San Antonio FC announced on Friday that Saudi Arabia will play Senegal in an international friendly on Tuesday, June 9 at Toyota Field. Match time is set for 6 p.m.

The friendly will serve as an appetizer before the start of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which officially kicks off on June 11.

“We’re excited to bring a high-quality international matchup to Toyota Field and showcase not only our club’s facilities, but the city of San Antonio to a global audience,” Senior Director of Toyota Field and Ricos STAR Soccer Complex Jose Lizardo said in a statement. “Being a part of an event connected to the World Cup is a tremendous opportunity for our organization and community. We’re looking forward to seeing our fans show up in full force and demonstrate the welcoming, passionate spirit that makes San Antonio such a special place to host. This is another great example of our commitment to bringing top-level events to Toyota Field and continuing to elevate our city on the international stage.”

Tickets for the friendly go on sale at 2 p.m. on Friday through Ticketmaster’s website.

TOYOTA FIELD IS GOING INTERNATIONAL 🌍

Toyota Field will host an international friendly between the Saudi Arabia and Senegal men’s national teams on Tuesday, June 9 🙌

Tickets will go on sale to the general public today at 2PM here: https://t.co/XHJOOTnIZc 🎟️ pic.twitter.com/lAAIs3GFd3

— San Antonio FC (@SanAntonioFC) May 1, 2026

Saudi Arabia, which is in Group H of the FIFA World Cup, will face Uruguay on June 15. Senegal will have its first Group I match against France on June 16.

While the FIFA World Cup trophy made a stop in the Alamo City on Thursday, San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones hinted at San Antonio hosting some of the clubs for upcoming matches.

“We’re really excited to be hosting the visiting teams during their down time during the games as well as visitors that are coming in from all over the world to celebrate their teams,” Jones said on Thursday.

San Antonio is no stranger to hosting international friendlies. In 2024, the Alamo City landed the Clásico Regio between Tigres and the Rayados de Monterrey — Mexico’s two most prominent clubs.

Back in February, Austin FC announced that the club would be hosting the Saudi Arabian Football Federation for the men’s national team to reside and train for their upcoming World Cup matches.

San Antonio FC has also hosted international friendlies before. In 2023, SAFC hosted England’s Sunderland AFC in a sold-out match. Later this year, SAFC will host Germany’s SV Darmstadt 98 at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, September 29. Tickets for that match can be also purchased here.

The first official World Cup match will be on June 11 when Mexico faces South Africa at the Estadio Banorte in Mexico City. On the following day, the United States will face Paraguay at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California.

KSAT 12 Sports have more on Friday’s announcement and preview SAFC’s next home match against the Colorado Springs Switchbacks at 9:35 p.m. tonight on KSAT Sports Now, which streams live and for free on KSAT Plus.

More recent sports coverage on KSAT:

• San Antonio Spurs draw Minnesota Timberwolves in second round of NBA playoffs
• SCHEDULE: Spurs at home to start second round of playoffs

The San Antonio Toros are a founding member of the new Continental Football League, but they aren’t starting from scratch.

The Toros carry the legacy of one of the original Continental Football League’s championship contenders, falling just short of the 1969 title in a sudden-death overtime.

The Toros unveiled their uniforms at a community event Friday, allowing fans to meet the new players and coaches representing San Antonio.

Stan Bedwell serves as the head coach of the Toros, bringing coaching experience from high school, college and professional football on three different continents.

Beyond winning a championship, Bedwell said his goal is to build a stable, lasting team in San Antonio.

“Becoming ingrained within San Antonio,” Bedwell said, “we’re a team that’s here to stay and not the fly-by-night that I know has happened time and time again with a lot of the pro football teams in San Antonio.”

The Toros will play their home games at Benson Stadium on the campus of the University of the Incarnate Word. Their schedule is as follows:

• Preseason vs. Tennessee Hornets | 7 p.m. May 24
• Week 1 at Texas Syndicate | 7 p.m. May 30
• Week 2 at Fort Worth Braves
• Week 3 vs. Tall City Black Gold | 7 p.m. June 13
• Week 4 vs. Texas Syndicate | 7 p.m. June 20
• Week 5 at Tall City Black Gold | 7 p.m. June 28
• Week 6 vs. Fort Worth Braves | 3 p.m. July 5
• Southern Division Championship | July 11
• Continental Football League Championship | July 19

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• UTSA Roadrunners open spring with 7-7 tie at Alamodome

Josh Norris added an empty-netter. Alex Lyon finished with 25 saves.

The 4-2 series victory is the latest milestone for Buffalo, which saw the end of its 14-year playoff drought by capturing its first Atlantic Division title. The 2007 season was also the last time the Sabres advanced to the second round. They lost in the conference finals that year.

“It's one step in the right direction. That's it,” Tuch said.

Buffalo will play the winner of the Montreal-Tampa Bay series in the second round. That series will go to seven games after the Lightning's 1-0 overtime win Friday night in Montreal.

This is Buffalo's first playoff series win with Lindy Ruff as coach.

“I think Part A is getting to the playoffs. Part B is trying to have success once you get there,” Ruff said. “We talked about what a challenge it was going to be to try to take out a good team. And Boston's a good team. ... I thought our guys dug in and gave us a heck of a game tonight.”

David Pastrnak scored the lone goal for the Bruins. Jeremy Swayman made 22 stops.

“Buffalo, there's a reason they won the division,” Pastrnak said. "A lot of skill and speed that's over there. Their (defense) is very active. So, yeah, they were better."

Tempers flared with 1:31 to play after Benson tripped Charlie McAvoy. McAvoy responded with a slash at Benson. Both were sent to the penalty box.

It ends a feisty series comeback for the Bruins after earning a playoff berth in their first season under coach Marco Sturm. Boston has lost its last six home playoff games.

Trailing 2-1 in the third, the Bruins picked up their attack and had something working in the Sabres’ zone. But Josh Doan poked the puck away to start a break. He was pursued by Pastrnak and McAvoy toward the corner, when Doan flipped it back to a wide-open Zach Benson, who beat Swayman.

The Sabres’ speed dominated in the early going.

That changed 1:54 into the second period when a Buffalo turnover turned into a 2-on-1 break between Pastrnak and Pavel Zacha. Zacha passed to Pastrnak on the left side, and he fired it in from the faceoff circle to get the Bruins within 2-1. It marked his third goal in the series.

It was part of a second period that saw an increase in physical play that was mostly allowed by the referees. It included a more than nine-minute stretch without a stoppage of play.

The Sabres needed just 3:25 into the first period to open the scoring when Tuch guided in a touch pass in front of the net by Rasmus Dahlin.

___

AP NHL: https://apnews.com/NHL

The Spurs admit they have to prepare for a bigger challenge.

“Portland is a pretty straightforward team. They’re on one end of the spectrum of NBA teams, so it requires a lot of resilience to keep pushing through,” said Spurs center, forward and Defensive Player of the Year Victor Wembanyama.

Wembanyama said he’s looking forward to playing the Timberwolves.

>> SCHEDULE: Spurs at home to start second round of playoffs

“We’re locked in. We know it’s going to be even harder than the first series,” he said.

Spurs head coach and finalist for the 2026 Coach of the Year award Mitch Johnson said his team is disciplined and ready for the challenge.

“The guys have been great in terms of their preparation and what we’ve asked of them,” Johnson said. “I believe this next series will test us more than anything we’ve gone through this year.”

The Spurs are using their home-court advantage to start the series off right.

Game 1 of the second round is Monday, May 4. The time is to be determined.

More Spurs coverage on KSAT:

• Where to watch the Spurs’ second round series for free in San Antonio
• A new era in San Antonio: Spurs, fans and prices evolve since last playoff success
• Shaq calls Wembanyama first perfect big man in NBA history

Friday's unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is requiring that the abortion pill be distributed only in person and at clinics, overruling regulations set by the federal Food and Drug Administration.

The ruling, which is likely to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, is the biggest jolt to abortion policy in the U.S. since the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed states to enforce abortion bans.

In the ruling, Judge Kyle Duncan, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, agreed with the state of Louisiana's contention that allowing the drug to be mailed there makes moot the state's ban on abortion at all stages of pregnancy.

“Every abortion facilitated by FDA’s action cancels Louisiana’s ban on medical abortions and undermines its policy that ‘every unborn child is human being from the moment of conception and is, therefore, a legal person,’” the ruling states.

Mifepristone is involved in most abortions in the US

Mifepristone was approved in 2000 as a safe and effective way to end early pregnancies. It is typically used in combination with a second drug, misoprostol.

Surveys have found that the majority of abortions in the U.S. are provided via pills and that about 1 in 4 abortions nationally are prescribed via telehealth.

One survey of abortion providers last year estimated that more women in states where abortion is banned obtained abortions that way than by traveling to other states.

Some Democratic-led states have laws that seek to protect providers who prescribe via telehealth to patients in places with bans.

That rise in prominence is why abortion opponents have targeted the pills in legislation and litigation.

Ruling goes against how courts usually view FDA decisions

There is little precedent for a federal court overruling the scientific regulations of the FDA, and it wasn’t immediately clear how quickly or completely the decision would impact mailing of the drug throughout the country.

Judges have long deferred to the agency's judgments on the safety and appropriate regulation of drugs.

FDA officials under Trump have repeatedly stated that the agency is conducting a new review of mifepristone’s safety, at the direction of the president.

The judges, all nominated by Republican presidents, noted in their ruling that the FDA “could not say when that review might be complete and admitted it was still collecting data.”

Because of rare cases of excessive bleeding, the FDA initially imposed strict limits on who could prescribe and distribute the pill — only specially certified physicians and only after an in-person appointment where the person would receive the pill.

Both those requirements were dropped during the COVID-19 years. At the time, FDA officials under President Joe Biden said that after more than 20 years of monitoring mifepristone use, and reviewing dozens of studies involving thousands of women, it was clear that women could safely use the pill without direct supervision.

GenBioPro, which makes generic mifepristone, said in a statement the court’s decision “ignores the FDA’s rigorous science and decades of safe use of mifepristone in a case pursued by extremist abortion opponents.”

The impact isn't just in states with bans

In a court filing, Louisiana’s attorney general and a woman who said she was coerced into taking abortion pills requested that the FDA rules be rolled back to when the pills were allowed to be prescribed and dispensed only in person.

A Louisiana-based federal judge last month ruled that those allowances undermined the state’s abortion ban but stopped short of undoing the regulations immediately.

Friday's ruling is in effect as the case works its way through the courts and extends beyond Louisiana and states with abortion bans.

Telehealth prescriptions have become common even in states where abortion is allowed — and the ruling blocks them there, too.

“This is going to affect patients’ access to abortion and miscarriage care in every state in the nation,” said Julia Kaye, an ACLU lawyer. “When telemedicine is restricted, rural communities, people with low incomes, people with disabilities, survivors of intimate partner violence and communities of color suffer the most.”

The National Right to Life Committee said the ruling “restores a critical layer of oversight" in women’s health.

“Women deserve better than an abortion-by-mail system that prioritizes ideology over safety," said Carol Tobias, the group’s president.

Next step could be an appeal to the nation's top court

Danco Laboratories, another mifepristone manufacturer and a defendant in the lawsuit, asked the appeals court Friday after the ruling to put its order on hold for one week to give the company time to “seek relief” from the Supreme Court. If the court does not grant the request, the company said it will file an emergency appeal with the high court.

The conservative-majority Supreme Court overturned abortion as a nationwide right in 2022 but unanimously preserved access to mifepristone two years later.

That 2024 decision sidestepped the core issues, however, by ruling that the anti-abortion doctors behind the case didn’t have legal standing to sue.

“I look forward to continuing to defend women and babies as this case continues,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, a Republican, said in a statement.

Representatives for the FDA and the U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday evening.

In the meantime, anti-abortion groups are celebrating Friday's ruling. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, applauded the ruling as “a huge victory for victims and survivors of Biden’s reckless mail-order abortion drug regime.” She also criticized the Trump administration for taking time to conduct its own review of mifepristone, saying its slow movement has forced states to take action.

“Women and children suffer and state sovereignty is violated every day the FDA allows abortion drugs to flood the mail,” Dannenfelser said.

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Associated Press reporters John Hanna, Matthew Perrone and Lindsay Whitehurst contributed.

To see how the city handles complaints about potholes and flooding, KSAT visited the City of San Antonio’s 311 call center. The 311 call center is staffed seven days a week to route non-emergency requests to the appropriate department.

Paula Stallcup, 311 director of customer service, said the call center serves as a first stop for a wide range of city services.

“We want to be that first point of contact,” Stallcup said. “We handle not only the calls for Animal Care Services, for Code Enforcement, Public Works, Parks, Solid Waste ... but maybe you’re trying to learn about a Parks program. Or maybe you want to know about the economic development incentives that are available for a small business."

Potholes are among the issues 311 routes to Public Works.

“Our Public Works Department handles (potholes) within two business days, so those are definitely easy to fix,” Stallcup said. “We’re getting about 12,000 to 15,000 calls a week.”

KSAT obtained the city’s call data through an open records request. It shows the scope of traffic and pavement complaints.

• From Jan. 1-April 13, 2024, there were 7,073 calls to 311 about traffic and pavement issues.
• From Jan. 1-April 13, 2025, there were 8,952 calls to 311 related to traffic and pavement issues.
• In the first three months of 2026, there have been 7,672 calls for traffic and pavement issues to 311.

That volume results in residents not always getting an update when expected. Some have said they feel like their request is stalled.

If the expected timeframe passes, 311 staff encourage people to call back and reference their original report number so the case can be checked and, if needed, escalated to the department responsible.

City staff also recommend being specific when filing a report, including the nearest address or cross streets and a description of the problem, such as street flooding, blocking a driveway, water covering a roadway or a pothole that is growing after repeated rain.

Read also:

• Millions owed to City of San Antonio in unpaid citations, some dating back to 2000

The separatist fighters, meanwhile, said earlier in the day that they captured a strategic military camp in the northern town of Tessalit after the withdrawal of Mali's army and its Russian allies from there.

The claim by the Azawad Liberation Front separatist group was the latest setback for Mali’s ruling junta, which lost control of the major city of Kidal earlier in the week as part of the attacks that killed Malian Defense Minister Sadio Camara.

Mali has been run by the military since a 2020 coup and has long suffered violence as jihadi groups expand in surrounding territories in the wider Sahel region south of the Sahara Desert, which is known as global hotspot for violent extremism.

The latest assault in the West African nation began Saturday after al-Qaida-backed Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, or JNIM, and the Azawad Liberation Front, or FLA, partnered to target the main international airport in the capital, Bamako, as well as other Malian towns and cities in near-simultaneous attacks, with the fighters riding on motorcycles and trucks.

A statement from the public prosecutor at the Military Court of Bamako, which was read on state television on Friday, noted that investigations found “solid evidence regarding the complicity of certain military personnel” in the attacks, including serving and recently dismissed officers.

The officers participated in “the planning, coordination, and execution” of the attacks, the prosecutor's statement said, while also alleging the involvement of politicians, including Oumar Mariko, a prominent Malian politician in exile.

Malian army withdraws from a key town

Before the arrival of the FLA fighters Friday, the Malian army and members of Russia’s Africa Corp reportedly pulled out of the Tessalit military camp, which is strategically located near an airport and the border with Algeria.

Achafghi Ag Bouhanda, a top FLA commander, announced the capture of Tessalit in an online video verified by The Associated Press.

The AP could not independently confirm the situation at the camp. Malian authorities did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

At least 10 locations have been attacked by the militants since the latest assault began, forcing Malian and Russian forces to withdraw from the key northern city of Kidal, which was once a stronghold of the separatists.

The junta has vowed to continue its aerial and ground offensive against the militants.

“Military operations will continue until the armed groups involved have been completely neutralized and security has been sustainably restored throughout the country,” Assimi Goita, Malian military leader, said on Tuesday.

Roads to Bamako are blocked

The jihadis have at various times in recent days blocked roads leading to Mali’s capital Bamako, further squeezing the city that already was facing a fuel blockade imposed by the militants late last year.

JNIM earlier this week announced it would enforce a total blockade of Bamako's four major routes, which had previously been partially blocked by the militants. Traffic leading to the city was disrupted Friday and there were reports of roadblocks. The partial blockade has forced some travel agencies to stop operating, travelers said.

“These days, traveling by road is a dangerous undertaking,” said Aminata Traoré, who travels between Bamako and the Sikasso region in the south of the country.

The president did not provide details but said an announcement could come later Friday or Saturday.

“We’re looking at it. If we could do it, we’ll do it. But only if it’s a good deal,” he said earlier Friday, speaking to reporters before departing the White House for Florida.

The possibility of a bailout first emerged publicly last week, when Trump floated the idea of the U.S. government offering Spirit a financial lifeline to help keep it from going out of business. Separately, a lawyer for the airline told a U.S. Bankruptcy Court that Spirit was in advanced talks with the government about a financing package.

The president suggested the government would be able to resell the airline known for its bright yellow planes and “no frills” service for a profit once oil prices driven up by the Iran war come down.

Lawmakers from both parties and some Trump administration officials have criticized using taxpayer funds to keep the ultra-low cost airline afloat. Speculation around Spirit's future has grown with every day that passes without a resolution and its operating expenses and debts mount.

A spokesperson for Spirit, headquartered in Dania Beach, Florida, declined to comment on ongoing discussions Friday and said “Spirit is operating as usual.”

Although travelers still could book flights on the airline's website Friday evening, customers flooded Spirit's X account with questions about upcoming flights and demands for refunds. Some U.S. airlines say they would step in to support Spirit customers if the airline goes under.

American Airlines said in a statement that it was capping main cabin fares for flights on Spirit routes where American also offers nonstop service. Budget carrier Frontier said in an X post that it was “ready to support customers who may be impacted if Spirit Airlines ceases operations."

Trump framed the possible federal intervention as an effort to preserve jobs but stressed that any deal must benefit the government.

“If we can help them, we will," he said. “But we have to come first.”

The size and terms of the deal have not been shared publicly. The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources, both reported an amount of $500 million that would give the government an option to acquire a sizable stake in the airline.

Supporters of a rescue — including labor unions representing Spirit's pilots, flight attendants and ramp workers — say a collapse would put thousands of Americans out of work and hurt consumers by reducing airline competition and increasing airfares. About 17,000 jobs could be impacted, according to Spirit lawyer Marshall Huebner.

Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, said Friday in a post on X that if Trump wanted to help the airline, “it's in his hands.”

“Everyday Americans will hurt,” Nelson wrote, including consumers and the employees who stand to lose their jobs if Spirit shuts down.

Miami resident Caleb Euzebe, 27, who works at an insurance company, said he flies Spirit “all the time" and compared the carrier to “that reliable car that you have. It always gets you from point A to point B safely.”

Euzebe, who was at Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport after his Spirit flight to Houston was canceled Friday, said he supported the government stepping in if it meant saving jobs.

Spirit's employees have to “put food on the table, keep the lights on for their homes,” he said. "So if that means that bailing them out keeps these people working, I support 100%.”

Spirit has struggled financially since the COVID-19 pandemic, weighed down by rising operating costs and growing debt. By the time it filed for Chapter 11 protection in November 2024, Spirit had lost more than $2.5 billion since the start of 2020.

The budget carrier sought bankruptcy protection again in August 2025, when it reported having $8.1 billion in debts and $8.6 billion in assets, according to court filings.

Shortly before, its parent company revealed in a quarterly report that it had “substantial doubt” about Spirit’s ability to stay in business over the next year, citing “adverse market conditions” — including weak leisure domestic travel demand and ongoing “uncertainties in its business operations.”

The company, Spirit Aviation Holdings Inc., struck a more optimistic tone earlier this year, saying in February it had reached a preliminary deal with creditors and expected to exit Chapter 11 in late spring or early summer. It pitched a “new Spirit,” — smaller and leaner, but still focused on low fares while adding more premium seating options.

Instead, the war that started days later when the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran intensified the airline's cash flow problems. Rising jet fuel costs tied to the war added pressure across the industry, and Spirit's creditors last month expressed doubts about whether it could continue operating, raising the possibility of the airline being forced to sell off assets and shut down.

Gianfranco Finizio, a bankruptcy expert and partner at law firm Lowenstein Sandler, said Spirit’s situation reflected an unusually turbulent stretch for the airline, shaped in part by shifting signals from Washington.

He cited the Biden administration’s successful 2023 lawsuit to block Spirit’s merger with JetBlue, followed by mixed messages from the Trump administration about a potential rescue.

“The thought of there even being a bailout is unusual. It’s not something that happens in every day bankruptcy practice,” said Finizio, who is not involved in the airline's Chapter 11 proceedings.

"It's been a tumultuous couple of years and certainly a tumultuous couple of weeks for Spirit,” he said.

Budget-conscious and leisure travelers would likely feel Spirit's absence the most — especially where the airline has a big footprint, such as Las Vegas and the Florida cities of Fort Lauderdale and Orlando.

The carrier flew about 1.7 million domestic passengers in February, roughly half a million fewer than it did during the same month a year earlier, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium. It has also sharply reduced its capacity, with about half as many seats available this month than in May 2024.

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Yamat reported from Las Vegas. Associated Press video journalist Daniel Kozin contributed from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Detroit trailed by 22 at the half and Orlando's lead went to 62-38 early in the third quarter. The Magic looked absolutely poised to become the seventh No. 8 seed to eliminate a No. 1 seed in the first round.

And then everything went wrong for Orlando. Everything.

“Detroit grit,” Cunningham said. “That's what we've been talking about all year.”

