000 increase from the legislation, and the bill would cost the poorest people $1,600 a year, mainly due to reductions in Medicaid and food aid, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office analysis of the House’s version.

GOP bill funds the border wall, deportations and a missile shield

The bill would provide some $350 billion for Trump’s border and national security agenda, including for the U.S.-Mexico border wall and for 100,000 migrant detention facility beds, as he aims to fulfill his promise of the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history.

Money would go for hiring 10,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, with $10,000 signing bonuses and a surge of Border Patrol officers, as well. The goal is to deport some 1 million people per year.

To help pay for it, immigrants would face various new fees, including when seeking asylum protections.

For the Pentagon, the bill would provide billions for ship building, munitions systems, and quality of life measures for servicemen and women, as well as $25 billion for the development of the Golden Dome missile defense system. The Defense Department would have $1 billion for border security.

Medicaid, SNAP face deep cuts to fund bill’s tax breaks and spending

To help partly offset the lost tax revenue and new spending, Republicans aim to cut back on Medicaid and food assistance for people below the poverty line.

Republicans argue they are trying to rightsize the safety net programs for the population they were initially designed to serve, mainly pregnant women, the disabled and children, and root out what they describe as waste, fraud and abuse.

The package includes new 80-hour-a-month work requirements for many adults receiving Medicaid and food stamps, including older people up to age 65. Parents of children 14 and older would have to meet the program’s work requirements.

There’s also a proposed new $35 co-payment that can be charged to patients using Medicaid services.

More than 71 million people rely on Medicaid, which expanded under Obama’s Affordable Care Act, and 40 million use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Most already work, according to analysts.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 11.8 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034 if the bill became law and 3 million more would not qualify for food stamps, also known as SNAP benefits.

Republicans are looking to have states pick up some of the cost for SNAP benefits. Currently, the federal government funds all benefit costs. Under the bill, states beginning in 2028 will be required to contribute a set percentage of those costs if their payment error rate exceeds 6%. Payment errors include both underpayments and overpayments.

But the Senate bill temporarily delays the start date of that cost-sharing for states with the highest SNAP error rates. Alaska has the highest error rate in the nation at nearly 25%, according to Department of Agriculture data. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, had fought for the exception. She was a decisive vote in getting the bill through the Senate.

Final price tag: GOP bill could add $3.3 trillion to deficit

Altogether, the Congressional Budget Office projects that the bill would increase federal deficits over the next 10 years by nearly $3.3 trillion from 2025 to 2034.

Or not, depending on how one does the math.

Senate Republicans are proposing a unique strategy of not counting the existing tax breaks as a new cost because those breaks are already “current policy.” Republican senators say the Senate Budget Committee chairman has the authority to set the baseline for the preferred approach.

Under the alternative Senate GOP view, the bill would reduce deficits by almost half a trillion dollars over the coming decade, the CBO said.

Democrats say this is “magic math” that obscures the true costs of the tax breaks. Some nonpartisan groups worried about the country’s fiscal trajectory are siding with Democrats in that regard. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says Senate Republicans were employing an “accounting gimmick that would make Enron executives blush.”

California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is calling President Donald Trump’s military intervention at protests over federal immigration policy in Los Angeles an assault on democracy and has sued to try to stop it. Meanwhile, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is putting the National Guard on standby in areas in his state where demonstrations are planned.

The divergent approaches illustrate the ways the two parties are trying to navigate national politics and the role of executive power in enforcing immigration policies.

In his live TV address this week, Newsom said that Trump’s move escalated the situation — and for political gain.

All 22 other Democratic governors signed a statement sent by the Democratic Governors Association on Sunday backing Newsom, calling the Guard deployment and threats to send in Marines “an alarming abuse of power” that “undermines the mission of our service members, erodes public trust, and shows the Trump administration does not trust local law enforcement.”

The protests in Los Angeles have mostly been contained to five blocks in a small section of downtown; nearly 200 people were detained on Tuesday and at least seven police officers have been injured.

In Republican-controlled states, governors have not said when or how they’re planning to deploy military troops for protests.

Since Trump’s return to office, Democratic governors have been calculating about when to criticize him, when to emphasize common ground and when to bite their tongues.

The governors’ responses are guided partly by a series of political considerations, said Kristoffer Shields, director of the Eagleton Center on the American Governor at Rutgers University: How would criticizing Trump play with Democrats, Republicans and independent voters in their states? And for those with presidential ambitions, how does that message resonate nationally?

Democratic governors are weighing a number of considerations.

“There probably is some concern about retributions — what the reaction of the administration could be for a governor who takes a strong stance,” Shields said.