The Magic became the first team since 1996-97 — when play-by-play began getting tracked digitally — to lose at home after leading by at least 24 points with a chance to win a series.

That number, and a whole lot of others, were just baffling. The Magic missed 23 consecutive shots from the field, Detroit went on a 35-5 run and just like that, the story of the game — and quite possibly the series — changed wildly.

“We took each possession at a time, both offensively and defensively, and tried our best to execute on every single possession," Pistons coach J.B. Bickerstaff said. "Every screening action, every rebound, all the small things. We went out and focused on that. And we put ourselves in position to win.”

Tobias Harris scored 22 points for Detroit, which will host Game 7 on Sunday. Paolo Banchero and Desmond Bane each scored 17 for Orlando, which is now 0-2 in closeout opportunities in this series and was again without injured forward Franz Wagner.

The first quarter was back and forth, Detroit leading 26-25 after those opening 12 minutes.

The second quarter: Magic 35, Pistons 12.

Orlando outscored the Pistons 17-0 from 3-point range and the free-throw line in that quarter, held Detroit to 2-for-11 shooting over the first 5:48 of the period and took a 60-38 lead into the half.

The 22-point halftime lead was the fourth-largest by a No. 8 seed over a No. 1 seed in this format. And there was never an instance of a No. 8 seed — at least in the play-by-play era, which started in 1996-97 — outscoring a No. 1 seed by 23 or more points in any quarter of a playoff game, either.

It seemed over. It was not. Because the third quarter: Pistons 24, Magic 11.

“When things get sideways, people splinter. And this group does the opposite," Pistons guard Duncan Robinson said. "It finds a way to just come together. There’s a lot of pride in that locker room, not wanting to go out like that.”

The tone was set for a comeback — an epic one — and when the night ended those who remained in Orlando's Kia Center booed as they departed for possibly the final time this season.

“We've got to go do it the hard way,” Magic coach Jamahl Mosley said.

___

AP NBA: https://apnews.com/NBA

“This filly was struggling,” Brown said. “Her career was really up in the air.”

After more than a month in a veterinary clinic and treatment with a hyperbaric chamber, she began her racing career in February. On Friday night, Always a Runner showed her toughness once again by winning the Kentucky Oaks against some of the best 3-year-old fillies around in the 152nd edition of the race and the first run under the lights in prime time at Churchill Downs.

“This filly is very resilient, very tough,” Brown said after winning the Oaks for the first time. “She didn’t have to be here today. She didn’t have to run again. She could have never run, easily. I’ve had it happen with several horses. The fact that not only did she overcome it and ended up here today as an undefeated horse in the Oaks is just remarkable.”

Ridden by Jose Ortiz, Always a Runner made a move around the final turn and needed every bit of the stretch to pass Bob Baffert’s Explora and and Michael McCarthy’s Meaning before the finish line of the 1 1/8-mile race.

Meaning was second by 1 1/4 lengths and Counting Stars third. Always a Runner finished in 1:48.62 and paid $13.04 to win, $7.46 to place and $5.44 to show.

“We were there every step of the way,” McCarthy said. “Kudos to Chad, that filly came running. We were second best.”

Always a Runner impressed Ortiz, who had never ridden her in a race before the Oaks — just a morning workout. She's now 3 for 3.

“Chad was very confident in her,” said Ortiz, who won five races on Friday at Churchill Downs. "He knew what he had. He told me, ‘Just go out there, get to know her in the work and you’re going to feel like a sports car, like she’s a Ferrari.’ And he was right. I loved the way she worked, and here we are. We won.”

Brown will try to pull off the Oaks- Kentucky Derby double on Saturday with Emerging Market, who also had pneumonia as a 2-year-old and has only raced twice. He has also never won the Derby.

“I stick with things that are working," Brown said. “So, two starts, we should be good.”

The first night Kentucky Oaks was one for the history books, but also took place in front of large swaths of empty seats. Many of the 100,000-plus fans who filled the grandstand and the track from the late morning through the afternoon had departed before sunset. The Oaks has typically been run before 6 p.m.

“For me it’s just a very long day,” Ortiz said. “It was just amazing. Good vibe. It’s for the public. If they have fun, it’s good to me.”

Brown lamented not being able to get presented with the trophy in the infield, the tradition for the Oaks and the Derby that was moved to the paddock because of the time. Other than that, he had no complaints.

“It was a really cool experience, and it’s nice to utilize this facility with the lights and all and I would definitely do it again. Obviously, my horse ran terrific,” Brown said. “(The ceremony) was the only negative. Everything else about it was an incredible experience today with this post time.”

___

AP horse racing: https://apnews.com/hub/horse-racing

The new rules also include significant changes to the much-criticized international film category, expanding eligibility to include films that won top qualifying awards from prestigious film festivals like Cannes, Venice and Toronto.

“As we do every year, we made a lot of, we think, really smart and progressive changes,” film academy CEO Bill Kramer told The Associated Press. “Obviously, as the academy becomes more global, we need to think about how we are inviting international films into the Oscars conversation.”

AI and the Oscars

As part of its annual review of Oscar eligibility rules, the academy is tackling one of the global filmmaking community's biggest concerns: generative artificial intelligence.

The new rules state that “the tools neither help nor harm the chances of achieving a nomination” and that the academy and each branch “will judge the achievement, taking into account the degree to which a human was at the heart of the creative authorship when choosing which movie to award.” They’re also reserving the right to request more information from the filmmaking team about the nature of the use of AI and “human authorship.”

“Humans have to be at the center of the creative process,” said academy president Lynette Howell Taylor. “As AI continues to evolve, our conversations around AI will do so along with that. But for the academy, we are always going to put human authorship at the center of our awards eligibility process.”

When it comes to the eligibility of performances, only roles “demonstrably performed by humans with their consent” will be considered. The organization declined to comment on whether the upcoming AI-rendered Val Kilmer performance would be eligible as the filmmakers have not yet submitted it for consideration.

A likeness is not an actor, for one, but it might also depend on how Kilmer is credited in the film: As Val Kilmer or something else? One could also take Andy Serkis as Gollum as an example of a human collaborating with technology for the final performance.

“We will review that on a case-by-case basis,” Kramer said. “We, like everybody in our industry and world, we will be assessing this every year.”

There is less ambiguity in the screenplay categories, where the rules state that “screenplays must be human-authored to be eligible.”

The film academy has often had to review its standards to meet the technological advances of the moment, whether it be sound, color or computer generated imagery (CGI).

Sweeping changes to international film eligibility

As its membership has grown much more international, there have been increasing calls for an overhaul to the international film category, which had been continually criticized as unjust, outdated and subject to political interference. That's led to independent and dissident filmmakers often pointedly not being submitted to represent the country they’re from.

Last year’s Palme d’Or-winner at Cannes, for instance, was “It Was Just an Accident,” from Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, was not submitted as Iran’s official entry for the 98th Academy Awards, but France’s.

Under the new rules, “It Was Just an Accident” could be considered eligible because it won the top Cannes prize and not because a country chose to submit it. In addition to the Palme d’Or at Cannes, the Golden Lion at Venice and the Platform award at Toronto, other festivals with eligible qualifying awards will also include the Berlin International Film Festival’s Golden Bear, the Busan International Film Festival’s best film award and the Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema Grand Jury Prize.

All the international films will also be credited as the nominee, not the country or region, and the award will be accepted by the filmmaker. The director’s name will also be listed on the Oscar plaque, “after the film title and country if applicable.”

“That really reflects our desire to honor the film’s creative team. That is how we approach other categories,” Kramer said. “And as we become more global, as the filmmaking community becomes more global. I think it’s really about a focus on the filmmakers and less a focus of the country.”

Actors can now be nominated for more than one award in a category

The acting branch is catching up with the rest of the academy in allowing an actor to be nominated for more than one performance in a single category. If, say, this year’s best actor winner Michael B. Jordan has two extraordinary leading performances in two different films in 2026, he could possibly get two best actor nominations.

This is standard practice in the other categories. In 2001, at the 73rd Oscars, Steven Soderbergh was nominated for best director for both “Traffic” and “Erin Brockovich,” winning the prize for the former.

And about those original songs in the end credits

The organization also clarified the eligibility of original songs used during a film’s end credits. For songs in which the first music cue plays over the end credits, that song must overlap with at least the film’s last 15 seconds before the credits roll in order to be considered eligible. This year’s original song winner, “Golden” was a key part of “KPop Demon Hunters” and used several times throughout the film.

“We never stop looking at ways to improve our eligibility process,” Taylor said.

The crash happened around 11 p.m. Thursday in Wimberley, a city about 40 miles (64 kilometers) southwest of Austin, the Texas Department of Public Safety said.

“The pilot and four passengers on board were pronounced deceased on scene,” Sgt. Billy Ray told reporters.

Names of the victims were not immediately released by authorities, though the Amarillo Pickleball Club in Amarillo, Texas, said they were members who were flying to a tournament.

An unidentified woman wiped her eyes and fanned her face with her hands as she stood behind yellow police tape near the crash site Friday afternoon. A man consoled her.

The plane, a Cessna 421C, took off from Amarillo and was headed to New Braunfels National Airport, according to the flight history. Aerial photos posted online by the Austin American-Statesman showed the aircraft destroyed in a wooded area.

Ray said federal authorities were leading the investigation.

Stacey Rohr, who lives nearby, said she was in bed when she heard a crash and “felt everything vibrate.”

“It was so close I felt like it was the back of my place up in flames," said Rohr, who immediately called her landlord.

The players were heading to a pickleball tournament at the Cranky Pickle in New Braunfels, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) northeast of San Antonio, said Martin Robertson, head pro at the venue.

He said they canceled the tournament Friday and plan to say a prayer before they start Saturday and honor the players who died.

“We’re very heavy hearted, heartbroken from this," he said. "The pickleball community is very tight knit. Everybody knows everybody.”

Dan Dyer, president of the Amarillo Pickleball Club, said he’d played many games with four of the five people who were killed.

“I’ve handed them medals. They were excellent players. They were out to win some games," Dyer said. “Every weekend there are dozens of tournaments. Some people get the bug; others don’t. But once they do, they’ll travel for a tournament.”

Dyer said a second plane was traveling to the event from Amarillo at the same time. Authorities said it landed safely at the airport in New Braunfels.

“I haven't heard anything from him,” the pilot of the second plane said, according to Air Traffic Control audio.

A controller responded: "He started to move erratically and now his track is disappeared from the scope. So we want to make sure everything's all right with him.”

At least one pilot in the area confirmed the troubled plane's locator emergency device had emitted a distress signal. The controller called 911.

It was mostly cloudy in the New Braunfels area shortly before the crash and there was a thunderstorm two hours later, the National Weather Service said.

Wimberley, with a population of about 3,000, and New Braunfels, with a population of about 116,000, are tourist destinations in the Texas Hill Country.

___

White reported from Detroit. AP reporters Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire, and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed to this report.

Even as negotiations continue, Trump is claiming that the war has been “terminated” because of the ceasefire. The president also called the War Powers Resolution, which states Congress must declare war or authorize the use of force within 60 days, “unconstitutional.”

The resolution’s May 1 deadline is now set to pass without action, as lawmakers left town for a week on Thursday after the Senate rejected a Democratic attempt to halt the war for a sixth time.

Trump also said Friday that he will increase the tariffs charged on cars and trucks from the European Union next week to 25% after claiming without evidence that the E.U. was “not complying with our fully agreed to Trade Deal.” The U.S. and E.U. reached a trade deal last July that sets a 15% tariff on most goods.

Here's the latest:

Trump jokes that US Navy will take on Cuba on the way home from Iran

“Cuba’s got problems,” Trump said in one of several digressions in his Friday evening speech before the non-profit Forum Club of the Palm Beaches. “On the way back from Iran, we’ll have one of our big, maybe the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier — the biggest in the world — we’ll have that come in, stop about 100 yards offshore, and they’ll say, ‘Thank you very much. We give up.’”

The Trump administration is in the midst of a monthslong campaign to press the Cuban government to make dramatic reforms. All the while, Trump has repeatedly threatened that the U.S. could take military action against the island to get what he wants.

Trump now speaking in West Palm Beach, Florida

The president is at the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches Dinner, which is being held at the Raymond F. Kravis Center for the Performing Arts.

“We’re joined tonight by a lot of my friends,” he said.

Trump owns Mar-a-Lago, his home and private club across the causeway in Palm Beach.

He also spoke a little bit about the war against Iran.

US to withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany in next 6-12 months after feud over Iran war

Trump had threatened to withdraw some troops from its NATO ally earlier this week as he continues to feud with Chancellor Friedrich Merz over the U.S-Israel war against Iran. Merz said the U.S. was being “humiliated” by the Iranian leadership and criticized Washington’s lack of strategy in the war.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement that the “decision follows a thorough review of the Department’s force posture in Europe and is in recognition of theater requirements and conditions on the ground.”

The U.S. has several major military facilities in Germany, including the headquarters for U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command. The number of troops leaving Germany would be 14% of the 36,000 American service members stationed there.

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Court restricts abortion access across the US by blocking the mailing of mifepristone

A panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is requiring that the pill — one of the most common means of abortion in the U.S. — be distributed only in-person at clinics.

Judges have long deferred to the Food and Drug Administration’s judgments on the safety and appropriate regulation of drugs. FDA officials under Trump have repeatedly stated the agency is conducting a new review of mifepristone’s safety, at the direction of the president.

Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed enforcement of abortion bans, prescriptions by mail has become a major way that abortions are provided — including in states where bans are in place.

“This is going to affect patients’ access to abortion and miscarriage care in every state in the nation,” said Julia Kaye, an ACLU lawyer.

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Trump opens event with older Americans in Florida by referencing shooting at Washington dinner he attended

Trump is visiting The Villages in central Florida, a community for older Americans, to talk about how his policies are helping them.

He said he loves Florida and was “thrilled” to be among the “great American patriots” of The Villages.

“Now, you know I shouldn’t be here,” Trump said, referencing what law enforcement authorities have said was an attempt on his life during a gala dinner in Washington last weekend.

Trump said he should be “indoors at a secure facility” and asked, “What’s more secure than The Villages?”

EPA says oil and gas producers can continue routine flaring at new oil wells

A Biden-era rule had set a May 7 deadline to halt routine flaring of planet-warming methane at new wells. However, the Environmental Protection Agency said Friday it won’t make that change in response to concerns from energy companies.

Republican Rep. Julie Fedorchak of North Dakota hailed the new guidelines, which she said will allow continued production of up to 40,000 barrels of oil a day in her state.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that traps heat far more efficiently than carbon dioxide over the short term and is a major driver of climate change. Energy companies routinely flare, or burn, excess methane produced by oil wells because it’s less valuable than the oil.

Chinese envoy says ‘world is big enough’ for both US and China ahead of Trump’s visit to Beijing

Asked if the ongoing war between Iran and the U.S. will overshadow the upcoming Trump-Xi summit, China’s U.N. ambassador Fu Cong said the relationship between the two world powers “goes beyond” the issue of reopening the critical waterway.

“I think it is in the interest of both countries and both people — and I may say, to the entire world, of the people of the entire world — that China and U.S. maintain a steady and sound and sustainable relationship,” he told reporters at the U.N. headquarters in New York.

Fu added that there’s room for both on the world stage and that “it doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game between the two countries.”

Trump contends hostilities with Iran have ‘terminated’

The White House asserted to Congress in a letter Friday that hostilities with Iran have “terminated” despite the continued presence of U.S. armed forces in the region.

The message from Trump effectively skirts a May 1 legal deadline for gaining approval from members of Congress to continue the war with Iran. That deadline was already set to pass without action from Republican lawmakers, who are deferring to the president.

The letter brings into stark relief the bold but legally questionable assertion of presidential power at the heart of Trump’s war, which he began without congressional approval two months ago.

He also made it clear in the letter that the war may be far from over.

“Despite the success of United States operations against the Iranian regime and continued efforts to secure a lasting peace, the threat posed by Iran to the United States and our Armed Forces remains significant,” the Republican president said.

US military reaches deals with 7 tech companies to use their AI on classified systems

Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Nvidia, OpenAI, Reflection and SpaceX will provide resources to help “augment warfighter decision-making in complex operational environments,” the Defense Department said.

The use of AI can help the U.S. military reduce the time it takes to identify and strike targets on the battlefield, while aiding in the organization of weapons maintenance and supply lines, according to a report in March from the Brennan Center for Justice.

Friday’s announcement comes after concerns raised by a company not on the list, Anthropic, whose battle with the Pentagon to put up AI guardrails has spilled into court.

The tech company said it wanted assurances in its contract that the military would not use its technology in fully autonomous weapons and the surveillance of Americans. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the company must allow for any uses the Pentagon deemed lawful.

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Trump says after CENTCOM briefing that he has two options for Iran

Discussing a Thursday briefing with Adm. Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command, Trump said the U.S. has just two options in Iran.

“I mean, do we want to go and just blast the hell out of them and finish them forever? Or do we want to try and make a deal? I mean, those are the options,” Trump said.

Asked if he wanted to pursue the former, Trump said: “I’d prefer not. On a human basis, I’d prefer not, but that’s the option.”

Trump said he believes Iran’s leadership has made some progress toward unifying around a resolution.

“They’ve made strides, but I’m not sure if they ever get there,” he said. “There’s tremendous discord, they’re having a tremendous problem getting along with each other in Iran.”

Trump dismisses war powers law as ‘unconstitutional’

Friday marked the 60th day since the White House notified Congress of its military operations in Iran, meaning Trump would have to withdraw forces or seek formal approval from Capitol Hill.

But the president said his predecessors have similarly not sought congressional approval for military action abroad, and he wasn’t going to be any different.

“Every other president considered it totally unconstitutional, and we agree with that,” Trump said at the White House as he departed for Florida on Friday.

He also agreed with an argument advanced by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth this week that ceasefire days should not count as hostilities and thus not toward the 60 day limit.

A senior administration official says the U.S.’s military actions in Iran have effectively “terminated” since the April 7 ceasefire.

Meet Dr. Nicole Saphier, Trump’s third pick for US surgeon general

Trump dropped his pick for surgeon general Dr. Casey Means this week after it became clear she didn’t have enough Senate votes.

His new pick Dr. Nicole Saphier, a radiologist and former Fox News Channel contributor, has promoted much of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s agenda, including cutting ultraprocessed foods from diets and encouraging exercise.

But she has been a more vocal advocate for vaccination than Kennedy. She’s also criticized the administration’s handling of some issues as “embarrassing.”

“The more vaccine confusion we create, the more preventable disease we will see,” she said in September, urging the administration to get itself in order on the issue.

Trump sounds open to putting former 2024 GOP rival Ron DeSantis in his Cabinet

When asked Friday if he’d consider a Cabinet role for the Florida governor, who is term-limited and will be out of office in 2027, Trump responded by saying, “Well, I like him a lot.”

Trump’s team in 2024 was considering DeSantis as his defense secretary when then-nominee Pete Hegseth’s path to Senate confirmation seemed shaky.

Trump says he’s still looking at a taxpayer-funded takeover of Spirit Airlines

“We’re looking at it. If we could do it, we’ll do it. But only if it’s a good deal,” Trump told reporters on Friday as he prepared to leave the White House for a trip to Florida.

He didn’t offer any details about what proposal he was considering but said he’d like to save jobs at the airline. Trump said his administration gave Spirit “a final proposal” and would make an announcement Friday or Saturday.

“We’re looking at Spirit and if we can help them, we will. But we have to come first,” he said.

Trump says he’s ‘not satisfied’ with Iran’s latest proposal in negotiations to end the war

“They want to make a deal, I’m not satisfied with it, so we’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters Friday at the White House.

Asked about what he sees as the proposal’s shortcomings, Trump said, “They’re asking for things I can’t agree to.”

The president said negotiations have continued by phone after he called off his envoys’ trip to Pakistan last week. He expressed frustration with Iran’s leadership, which he described as fractured.

“It’s a very disjointed leadership,” he said. “They all want to make a deal, but they’re all messed up.”

Some background on the 2025 trade deal between the US and EU

The 2025 deal was first cast into doubt after the U.S. Supreme Court this year ruled the Republican president lacked the legal authority to declare an economic emergency and charge tariffs on EU goods.

The initial agreement had been a tariff ceiling of 15% on goods from the EU, but the Supreme Court ruling reduced that to 10% as the Trump administration launched a new set of import taxes based on other laws. The Trump administration is in the middle of investigations on trade imbalances and national security risks to impose a new tariff regime, which could ultimately put the agreement with the EU in risk of violation.

The EU had said it expected the bilateral deal would save European automakers about 500 million to 600 million euros ($585 million to $700 million) a month.

The value of EU-U.S. trade in goods and services amounted to 1.7 trillion euros ($2 trillion) in 2024, or an average of 4.6 billion euros a day, according to EU statistics agency Eurostat.

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Trump says he’ll place 25% tariff on autos from EU, accusing bloc of not complying with trade deal

It’s a move that could jolt the world economy at a fragile moment.

Trump said in a post that the EU “is not complying with our fully agreed to Trade Deal,” though he did not flesh out his objections in the post.

Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had agreed to the trade deal last July. It set a 15% tariff on most goods.

Bessent wants Americans to avoid easy-money traps and invest in financial literacy

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent winces at the allure of easy money — whether it’s lottery tickets, buy now, pay later loans or the promise of a crypto windfall — warning that the get-rich-quick mindset often leads Americans farther from financial stability, not closer to it.

“There are a lot of young people, mostly young men, going to blue-collar construction jobs, playing the lottery. It drives me crazy,” Bessent said in an interview.

“The best thing you can do is not play the lottery,” he said — rather, people should invest and “then watch it grow.”

Bessent spoke about the basics of building a workable budget and saving for the future at the tail end of Financial Literacy Month, an initiative the billionaire hedge fund manager has made a priority since joining Trump’s administration, driven by a childhood marred by poverty.

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King Charles III wins praise for deft handling of Trump on his US state visit

President Trump sang the praises of King Charles III after the monarch’s state visit this week. He even lifted some tariffs on Scotch whisky as a favor to the British monarch.

The king delivered a diplomatic master-class on the trip, mixing praise for his host with subtle criticism. It’s unclear, though, whether it will make a major difference to a trans-Atlantic relationship troubled by divisions over issues including the Iran war.

“In the short term probably yes, in the long term probably no,” said Kristofer Allerfeldt, a University of Exeter professor specializing in American history. But he said Charles had “definitely clawed back some of the prestige of the monarchy” in his homeland with his assured performance.

“He’s done us proud,” Allerfeldt said.

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Joe Biden endorses a former Atlanta mayor and White House adviser for Georgia governor

The former Democratic president is wading into the midterms, making his first political endorsement of the 2026 cycle by backing Keisha Lance Bottoms for the state’s top job.

Bottoms served as Biden’s senior adviser for public engagement after her tenure as Atlanta mayor.

In a one-minute video promoting her candidacy, Biden praised her track record as mayor and said “those same qualities that made her a great mayor made her invaluable to our administration — smart, focused, gets things done.”

“She handled it all with steady and thoughtful leadership,” Biden said in the video. “That’s the definition of battle-tested.”

After major enforcement operations, the Trump administration recalibrates its immigration crackdown

When Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin was questioned by senators during his confirmation hearing about his vision for implementing President Trump’s mass deportation agenda, he said his goal was to keep his department off the front pages of the news.

To some degree, he has. Gone are the social media video clips of now-retired Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino clashing with protesters. Mullin’s predecessor, Kristi Noem, made her first trip as secretary to New York City to make arrests with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In contrast, Mullin went to North Carolina to review hurricane recovery efforts.

The Republican administration appears to be recalibrating its approach to a centerpiece policy that helped bring Trump back to the White House, moving in many ways away from aggressive, public-facing tactics toward a quieter approach to enforcement. Despite that shift, the administration insists it’s not backing down from its lofty deportation goals.

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The 2023 rule allowed doctors to prescribe mifepristone remotely and the drug to be mailed to patients, including those in Texas from other states where abortion is legal. The 5th Circuit’s ruling Friday, stemming from a lawsuit in Louisiana, means mifepristone can only be picked up in-person from doctors or pharmacies. 

The ruling will halt the estimated thousands of telehealth abortion pills that are provided per month to states that otherwise outlaw abortion, but it will also restrict its availability for other uses. Mifepristone, when used alongside misoprostol, is the most common way Americans end their pregnancies, including to manage miscarriages. Through 2024, 1 in 4 abortions were provided through telemedicine, according to the Society of Family Planning.  

Abortion advocates nationally decried the ruling as a crackdown aimed at restricting remote abortion access nationwide, particularly impacting states like Texas where mifepristone would not be available without telehealth services.

“Anti-abortion politicians know their policies are unpopular, so they are using every lever of government they can,” said Mini Timmaraju, CEO of abortion advocacy group Reproductive Freedom for All. “Louisiana built this case on debunked, junk science. The safety of mifepristone has never actually been in question.”

The FDA approved mifepristone in 2000, a generic version of the drug in 2019 and a second version last October, and studies have shown the drug to be safe and effective. Texas has joined Florida in suing the FDA over its original approval of mifepristone, arguing that the agency did not conduct proper safety evaluations. 

Anti-abortion groups across the country, including the nonprofit Live Action, celebrated the ruling as a “major step toward justice” in permanently ending mail access to mifepristone and similar drugs.

“These drugs are designed to end the life of a preborn child, and they are now responsible for the destruction of millions of preborn lives, often behind closed doors with no doctor present,” Live Action Founder Lila Rose said in a statement.

Under House Bill 7, passed last year, doctors who prescribe or companies that distribute abortion-inducing drugs like mifepristone can be sued for up to $100,000. But 22 states where the medication is often prescribed have “shield laws,” which provide civil and criminal protections for healthcare providers who assist those in states like Texas with restrictive abortion laws. Pregnant people who seek out abortions or take abortion pills are exempt from litigation under the law.

It remains unclear how Friday’s ruling will affect lawsuits underway seeking to collect fines from out-of-state doctors who have provided mifepristone prescriptions, including three cases from Attorney General Ken Paxton against healthcare providers in California and Delaware. While the suit against the California doctor uses the new provisions under HB 7, the Delaware suit does not.

In a Monday statement announcing his death, Marvel described Conway as a legendary comic book writer with a prolific career. He died of pancreatic cancer on Sunday in Thousand Oaks, California, his wife, Laura Conway, told The Associated Press.

“From Spider-Man to the Avengers, Iron Man to Captain Marvel, Gerry Conway has deftly written almost every character in the Marvel Universe,” Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief C.B. Cebulski said. "Gerry Conway’s legacy has made an undeniable and indelible impact on the Super Hero stories we know and love. He will be dearly missed.”

Tributes were also shared on social media.

“While many know his Marvel accomplishments ... Gerry’s contributions to DC were equally impactful and significant: shaping Batman, Superman, the Justice League of America, and co-creating Firestorm, Jason Todd and Power Girl and so many more,” Jim Lee, chief creative officer and president of DC Comics, said in an Instagram post. “Thank you, Gerry, for the worlds imagined and the heroes created.”

Conway was born in Brooklyn on Sept. 10, 1952. A lifelong fan of comic books, he started writing comic book stories as a teenager, and by the age of 19 he landed work on “The Amazing Spider-Man" — which Marvel's statement described as "the job that would change his life — and the comic book industry at large — forever.”

Conway's writing featured "pivotal moments” that redefined the series, Marvel said, such as the death of Gwen Stacy, Peter Parker's girlfriend. He also co-created the Punisher, a vigilante antihero known for the skull logo on his chest.

The skull imagery has been used by law enforcement in recent years, sparking controversy at times. Nearly a decade ago, Conway objected to police departments putting Punisher decals on their vehicles, saying in a social media post that the character was “a complex morally compromised anti-hero, not to be emulated by cops,” as reported the Syracuse Post-Standard.

Conway had a way of imbuing characters with nuance and emotional depth, Marvel said in its statement.

“Gerry Conway brought real stakes to his writing, able to weave together sensational super heroics with the human and relatable, and in doing so created some of the most memorable stories and characters of all time,” Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige said.

Beyond the Spider-Man comics, Conway wrote for several other major Marvel titles, including “Fantastic Four,” “Thor” and “The Incredible Hulk.”

In a 1981 interview with The Comics Journal, Conway noted how comic books can appeal to both younger and older audiences.

"I'm writing for the youthful part of myself, the primitive part of myself,” he told the magazine. "If an adult likes the books it's because of a nostalgic feeling for that primitive, easy conceptualization of heroic purpose.”

He and his fans loved meeting each other, his wife Laura Conway said. At his last public comic book signing in February, “he was tired and in a lot of pain as the cancer was spreading, but he stayed an extra two hours to make sure every fan in line could get their book signed and have a moment to talk with him about comics,” she said.

“That’s the kind of person he was.”

Conway is survived by his wife and two daughters from previous marriages.

“Being separated from a soulmate is a unique kind of pain. But I’m grateful we found each other and for the time we had together, which changed both our lives,” his wife said.

“I know Andy well, and he is always a Vote we can count on because he knows what it takes to GET THINGS DONE,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.

Barr is facing former Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron in the May 19 Republican primary, and would have faced entrepreneur Nate Morris. In a Truth Social post just before his endorsement of Barr, Trump announced that he'd asked Morris to “step aside” from the race to join his administration as an ambassador.

“Nate is a terrific businessman and strong MAGA Warrior,” Trump wrote, adding that he'll announce Morris' specific role soon. Shortly after, Morris posted on X that he was proud to be part of the Trump administration and, in another post, endorsed Barr.

All three Republicans coveted the president's endorsement — and boasted frequently of their Trump loyalty — in the conservative state, where Trump won 64% of the vote in the 2024 presidential race.

It isn’t the first Senate primary where Trump has endorsed or teased an endorsement, and he’s been using his influence to continue shaping the Republican Party.

In Louisiana, Trump backed Sen. Bill Cassidy’s challenger, Rep. Julia Letlow. Cassidy voted to convict the president during his 2021 impeachment trial after the Jan. 6. attack on the U.S. Capitol.

In Texas, the president has dangled a possible endorsement in the primary between Sen. John Cornyn and challenger Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general, but he hasn’t announced anything.

In Kentucky, Barr said he was honored to have Trump’s endorsement, adding in a statement that he’ll stand with Trump “100% to deliver for Kentucky and to keep Making America Great Again.”

A consultant for Cameron’s campaign, Brandon Moody, said in a texted statement, “Congrats to Mitch McConnell for getting his guy,” but did not explain further.

The Democratic field in Kentucky includes former state lawmaker Charles Booker and former Marine pilot Amy McGrath. Booker narrowly beat McGrath in the 2020 Democratic primary to face McConnell.

Democrats have not won a U.S. Senate race in Kentucky since 1992.

In Alabama, Republican Gov. Kay Ivey announced Friday that she is calling a special legislative session to begin Monday in hopes that the Supreme Court allows the state to change its U.S. House map ahead of the November midterm elections. In Tennessee, Republican Gov. Bill Lee also announced a special session for the GOP-controlled Legislature to break up the state's one Democratic-held House district, centered on the majority-Black city of Memphis.

Louisiana already has suspended its May 16 congressional primary to allow time for lawmakers to approve new U.S. House districts, though that is being challenged in court. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is pressuring other states such as Tennessee to also redistrict ahead of the midterm elections that will determine whether Republicans maintain control of the closely divided House.

Trump urged Texas Republicans last year to redraw U.S. House districts to give the party an advantage. Democrats in California responded by doing the same. Then other states joined the battle. Lawmakers, commissions or courts have adopted new House districts in eight states.

That total could grow following the Supreme Court’s decision that significantly weakened a provision in the federal Voting Rights Act.

Here’s a look at how some states are responding to the Supreme Court ruling:

Louisiana

Current House map: two Democrats, four Republicans

Early in-person voting was to begin Saturday for Louisiana’s primaries. But Republican Gov. Jeff Landry moved quickly Thursday to postpone the congressional primary while allowing elections for other offices to go forward.

A federal lawsuit filed later Thursday, on behalf of a Democratic congressional candidate and voter, asked a court to block Landry’s order and allow the House primary to occur as originally scheduled. Two more lawsuits asserting that the congressional primary should go forward were filed Friday in state court on behalf of voters who already had cast absentee ballots and several civil rights organizations.

Among other things, the lawsuits contend that Landry lacked authority to suspend the primary and that thousands of absentee ballots already have been mailed to people, with a substantial number filled out and returned.

District court judges in Baton Rouge late Friday denied requests in two of those cases to temporarily block Landry’s executive order.

Separately, a three-judge federal court panel that heard the case that was appealed to the Supreme Court also issued an order Thursday suspending Louisiana’s congressional primary.

Republican state House and Senate leaders said they are prepared to pass new U.S. House districts — and set a new primary election date — before their legislative session ends in a month.

Alabama

Current House map: two Democrats, five Republicans

The state’s primaries are set for May 19. But Alabama officials on Thursday filed an emergency motion with the Supreme Court seeking an expedited review of a pending appeal in a redistricting case that could affect the election.

A federal court in 2023 ordered the creation of a new near majority-Black district in Alabama, resulting in the election of a second Black representative to the U.S. House. Alabama is under a court order to use the new map until after the next census in 2030.

An appeal pending before the Supreme Court argues that the map is an illegal racial gerrymander, a claim similar to that made in Louisiana.

The state is seeking to lift an injunction blocking the use of a 2023 map drawn by the Republican-controlled Legislature that did not include the new district. The state is making a similar request for two state Senate districts impacted by a separate redistricting case.

Ivey said the special legislative session will focus on a contingency plan to have special primary elections in case the Supreme Court acts quickly enough to allow Alabama’s previously drawn districts to be used this year.

Florida

Current House map: eight Democrats, 20 Republicans

Hours after the Supreme Court’s decision, Florida’s Republican-led Legislature approved new U.S. House districts that could help the GOP win up to four additional seats in November.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis called a special legislative session without knowing when the Supreme Court would issue its opinion in the Louisiana case. But DeSantis expressed confidence that the court would rule as it did. Among other things, the new map reshapes a southeastern Florida district that DeSantis said was created to help elect a Black representative in an attempt to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act.

A Florida constitutional amendment approved by voters in 2010 prohibits districts from being drawn to deny or diminish the ability of racial or language minorities to elect the representatives of their choice. DeSantis said he considers that amendment a violation of the U.S. Constitution. That question is expected to be decided by the courts.

Tennessee

Lee announced the special session in a statement late Friday afternoon, saying, “We owe it to Tennesseans to ensure our congressional districts accurately reflect the will of Tennessee voters.”

That came after a pressure campaign by Trump and other Republicans to reconfigure the state's 9th Congressional District. Republicans have always been checkmated by the Voting Rights Act in their desire to spread the district's Democratic voters around neighboring conservative districts and make it winnable, but the law may no longer be an impediment.

The candidate qualifying period ended in March, and the primary election is scheduled for Aug. 6. Democrats noted that in 2022 the state supreme court checked additional redistricting because it was too close to an election. They argued that the court is their best hope this time around too.

“We cannot keep doing things like this and calling ourselves a democracy, Democratic State Sen. Ramesh Akbari said at a news conference outside the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, which includes the structure of the motel where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968.

Mississippi

Current House map: one Democrat, three Republicans

Mississippi held its U.S. House primaries in March. But the Supreme Court’s decision could affect elections for other offices.

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves announced previously that he would call a special legislative session to redraw voting districts for the state Supreme Court that would begin 21 days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Louisiana case. That would put the special session's start at around May 20.

A federal judge last year ordered Mississippi to redraw its Supreme Court voting districts after finding that they violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the power of Black voters. Mississippi lawmakers had been waiting on a decision in the Louisiana case before moving forward, but their legislative session ended in April.

Reeves said in his proclamation that the Supreme Court’s decision would provide guidance to lawmakers on whether “race-conscious redistricting” violates the U.S. Constitution.

Georgia

Current House map: five Democrats, nine Republicans

Early in-person voting began April 27 and continues for the next few weeks ahead of Georgia’s primary elections on May 19.

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp said it’s too late for Georgia officials to try to change congressional districts for this year’s elections, because voting already is underway. But he said the rationale in the Supreme Court’s decision “requires Georgia to adopt new electoral maps before the 2028 election cycle.”

___

Associated Press writers Jeff Amy, Jack Brook, Travis Loller, Nicholas Riccardi and Kim Chandler contributed to this report.

At a Valero gas station in Edinburg, Reynaldo Zarazoa, who installs tile for a living and has to haul tools and equipment around in his gray GMC pickup, watched Thursday as the display on the gas pump reached $78 — nearly a fifth of his weekly income.

“My work is cheap and the gas is expensive,” said Zarazoa, a father of two living in Peñitas, a small city in the Rio Grande Valley. “But I have to drive every day, every day for work.”

The price of fuel has risen significantly since the U.S.-Israel war on Iran began on Feb. 28, closing a key international shipping lane for oil and gas, the Strait of Hormuz. The average price for a gallon of gas in Texas was $2.55 in early February, according to AAA. It had risen to $3.78 on Wednesday morning.

Texans who rely on cars to get around are bearing the cost of the war at the gas pump, and high diesel prices are fueling rising inflation in other sectors of the economy.

“If I go grocery shopping one day, I’m definitely not going to get a full tank of gas the same day because it’s so expensive,” Asher McClafferty, a 20-year-old University of Texas student, said while filling up at an Austin gas station.

The average Texan now spends $223 per month on gasoline, according to a study published earlier this month by financial services company Motley Fool Money.

“It’s all crazy,” Victor Cortez, a 40-year-old Austin construction worker, said while filling up his pickup truck last week. “It depends on the day, some days I’m moving to three or four buildings and spending 100 bucks a day.”

President Donald Trump, who promised during his campaign that he would lower gas prices below $2 a gallon, has argued that the high cost of fuel is a temporary but necessary sacrifice, and prices will fall quickly once the war concludes.

The U.S., Israel and Iran are currently navigating a tenuous ceasefire, and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz — where 20% of the world’s oil passes — is still far below pre-war levels as the threat of attacks on oil tankers remains. Oil and gas facilities located along the Persian Gulf were also damaged by Iranian missiles and drones, further elevating fuel prices.

Even if the Strait of Hormuz reopens completely in the near future, it would take weeks for the bottlenecked supply chain to stabilize. Even then, the market may continue to assign oil a “risk premium” that will keep it priced well above regular levels as long as the threat of war in the Middle East remains.

The price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international benchmark, was above $115 on Wednesday, compared to about $70 a barrel before the war began.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration forecast in early April that Brent crude will trade above $95 a barrel over the next two months, before falling to $80 a barrel in the summer and $70 a barrel in the fall. It said its forecast is based on assumptions about the duration of the Middle East conflict and reduced oil production.

“A lot of people are feeling it”

Polling firm KFF published a survey Wednesday that found the cost of gasoline and other transportation has risen to become U.S. adults’ top affordability concern, alongside healthcare. The poll found two-thirds of respondents said they are worried about being able to afford gas and transportation.

Cecilia Cano, who lives in Edinburg, said she’s had to limit how often and how far she drives because of how high gas prices have climbed. She said it used to cost her $25 to fill up her white Toyota Sequoia, but last Friday it cost around $40.

She has grandkids who live in McAllen and she said she has to weigh the cost of visiting them and taking them to school or their after-school activities.

Cano did not vote for Trump and blames his administration for high gas prices.

“I am disappointed, he hasn’t kept any promises,” she said. “They’re high because of the war, and we didn’t need a war, there was no need for it. And a lot of people are feeling it.”

Fuel prices typically rise in the summer months as school lets out and people travel more. The high cost of gas is making some families rethink their travel plans.

Andrea Mehi and Jeff Mehi with their kids at a Shell gas station on South Lamar Boulevard in Austin on April 24, 2026. Manoo Sirivelu/The Texas Tribune

Andrea Mehi was getting gas on Friday in Austin with her husband, Jeff Mehi, and their two young daughters. Both parents do not have to drive much for work and their daughters’ school is near their home, but they said lingering high gas prices will affect their plans.

“We definitely have to reconsider those ‘get away for the weekend’ type of things and do them a little less frequently,” Mehi said.

High diesel prices fuel inflation

The longer fuel prices remain high, the more those additional costs will flow through the rest of the economy. Diesel fuel — which has jumped from $3.30 a gallon in early February to about $5 on Wednesday — powers the trucks, trains and ships that move consumer goods across the country. Diesel also powers most farm and construction equipment.

Driven largely by rising fuel costs, consumer prices nationally rose 3.3% in March compared to a year earlier, the biggest annual increase of inflation since May 2024, according to the U.S. Labor Department.

The main expenses for a trucking company are drivers’ pay and diesel, said John Esparza, president and CEO of the Texas Trucking Association.

“It’s always a battle between labor and fuel, those are the two highest costs to operate an 18 wheeler,” Esparza said. “You could argue now, that’s switched to fuel, then labor.”

About half of the truckers in Texas are independent operators who purchase diesel at gas stations and truck stops and don’t get the discounted fuel prices that big companies with their own trucking yards can receive for buying in large quantities.

Esparza said he does not think the high cost of diesel will put many operators out of business, but he knows the increasing cost of transporting goods is already flowing through to consumers.

Emanuel Siah, a nursing assistant in Austin, said his family is spending $150 a week on gas for two cars. Siah was buying $20 worth of gas on Friday afternoon and said the roughly five gallons of gas would not get him very far.

Emanuel Siah talks about the impact that rising gas prices have had on his budget in Austin’s Hyde Park neighborhood on April 24, 2026. Manoo Sirivelu/The Texas Tribune

“It’s killing us, man,” Siah said. “And it’s because of Trump.”

Evan Hegarty, a 42-year-old who lives in Austin with his wife and child, said the city is already expensive without high gas prices.

“We’re really spending most of the extra money we have on food and things like gas,” he said. “And gas prices going up is causing food prices to go up, which probably impacts me more than the hand on the pump does.”

Disclosure: Valero has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

Evan Hegarty, 42, pays for his gas at a Shell station in Austin on April 24, 2026. Manoo Sirivelu/The Texas Tribune

In a statement, camp officials said it informed the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) that it is withdrawing its application for a summer 2026 camp license.

A DSHS spokesperson confirmed to KSAT 12 News that the Eastland family withdrew their license renewal application.

The camp, which is owned and run by Edward and Mary Liz Eastland, stated that the decision “is intended to remove any doubt that Camp Mystic has heard the concerns expressed by grieving families, members of the Texas House and Senate investigating committees and citizens across our state.”

Camp Mystic said in the statement that it will cooperate with ongoing investigations.

In a statement, Gov. Greg Abbott said DSHS and the Texas Rangers are still working together in the investigation of Camp Mystic and results will be made as soon as possible.

The withdrawal of the license comes after the Guadalupe River flooded on July 4, 2025, resulting in the death of 27 campers.