And in this case, polling indicates about half of U.S. adults approve of how Trump is handling immigration, though that polling was conducted before the recent military deployment.

On other issues, Democratic governors have taken a variety of approaches with Trump.

At a White House meeting in February, Maine Democratic Gov. Janet Mills told Trump, “ we’ll see you in court ” over his push to cut off funding to the state because it allowed transgender athletes in girls’ school sports. Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer, a possible 2028 presidential candidate, publicly sparred with Trump during his first term but this time around, has met with him privately to find common ground.

Initially, Hawaii Gov. Josh Green referred to Trump as a “straight-up dictator,” but the next month he told a local outlet that he was treading carefully, saying: “I’m not going to criticize him directly much at all.”

Democratic governors called to testify before a House panel Thursday on so-called sanctuary policies blasted the use of military troops in the Los Angeles area.

Gov. JB Pritzker said Illinois complies with all laws when it comes to immigration while honoring First Amendment rights. “We will not take away people’s rights to peacefully protest,” Pritzker said. “It’s wrong to deploy the National Guard and active duty Marines in an American city over the objection of local law enforcement just as it’s wrong to tear children away from their homes.”

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul told committee members that the focus should be on comprehensive immigration reform. “As we speak, an American city has been militarized over the objections of their governor,” she said. “This is a flagrant abuse of power and nothing short of an assault on our American values.”

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, in an interview Wednesday in The Washington Post, said Trump should not send troops to a weekend protest scheduled in Philadelphia.

“He’s injected chaos into the world order, he’s injected it into our economy, he is trying to inject chaos into our streets by doing what he did with the Guard in California,” Shapiro said.

As state attorney general during Trump’s first term, Shapiro routinely boasted that he sued Trump over 40 times and won each time. As governor he has often treaded more carefully, by bashing Trump’s tariffs, but not necessarily targeting Trump himself.

The White House on Tuesday officially asked Congress to claw back $9.4 billion in already approved spending, taking funding away from programs targeted by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

It’s a process known as “rescission,” which requires President Donald Trump to get approval from Congress to return money that had previously been appropriated. Trump’s aides say the funding cuts target programs that promote liberal ideologies.

The request, if it passes the House and Senate, would formally enshrine many of the spending cuts and freezes sought by DOGE. It comes at a time when Musk is extremely unhappy with the tax cut and spending plan making its way through Congress, calling it on Tuesday a “disgusting abomination” for increasing the federal deficit.

White House budget director Russ Vought said more rescission packages and other efforts to cut spending could follow if the current effort succeeds.

“We are certainly willing and able to send up additional packages if the congressional will is there,” Vought told reporters.

Here’s what to know about the rescissions request:

Will the rescissions make a dent in the national debt?

The request to Congress is unlikely to meaningfully change the troublesome increase in the U.S. national debt. Tax revenues have been insufficient to cover the growing costs of Social Security, Medicare and other programs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the government is on track to spend roughly $7 trillion this year, with the rescission request equaling just 0.1% of that total.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at Tuesday’s briefing that Vought — a “well-respected fiscal hawk,” she called him — would continue to cut spending, hinting that there could be additional efforts to return funds.

“He has tools at his disposal to produce even more savings,” Leavitt said.

Members of the House Freedom Caucus, among the chamber’s most conservative lawmakers, said they would like to see additional rescission packages from the administration.

“We will support as many more rescissions packages the White House can send us in the coming weeks and months,” the group said in a press release. “Passing this rescissions package will be an important demonstration of Congress’s willingness to deliver on DOGE and the Trump agenda.”

Sen. Susan Collins, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, gave the package a less optimistic greeting.

“Despite this fast track, the Senate Appropriations Committee will carefully review the rescissions package and examine the potential consequences of these rescissions on global health, national security, emergency communications in rural communities, and public radio and television stations,” the Maine lawmaker said in a statement.
Vought said he can send up additional rescissions at the end of the fiscal year in September “and if Congress does not act on it, that funding expires.”

“It’s one of the reasons why we are not putting all of our expectations in a typical rescissions process,” he added.

What programs are targeted by the rescissions?

A spokesperson for the White House Office of Management and Budget, speaking on condition of anonymity to preview some of the items that would lose funding, said that $8.3 billion was being cut from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. NPR and PBS would also lose federal funding, as would the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, also known as PEPFAR.

The spokesperson listed specific programs that the Trump administration considered wasteful, including $750,000 to reduce xenophobia in Venezuela, $67,000 for feeding insect powder to children in Madagascar and $3 million for circumcision, vasectomies and condoms in Zambia.