“Today is not about camp operations. It is about respect for the families, accountability to the public and reverence for the memory of the lives lost,” the statement said.

Camp Mystic today informed the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) that it is withdrawing its application for a summer 2026 camp license.

No administrative process or summer season should move forward while families continue to grieve, while investigations continue and while so many Texans still carry the pain of last July’s tragedy.  We commend DSHS for their testimony this week that recognized their legal obligations.  But rather than risk defending our rights under Texas law in a manner that may unintentionally effect further harm, we choose rather to withdraw our application for the 2026 camp season.  

Twenty-eight precious lives were lost. We recognize that no statement and no decision can undo that loss or ease the burden carried each day by parents, siblings, loved ones, survivors, first responders and our beautiful Kerr County community.  We also recognize that over 800 girls want to return to Camp Mystic Cypress Lake this summer. Our special bond with our Camp Mystic families does not change or end with the announcement.  We love each of you.

This decision is intended to remove any doubt that Camp Mystic has heard the concerns expressed by grieving families, members of the Texas House and Senate investigating committees and citizens across our state. Respect for those voices requires that we step back now.

Camp Mystic will continue to fully cooperate with all ongoing investigations, comply with every lawful requirement and continue supporting recovery and healing efforts.

Today is not about camp operations. It is about respect for the families, accountability to the public and reverence for the memory of the lives lost.

Camp Mystic

Attorney Sam Taylor of The Lanier Law Firm, who represents some of the families of the girls killed at Camp Mystic during the flooding, said they believe the decision is “proper.”

“The families we represent are grateful that no other Texas family will hand their daughter over to Camp Mystic this summer,” Taylor said. “But until there is full accountability for what happened on July 4 and until there are real, enforceable safeguards for every child sent to a Texas summer camp, our work continues.”

KSAT spoke to a parent who had her daughter sign up to go to Camp Mystic this summer. Her daughter was at Camp Mystic during the July 4 flooding and still wanted to go back.

While this mother thought their perspective was important, she said some of the families who planned to send kids back to Mystic have faced harassment, which is why KSAT is not identifying the woman.

“The news about Camp Mystic deciding not to move forward with renewing their license comes as a disappointment,” the woman told KSAT. “Our daughter was a survivor of the July 4th flood. She was in a cabin on the flats and was rescued by Edward. The decision to return to camp was not made in haste.”

“We took our time and waited for the new Heaven’s 27 laws to be implemented,” the woman continued. “We talked with the Eastland’s about all of the new safety measures they had in place at Cypress Lake. We felt comfortable and confident in sending our daughter back. ... We are heartbroken for our daughter and the 800+ other girls who were planning to return to Camp Mystic.”

One family’s statement getting attention is that of Cici and Will Steward, whose daughter Cile Steward is the only Mystic camper still missing.

They rebuked Camp Mystic’s reasons for pulling its application.

For nearly ten months, our family has lived with the unbearable absence of our eight-year-old daughter, Cile – the last Camp Mystic camper still lost in the ruin of the Guadalupe River.

For nearly ten months, the Eastland family had refused to take any accountability for the decisions that stole twenty-seven daughters from their families. They have now admitted that the camp was not safe, not prepared, and not ready for our daughters last summer.

Today, Camp Mystic announced it will no longer seek a 2026 operating license. We are grateful that no child will be placed in the Eastlands’ care this summer.

But let there be no confusion about what happened today. Camp Mystic did not withdraw its application out of grace. It withdrew because the State of Texas was prepared to deny it. It withdrew after DSHS cited nearly two dozen deficiencies in its licensing application. It withdrew after Lieutenant Governor Patrick’s continued public demands on DSHS to deny renewal and on the Eastland family to do the right thing. It withdrew after four days of court testimony and two days of legislative testimony, testimony that forced our family to live through the Eastlands’ failures on July 4^th over and over again.

What the Eastlands offered today was not accountability. It was not out of respect for our grieving families. Nor because they wanted to do the next right thing. We have pled with them to stop since September. It was a calculated exit from a license they were about to lose.

The Eastland family withdrew their license to operate before the State of Texas yanked it from them.

We are deeply grateful to Governor Abbott; Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick; to Chairman Flores, Chairman Meyer, Vice-Chair Perry, Vice-Chair Moody, and every member of the Senate and House General Investigating Committees; to DSHS for upholding its obligations under the Heaven’s 27 Safety Act; and to Chief Nim Kidd and the Emergency Operations Center, who have never stopped working to bring Cile home.

To the families the camp addressed in its statement today: I am sorry you were held in limbo for so long, and I hope your daughters still find the positive, healing, and safe camp experience they deserve. Every Texas family deserves that.

This is not the end. We will continue to fight for Cile and the recovery to bring her home. We will continue to fight for the legal reforms this Committee and the Heaven’s 27 Safety Act began. We will not stop until a jury renders its verdict in court, where it belongs. And we will continue to believe that there were heroes at Camp Mystic on July 4, 2025…but their names were not Eastland.

Cici and Will Steward

A week ago, KSAT reported that Camp Mystic’s emergency plan submitted to operate this summer, did not fully comply with new rules for youth camps.

DSHS directed the camp to make changes, such as:

• Map the locations of all cabins in relation to flood risk
• Explain how they would help campers with mobility or visual impairments during an evacuation
• Show how the emergency plan would be distributed to parents and staff

Those updated camp safety requirements are from a new state law passed in September, deemed the “Heaven’s 27 Law.”

State Rep. Wes Virdell, R-Brady, felt compelled to give background on some of the claims in response to the statement.

“Mrs. Steward is hurt. She’s going through something terrible and I understand her reaction to it,” Virdell said. “What’s left out is that it wasn’t just Camp Mystic that received the letters for the deficiencies. It was camps all across Texas. Out of every camp that applied, only 3 of them did not receive a letter of deficiency.”

Several lawmakers, including Virdell, have spoken out for months against the new law that created these stricter requirements, saying parts of it are unattainable and will force camps to close.

“The biggest one is the fiber-optic requirement. I’ve talked to so many camps who tell me it’s millions of dollars to get fiber optics to their property. There are other options like Starlink. I know there are at least 19 camps that are suing the state right now because of the fiber-optic requirement,” Virdell said.

Virdell has proposed a special session to go over possible changes to the law, but it has not yet been granted.

The Stewards, meanwhile, remain focused on Mystic and have asked that it never reopen with the same owners in place.

More Hill Country flood coverage on KSAT:

• San Antonio mother of Camp Mystic camper killed during Hill Country floods testifies
• Texas Senator suggests Camp Mystic reopen without Eastland family

Trump had threatened to withdraw some troops from the NATO ally earlier this week after Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the U.S. was being “humiliated” by the Iranian leadership and criticized Washington’s lack of strategy in the war.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement that the “decision follows a thorough review of the Department’s force posture in Europe and is in recognition of theater requirements and conditions on the ground.”

Germany hosts several U.S. military facilities, including the headquarters of its European and Africa commands, Ramstein Air Base and a medical center in Landstuhl, where casualties from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were treated. U.S. nuclear missiles are also stationed in the country.

The number of troops leaving Germany would be 14% of the 36,000 American service members stationed there.

News of the troop withdrawal drew swift pushback from Democrats in Congress as well as a hawkish Washington think tank. They said the move will benefit Russian President Vladimir Putin and weaken U.S. security interests.

The withdrawal “suggests American commitments to our allies are dependent on the president’s mood," said Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"The president should immediately cease this reckless action before he causes irreversible consequences for our alliances and long-term national security,” Reed said.

Bradley Bowman, a scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the U.S. military's presence in Germany and elsewhere in Europe “not only strengthens deterrence against additional Kremlin aggression but also facilitates the projection of American military power into the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and Africa.”

Trump ignored questions from reporters about the withdrawal on Friday as he boarded Air Force One in Ocala, Florida, following a rally to tout his economic agenda.

Trump made a similar threat in his first term, saying he would pull about 9,500 of the roughly 34,500 U.S. troops who were then stationed in Germany, but he didn’t start the process and Democratic President Joe Biden formally stopped the planned withdrawal soon after taking office in 2021.

The mercurial U.S. leader has mused for years about reducing the American military presence in Germany, and has railed against NATO for its refusal to assist Washington in the war, which began on Feb. 28 with U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran.

Trump wrote Wednesday on social media that the U.S. was reviewing possible troop reductions in Germany, with a “determination” to be made soon. On Thursday, he was still thinking about Merz, posting that the German leader should “spend more time on ending the war with Russia/Ukraine” and “fixing his broken Country” than concerning himself with Iran.

American allies in NATO have braced for a U.S. troop withdrawal since Trump took office, with Washington warning that Europe would have to look after its own security, including that of Ukraine, in the future.

Depending on operations, exercises and troop rotations, around 80,000-100,000 U.S. personnel are usually stationed in Europe. NATO allies have expected for more than a year that the U.S. troops deployed after Russia launched its all-out war on Ukraine in February 2022 would be first to leave.

Ed Arnold, an expert in European security at the Royal United Services Institute, or RUSI, in London, said Europe is more concerned about issues like a U.S. redeployment of Patriot missile systems and ammunition from Germany to the Middle East.

In October, the U.S. confirmed that it would reduce its troop presence on NATO’s borders with Ukraine. The move to cut 1,500-3,000 troops came on short notice and unsettled NATO ally Romania, where the military organization runs an air base.

——

Madhani reported from West Palm Beach, Florida.

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The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. Southern District of Texas Court on Thursday, accusing the company of gross negligence and trespassing for loud blasts caused by 11 rocket tests from April 2023 to October 2025. Because some of SpaceX’s tests involve 400-foot, two-stage rockets, with both stages capable of landing, tests sometimes subjected residents’ homes to multiple prolonged periods of damaging noise, according to the suit.

During the Starship rocket’s initial launch in 2023, the force of the 33-engine booster destroyed the launch pad and flung debris three quarters of a mile away, which the lawsuit said “violently illustrated” the rocket’s destructive power.

The suit asks for a jury trial to seek damages, court costs and attorney fees from SpaceX. The plaintiffs own 53 homes in Laguna Vista, Port Isabel and South Padre Island, including several couples who shared homes.

The suit does not name what specific damages residents’ houses sustained due to the repeated sonic booms, but does explain that the loud blasts can cause damage to walls, windows and roofs of homes.

SpaceX and Benigno Martinez, the primary attorney for the plaintiffs, did not respond to immediate requests for comment. SpaceX has not yet responded to the lawsuit in court, and there are no hearings for the lawsuit currently scheduled.

SpaceX has increased its footprint in the South Texas region significantly as it has ramped up the frequency of its rocket launches and size of its operations. Company employees helped found Texas’ newest city, Starbase, in May 2025, and the company was in talks with the Trump administration to swap land for 775 acres of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge in December.

In 2025, the Federal Aviation Administration authorized SpaceX to launch rockets up to 25 times per year, five times more than was allowed the year before. SpaceX’s launches cause a closure of an 8-mile long beach that lies adjacent to its launch pad. The company is currently facing a separate lawsuit over how often it can close the beach to launch its rockets. Oral arguments for the case were heard by the Texas Supreme Court in March.

Korda only took advantage on two of the four par 5s at El Camaleon, and she had to scramble on the par-5 18th coming out of the right rough. But she had the right touch on a gap wedge from just over 50 yards to 4 feet to close out her round with a birdie.

That allowed her to catch Do, who had a fairway metal for her second shot into the par-4 ninth and finished with a bogey for a 69.

They were at 9-under 135,having faced a stronger wind than the morning wave from the day before on the course along the coast of the Caribbean Sea.

“Drive it straight, hit it close and make putts,” Korda said of the key to playing El Camaleon, the rest course that previously hosted PGA Tour and LIV Golf events.

Melanie Green, who shared the 18-hole lead with Do, had a slow start until making three birdies over her last six holes for a 70. She was one shot behind.

Minami Katsu of Japan had a 69 and was two shots behind.

Korda hit only seven of the 14 fairways, though she was rarely out of position and at times went with a fairway metal off the tee to avoid the bunkers. But she putted for her birdie on all but two holes and was steady over a few 4-foot par putts.

She also had a big following, only partially related to being the No. 1 player in women's golf with her wire-to-wire victory last week in The Chevron Championship for her second win this year, and her third career major.

She was playing alongside Gaby Lopez of Mexico, who shot 71 and was four shots behind.

“Playing with Gaby the crowds have been amazing to see the local support for her, ” Korda said. “And not complaining about where I am on the leaderboard. Playing some solid golf and playing in front of fun crowds, hometown crowds for Gaby is fun to see. Hopefully I can continue playing well, good golf going into the weekend.”

Do, the 36-year-old American, managed her 69 without making birdie on the par 5s. But her iron game gave her plenty of good looks for birdie, and she converted four of them.

She tied for ninth at the Riviera Maya Open a year ago, her only top 10 on the LPGA Tour.

“I put myself in that position last year here and so I think I’m going to be a little more prepared for it this year,” Do said. “I don’t think you’re ever very comfortable being in contention and leading, and so I’m going accept it and kind of just play within myself and feel the feels and kind of see what happens — just accept what happens.”

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AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf

The two-time All-Star left midway through the second quarter of Toronto's 125-120 loss at Cleveland on Wednesday night. He scored one point in 11 minutes before departing.

Guard Jamal Shead started in Ingram’s place in Game 6.

The Raptors are already without guard Immanuel Quickley, who has missed the entire series because of sore right hamstring.

After averaging 21.5 points per game in the regular season, his first with Toronto, Ingram has struggled in the playoffs, averaging 12 in the five games against the Cavaliers. He's shooting 19 for 58 overall and 5 for 13 from 3-point range.

Cleveland leads the series 3-2 and can advance with a win Friday. The home team has won each of the five games in the series.

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AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/nba

Judge Dale E. Ho in Manhattan extended the status temporarily while a lawsuit seeking to preserve the protections plays out. In an emergency order, he wrote that people granted the status are ordinary, law-abiding people who the U.S. government had determined could face threats to their safety if they were returned to a country facing an ongoing armed conflict.

Amid its immigration crackdown, the Trump administration has terminated Temporary Protected Status for people from nine countries, including Haiti, Venezuela and Ethiopia. Before Ho’s ruling, protections for Yemeni refugees were set to end on Monday, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

People with Temporary Protected Status are eligible to remain in the U.S., may not be removed from the country, and are able to receive work and travel authorization.

In his ruling, Ho criticized former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, saying Congress had established a process for Temporary Protected Status to be altered or rescinded, but she had not followed it.

He was particularly critical of a social media message she sent out in early December in which she said she had just met with President Donald Trump and was recommending a full travel ban “on every damn country that's been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies.”

On Feb. 13, he noted, Noem announced in a news release that Temporary Protected Status would be terminated for Yemen, finding that letting them stay in the U.S. was “contrary to our national interest.”

“TPS holders from Yemen are not ‘killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies,’ ” Ho wrote at the start of his conclusion in his 36-page decision.

He noted that among 2,810 Yemenis who hold TPS status and another 425 who have applied were a pregnant 33-year-old Detroit woman due to give birth this month whose unborn child has a congenital heart condition that is not treatable in Yemen and a 50-year-old former human rights worker in Brooklyn who is a target of Houthi-aligned militias in Yemen.

“Temporary means temporary and the final word will not be from activist judges legislating from the bench," the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.

“Allowing TPS Yemen beneficiaries to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to our national interest," the department’s statement said, emphasizing that the Trump administration is “returning TPS to its original temporary intent.”

Razeen Zaman, director of immigrant rights at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, applauded Ho's ruling, saying that “the court has made clear that humanitarian statutes like TPS cannot be used as a deportation pipeline."

Zaman said in a release that Homeland Security had determined that it was unsafe for Yemeni refugees to return to their country “but terminated their protection anyway.”

Zaman said Ho's ruling "affirms that protection must be based on facts and conditions on the ground, not on the political appetite to end it.”

Noem announced her decision to end Temporary Protected Status for Yemen in February. The Department of Homeland Security on Friday said she had reviewed conditions in the country and consulted with government agencies before determining that Yemen no longer met the legal requirements for temporary status.

Yemenis praise ruling

The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund included comments from several lawsuit plaintiffs in its press release heralding Ho's ruling.

One plaintiff identified by a pseudonym to protect his safety wrote that the people fighting to preserve protections for Yemenis were “doctors, engineers, and pilots like myself, and also drivers, deli workers, and countless other people who contribute meaningfully every day, supporting not just our own families but the broader fabric of society.”

He added that their presence "represents resilience, skill, and dedication — values that strengthen the nation as a whole.”

A woman also identified by a pseudonym called Ho's decision “a lifeline for my family.” She added: "It is the moment we finally breathed a sigh of relief after months of existential anxiety,”

Yemen was initially designated for Temporary Protected Status in 2015, about a year after the country’s civil war began.

As the war persisted, the Obama and Biden administrations extended the designation multiple times, most recently in 2024, when officials estimated that 2,300 Yemenis were eligible to reregister for protected status and that 1,700 Yemenis were newly eligible.

Ho cited other instances in which courts have recently permitted those who have fled other countries under various circumstances to stay in the U.S.

___

Associated Press writer Larry Neumeister contributed to this report.

Hill, who works along Furnish Avenue near South San Marcos, said she often begins her day walking along the creek. But on Friday morning, her routine was interrupted by a sight she said she won’t forget.

“Right down there, they were face down,” Hill said, describing where she saw the body.

Hill said she immediately walked away after realizing what she had seen.

“As soon as I saw it, I walked away, because of course, now I can’t get that image out of my head,” she said.

According to the San Antonio Police Department, officers were called to the area around 9 a.m. after receiving reports of a person in high water near San Pedro Creek.

Police and fire crews responded and pulled the person from the water. They were unresponsive and pronounced dead at the scene, officials said.

The person has not yet been identified, and the investigation remains ongoing.

Hill said it’s common to see people walking or biking along the creek, which made the situation even more unsettling.

“You’ll see people walking or doing bike rides back and forth,” she said. “I have no idea how he got there.”

Hill said she plans to continue her daily walks in the area. Still, she acknowledged the emotional impact of what she witnessed.

“Once you see something like that, you’re never going to forget that,” she said.

Read also:

• Neighbors surprised by attack on teen, manhunt for suspect in Kerr County

The U.S. government detained and deported a 25-year-old man who says he’s a U.S. citizen to Mexico in April, after police stopped the vehicle he was riding in near Fredericksburg, then called immigration authorities when he couldn’t immediately provide identification or proof of citizenship.

Brian José Morales García, who says he was born in Denver but grew up in Mexico, was living and working in Texas at the time of his arrest. In an interview with The Texas Tribune, he said he repeatedly told police and immigration agents that he was a U.S. citizen and that he had a copy of his birth certificate and his Social Security card at home in Austin that he could show them, but was denied the opportunity.

Still, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is disputing that he is a U.S. citizen and claims he admitted to entering the country illegally.

On Friday, Morales’ attorneys filed a lawsuit on his behalf in a federal court in Austin, arguing that he was coerced into saying he entered the country illegally. The lawsuit is asking a federal judge to allow him to return to the U.S. using his birth certificate and to prevent immigration officials from deporting him again.

Morales, who doesn’t speak English and has dual citizenship in Mexico, was booked into the Gillespie County Jail before U.S. Border Patrol agents took custody of him.

He was held for five days and said he feared being detained for months, so he decided to sign documents agreeing to a quick deportation so he could rejoin his wife and newborn daughter, who live in Mexico.

“Eventually I told them what they wanted to hear because I wanted to speed up the process and return and see my daughter,” Morales said in an interview.

Morales and his lawyer provided the Texas Tribune copies of his Social Security card and his birth certificate, which shows he was born in Denver. They also shared a Denver hospital record showing that he was admitted to the hospital the day he was born.

A spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, which keeps records of births in the state, said the agency is prohibited by state law from providing or confirming the validity of anyone’s birth certificate.

The Tribune also reviewed Morales’ Mexican identification, which shows a different spelling of his first name and a different date of birth. His mother said that when she and her family returned to Mexico when Morales was 1 year old and registered him for Mexican citizenship, the clerk used the common Spanish spelling of his first name — Bryan — and changed his date of birth without checking his American birth certificate.

César Cuauhtémoc García-Hernández, a law professor at Ohio State University and immigration attorney, said that it is common for dual citizens to have different versions of their names on different government documents.

The Texas Department of Public Safety said in a statement that on April 3 one of its troopers pulled over a pickup truck in Fredericksburg for a window tint violation. The trooper called Gillespie County Sheriff’s deputies and officers with the Fredericksburg Police Department to help translate for Morales and another passenger in the pickup.

Officers then called ICE agents, who asked officers on the scene to hold the men.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security disputed Morales’ citizenship claim, saying in a written statement that its agents “did NOT arrest a U.S. citizen.”

“Agents determined Morales-Garcia was illegally in the U.S. through record checks,” the statement said. “Morales-Garcia also admitted he is a Mexican national and he entered the country illegally. He was subsequently removed to Mexico on April 7.”

Morales said he initially told agents that he entered the country legally through a port entry in El Paso, but they again accused him of lying “and they told me I could go to prison, so I just told them I entered illegally.”

“They asked me how many miles away from the city and what date I entered, so at this point I was just making up numbers,” he said.

Homeland Security didn’t respond after the Tribune asked about Morales’ U.S. birth certificate, Social Security card and hospital records.

Univision was the first to report Morales’ arrest and deportation.

Starting a family in Denver before returning to Mexico

Morales’ mother, María del Socorro García, 44, said she and her sister moved from Mexico to Denver in 1999. She lived in an apartment complex and worked cleaning offices. She began dating a restaurant cook who lived in the same apartments, and two years later she gave birth to Brian. A year later they had another son, Miguel Morales García.

Socorro García said she returned to Mexico with her sons in 2002 because she wanted them to meet their grandfather, who had been struggling with diabetes. Her husband followed them later, and they agreed to stay and raise their sons in Mexico.

Miguel Morales, now 24, said when he became an adult he decided he wanted to know “his roots” and live in the country where he was born. He said he came to the U.S. three years ago with his Social Security card and told immigration agents that he didn’t have a copy of his birth certificate but that he was a U.S. citizen. After identifying him, immigration agents let him through, he and his mother said.

Once he reached Denver, he got a copy of his and his brother’s birth certificates and gave his brother’s certificate to him during a visit to Mexico.

In January 2025, a family friend who also has relatives in Denver drove Brian Morales from Aguascalientes to the border city of Ciudad Juárez, where they drove across the bridge into El Paso. Brian Morales said he showed U.S. Customs and Border Protection his birth certificate and they let them through.

“I wanted to come to the U.S. because I wanted to work and help provide for my wife who was three months pregnant at the time,” Brian Morales said.

He moved in with his brother, but said he struggled to find work in Denver and decided to move to Austin with a friend, where he found a job installing air conditioning units. He said his boss was driving him and another coworker to Fredericksburg for a job when they were pulled over.

Miguel Morales said his brother’s roommate called him in Denver with news of his brother’s detention by ICE.

“At first I thought, ‘Well he’s a U.S. citizen, they’re going to eventually release him,’” Miguel Morales said.

Miguel Morales said he didn’t learn his brother was in a detention center until an Univision reporter called him. He and his mother began to worry even more, he said, because he had read that people were suffering in detention centers.

“I got scared,” said Miguel Morales, who works as a cashier at a McDonald’s. “And in my case, I haven’t mastered speaking English yet, so I’m worried about … being questioned, too.”

Brian Morales said he was transferred to five different facilities before he signed the deportation papers and was placed on a plane to Mexico. He said he wants to return to the U.S.

“As a U.S. citizen, how can they treat me like this, just because I only speak Spanish?” he said. “I want them to take responsibility.”

Socorro García said she doesn’t understand why her son was detained and deported.

“I feel angry because he’s from there, so why was he so mistreated?” she said.

Report found U.S. officials detained 170 U.S. citizens

Morales’ deportation is evidence that the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown is leading immigration agents to racially profile Hispanic people and violate American citizens’ civil rights, said Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, Morales’ lawyer.

“If you think about what this case means for every single other person living in this country, we should all be afraid because no passenger in any vehicle who’s driving down the road in any part of the United States who is a U.S. citizen has any legal obligation to carry proof of their citizenship,” Lincoln-Goldfinch said. “The slippery slope is very obvious.”

U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, said in a statement that he’s advocating for Morales’ return to the U.S.

“His arrest and deportation are the direct result of Trump’s cruel and haphazard mass deportation campaign,” Castro said in a statement. “The Administration’s immigration policies continue to threaten our constitutional rights, and it should raise alarms for everyone — including U.S. citizens. My office is in touch with Brian’s attorney, and I will continue to push for his legal entry into the country. He belongs here.”

The U.S. Government Accountability Office, the research arm of the U.S. Congress, found that immigration agents “arrested 674, detained 121, and removed 70 potential U.S. citizens” between 2015 and 2020, according to a July 2021 report.

A ProPublica investigation found more than 170 U.S. citizens were detained by immigration agents in the first nine months of President Trump’s second administration. The report didn’t identify anyone who was deported.

Late last year, ICE agents arrested 22-year-old Dulce Consuelo Diaz Morales, whose lawyers say is a U.S. citizen and provided ICE officials with her birth certificate showing she was born in Maryland. Homeland Security contested her citizenship, saying she entered the country illegally. She was held in an immigrant detention center for 25 days before she was released.

Recently, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a court order that during immigration stops, a person’s “apparent ethnicity” can be used by immigration agents as “a relevant factor” to question a person’s citizenship status. Kavanaugh wrote in his order that if the person is a U.S. citizen, “that individual will be free to go after the brief encounter.”

Immigrant rights advocates and immigration lawyers warned that this ruling would lead ICE agents to racially profile people, including U.S. citizens.

“This administration’s disdain for our fundamental rights has no bounds,” Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice, a national immigrants rights advocacy group, said in a statement. “The continued examples of U.S. citizens being detained and deported are a built-in feature of” the Trump administration’s “mass deportation crusade and the culture that prioritizes speed and quotas instead of accuracy, accountability or dignity.”

There’s more than a few up-and-coming talents to get excited about in the movies this summer. The Associated Press spoke to 11 ones to watch.

Catherine Lagaʻaia, “Moana”

Catherine Lagaʻaia (“lung-uh-aye-uh”) found out she got “Moana” on a school day. It was around 8:15 a.m. and she’d just heard the best news of her life after a very stressful year of auditioning. But the celebration would have to wait: It was swimming carnival day and she was on deck for the 400-meter backstroke.

“I guess, like, the water vibes carried through,” said Lagaʻaia, 20, laughing.

Lagaʻaia, who is one of eight children, grew up around acting in Sydney, Australia. Her father played Captain Typho in the “Star Wars” prequels, she went to a performing arts high school and a lot of her siblings are in theater. Two of her sisters even auditioned for “Moana” alongside her, but she was just the right age at the right time, she said.

The animated film meant the world to Lagaʻaia, who is of Samoan heritage, and she’s acutely aware of the big expectations for the live action film (out July 10) — she has them for herself too.

“I felt a fair bit of impostor syndrome stepping into it,” she said. “I think we’ve made some great changes, and we’ve kept a lot of the stuff that holds the heart of the film the same.”

Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen, “Leviticus”

Teenage boys Ryan (Stacy Clausen, 21) and Naim (Joe Bird, 19) are drawn to one another in their backwater Australian community in “Leviticus,” the “conversion therapy” horror that broke out at the Sundance Film Festival. It hits theaters on June 19.

“It is about growing up queer and how the fear of growing up queer can block someone mentally from acting on their desires, and physically,” Clausen said. “But I think that there is something in it for everyone, like whether you’re LGBTQIA or not, it’s about love.”

They knew they had made something special, but it’s been affirming to see it resonate with audiences. When the trailer posted on YouTube, Bird noticed one commenter who wrote that they wished they’d had this film when they were younger.

“It just takes one person to be inspired, or you know say, ‘Oh, I wish I had a film like this’ to know that you’ve kind of done your job,” Bird said. “It’s all about connecting.”

Kara Young and Mallori Johnson, “Is God Is”

Aleshea Harris chose a two-time Tony-winner, Kara Young, and a relative newcomer, Mallori Johnson, to anchor the big screen adaptation of her Obie-winning play “Is God Is.” The story is centered on twin sisters searching for their abusive father, who burned and scarred them as babies.

Young plays Racine the Rough One; Johnson is Anaia the Quiet One. After fending for themselves their entire lives are set on an epic road trip and a journey of revenge and reckoning. It’s in theaters on May 15.

“Anaia depends a lot on Racine to protect her,” Johnson said. “I think that they’ve set up a dynamic since they were children … they have this kind of codependent relationship.”

And although both Young and Johnson are in different phases of their careers, their enthusiasm for the material, and getting to be part of it, is identical.

“Getting into the world of ‘Is God Is’ feels like an ancestral calling in some wild, beautiful, almost like indescribable way,” Young said. “It’s an epic road trip. It’s a Greek tragedy. It’s a love story between two sisters …. I lost my train of thought because I just got so hyped.”

Kane Parsons, “Backrooms”

Kane Parsons was a teenager when he was signed to direct his first feature, based on his viral YouTube series “Backrooms.”

The concept was inspired by an internet creepypasta that imagined never-ending expanse rooms and hallways full of fluorescent lights, old carpet and monotonous yellow paint; He took that idea and ran with it, creating unnerving videos from his bedroom with the help of the open-source 3D graphics software Blender. Soon both James Wan and Shawn Levy’s companies were interested in taking it to the next level.

In the film, out May 29, Chiwetel Ejiofor plays a struggling furniture store owner who seemingly slips out of reality. Renate Reinsve co-stars.

“I don’t think of this as inherently horror-driven; it’s definitely not a building full of monsters,” Parsons, 20, said. “I’ve always been more interested in the sort of man looking in the mirror version.”

The bachelors, “72 Hours”

“SNL” cast members Kam Patterson, 27, and Ben Marshall, 30, play a couple of Gen Z guys on a bachelor trip, with Marcello Hernández, groom-to-be Mason Gooding and a middle-aged ad exec (Kevin Hart) who was accidentally added to the group chat in the new Netflix comedy “72 Hours” (streaming July 24).

“It was the most fun you could possibly have shooting a movie,” Marshall said.

Between goofing around in a mansion in New Jersey and hanging in Miami with Hernández, it was, Patterson said, like summer camp. And Hart was their de facto counselor. They teased Gooding about never having his shirt on, Marshall for being so uniquely bad at jet skiing and Patterson for that time someone left him with one of the production assistant’s walkie talkies and for 5 minutes he had an open mic to the entire crew. That energy continued when the cameras were on too.

“I don’t think we said one word that’s actually in the script,” Marshall laughed.

Patterson chimed in: “Not at all. We take that script and threw it out the window.”

The new assistants in “The Devil Wears Prada 2”

Call them the new Emilys. Or, maybe don’t. But there’s a new batch of smart, young things manning the desks at “Runway” in “The Devil Wears Prada 2” (now in theaters).

Simone Ashley, of “Bridgerton” fame, is Miranda Priestly’s first assistant Amari, who screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna didn’t want to be Emily 2.0.

“With Amari the comedy comes from, like, flick of the wrist kind of sassiness and her quiet confidence,” Ashley, 31, said. “Me and Aline kind of had this inside joke that Amari is like secretly the next Miranda.”

Comedian Caleb Hearon, 31, is Miranda’s second assistant, Charlie, who is not allowed to leave his desk. Ever. But he’s not mad about it: This is literally the dream.

“I really thought a lot about a guy like Charlie and what it would mean to him to be in this office and why he wouldn’t mind staying at the desk all day,” Hearon said.

And finally, there is Helen J Shen, 26, who after breaking out on stage in “Maybe Happy Ending” makes her big screen debut as Andy’s assistant, Jin.

Shen said she “was excited to see that the dialogue was so silly to me, but Jin doesn’t find it silly.”

“I felt like that was a fresh take on someone who knows exactly what they’re trying to do,” Shen added. “She has a lot of wonderful things under her belts, intelligence wise, and she’s just trying to like, show that and be as helpful to Andy as possible.”

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For more coverage of this summer’s upcoming films, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/movies

FORECAST HIGHLIGHTS

• TONIGHT: Dry and cool
• WEEKEND: Cool mornings, sunny and comfortable afternoons
• NEXT WEEK: A steady warm‑up, mainly dry

FORECAST

TONIGHT

Cool and breezy with wind gusts up to 35 mph and temperatures dropping through the 50s with sunrise temperatures in the lower 50s around San Antonio, and mid/upper 40s in the Hill Country.

WEEKEND

A sunny and dry weekend is on the way with low humidity and fall-like temperatures. Plan for mornings in the lower 50s and afternoon highs in the 70s under vast sunshine. We’ll warm up next week with just a slight chance of mid week storms.

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But that only covers a fraction of UNT’s projected $45 million budget shortfall that’s driven largely by declining international student enrollment and reduced state funding. Julie Elliot Payne, UNT’s assistant vice president of communications, said deans and division leaders are still weighing other potential cuts, though broad layoffs across the Denton school aren’t expected.

Records obtained through a public information request by The Texas Tribune show 44 professors, tenured administrators and other long-term instructors applied for buyouts during the application window that closed April 10. The records show four were denied because they did not meet eligibility requirements.

The College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences had the most buyouts at 15, including six in English, three in economics and three in media arts.

Some of those departments are also affected by UNT’s academic program changes: English is absorbing the creative writing master’s program and losing the American studies minor, while media arts is losing a master’s program and an undergraduate certificate.

Two linguistics faculty members are among those leaving through buyouts as UNT is phasing out linguistics degrees and merging the department with World Languages, Literatures and Cultures.

The records do not identify faculty by name nor show whether they taught in a degree, minor or certificate program slated for elimination.

The College of Engineering had the second-highest number of buyouts with six, followed by the College of Information and the College of Public Affairs and Health Sciences with four each, and the College of Music with three.

To be eligible, the employees must have worked at UNT for at least 15 continuous years. Tenured faculty, administrators who also hold tenure, and some non-tenure-track faculty could seek the buyouts.

Tenured faculty and administrators taking the buyout will receive one year of base pay, while non-tenure track employees will receive six months. They must leave UNT by Aug. 31, and the university must pay them by Oct. 15, after the next fiscal year begins.

UNT officials said another round of buyouts is not planned and that some positions could be refilled if they advance the university’s strategic plan.

For journalism professor Tracy Everbach, who has taught at UNT for 22 years, the buyout offered a way out of a university she said has become increasingly hostile to academic freedom and faculty input.

Everbach said her concerns compounded over time — beginning with what she described as UNT’s overcompliance with the state’s ban on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at public colleges in 2023, continuing with the recent removal of artwork from campus exhibits, and culminating with the AI-assisted syllabus review that she said flagged her “Race and Gender in the Media” class.

Finally, the university’s announcement that it would cut or consolidate more than 70 degrees, minors and certificates reinforced her decision to leave. Faculty critics say those changes happened without meaningful input.

Everbach said she has taught “Race and Gender in the Media” nearly every fall and spring semester since 2009. The class, which enrolls about 95 students and is required for journalism majors, examines how people from different groups are represented in the media and teaches critical thinking, she said.

She informed students this week that she was leaving.

“They were very dismayed to hear that,” Everbach said. “They felt like that was one of the most important classes they had taken as college students.”

UNT has blamed the shortfall on a 45% drop in international graduate student enrollment and reduced state funding tied to enrollment. International students typically pay higher out-of-state tuition, so losing them can create a larger budget hole than losing the same number of Texas students.

To close the gap, university officials moved to cut or consolidate academic programs, left some positions vacant, offered buyouts and shifted more than 40 courses to a format in which students watch lectures online and meet in person for smaller groups, a model aimed at teaching more students without hiring more faculty.

The move to cut programs was not made lightly, UNT president Harrison Keller and Michael McPherson, provost and vice president for academic affairs, wrote in a March letter to university staff.

“While these decisions are painful, they are part of a broader effort to position UNT for greater long-term stability in an increasingly dynamic time for higher education,” the leaders wrote.

UNT is not alone in facing budget pressure as international enrollment has fallen amid heightened federal scrutiny and travel restrictions.

Since June, the University of Texas at Arlington has notified 49 employees they are being laid off, according to the Fort Worth Report. UT-Arlington saw a 30% drop in international graduate students in the fall.

The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

Whataburger is giving out free breakfast to educators between 5 and 9 a.m. Thursday.

Teachers and school staff can choose between a free Breakfast on a Bun, Honey Butter Chicken Biscuit or Breakfast Taquito with a valid school ID. According to a news release, the promotion is only valid in person.

The San Antonio Zoo will offer free admission to teachers and 50% off tickets for up to four guests between May 4 and 10. A valid school ID is needed to take advantage of the deal.

Nurses will also be able to take part in the deal between May 4 and 17. Once again, valid credentials must be presented.

If your business is offering deals for teachers or nurses, share them with us by emailing news@ksat.com for a chance to be featured in this story.

More Things To Do from KSAT:

• 🌮 Things to do in May: Cornyval, Tacos & Tequila Festival, Pride River Parade & Fest
• Free outdoor films under the moon are back at South Side theater
• Helotes Cornyval Festival returns for 61st year with live music, rodeo
• McAllen mariachi band released from ICE custody to open for Kacey Musgraves at Gruene Hall

>> Rounds of storms could bring heavy rain through Friday evening

KSAT crews have traveled around the San Antonio area to check on road conditions and provide safety tips for viewers.

Heavy rainfall remains the main concern, with 2–4 inches possible in many spots and isolated totals up to 6 inches by Friday evening.

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Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Nvidia, OpenAI, Reflection and SpaceX will provide their resources to help “augment warfighter decision-making in complex operational environments,” the Defense Department said.

Notably absent from the list is AI company Anthropic, after its public dispute and legal fight with the Trump administration over the ethics and safety of AI usage in war.

The Defense Department has been rapidly accelerating its use of AI in recent years. The technology can help the military reduce the time it takes to identify and strike targets on the battlefield, while aiding in the organization of weapons maintenance and supply lines, according to a report in March from the Brennan Center for Justice.

But AI has already raised concerns that its use could invade Americans' privacy or allow machines to choose targets on the battlefield. One of the companies contracting with the Pentagon said its agreement required human oversight in certain situations.

Concerns about military use of AI arose during Israel’s war against militants in Gaza and Lebanon, with U.S. tech giants quietly empowering Israel to track targets. But the number of civilians killed also soared, fueling fears that these tools contributed to the deaths of innocent people.

Questions about military use of AI still being worked out

The Pentagon's latest contracts come at a time of anxiety about the potential for over-reliance on the technology on the battlefield, said Helen Toner, interim executive director at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

“A lot of modern warfare is based on people sitting in command centers behind monitors, making complicated decisions about confusing, fast-moving situations,” said Toner, a former board member of OpenAI. “AI systems can be helpful in terms of summarizing information or looking at surveillance feeds and trying to identify potential targets.”

But questions about the appropriate levels of human involvement, risk and training are still being worked out, she said.

“How do you roll out these tools rapidly for them to be effective and provide strategic advantage?” Toner asked, “While also recognizing that you need to train the operators and make sure they know how to use them and don’t over trust them?”

Such concerns were raised by Anthropic. The tech company said it wanted assurances in its contract that the military would not use its technology in fully autonomous weapons and the surveillance of Americans. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the company must allow for any uses the Pentagon deemed lawful.

Anthropic sued after President Donald Trump, a Republican, tried to stop all federal agencies from using the company’s chatbot Claude and Hegseth sought to label the company a supply chain risk, a designation meant to protect against sabotage of national security systems by foreign adversaries.

OpenAI had announced a deal with the Pentagon in March to effectively replace Anthropic with ChatGPT in classified environments. OpenAI confirmed in a statement Friday that it was the same agreement it announced in early March.

“As we said when we first announced our agreement several months ago, we believe the people defending the United States should have the best tools in the world,” the company said.

One company's agreement with the Pentagon included language that said there should be human oversight over any missions in which the AI systems act autonomously or semiautonomously, according to a person familiar with the agreement who was not authorized to speak about it publicly. The language also said the AI tools must be used in ways that are consistent with constitutional rights and civil liberties.

Those resemble sticking points for Anthropic, though OpenAI has previously said that it secured similar assurances when it made its own deal with the Pentagon.

The Pentagon's point of view

Emil Michael, the Pentagon's chief technology officer, told CNBC on Friday that it would have been irresponsible to rely on only one company, an acknowledgment of the friction with Anthropic.

“And when we learned that one partner didn’t really want to work with us in the way we wanted to work with them, we went out and made sure that we had multiple different providers,” Michael said.

Some of the companies, including Amazon and Microsoft, have long worked with the military in classified environments, and it was not immediately clear if the new agreements significantly altered their government partnerships. Others, such as chipmaker Nvidia and the startup Reflection, are new to such work. Both companies make open-source AI models, which Michael has described as a priority to provide an “American alternative” to China's rapid development of AI systems in which some key components are publicly accessible for others to build upon.

The Pentagon said Friday that military personnel are already using its AI capabilities through its official platform, GenAI.mil.

“Warfighters, civilians and contractors are putting these capabilities to practical use right now, cutting many tasks from months to days,” the Pentagon said, adding that the military's growing AI capabilities will “give warfighters the tools they need to act with confidence and safeguard the nation against any threat.”

In many cases, the military uses artificial intelligence the same way civilians do: to take on rote tasks that would take humans hours or days to complete, said Toner, of Georgetown University.

AI can be used to better predict when a helicopter needs maintenance or figure out how to efficiently move large amounts of troops and gear, she said. It can also help determine whether vehicles on a drone's surveillance feeds are civilian or military.

But people shouldn't become overly dependent on it.

“There's a phenomenon called automation bias, where people can be prone to assume that machines work better than they actually do,” Toner said.

___

O'Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island.

___

Follow the AP's coverage of artificial intelligence at https://apnews.com/hub/artificial-intelligence.

More than 40 search warrants have been issued, authorities in North Carolina say, focusing on a married couple who allegedly knew Biffle and his wife Cristina. The suspects did “a lot of planning in an attempt to make a financial gain” off their deaths, Iredell County Sheriff Darren Campbell said. The Associated Press is not naming the pair because no arrests have been made.

Biffle, his wife and his two children, along with three others, died in the Dec. 18 crash, which remains under investigation by the NTSB. Some survivors of those killed are suing the estates of Biffle and the pilot for millions of dollars.

According to a search warrant affidavit, the husband being investigated met Biffle when the former driver used his private helicopter to deliver aid after Hurricane Helene. The woman attended a Christmas party at the Biffles' home in Mooresville, North Carolina, weeks before the crash.

Authorities reported a break-in at the home on Jan. 8, saying $30,000 in cash, two Glock handguns and NASCAR memorabilia were stolen. Search warrants were later executed at two sites, one near the Biffles’ residence and another in a nearby county.