Is the rescissions package likely to get passed?

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., complimented the planned cuts and pledged to pass them.

“This rescissions package reflects many of DOGE’s findings and is one of the many legislative tools Republicans are using to restore fiscal sanity,” Johnson said. “Congress will continue working closely with the White House to codify these recommendations, and the House will bring the package to the floor as quickly as possible.”

Members of the House Freedom Caucus, among the chamber’s most conservative lawmakers, said they would like to see additional rescission packages from the administration.

“We will support as many more rescissions packages the White House can send us in the coming weeks and months,” the group said in a press release. “Passing this rescissions package will be an important demonstration of Congress’s willingness to deliver on DOGE and the Trump agenda.”

Sen. Susan Collins, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, gave the package a less optimistic greeting.

“Despite this fast track, the Senate Appropriations Committee will carefully review the rescissions package and examine the potential consequences of these rescissions on global health, national security, emergency communications in rural communities, and public radio and television stations,” the Maine lawmaker said in a statement.

Exit polls in Poland’s presidential runoff Sunday showed the two candidates in a statistical tie with the race still too close to call in the deeply divided nation. The results could set the course for the nation’s political future and its relations with the European Union.

A first exit poll showed liberal Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski with a slight lead over conservative historian Karol Nawrocki, but two hours later an updated “late poll” showed Nawrocki winning 50.7%, more than Trzaskowski with 49.3%

Though the final result was still unclear with the two locked in a near dead heat, both men claimed to have won in meetings with their supporters in Warsaw.

“We won,” Trzaskowski told his supporters to chants of “Rafał, Rafał.”

“This is truly a special moment in Poland’s history. I am convinced that it will allow us to move forward and focus on the future,” Trzaskowski said. “I will be your president.”

Nawrocki, speaking to his supporters at a separate event in Warsaw, said he believed he was on track to win. “We will win and save Poland,” he said. “We must win tonight.”

The decisive presidential runoff pitted Trzaskowski, a liberal pro-EU politician, against Nawrocki, a conservative historian backed by the right-wing Law and Justice party and aligned with U.S. conservatives, including President Donald Trump.

The fact that it was so close underlined how deep the social divisions have become in Poland.

The outcome will determine whether Poland takes a more nationalist path or pivots more decisively toward liberal democratic norms. With conservative President Andrzej Duda completing his second and final term, the new president will have significant influence over whether Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s centrist government can fulfill its agenda, given the presidential power to veto laws.

“We will not allow Donald Tusk’s grip on power to be completed,” Nawrocki said.

The runoff follows a tightly contested first round of voting on May 18, in which Trzaskowski won just over 31% and Nawrocki nearly 30%, eliminating 11 other candidates.

Katarzyna Malek, a 29-year-old voter in Warsaw, cast her ballot in the first round for a left-wing candidate but went for Trzaskowski on Sunday, viewing him as more competent and more likely to pursue stronger ties with foreign partners and lower social tensions.

The campaign has highlighted stark ideological divides. Trzaskowski, 53, has promised to restore judicial independence, ease abortion restrictions and promote constructive ties with European partners. Nawrocki, 42, has positioned himself as a defender of traditional Polish values and skeptical of the EU.

The State Department says South Africa’s ambassador to the United States, who was declared “persona non grata” last week, has until Friday to leave the country.

After Secretary of State Marco Rubio determined that Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool was no longer welcome in the U.S. and posted his decision Friday on social media, South African embassy staff were summoned to the State Department and given a formal diplomatic note explaining the decision, department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said.

She said Rasool’s diplomatic privileges and immunities expired Monday and that he would be required to leave the United States by Friday.

South African Foreign Ministry spokesperson Chrispin Phiri said in a television interview on Monday that Rasool was still in the U.S. but would be leaving as soon as possible.

Rubio announced his decision in a post on X as he was flying back to the United States from a Group of 7 foreign ministers meeting in Canada. In it, he accused Rasool of being a “race-baiting politician” who hates President Donald Trump. His post linked to a story by the conservative Breitbart news site about a talk Rasool gave earlier Friday in Johannesburg as part of a South African think tank’s webinar. Rasool, speaking by videoconference, talked about actions taken by the Trump administration in the context of a United States where white people soon would no longer be in the majority.

It is highly unusual for the U.S. to expel a foreign ambassador, although lower-ranking diplomats are more frequently targeted with persona non grata status.