A person seen on surveillance video, identified as a woman, appeared to be familiar with the large home's layout, including the locations of cameras, closets and a safe room, a detective wrote in a search warrant affidavit. The intruder spent nearly six hours inside the house the night of Jan. 7 into the following morning.

Evidence showed a cellphone and multiple devices were active on the property during that time, according to the warrant. The only people allowed to be there would've been the administers of the estate, but they weren't present.

Authorities say they linked the woman to someone who attended Biffle’s celebration of life, and said license plate readers placed her husband’s truck near the home that night.

The warrants also describe alleged financial crimes. Investigators say that bank, Venmo and PayPal accounts tied to the Biffles were accessed online using personal information, with phone numbers and email addresses changed to gain control of funds. Money was then allegedly transferred to accounts not belonging to the family and used for purchases, according to the warrant.

At least one fraudulent check tied to Biffle’s business interests was cashed, and other attempts were made to access accounts. The activity occurred across multiple states. The sheriff would not say whether the same suspects in the break-in are being investigated for the financial crimes, saying the department is waiting for more evidence.

Meanwhile, the plane crash sparked lawsuits against the estates of Biffle and the pilot Dennis Dutton, who was killed along with his son.

On April 17, the estates of Dutton and his son sued Biffle’s estate for at least $15 million each, alleging Biffle failed to properly maintain the plane and operated it in a defective condition. The claims include lost income and “pre-death pain and suffering.”

In February, Biffle’s ex-wife, Nicole Biffle, filed a notice of claim against Dutton’s estate on behalf of the couple’s 14-year-old daughter’s estate, seeking at least $10 million for wrongful death.

___

Associated Press writer Allen G. Breed in Wake Forest, North Carolina, contributed to this report. ___

AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/apf-AutoRacing

Jurors found Republican David Rivera and an associate, Esther Nuhfer, guilty on all counts, including failing to register as a foreign agent with the Justice Department and conspiracy to commit money laundering as part of their work for former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro's government.

Much as he did throughout the trial, Rivera looked stone-faced as the jury delivered its verdict.

Rivera, 60, had been out on bond, but Judge Melissa Damian ordered him taken into custody, finding that he posed a flight risk because he has access to sizable funds, faces a potentially long prison sentence, and faces additional federal charges in Washington, D.C., in a related foreign lobbying case.

The seven-week trial offered a rare glimpse into Miami's role as a crossroads for foreign influence campaigns aimed at shaping U.S. policy toward Latin America, one highlighting the city's reputation as a magnet for corruption and anti-communist crusaders among its sizable exile population.

It included testimony from Rubio, Texas Congressman Pete Sessions and a top Washington lobbyist — all of whom testified that they were shocked to learn belatedly of Rivera’s consulting contract with a U.S.-based affiliate of Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA.

“These convictions expose a simple truth: the defendants sold access and influence to a hostile foreign regime for money,” said U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones. “In South Florida, where so many families fled communist oppression, that kind of betrayal carries real weight.”

Attorneys for Rivera said they plan to appeal.

In an indictment unsealed in 2022, prosecutors alleged that Rivera was tapped by then Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez — now Venezuela’s acting president — to work Republican connections from Rivera's time in Congress to get the first Trump administration to abandon its hard-line stance and ease crippling sanctions on Venezuela.

As part of the charm offensive, prosecutors alleged, Rivera and Nuhfer, a political consultant, manipulated influential friends, including Rubio and Sessions, like “pawns on a chess board." The goal: to try and normalize relations with the new Trump administration at a time when the Maduro government was buffeted by serious accusations of human rights violations.

“As long as the money kept coming in, they didn’t care from where,” prosecutor Roger Cruz said of the defendants during closing arguments.

‘Massive secret’ threatened to damage Rivera's political career

But the two held onto the “massive secret” and didn't disclose their lobbying work as required, for fear it would have ended Rivera's political career as an anti-communist stalwart, Cruz said.

To hide his work, prosecutors allege, Rivera also set up an encrypted chat group called MIA — for Miami — with his main conduit to the Maduro government: Venezuelan media tycoon Raúl Gorrín, who was subsequently charged in the U.S. with bribing top Venezuelan officials.

Members of the group used playful code words to discuss their activities: Maduro was the “bus driver,” Sessions “Sombrero,” Rodríguez “The Lady in Red,” and millions of dollars “melons,” according to copies of text messages presented to the jury.

“It was all about La Luz,” Cruz said, referring to the Spanish word for light, which Rivera and others repeatedly used to discuss payments from Caracas.

Attorneys for Rivera and Nuhfer said the two acted in good faith and believed they were under no requirement to disclose their work. The three-month, $50 million contract with Rivera's one-man consulting firm, they say, was focused exclusively on luring oil giant ExxonMobil back to Venezuela — commercial work that is generally exempt from the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Wholly distinct from that consulting work, they say, were Rivera's meetings with Rubio and Sessions, which occurred after the consulting contract had expired and was focused on ushering in leadership in Venezuela that would be less hostile to the U.S.

“He was working every possible angle to get Nicolás Maduro out,” defense attorney Ed Shohat said during closing arguments. “There was not a word in the chats about normalizing relations.”

Nuhfer's attorney, David Oscar Markus, likened the government's case to the 17th century Salem witch trials, presuming ill intent that was belied by the flimsiest of evidence.

“My client does not have a dark heart,” he said.

Exxon meetings for Rodríguez

Prosecutors said Rivera used the contract with New York-based PDV USA as cover for illegal lobbying.

Once exposed, the partners tried to hide the work — backdating documents and coming up with sham agreements like one to justify a wire transfer of $3.75 million to a South Florida company that maintained Gorrín’s luxury yacht.

The political activity included setting up meetings for Rodríguez in New York, Caracas, Washington and Dallas. As part of the effort, the two roped in Sessions, who later tried to broker a meeting for Rodríguez with the CEO of ExxonMobil that had succeeded Trump’s then-secretary of state, Rex Tillerson. After a secret meeting in Caracas with Maduro, Sessions also agreed to deliver a letter from the Venezuelan president to Trump.

The outreach quickly unraveled, however. Within six months of taking office, Trump sanctioned Maduro and labeled him a “dictator,” launching a “maximum pressure” campaign to unseat the president.

However, nearly a decade later, Rodríguez has emerged as the second Trump administration's trusted partner after the U.S. military's ousting of Maduro.

Before being elected to Congress in 2010, Rivera was a high-ranking Florida legislator. During that time, he shared a Tallahassee home with Rubio, who eventually became the Florida House speaker.

Rivera has previously faced controversy, including allegations that he secretly funded a Democratic spoiler candidate in a 2012 congressional race. Last year, federal prosecutors dropped the case after an appeals court threw out a sizable fine imposed by a lower court. Rivera was also investigated — but never charged — for alleged campaign finance violations and a $1 million contract with a gambling company while serving in the Florida Legislature.

Paxton filed a lawsuit against ActBlue in late April, claiming that ActBlue allows improper donations from people outside the United States and those who have already hit the mandated donor limits. He opened an investigation into ActBlue in December 2023, and the next year, sent a letter to the Federal Elections Commission, claiming he had uncovered evidence that “bad actors can illegally interfere in American elections by disguising political donations.”

ActBlue’s lawsuit, filed in federal court Friday, says Paxton initiated undercover investigations into the fundraising platform the day after Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico announced he had raised a record-setting $2.5 million in 24 hours.

“The timing of Paxton fighting for his political life in his run for U.S. Senate and his use of the Attorney General’s office to attack ActBlue, should not be lost on anyone,” said Lawrence Oliver, chief legal officer at ActBlue. “He is wasting taxpayer dollars to benefit his political ambitions.”

Background: ActBlue is the main platform used by Democratic candidates and causes. Since its founding, more than 28 million people have donated through ActBlue, which processed $1.78 billion last year alone.

The group began facing pressure from Republican members of Congress in 2023, which Paxton followed by opening an investigation into Texas-based donations. In August 2024, Paxton claimed victory, saying ActBlue had agreed to start requiring CVV codes on credit card donations.

In April 2025, Trump ordered the Justice Department to investigate ActBlue, heightening fears among Democrats about the political targeting of the infrastructure that allows them to fundraise. Paxton also involved ActBlue in his investigation of Texas Democratic House members who left the state in the summer 2025 to protest mid-decade redistricting.

The compounding investigations have led to internal turmoil at ActBlue, The New York Times reported. Earlier this month, the newspaper reported that ActBlue lawyers raised concerns that the company’s systems were not as robust as top executives had told congressional Republicans that they were.

What Paxton is saying: Citing that recent reporting, Paxton filed his lawsuit on April 20, saying that ActBlue “lied to Congress and to the American people.”

“It has blatantly ignored state law that prohibits deceptive practices, and it must pay for its illegal conduct,” Paxton said. “Fair elections are the foundation of our democracy, and I will work to ensure no illegal campaign donation flies under the radar.”

He is suing in state court under the Deceptive Trade Practices Act, a consumer protection statute he has deployed repeatedly over the last year to go after left-leaning organizations. The civil penalties of up to $10,000 per violation could be significant if the judge were to rule against the company.

What ActBlue is saying: ActBlue’s lawsuit says Paxton is violating the company’s First and 14th Amendment rights, and alleges he misinformed the court about the results of his office’s investigation. Paxton’s investigators’ attempts to use gift cards were repeatedly denied, the company said, despite claims in the lawsuit to the contrary.

In a press release, the company criticized Paxton for framing his investigation in “partisan, not consumer protection, terms,” pointing to his comments about the company’s support for “liberal Democrats” and “left-wing campaigns.”

“Ken Paxton has spent more than two years using the power of his office to investigate, harass, and sue ActBlue,” Oliver said in a statement. “This is not law enforcement. It is retaliation against constitutionally protected speech and association, and it is exactly what the First Amendment forbids.”

Disclosure: New York Times has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

The win almost certainly guarantees top tier football at Elland Road next season. Leeds moved nine points clear of Tottenham Hotspur, the team occupying the third and last relegation spot.

Daniel Farke’s men improved to 14th place, above Newcastle, Nottingham Forest and West Ham, all of whom have a game in hand. The bottom two, Wolves and Burnley, are already going down.

The Leeds players celebrated in front of a delirious home crowd at the final whistle and although they were not taking their survival for granted yet the win was clearly a relief.

“It’s an unbelievable feeling,” one of Leeds' stars Dominic Calvert-Lewin said. “Leading from the front, high up the pitch, and we executed the game plan really well. They’ve come in playing with nothing to lose and that can be dangerous sometimes, but pleased with and proud of the boys with how we’ve performed.”

Anton Stach put the home side ahead in the eighth minute with a low shot from 30 meters out that somehow sneaked inside Martin Dubravka’s post.

The second came seven minutes into the second half thanks to sloppy defending by Burnley’s Bashir Humphreys. His pass was intercepted by Calvert-Lewin, whose neat backheel created more space in the Burnley defense and allowed Noah Okafor to fire home.

Calvert-Lewin got the third himself four minutes later when he was on hand to prod home in a crowded penalty box after Dubravka could only parry Ao Tanaka’s long-range effort.

Loum Tchaouna got Burnley’s consolation goal.

The Lancashire club fired manager Scott Parker after two years in the role on Thursday and interim coach Mike Jackson was appointed for the last four games of the season.

“I knew this game could go one of two ways with what’s happened in the last 24 hours," Jackson said. “The shock of it to the group. I had a feeling it could go a little bit like that. First half, first 25 minutes, we looked a little bit shellshocked in a way. We grew into the game a little bit more. We started the second half I thought pretty well, and then we can’t make those errors. And then you’re always up against it.”

___

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

Friday, May 1

Heavy rainfall has caused multiple roads and lanes to close on Friday morning in San Antonio. Here are the latest traffic closures:

• Two lanes on Interstate 35 northbound at Cassin Road
• Three northbound lanes on Interstate 35 at Salado Creek
• Both U.S. Highway 90 westbound lanes at Leon Creek
• FM 1976 and Gibbs Sprawl Road
• North Seguin Road and Old Cimarron Trail
• Weir Road at Trainer Hail
• Schaefer Road at Crescent Bend
• All lower water crossings along Cibolo Creek

>> Map: Emergency road closures in San Antonio, Bexar County, Hill Country and Texas

Drivers are urged to use alternate routes.

For more information on traffic, you can click here to view our traffic page on KSAT.com. To view more on the current weather conditions, click here.

Click the links below for current road closures.

• San Antonio road closures
• Bexar County road closures
• TxDOT highway conditions

Arkansas announced a week ago it would drop its men's and women's programs and Saint Louis followed Monday with the same announcement. Illinois State said Tuesday it would end its men's program, and North Dakota said Thursday it would shut down its men's and women's teams. Gardner-Webb announced in February this would be the last season for the men's and women's programs.

Arkansas and Gardner-Webb are among the 64 teams in the men's NCAA Tournament.

The number of Division I schools sponsoring tennis in 2024-25 was 237 for men and 304 for women. An NCAA spokeswoman said Friday that numbers for 2025-26 were unavailable.

Dozens of schools across all divisions shut down programs in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since revenue sharing with athletes started last year, Division I schools have chosen to redirect resources to fund direct payments to athletes in football, basketball and a few other sports.

Brian Vahaly, chairman of the board and president and interim co-CEO of the U.S. Tennis Association, said in a statement to The Associated Press on Friday that visibility of the college game needs to be elevated, the pathway for players to continue competing beyond juniors needs to be strengthened and tennis leaders need to work more directly with athletic departments.

“A strong collegiate tennis landscape is fundamental to the future of our sport,” Vahaly said, “and we will continue to look for ways to support its growth and long-term sustainability.”

Arkansas' decision to drop the sport caught the tennis community off guard.

“We in the tennis world have sort of been battling this at the lower levels of college tennis, but not the big, bad SEC,” ESPN tennis analyst and former college and pro player Patrick McEnroe said on the WholeHogSports podcast. "The Division II schools and some of the smaller Division I programs over the years, you're always sort of on the lookout in the tennis community to fight and protect as many programs as possible."

Tennis has been targeted as youth participation for American boys and girls has declined and the ratio of international players at U.S. colleges has continued to grow.

In 2006, the number of boys and girls ages 12-17 playing tennis was equal, at 1.1 million, according to the National Sporting Goods Association. Over the last 20 years, participation has dropped 23% for boys in that age group (849,000) and 26% for girls (811,000).

The most recent NCAA data showed that among first-year college players in 2022, 64% of men and 61% of women were international students. At Arkansas, seven of the nine men and seven of the 11 women on the 2025-26 rosters are international students.

The math didn't work for the Razorbacks anymore. They spent a combined $2.35 million on the two teams in the 2025 fiscal year; the men's team generated $3,202 in revenue and the women $82.

Arkansas' operating expense per player in 2025 was $41,772 for the men and $41,582 for the women, among the highest in the athletic department.

Tennis also ranked among the most expensive sports per player at North Dakota and Gardner-Webb, and at Illinois State the $10,224 cost per men's player was more than football and baseball. At Saint Louis, cost per player ranked third out of six men's sports and sixth out of eight on the women's side.

___

AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports

Patrick’s directive was the first time a state leader officially acknowledged the existence of rapidly growing prediction markets, which let users wager on outcomes tied to anything from the weather to election winners and sports scores.

Most prediction markets didn’t operate in the U.S. before 2025.

Any attempts by the Texas Legislature to restrict prediction operators, however, would run into federal roadblocks as the Trump administration insists that oversight belongs to a U.S. agency, not the states.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has taken vigorous steps to retain exclusive regulatory oversight, suing to block five states from taking legal action against predictive markets, including a lawsuit filed Tuesday against Wisconsin.

Prediction market operators argue that state gambling laws don’t apply to them because users aren’t placing bets, they’re risking money on predictions — no different than other exchange-traded financial contracts that speculate on the future performance of commodities. Congress created the CFTC in 1974 to regulate futures trading.

Sara Slane, head of corporate development for Kalshi, the country’s largest prediction market, said she believes federal regulators provide adequate oversight, a perspective Kalshi is “never shy” about sharing with state officials.

“We are regulated at the federal level, but of course, given now the popularity of prediction markets, we are doing a lot of educating on the state level,” Slane said. “That’s the dialogue that we’ll envision having, certainly, in the state of Texas.”

Amid fears of insider trading and market manipulation, other states have struggled to regulate prediction markets under their current gambling laws, including 15 states that have sued, investigated or sent cease and desist orders to operators for allegedly violating gambling restrictions or failing to acquire gambling licenses.

Texas, however, has been slower to react, uncharacteristic for a state that has stood firm against efforts to expand online wagering.

The National Association of Attorneys General and the Ohio attorney general’s office asked Texas in March to join a legal brief arguing that the CFTC does not have sole authority to regulate the markets, emails obtained by The Texas Tribune show. Although 39 states signed on, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office didn’t respond.

The same thing happened last week when the two organizations again asked Texas to support a similar brief joined by 37 states.

In August 2025, Paxton was one of four state attorneys general who did not sign a letter urging then-U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to crack down on offshore gambling.

Paxton’s office did not respond to requests for comment on whether state gambling laws applied to prediction markets and why Texas did not join the two briefs or the letter to Bondi. When the Tribune asked to view internal communications related to prediction markets, the office declined, saying the information was protected by attorney-client privilege. The Ohio attorney general’s office and the national group declined to comment.

Opponents of legalized gambling say prediction markets, despite being portrayed as a form of futures trading, are simply a new form of gaming, producing the same problems as other types of wagering, including addiction, financial ruin and family strain.

“This is public health. It rewires the brain, it requires increasing amounts of dopamine, people will bet more and more and more,” said Russ Coleman, board chair for Texans Against Gambling. “The number of suicides that will result, the number of families that will be broken up, the number of embezzlement cases — it will hit.”

Jonathan Covey, director of policy for Texas Values, a conservative advocacy group, said the markets have the potential for additional harm because many facilitate wagering on elections.

“Elections, they’re not just economic activity, they’re core functions of our state sovereignty,” Covey said. “We have Penal Code chapter 47 that says election betting is illegal, and prediction markets have been trying to sort of relabel that activity.”

Last week, Kalshi revealed that it had fined three congressional candidates, including one in Texas, for attempting to wager on their own elections. That revelation — and the recent arrest of a U.S. Army soldier accused of using classified information for an almost $410,000 payday on another platform — has added fuel to opponents’ concerns that the current regulatory framework is unprepared to address potential manipulation.

Betting on federal oversight

Prediction markets operate by offering “event contracts” tied to different outcomes, such as the number of strikeouts in an Astros’ ballgame or the winner of the Texas attorney general Republican runoff. Sports-related contracts represent 80% to 90% of Kalshi’s monthly trading volume, according to investment research platform Artemis.

There are very few explicit federal restrictions on futures trading beyond motion picture box office receipts and, thanks to the Onion Futures Act of 1958, the price of onions. A CFTC advisory in March also clarified that contracts related to war, assassination or terrorism are not allowed.

Polymarket, which bills itself as the world’s largest prediction market, has offered contracts based on the wars in Iran and Ukraine, but those are hosted on a platform outside of the U.S. and are not subject to CFTC regulation. Polymarket also maintains a U.S. product under CFTC regulation.

The CFTC permits prediction market operators to self-regulate their contracts, a structure Chair Michael Selig described as the government granting them “quasi-regulatory authority.” The CFTC, he told a U.S. House hearing mid-April, can review and reject contracts, acting as the “second line of defense” after the operators themselves.

“The Commodity Exchange Act sets forth a regulatory scheme where the exchanges are the first line of defense,” Selig said.

That self-governing was displayed last week when Kalshi announced enforcement action against the congressional candidates who bet on their own races, including Zeke Enriquez, who finished 11th in the 21st Congressional District Republican primary. Kalshi fined Enriquez $784 and banned him from using the exchange for five years for buying less than $100 worth of event contracts in the GOP primary.

The CFTC also solicited public comments from mid-March through Thursday for input on future rules specifically addressing prediction markets. On Thursday, the National Conference of State Legislatures, which represents state lawmakers including those in Texas, submitted a comment urging the CFTC to place event contracts related to sports under state gambling laws.

In Texas, Patrick opened the door to potential regulation in March when he directed the State Affairs Committee to study how federal law has been exploited to “circumvent Texas gambling prohibitions.” As presiding officer of the Texas Senate, he has long opposed efforts to loosen state gambling restrictions.

Patrick also told senators to prepare recommendations for the 2027 session of the Legislature to ensure prediction markets do not endanger the integrity of elections and sports in Texas.

The committee has no meetings currently scheduled.

Coleman said Patrick’s directive was a “happy surprise” as his organization works to raise awareness of the rapidly expanding prediction markets. While uncertain what effect it will have, he hoped it indicated Patrick’s continued opposition to gambling writ large.

“Maybe it was stretching a little bit to read too much into that, but it says that he’s paying attention,” Coleman said.

The CFTC’s efforts to discourage states from regulating prediction markets started after Selig, appointed by President Donald Trump, began in December as the only commissioner at the agency, which is designed to be led by five presidential appointees. Selig and the CFTC did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Covey said Selig’s treatment of prediction markets was “concerning” because states have traditionally had the power to determine what kinds of gambling are permitted within their borders.

“The CFTC is treating these as financial documents, but the states are the ones that have always regulated gambling,” Covey said. “When a federal agency pushes to expand these markets nationwide, it risks overriding state authority and exposing consumers to something that many states would otherwise restrict.”

Covey said operators, relying on federal oversight, have set up shop in states without formal notification, leaving political leaders playing catch-up.

“I think that this issue has not been highlighted, and a lot of people are not aware of it,” Covey said.

In Republican-led Texas, efforts to regulate prediction markets may be complicated by many state officials’ close ties to Trump. Truth Social, the social media platform created by the president, announced in October it would launch its own prediction market platform. Donald Trump Jr. is an adviser for Kalshi and Polymarket.

“There’s a lot of political overtones to this,” Coleman said.

As courts, Congress weigh in, sportsbooks enter the picture

People on both sides of the issue expect questions about state vs. federal regulation to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. Three federal appeals courts are reviewing disputes between prediction market operators and states, with oral arguments completed in two cases and a third set for next week — although no cases are pending before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees Texas.

“This is so, so far down the road that I can truly understand why state lawmakers are saying, ‘OK, great, Dan Patrick, it’s on the interim charge, thank you, we’ll keep our eye on this,’ but at this point it’s got to play out in the courts,” Coleman said.

Several bills have been introduced in Congress to restrict who can use prediction markets and prohibit contracts related to sports or war, including one sponsored by Rep. Greg Casar, D-Austin. On Thursday, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a resolution banning senators from using prediction markets. Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, said on the Senate floor that the ban also applied to Senate staff.

Meanwhile, prediction markets have provided sportsbooks access to residents of states like Texas where online gambling is generally forbidden.

Two of the largest online sportsbooks, FanDuel and DraftKings, have launched prediction market products offering sports contracts that accept money from Texans. Gaming advocates had worked, unsuccessfully, to persuade Texas lawmakers to legalize daily fantasy sports in 2017 and online sports betting in 2023 and 2025. Today, opening DraftKings’ sports betting app in Texas automatically pivots players to its prediction market.

DraftKings says there is “clear consumer interest” in Texas.

“Drawing on more than a decade of experience serving sports fans, and informed by ongoing, thoughtful dialogue with regulators and policymakers, DraftKings has developed a platform designed to enhance the fan experience while making available responsible engagement tools and resources,” a statement from a DraftKings spokesperson read.

FanDuel responded to questions about their prediction markets by pointing to interviews with other outlets, including a CNN interview with company President Christian Genetski, who described the markets as a “reasonable facsimile” to sportsbooks.

What could Texas do?

Carol Ann Maner, chair of the Texas Coalition on Problem Gambling, a nonpartisan organization focused on bolstering resources to combat gambling addiction, said the exponential growth of prediction markets is a great concern from a public health perspective.

The coalition has not identified examples of problem gambling stemming from prediction markets, but Maner said the similarities between them and sportsbooks means the risks are no different.

“It would be almost like malpractice on our part to pretend not to know that this would be harmful,” she said.

Gambling opponents say Texas lawmakers still have several opportunities to regulate or investigate prediction markets without crossing the CFTC.

Covey suggested scrutinizing advertising that is often indistinguishable from sportsbook operations and can target younger audiences. Federal regulations allow prediction markets to be used by those 18 and older, while most states restrict gambling to those 21 and up.

“Their advertising really is a pretty significant insight into where they feel like they’re pulling their customer base from,” Covey said.

Kalshi and Polymarket previously ran Instagram ads in Texas that explicitly called their services “betting,” the Tribune found in September. Ads using direct gambling terminology were removed after Event Horizon and the Tribune reported on their proliferation, but new ads still frame the markets as a more profitable alternative to sportsbooks.

Legislators could also request or subpoena information from operators to glean details on how Texans use prediction markets. The Senate State Affairs Committee used that tool last year when it scrutinized lottery couriers, learning that 99.9% of the largest courier’s sales in 2024 were done online, which Patrick and other lawmakers said violated state law.

Another idea is banning state officials and employees from participating in prediction markets if they have insider information. Four state governors have issued executive orders barring state employees from using nonpublic information to influence contracts purchased on prediction markets. The orders do not outright ban employees from using the markets.

Slane said she understands why state leaders may be apprehensive about giving up oversight but is confident Kalshi is on “firm legal ground” being regulated exclusively by the feds.

“It’s not a fight that we want to be in, but we’re not surprised that we are in it,” Slane said. “I think when people sort of take a step back, certainly from a state level, and they’re simply viewing this as a federal preemption issue over states’ rights, your natural intuition is to be the defender of your state rights.”

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.

Then his phone rang on Friday morning with a number from California he did not have saved. It was trainer Doug O'Neill calling to ask if he wanted to take the mount on Robusta, who got into the field when Kenny McPeek's Right to Party was scratched by track veterinarians.

“I was shocked,” Torres told The Associated Press after riding in the fifth race at Churchill Downs later in the day. “I didn’t respond for a few seconds because I couldn’t believe it. It’s been a roller coaster of emotions but just very happy and very grateful.”

Torres, a native of Puerto Rico who began riding in 2019, was set to be aboard Silent Tactic in the 152nd running of the Derby. Trainer Mark Casse and owner John Oxley made the call Wednesday to scratch Silent Tactic because of a foot injury and plan for the Preakness on May 16.

Casse said it was an easy decision in the best interests of the horse but that he felt badly for Torres.

The second chance materialized with Robusta getting in off the also-eligible list. O’Neill tapped Torres for the mount because Emisael Jaramillo was already booked to ride at Santa Anita Park in California on Saturday.

“It’s been crazy,” Torres said. “But I’m very happy to be here, and I’m grateful for Doug. He called me and gave me the chance to ride Robusta. Man, just grateful. Grateful with every opportunity that comes and very happy and very excited.”

Torres is going into the biggest race of his career with limited knowledge of Robusta, who was second in the San Felipe Stakes on March 7 and seventh in the Santa Anita Derby on April 4.

“I’ve watched his replays, his races when he ran in California, but I’m not very close to the horse so I’m just going to watch the replays and see and talk with Doug and see what we can do,” Torres said.

Robusta was the second-to-last horse eligible for the opening leg of the Triple Crown. Dallas Stewart's Corona de Oro would draw in if there are any additional scratches to the current field of 20 horses.

In addition to Right to Party and Silent Tactic, Brad Cox scratched Fulleffort after an X-ray revealed a chip and fluid in the colt's left hind ankle.

Right to Party was a vet scratch, not a choice made by McPeek and owner Chester Broman Sr.

“The safety and well-being of the racehorses training and competing in Kentucky are the center of everything we do,” the Kentucky Horse Racing and Gaming Commission said in a statement.

“(The commission) closely monitors data pertaining to scratches, including those based on the advice of our regulatory veterinarians,” the organization said. "It is one of the most difficult parts of the job, as we share the goal of each horse’s connections for the horse to compete safely. ... We all want what is best for the horse.”

___

This story has been corrected to show that Corona de Oro is also eligible if there is another scratch.

___

AP horse racing: https://apnews.com/hub/horse-racing

Antonio, Caleb and Joshua Gámez-Cuéllar are set to open for Grammy-winning country artist Kacey Musgraves during sold-out shows next week at Gruene Hall.

The brothers, who are members of McAllen High School’s award-winning Mariachi Oro group, said that the performance will be one of the biggest of their careers.

“I’m super excited,” Antonio Gámez-Cuéllar said. “Me and Caleb, we already have gone to Carnegie Hall in New York City and the Capitol in Washington, D.C. But this is something else.”

“It’s another one that we can add to our collection,” Antonio said, “but it’s one of the biggest ones that we ever played.”

The invitation to perform with Musgraves came about two weeks after the family was released from detention.

“We’re doing pretty good,” 18-year-old Antonio Gámez-Cuéllar said. “We think that it’s going very well after we got released. We love to be back.”

The Gámez-Cuéllar family’s story drew widespread attention after they were detained during a routine immigration check-in with ICE.

The Gámez-Cuéllar family said they entered the United States through the now-defunct CBP One asylum process in 2023 after fleeing violence in Mexico.

The Department of Homeland Security argued in March that the family entered illegally and was released into the country by the Biden administration.

“The law requires illegal aliens who show up at a port of entry without valid entry to be detained while all their claims are heard. You can look it up in the statute,” DHS said in the statement. “Unlike the previous administration, the Trump administration is not going to ignore the rule of law.”

However, there was a bipartisan push by lawmakers for their release, arguing that the family was following the law.

“Let’s not forget that this family followed the law and did everything it asked of them,” U.S. Rep Vicente Gonzalez, D-McAllen, said in a statement. “They should have never been detained in the first place, and their situation speaks to the grave injustices this Administration is inflicting on families in South Texas and across the country.”

Caleb Gámez-Cuéllar said the opportunity means a great deal to the family.

“I feel so grateful for her and God for this opportunity that they have given me, given us, me and my brothers and my family,” he said.

The brothers said audiences can expect surprises during the performances, though they already have a set list in mind.

Beyond the music, the brothers said they hope their story encourages other immigrant families and young musicians facing adversity.

“I think that most of the people that is criticizing us,” Antonio said, “it’s because they don’t look at us like as humans. And all of us are humans.”

Despite criticism online, the brothers said they are focused on positivity.

“We honestly don’t hate. We love everybody,” Antonio said. “We pray for every single person that hate us or that feel like any kind of hate for us to then open their eyes and to be blessed by God.”

Read also:

• McAllen mariachi band released from ICE custody to open for Kacey Musgraves at Gruene Hall
• McAllen family released from ICE custody after being detained, separated by ICE, Rep. Castro says
• McAllen ISD family detained by ICE, high school mariachi student separated from family, relative says

Briann is the team captain and a four-year member of the varsity tennis team.

Briann co-founded Marshall’s Model United Nations, is the secretary of the National Honor Society, is a member of Mock Trial, the Rho Kappa Honor Society, the Science National Honor Society, is a Healthy Futures of Texas Youth Advocate and is a school ambassador.

She maintains a 4.0 grade point average and is ranked sixteenth in her class.

Briann plans to attend Washington and Lee University, major in political science, go to law school and become a family attorney.

The S&P 500 climbed 0.3% to its latest all-time high and closed out a fifth straight winning week. That’s its longest such streak since 2024. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 152 points, or 0.3%, and the Nasdaq composite added 0.9% to its own record.

Apple led the way after the iPhone seller reported stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Because it’s one of Wall Street’s biggest stocks in terms of overall size, Apple’s rally of 3.3% was by far the strongest force lifting the S&P 500.

Stock prices generally follow the path of corporate profits over the long term, and U.S. companies have been blowing past expectations for earnings in the first three months of 2026. That’s even with the war with Iran and high oil prices souring confidence for many U.S. households.

A little more than a quarter of the companies in the S&P 500 have reported already, and 84% of them have topped analysts’ estimates, according to FactSet. The index is on track to deliver roughly 15% growth in profit from a year earlier.

Estee Lauder’s stock climbed 3.4% after reporting better earnings than expected, thanks in part to strength in China, and it raised some of its upcoming financial forecasts. Sandisk jumped 8.3% after the maker of storage for computers blew past analysts’ expectations for profit thanks in part to voracious demand from data centers.

Colgate-Palmolive added 2.2% after likewise delivering bigger results than expected, though CEO Noel Wallace said it expects “volatile macroeconomic conditions and slower category growth to continue in 2026.”

The main uncertainty for the global economy is where oil prices are heading because of the Iran war. Oil prices spurted higher early this week on worries that the war will keep the Strait of Hormuz closed for a long time. That would in turn keep oil tankers pent up in the Persian Gulf instead of delivering crude to customers worldwide.

But such moves have been quick to reverse throughout the war, as hopes rise and fall for a reopening of the strait. On Friday, the price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, fell 2% to settle at $108.17. Brent was selling for a little more than $70 per barrel before the war began.

That rise since the end of February helped the two biggest U.S. oil companies report stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. But stock prices nevertheless fell for both Exxon Mobil, 1%, and Chevron, 1.4%, as oil prices regressed Friday and each reported drops in net income from a year earlier.

All told, the S&P 500 rose 21.11 points to 7,230.12. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 152.87 to 49,499.27, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 222.13 to 25,114.44.

The fall in oil prices helped Treasury yields ease in the bond market. So did a report in the morning that said growth for U.S. manufacturing was a touch softer last month than economists expected.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.38% from 4.40% late Thursday. Such dips can make mortgages and other loans for U.S. households and businesses cheaper, and they also tend to give upward pushes to prices for stocks and all kinds of other investments.

Many stock markets worldwide were closed for May Day. Among the indexes still trading, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.4%, and London’s FTSE 100 slipped 0.1%.

___

AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed to this report.

An epidemic of Type 2 diabetes and hypertension are the biggest causes of kidney disease and end-stage renal disease, where kidneys alone cannot sustain life. At that point, patients face a difficult choice to stay alive: go on dialysis -- a draining process to cleanse the kidneys -- or seek a kidney transplant.

“Dialysis is life support,” explained Dr. Elizabeth Thomas, a transplant surgeon and director of the living kidney donor program at University Health Transplant Institute. “So many people think it’s routine. They’re like, ‘I go to dialysis three times a week; I’ll find a way to fit it into my schedule.’”

The reality, however, is that people die on dialysis.

“If you took 10 people and put them on dialysis, in five years, half are dead,” Thomas said.

Choosing transplantation

While a kidney transplant is the best way for a patient with kidney failure to regain their health and vitality, the gap between the need and availability is enormous.

The national transplant system known as UNOS reports that more than 94,000 people are on the waiting list for a deceased donor kidney, but only 21,000 received one in 2025. The average wait is about five years. During that time, a patient’s health continues to decline.

That’s why Dr. Thomas is a vocal advocate for living donation.

“There are not enough organs for all the people who need them,” she said.

The benefits of living donation

A person needs just one healthy kidney to live a full, active life. Living donors are generous people who give one of their two healthy kidneys to someone who needs it to survive -- often dramatically improving outcomes.

Recipients benefit in several ways:

• They receive a transplant within weeks or months instead of years.
• The kidney begins working immediately.
• Living donor kidneys are often healthier, with better long-term outcomes.

At University Health Transplant Institute, Dr. Thomas helped create the Champion for Life program, which helps patients share their story with friends and family in a non-confrontational way that often leads to a living donor stepping forward.

Even if a donor isn’t a match with the patient to whom they want to donate, the transplant can move forward by being included in a paired exchange: Willing donors are matched with compatible recipients in exchange for their loved ones also being guaranteed transplants.

What it takes to become a living donor

The first step to being a living donor is simply learning more.

“The most important thing for people to know is that you just have to be healthy and interested,” Thomas said. “You don’t have to be perfect.”

That matters, because many people rule themselves out early.

Some worry they don’t have a matching blood type or incorrectly believe they won’t be able to have children. Others are concerned about work, recovery time or family responsibilities.

“Please do not rule yourself out,” Thomas said.

Transplant teams like those at University Health will look for ways to help donors cope with personal and medical concerns. They will dispel the myths that sometimes result in interested donors not stepping forward.

What to expect: surgery and recovery

For those who move forward, the donation process is often more manageable than they expect.

Kidney donation surgery typically takes two to three hours, followed by a short hospital stay -- often just one night. At University Health, robotic-assisted surgery allows for greater precision and smaller incisions, helping reduce pain and speed recovery.

“They’re walking the very next day, they’re eating, they’re up and about,” Thomas said.

Most donors are advised to avoid lifting for about six weeks, but many return to normal routines -- including work and exercise -- relatively quickly.

“We encourage that,” Thomas said. “People go back to their full, healthy normal lives.”

Choosing the right transplant center

For both donors and recipients, choosing a transplant center is an important part of the process.

Dr. Thomas recommends starting with outcomes.

“It’s your body. It’s a huge investment,” she said. “You should know how they’re going to perform.”

The Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR) collects, analyzes and reports data on all solid organ transplants in the United States. At srtr.org, you’ll find a specific transplant center’s survival rates compared to national averages.

You can search by transplant center and organ type -- kidney, liver or lung, for example. Transplant programs like the kidney program at University Health Transplant Institute also post the SRTR patient outcomes they are proud of sharing on their websites.

In addition to patient survival, the SRTR website also provides:

• Graft survival -- how long the transplant organ functions.
• Waitlist mortality -- how many patients die waiting for a transplant.
• Transplant wait -- how quickly patients get a transplant.

A life-changing experience -- for both sides

While recipients gain a second chance at life, many donors say the experience changes them, too.

Thomas said donors often describe a deep sense of fulfillment after surgery.

[Read more: Local doctor with one kidney scales Mt. Kilimanjaro]

“It’s a fulfillment that leaves them almost speechless,” she said.

That impact can last long after recovery. Donors carry a lasting sense of purpose, knowing they played a direct role in saving a life.

Ready to take the next step?

For those who are curious, getting started is simple and comes with no obligation.

At University Health, potential donors begin with a short online questionnaire, followed by phone conversations and, if they move forward, a one-day evaluation with testing and consultations.

Not everyone who begins the process will become a donor -- and that’s OK.

“Just be curious. Just learn more,” Thomas said.

Because for someone waiting on a transplant, that curiosity could save a life.

Start your journey or learn more at University Health.

Today on Texas Eats NOW:

STERNEWIRTH AT HOTEL EMMA

136 E Grayson St, San Antonio, TX 78215

Sternewirth at Hotel Emma offers a refined yet welcoming tavern experience inside the historic Pearl Brewery complex. Known for its dramatic industrial design, the space features soaring ceilings, repurposed fermentation tanks, and cozy seating areas that blend history with modern luxury. The bar specializes in craft cocktails, curated wines, and local beers, paired with elevated small plates that make it a popular destination for both locals and visitors.

The venue also plays host to special events, including Pearl’s inaugural Tequila Weekend in partnership with Goodjuice. The celebration includes a multi-course distiller’s dinner, a cocktail competition across Pearl, and the Goodjuice Agave Spirits Festival, with proceeds benefiting the San Antonio Food Bank. With its rich history and sophisticated atmosphere, Sternewirth continues to stand out as one of San Antonio’s premier gathering spots.

DUCK & DUMPLING

3003 Thousand Oaks Dr, San Antonio, TX 78247

Duck & Dumpling brings authentic Chinese flavors to San Antonio’s North Side, specializing in traditional Peking duck and freshly made dumplings. Since opening in 2025, the restaurant has gained attention for its crispy-skinned duck, served with pancakes, cucumbers, and house sauces, along with a variety of dumplings prepared daily. The menu reflects a focus on quality and authenticity, offering a range of dishes that highlight classic techniques and bold flavors.

Guests can enjoy pork soup dumplings, pan-fried buns, and steamed options, as well as noodle dishes and Sichuan-inspired plates. The restaurant’s inviting, family-style atmosphere makes it a great spot for sharing meals, though its popularity often means arriving early is recommended. With its dedication to traditional recipes and fresh preparation, Duck & Dumpling is quickly becoming a go-to destination for Chinese cuisine in San Antonio.

ANGEL’S MEXICAN HAVEN

2302 E Commerce St, San Antonio, TX 78203

Angel’s Mexican Haven is a longtime East Side favorite serving authentic Tex-Mex in a warm, family-oriented setting. Established in 2004, the restaurant has built a loyal following with its homemade dishes, friendly service, and welcoming atmosphere that feels like dining at a relative’s home. Known for its vibrant yet modest decor, the space reflects its roots as a true neighborhood staple.

The menu features standout items like the famous pork chop taco, along with carne guisada, enchiladas, chile rellenos, and freshly made tortillas. Generous portions and affordable prices add to its appeal, making it a go-to spot for both regulars and newcomers. With more than two decades of serving the community, Angel’s Mexican Haven continues to deliver comforting, flavorful meals that highlight the heart of San Antonio’s Tex-Mex tradition.

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Progressive groups criticized the report, saying it fails to document a pattern of discrimination, focuses on causes favored by conservative Christians and amounts to “advocacy dressed up as investigation.”

The Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias, created within the Justice Department by President Donald Trump last year, issued its conclusions Thursday in a 200-page report.

“When Christian beliefs about morality and human nature conflicted with the Biden Administration’s views, religious rights often suffered," the report said.

Report alleges an unfair hard line against conservatives

The task force — which included numerous Cabinet secretaries — didn't accuse the Biden administration of any large pattern of suppressing churches themselves or the right to worship. But the report did accuse it of taking a hard line against those who advocated for conservative policies on the basis of their faith in such areas as abortion, gender, school curriculum and vaccine exemptions.

“The Biden Administration generally tolerated religious beliefs that were privately held but zealously pursued actions to limit Christians’ ability to act in accordance with their faith," it said.

Critics said the report essentially equates one strand of conservative Christianity to be representative of Christians overall, then construes policy disagreements to be persecution.

The report is “advocacy dressed up as investigation,” said Jim Simpson, executive director of the Center on Faith and Justice at Georgetown University.

He said the report falsely deems policy disagreements to be “evidence of anti-Christian bias rather than the normal functioning of a pluralistic democracy." He also said it falsely positions Christians — nearly two-thirds of Americans — as “a persecuted minority despite being the country’s largest and most politically influential religious group.”

The task force report contends that the Biden-era Justice Department sought severe penalties for anti-abortion activists who illegally blockaded clinics and took such protests more seriously than threats to pregnancy resource centers — often Christian-run facilities that seek to persuade women not to obtain abortions.

It cited a group of people convicted in federal court and sentenced to prison after invading and blockading a Washington abortion clinic. Trump pardoned them in 2025.

The report contended that the Biden administration “sidelined Christians in favor of their preferred constituencies.”

Alleged abuses related to Easter and LGBTQ+ rights

One section of the report accuses Biden of “replacing Easter" with Transgender Day of Visibility, which takes place every March 31. That event coincided with Easter on 2024. In fact, Biden issued proclamations honoring both occasions. The report accused Biden of “profound lack of consideration for the Christian faith.”