Rubio’s decision was the latest Trump administration move targeting South Africa. Trump signed an executive order last month halting funding to the country. It criticized the Black-led South African government on multiple fronts, saying it is pursuing anti-white policies at home and supporting “bad actors” in the world like the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Iran.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa told reporters on Monday that Rasool would give him a report when he returned home.

Ramaphosa said his government has “noted the displeasure that has been expressed by the United States,” and particularly about Rasool’s remarks, but stressed that he believed South Africa was in the process of rebuilding its relationship with the U.S.

“This is a hiccup, a hiccup we are working on straightening out,” he said.

“We will engage with the United States of America in a formal way,” Ramaphosa said. “We will do so with deep respect for them and for President Trump as well. Our relationship with the United States is going to be put on an even keel, so I would like the people of South Africa not to have sleepless nights.”

Bruce said the United States expects a certain level of respect.

“We’ve had a decent level of diplomacy with South Africa. There are some challenges, but you want people in each embassy who can actually facilitate a relationship,” she told reporters on Monday. “And these remarks were unacceptable to the United States, not just to the president, but to every American.”

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers have been given little more than 48 hours to explain what they accomplished over the last week, sparking confusion across key agencies as billionaire Elon Musk expands his crusade to slash the size of federal government.

Musk, who serves as President Donald Trump’s cost-cutting chief, telegraphed the extraordinary request on his social media network on Saturday.

“Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” Musk posted on X, which he owns. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”

Shortly afterward, federal employees — including some judges, court staff and federal prison officials — received a three-line email with this instruction: “Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.”

The deadline to reply was listed as Monday at 11:59 p.m., although the email did not include Musk’s social media threat about those who fail to respond.

The latest unusual directive from Musk’s team injects a new sense of chaos across beleaguered multiple agencies, including the National Weather Service, the State Department and the federal court system, as senior officials worked to verify the message’s authenticity Saturday night and in some cases, instructed their employees not to respond.

Thousands of government employees have already been forced out of the federal workforce — either by being fired or offered a buyout — during the first month of Trump’s administration as the White House and Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency fire both new and career workers, tell agency leaders to plan for “large-scale reductions in force” and freeze trillions of dollars in federal grant funds.

There is no official figure available for the total firings or layoffs so far, but The Associated Press has tallied hundreds of thousands of workers who are being affected. Many work outside of Washington. The cuts include thousands at the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Defense, Health and Human Services, the Internal Revenue Service and the National Parks Service, among others.

Labor union leaders quickly condemned the ultimatum and threatened legal action.

AFGE President Everett Kelley called the new order an example of Trump and Musk’s “utter disdain for federal employees and the critical services they provide to the American people.”

“It is cruel and disrespectful to hundreds of thousands of veterans who are wearing their second uniform in the civil service to be forced to justify their job duties to this out-of-touch, privileged, unelected billionaire who has never performed one single hour of honest public service in his life,” Kelley said. “AFGE will challenge any unlawful terminations of our members and federal employees across the country.”

Musk on Friday celebrated his new role at a gathering of conservatives by waving a giant chainsaw in the air. He called it “the chainsaw for bureaucracy” and said, “Waste is pretty much everywhere” in the federal government.

McLaurine Pinover, a spokesperson at the Office of Personnel Management, confirmed Musk’s directive and said that individual agencies would “determine any next steps.”

What happens if an employee is on leave or vacation? Again, she said individual agencies would determine how to proceed.

In a message to employees on Saturday night, federal court officials instructed recipients not to respond.

“We understand that some judges and judiciary staff have received an email ... directing the recipient to reply with 5 accomplishments from the prior week. Please be advised that this email did not originate from the Judiciary or the Administrative Office and we suggest that no action be taken,” officials wrote.

Judges around the country got emails from Musk’s team in late January, apparently by mistake, U.S. District Judge Randolph Daniel Moss said earlier this month. Moss said he’d also gotten a message and ignored it.

The National Weather Service leadership acknowledged some confusion in a message to its employees late Saturday as well.

AP News

The executive order mandates that all departments and agencies responsible for U.S. foreign development assistance immediately pause new obligations and disbursements of funds to foreign countries, non-governmental organizations, international organizations, and contractors. This pause will remain in effect pending reviews of such programs for efficiency and consistency with U.S. foreign policy.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio emphasized the administration's approach during his confirmation hearing, stating, "Every dollar we spend, every program we fund, and every policy we pursue must be justified with the answer to three simple questions: Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?"

Consequently, Trump declared that “no further United States foreign assistance shall be disbursed in a manner that is not fully aligned with the foreign policy of the President of the United States.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during his confirmation hearing last week that “every dollar we spend, every program we fund, and every policy we pursue must be justified with the answer to three simple questions:

A Georgia appeals court on Monday canceled oral arguments that were scheduled for next month on the appeal of a lower court ruling allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to continue to prosecute the election interference case she brought against President-elect Donald Trump.

Trump and other defendants had asked the Georgia Court of Appeals to hold oral arguments in the case, and the court had set those arguments for Dec. 5. But in a one-line order with no further explanation, the appeals court said that hearing “is hereby canceled until further order of this Court.”

A Fulton County grand jury in August 2023 indicted Trump and 18 others, accusing them of participating in a sprawling scheme to illegally try to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Four defendants have pleaded guilty after reaching deals with prosecutors, but Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty.

But with Trump set to return to the White House in January, the future of the case against the once and future president was already in question even if the Court of Appeals ultimately says Willis shouldn’t be disqualified.

Trump and other defendants filed the appeal seeking to get Willis and her office removed from the case and to have the case dismissed. They argue that a romantic relationship Willis had with special prosecutor Nathan Wade created a conflict of interest. Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee in March found that no conflict of interest existed that should force Willis off the case, but he granted a request from Trump and the other defendants to seek an appeal of his ruling from the Court of Appeals.

McAfee wrote that “reasonable questions” over whether Willis and Wade had testified truthfully about the timing of their relationship “further underpin the finding of an appearance of impropriety and the need to make proportional efforts to cure it.” He allowed Willis to remain on the case only if Wade left, and the special prosecutor submitted his resignation hours later.

The allegations that Willis had improperly benefited from her romance with Wade resulted in a tumultuous couple of months in the case as intimate details of Willis and Wade’s personal lives were aired in court in mid-February.

North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein was elected governor on Tuesday, defeating Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and maintaining Democratic leadership of the chief executive’s office in a state where Republicans have recently controlled the legislature and appeals courts.

Stein, a Harvard-trained lawyer, former state senator and the state’s chief law enforcement officer since 2017, will succeed fellow Democrat Roy Cooper, who was term-limited from seeking reelection. He will be the state’s first Jewish governor. Robinson’s campaign was greatly hampered by a damning report in September that he had posted messages on an online pornography website, including that he was a “black NAZI.”

Democrats have held the governor’s mansion for all but four years since 1993, even as the GOP has held legislative majorities since 2011.

As with Cooper’s time in office, a key task for Stein likely will be to use his veto stamp to block what he considers extreme right-leaning policies. Cooper had mixed success on that front during his eight years as governor.

Otherwise, Stein’s campaign platform largely followed Cooper’s policy goals, including those to increase public school funding, promote clean energy and stop further abortion restrictions by Republicans.

Stein’s campaign dramatically outraised and outspent Robinson, who was seeking to become the state’s first Black governor.

For months Stein and his allies used television ads and social media to remind voters of previous inflammatory comments that Robinson had made about abortion, women and LGBTQ+ people that they said made him too extreme to lead a swing state.

“The people of North Carolina resoundingly embraced a vision that’s optimistic, forward-looking and welcoming, a vision that’s about creating opportunity for every North Carolinian,” Stein told supporters in his victory speech after Cooper introduced him. “We chose hope over hate, competence over chaos, decency over division. That’s who we are as North Carolinians.”

Robinson’s campaign descended into disarray in September when CNN reported that he made explicit racial and sexual posts on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago. In addition to the “black NAZI” comment, Robinson said he enjoyed transgender pornography and slammed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as “worse than a maggot,” according to the report. Robinson denied writing the messages and sued CNN and an individual for defamation in October.

In the days following the report, most of Robinson’s top campaign staff quit, many fellow GOP elected officials and candidates — including presidential nominee Donald Trump — distanced themselves from his campaign and outside money supporting him on the airwaves dried up. The result: Stein spent millions on ads in the final weeks, while Robinson spent nothing.

Stein had a clear advantage among women, young and older voters, moderates and urban and suburban voters, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of more than 3,600 voters in the state. White voters were about evenly divided between Stein and Robinson, while clear majorities of Black voters and Latino voters supported Stein.

Fifteen percent of those who voted for Trump also backed Stein for governor, while just 2% of those who cast ballots for Democratic presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris backed Robinson.

Patrick Stemple, 33, a shipping coordinator attending a Trump rally last week in Greensboro, said he voted early for Trump but also chose Stein for governor.

Stemple mentioned both Stein’s ads talking about how he has fought illegal drug trafficking and his dislike for Robinson’s rhetoric. Stemple said the graphic language that CNN reported was used in Robinson’s posts reinforced his decision not to back Robinson.