Christian groups have mixed views on LGBTQ+ issues, with some progressive churches flying Pride flags. Conservative denominations generally oppose same-sex marriage and transgender rights. The report chided the Biden administration for flying Pride flags at U.S. Embassies, including at the Vatican.

Melissa Rogers, who served as executive director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships under Biden, contrasted Trump's Easter messaging this year with his predecessor's.

“President Biden spent Easter and Orthodox Easter wishing Christians worldwide joyful Resurrection Sundays, not by pretending to be Jesus, by tweeting profanities, and by attacking the pope,” she said.

She also noted that Biden is a devout Catholic, and that his administration's officials routinely met with Christian and other faith leaders to cooperate on a wide range of concerns, from the security of sanctuaries to immigration to supporting COVID-19 clinics.

The task force’s report criticized a Biden-era Justice Department memo that discussed possible efforts to prevent violence and threats targeting school boards. The discussions never led to federal action, and then-Attorney General Merrick Garland defended the effort, saying it was to curtail violence, not inhibit debates over policy.

The report did not directly say how it considered this anti-Christian bias, though many school board meetings in that time period did draw conservative Christians and other critics denouncing school policies and lessons on such topics as gender and race.

The report also criticized denials in federal agencies for Christians seeking exemptions from such things as COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

It criticized federal regulators that had told a Catholic hospital in Oklahoma to snuff its chapel candle, deemed a safety hazard because of the risk of combustion to patients with oxygen equipment. The hospital was allowed to keep the candle while putting up a barrier and a warning notice.

The report also cited what it said were disproportionately heavy fines imposed by Biden's Department of Education on two Christian universities — Grand Canyon University for allegedly deceiving thousands of students over program costs, and Liberty University for failures to comply with required disclosures of crime statistics. The Trump administration cleared Grand Canyon University of the charges and rescinded the fine.

Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, criticized the report for “cherry-picked anecdotes” that don't add up to a pattern of persecution.

“To the extent that the government ever did overreach or violate the law in any of these examples, the courts of law, not a partisan political report, provide the right venue to settle any legal disputes,” she said. “Focusing government resources on this narrow issue while ignoring or discounting the much more widespread instances of anti-religious discrimination against other faith groups in the U.S. further harms religious freedom for all.”

The report comes even as the Religious Liberty Commission, another entity created by Trump, prepares a report on its findings; its hearings featured many of the same grievances cited by the task force.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

A news release Friday morning said someone had called 911, reporting the sighting of a suspicious man in the area of Interstate 10.

Shortly after 11 a.m., deputies took David Bryan Cox, 44, into custody. Cox is accused of strangling the teen and causing injury.

The sheriff’s office said the attack happened late Thursday night at an RV park on Goat Creek Road, just a few miles from the field where Cox was eventually found.

The Code Red Alert sent out by KCSO earlier said Cox was to be considered armed and dangerous. It said when he ran from the scene of the attack, he was carrying at least one weapon and wearing a tactical vest along with a gun belt with multiple magazines.

People in the RV park and beyond were warned to be watchful and remain indoors.

“It said (the) 2800 (block), an RV resort. Well, this is the only one around here,” said Nathaniel Short, referring to an alert he received on his cell phone. “It was very surprising.”

Short, who lives in the RV park, spoke to KSAT 12 News on Friday morning, as deputies gathered around another RV a few doors down from his.

“For this to happen is very shocking, so very concerning,” he said.

The RV resort is inhabited by longtime occupants, such as Short, as well as people who are just visiting the area.

Some people told KSAT 12 News they had not received any alerts at all.

The sight of deputies staged throughout the area came as a surprise to some. However, at one point, all the patrol cars suddenly scattered and left the RV park.

Later, the same group of cars had gathered in an empty lot closer to the highway.

In a grassy area near the access road, deputies could be seen actively searching along with a dog.

A news release confirmed deputies had captured Cox. It also said they would remain in the area as they searched for his weapons.

Back at the RV park, Short said he and his neighbors were armed and ready to handle trouble on their own, if necessary.

“This is a community where we know everybody will protect each other,” Short said.

Read also:

• SAPD arrests 4 men in connection with prostitution sting operation
• Olmos Park Police Department searching for peeping Tom suspect
• San Antonio man pleads guilty to charges related to ATM explosions, gun possession, DOJ says

Brailen Weaver is charged with armed bank robbery and firearms offenses that caused death, according to federal court records.

Weaver entered a branch of U.S. Bank in Berea on Thursday, just before 2 p.m. and “immediately shot and killed a male victim” and then fatally shot a teller, according to an FBI affidavit filed in federal court Friday. He checked multiple drawers in the bank and then fled, the affidavit said. Investigators have not said if any money was taken from the bank.

"While there is no longer imminent danger, we understand that the tragedy is far from over for the community," Olivia Olson, special agent in charge of the Louisville FBI office, said at a news conference Friday. “The only solace that we can offer is that this individual, who valued a stolen dollar more than two human lives, will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”

Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman announced Friday he would pursue state murder charges against Weaver. Court records say Weaver is 18, and officials said Friday he lived somewhere in Kentucky.

Authorities identified a silver BMW sedan on surveillance video and matched it to a car for sale by Weaver on Facebook, the affidavit said. Investigators were also able to match clothing on the suspect to photos of Weaver on social media. Investigators said Weaver continued to post on social media after the robbery.

The FBI located Weaver’s car on I-75, and he was pursued at speeds over 100 mph (161 kph) Thursday night. He exited the highway into Lexington, where he exceeded speeds of 130 mph (209 kph) before crashing the car and fleeing on foot, the affidavit said.

Kentucky State Police Officer Justin Kearney said in a social media post Friday that a “person of interest believed to be involved in yesterday’s Berea bank robbery has been apprehended."

The affidavit was written before he was captured so it makes no mention of an arrest.

Rawl Kazee, a Lexington attorney identified in court records as representation for Weaver, did not immediately return a phone message later Friday morning.

Jason Parman, first assistant U.S. attorney for the eastern half of Kentucky, said in his 18 years as a prosecutor, he could not recall a death related to a bank robbery. Parman said it’s not uncommon for a bank robber to be armed and to threaten violence, but deaths are uncommon in his experience.

Bank robberies nationally have declined from 5,546 in 2010 to 1,263 in 2023, a decrease of 77%, according to the FBI’s annual Bank Crime Statistics report. There were no deaths associated with bank robberies in 2022 and 2023, the most recent year available for the data.

Tom Myers, a crime historian and retired FBI agent, said the drop in bank robberies is due to experienced criminals opting to move on to easier crimes that don’t come with the risk of a lengthy federal prison sentence. Bank security technology has also evolved rapidly, he said, and tiny, powerful tracking devices can make it easier to find stolen money bundles once a robber has left the bank.

“The juice ain’t worth the squeeze,” Myers said. “There’s so many other things to do that are profitable — you can go to a big box store and walk out with the same amount in some places, and only face state charges if you’re caught.”

Law enforcement officials went door to door in search of information and surveillance video, as well as using helicopters, drones and dogs. The Lexington Police Department and county sheriff’s offices took part in the search, along with the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Area schools went into lockdown for a while Thursday until campuses were deemed safe. Students were not allowed to go home on buses and had to be picked up by their parents, state police said.

U.S. Bank said it was working closely with law enforcement and committed to supporting the victims' families and bank colleagues. The small bank branch in the quiet community of Berea is located just a mile from Berea College and its campus that dates back to the 1850s.

“We’re deeply saddened by the tragic event that took the lives of two of our employees at our Berea, Kentucky branch earlier today,” the company said in a statement Thursday. “Our hearts go out to the families of the victims, our colleagues and the entire Berea community.”

Berea is about 36 miles (58 kilometers) south of Lexington.

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Rebecca Boone contributed to this story from Boise, Idaho.

Judge Daniella DeSeta Lyttle’s ruling on Friday continues the pause on the ban that another judge granted earlier this month.

Lyttle granted the Texas Hemp Business Council, Hemp Industry & Farmers of America, and several Texas-based dispensaries and manufacturers a temporary injunction against new testing requirements that create a 0.3% total THC threshold that would effectively bar the sale of natural smokeable hemp products. The ruling also prevents a 3,000% increase in licensing fees for hemp retailers from taking effect for now.

The pause on the ban will last until the next hearing, currently scheduled for July 27, but could end earlier if the state appeals the latest ruling and the court sides with the state.

During a three-day hearing this week, lawyers for the hemp industry argued that the Texas Department of State Health Services overstepped their constitutional authority by rewriting the statutory definitions of hemp established by lawmakers in 2019.

“The Texas Legislature must answer to the voters of Texas; that is a fundamental check and balance of our constitution. Agency bureaucrats lack accountability to the people of Texas, which is why their authority is limited,” said Jason Snell, one of the attorneys for the hemp businesses.

Attorneys for the state argued in court that Texas law requires the health agency to prioritize Texans’ well-being in rulemaking, allowing them to implement new hemp regulations. The judge disagreed, saying the rules were doing irreparable harm to the industry.

“The Court finds that the purpose of a temporary injunction is to preserve the last, actual, peaceable, non-contested status that preceded the controversy,” said Lyttle.

Andrew Alvarado, an attorney representing the hemp industry, said Lyttle’s ruling upholds the separation of powers among government entities.

“Frankly, I think it’s a win for all Texans, because fundamentally, the Court confirmed that unelected officials and state agencies cannot impose rules that conflict with the will of the people,” he said.

In a separate decision that could harm the industry’s chances of defeating the overall ban on smokeable hemp products, the Texas Supreme Court on Friday upheld the state health agency’s prohibition on another natural intoxicating hemp compound called delta-8 THC. Products with delta-8 THC has been off store shelves since 2022 because of the ban, allowing delta-9 THC to proliferate and become the most commonly found intoxicating chemical in hemp products now.

The court’s decision says the delta-8 ban can remain because state law gives the agency overarching authority to protect Texans. The state could invoke this ruling to allow the state health agency to ban any or all consumable hemp products based on its statutory responsibilities to protect Texans, and that can only be undone if the Legislature tells the state agency those products are legal.

“If the legislature desires to legalize powerful drugs, it has every tool it needs to do so—and to do so unmistakably, as we expect for such a major change to social policy. The role of the courts is merely to assess the state of the law as it is,” Texas Supreme Court Justice Evan Young said in his court opinion.

Alvarado said he wasn’t ready to determine what the Texas Supreme Court’s decision on delta-8 THC might mean for their chances of defeating the separate ban on all smokeable hemp products, but for now, the sale of hemp products remains the same.

“We’ve successfully thwarted the agency’s attempts to kill the hemp industry,” he said.

State law defines hemp as containing less than 0.3% levels of intoxicating delta-9 THC. The health agency redefined hemp in accordance with federal law which clarified last November that hemp can’t contain total amounts of any type of THC — not just delta-9 THC — that is more than 0.3% of its dry weight, according to Zachary Berg, an attorney with the Texas Attorney General’s Office. Berg added that the federal government’s new definition doesn’t go into effect until this coming November, but the state wanted to be in compliance early with federal law.

Snell said that by trying to mirror a federal law that isn’t yet in effect, the state clearly overstepped its regulatory authority. He also called on a slew of witnesses, including veterans, suburban mothers, rural store owners, and economists, to testify on how these new regulations are already shuttering businesses and killing off the industry.

Hemp retailers told the court that businesses have lost over 50% of their revenue since the rules went into effect; manufacturers are shutting down production due to increased licensing fees; and farmers are not planting crops because new testing requirements are making hemp flower worthless.

The hemp businesses also asked for a temporary injunction on other rules that increase licensing fees for retailers and manufacturers and prevent businesses from selling smokeable hemp out-of-state. Both of these were also lifted by the court for now.

The background: Even though Texas law bans marijuana, lawmakers legalized hemp in 2019. State law defines hemp as containing less than 0.3% levels of intoxicating delta-9 THC.

To get around the law’s delta-9 THC restrictions, manufacturers started cultivating hemp plants with another type of THC, called THCA, that, when ignited in a joint or smokeable product, can produce a high. Many lawmakers have said this legal loophole has allowed a recreational THC market to appear overnight without direct approval from the state.

Last year, the Texas Legislature voted to ban the products out of fear that these intoxicating products were consistently getting into the hands of children. But, Gov. Greg Abbott vetoed the decision last summer, before asking the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission and DSHS to increase regulations on the industry instead.

The Texas Department of State Health Services released regulations on consumable hemp-derived THC products that went into effect on March 31. These new regulations include child-resistant packaging, a significant increase in licensing fees, new labeling, testing, and bookkeeping requirements. The rules also codify the legal purchasing age to 21, which went into effect last year as an emergency directive.

Why the hemp industry sued: Also under the new rules, laboratories tests now measure the total amount of any THC in a product. If the THC levels exceed the 0.3% threshold, even if it’s only activated upon being smoked, the product will be noncompliant under state regulations. As a result, some of the most popular hemp products, like THCA flower and pre-rolled joints, have been banned.

Hemp businesses caught selling noncompliant products face a range of penalties and fines, including license revocation and up to $10,000 in violation fees for each day these products were sold in stores.

Retailers cannot sell hemp to out-of-state customers either.

Several hemp industry representatives testified on Thursday that smokable products aren’t the only items being removed from shelves due to the new testing requirements. Hair gels, bath bombs, balms, tinctures, dog treats, and much more can no longer be made because the main ingredient is hemp flower.

“It’s like trying to regulate the sale of wine by banning grapes,” said Amanda Taylor, one of the attorneys for the hemp businesses, in court.

The state health agency didn’t conduct a complete economic impact report on the proposed rules and regulations, which the lawyers for the hemp industry called negligence.

Attorneys for the state said the health agency either couldn’t find or verify the data needed to confirm the economic impact of these rules or wasn’t required to do so because the well-being of Texans takes priority over industry concerns.

Beau Whitney, the founder and chief economist at Whitney Economics, a cannabis economic research firm, told the court that his own impact report done earlier this year found that the new rules and regulations will have a $7.2 billion negative impact on the Texas economy due to job losses and reduced tax revenue from hemp retail closures. He said the process of preparing the economic report on the Texas hemp industry was simple and well within the state health agency’s reach in both economic and time terms.

The rules also increase licensing fees for manufacturers of hemp-derived THC from $258 to $10,000 per facility and retail registrations from $155 to $5,000, which industry leaders say will fulfill the ban by forcing businesses to close. The state’s attorney said the state needs the fees to build a system to regulate the hemp industry, despite the health agency stating in its rules that it didn’t have any plans to hire additional DSHS employees for this effort.

The hemp business community’s lawsuit is not challenging the other new regulations, including the age verification or ones they say protect consumers.

What the state says: Concerns about the safety of these high-THC products among youth led lawmakers to attempt to ban hemp-derived THC products outright last year. While the overall ban didn’t succeed, lawmakers successfully banned vape pens containing THC and other hemp-derived intoxicating chemicals.

Berg said in court that the state has received reports of hemp products containing 100 times the recommended amount of THCA being sold in these stores, and customers weren’t using it for wellness reasons but to get intoxicated.

“Many are consuming recreationally and not just adults,” said Berg.

Data provided from the Texas Poison Center Network confirms a sharp increase in cannabis-related poisoning calls starting in 2019, a year after hemp-derived THC was legalized by the federal government, from 923 to a 10-year high of 2,592 in 2024. Calls climbed to 2,669 last year. The majority of these calls involve suspected poisoning of children under the age of five and teenagers.

Drug policy experts said these numbers seem alarming, but it is natural for poisoning calls to increase when a drug has become legalized, and the data needs additional context before making conclusions from it.

What’s next: The federal government passed restrictions that redefined hemp so that only 0.3% of any type of THC is allowable, which effectively bans smokeable hemp nationally starting this November. There are ongoing efforts in Congress to alter the ban or allow states to opt out of following this new definition.

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.

Explosions and a fire were recorded at the terminal, the statement from the General Staff said. Local officials in Russia said a Ukrainian drone attack sparked the blaze and that no casualties were reported.

The facility had been hit previously on April 16, April 20 and April 28. Regional governor Veniamin Kondratyev said a fire at the city’s oil refinery had also been extinguished Thursday, less than 24 hours before the latest strike.

Meanwhile, Russian attacks continued to strike Ukraine.

Russia attacked the western Ukrainian city of Ternopil with over 50 drones on Friday, Mayor Serhii Nadal said.

Hits were recorded in industrial facilities and infrastructure, he said. At least 10 people were wounded, he added, while some neighborhoods remain without electricity as a result of the mass attack.

Two multi-story residential buildings and port infrastructure in Odesa were damaged after Russian forces launched another overnight drone attack on the southern region, local authorities said.

As a result of the strikes, an apartment in a 16-story building was destroyed and the roof caught fire. In another high-rise residential building, a fire engulfed the 12th floor, according to Ukraine's Emergency Service.

In a post on Telegram, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said at least five people were wounded in the region. He said damage from overnight attacks was also recorded in the central city of Kryvyi Rih and the northeastern Kharkiv region, where railway infrastructure was hit.

“Russia continues to attack our energy infrastructure, critical infrastructure, and civilian objects. Tonight, there were 210 drone strikes, and about 140 of them were “Shahed” drones,” Zelenskyy wrote.

Saphier, a radiologist and former Fox News Channel contributor, has promoted several aspects of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Make America Healthy Again agenda, including removing food additives, cutting ultraprocessed foods from diets and encouraging exercise.

But she has been a more vocal advocate for vaccination than Kennedy, and at times she has criticized the Trump administration's handling of health issues as “embarrassing.”

If confirmed as the nation's doctor, Saphier would be empowered to issue advisories that warn of public health threats. Surgeons general also have used the office to advocate on vaccination issues — though the office doesn't create vaccine policy.

Means, a Stanford University-educated physician and MAHA influencer who didn’t complete her surgical residency in Oregon and has an inactive medical license, faced grueling questioning from senators of both major political parties over her experience and stance on vaccination. She told The Associated Press her failed nomination was the result of a “yearlong smear campaign."

Saphier is a mom, radiologist and former Fox News contributor

Trump's new surgeon general pick is the director of breast imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering Monmouth, according to her profile on the institution’s website. She has a medical degree from Ross University School of Medicine in Barbados, along with fellowships at the Mayo Clinic, according to her profile.

She has earned the approval of institutions including the American College of Radiology, whose president, Dr. Dana Smetherman, on Thursday called her a “tireless advocate for women's health.” Kennedy said in a social media post that her experience with breast cancer patients and early detection will help the Republican administration take on the chronic disease epidemic.

Saphier was also a longtime Fox News Channel contributor until this week — one of several of the channel's personalities Trump has brought into his administration. Trump's first surgeon general pick, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, was also a contributor at the network, but her nomination fell apart last year after questions arose about her academic credentials.

An author and podcaster with her own show, “Wellness Unmasked with Dr. Nicole Saphier,” Saphier frequently comments on the Trump administration's approach to health, often positively. She also used the phrase “Make America Healthy Again” years before Kennedy popularized it. It was the title of a 2020 book she wrote that criticized the government’s handling of healthcare and the Affordable Care Act.

Saphier also has dipped into the wellness product industry, creating a line of herbal supplements called Drop Rx, according to her LinkedIn profile.

A mom of three boys, Saphier has often said she is thankful she decided to keep her first son after becoming unexpectedly pregnant at age 17. She has advocated for more resources for mothers who make the same choice.

Advocating for vaccination while criticizing COVID-era mandates

Like Means, Saphier has questioned some aspects of the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule, including the universal birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine, a longtime recommendation that the Trump administration has been trying to weaken.

She also has aligned with Kennedy's disdain toward COVID-19 vaccination requirements in schools, saying on her podcast in September that they were “a complete disaster" and one of the reasons for declining trust in vaccination.

Saphier says she supports immunization while arguing patients should be free to make their own medical decisions. In March, she praised acting U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya for posting a message encouraging Americans to get vaccinated against measles.

“The more vaccine confusion we create, the more preventable disease we will see,” she said in September, urging the administration to get itself in order "because it’s really upsetting.”

She's called the health department's mistakes ‘embarrassing’

While being supportive of the Trump administration at large, Saphier has publicly cringed at some of its health mishaps. Last summer, she decried its long-anticipated first attempt at a MAHA report, which cited some studies that didn't exist.

"There were a lot of flaws in this report," she said on her podcast. “In fact, it was pretty embarrassing."

She said Kennedy's firing of his first CDC director, Susan Monarez, after less than a month on the job was “a mess.”

"When we keep hearing radical transparency and we’re going to regain trust, I can tell you these shenanigans are taking us farther away from that mission,” Saphier said on her podcast.

In an email to the AP last year, Saphier said Trump's advice to pregnant women not to take Tylenol, which promoted unproven ties between the medication and autism, was overly simplistic. She said equally important, and missing from Trump's message, was the fact that untreated fever or severe pain can also pose serious risks to mothers and babies.

After Means' confirmation hearings earlier this year, Saphier said on her podcast that she expected Means would do a good job as surgeon general but wished she were “a little bit less involved with MAHA.”

“I’d really like to see a little bit more reaching across the aisle when it comes to public health,” Saphier said. “That doesn’t mean it has to be some Democratic nominee for surgeon general, maybe just someone a little less aligned with the MAHA movement who, I don’t know, finished their residency and has an active medical license.”

At least a few prominent MAHA influencers have suggested Saphier is no ally. Turning Point USA podcaster and anti-pesticide campaigner Alex Clark said in a post on Friday that Saphier “gets an F when it comes to all things MAHA.”

Trump turned back the latest proposal almost as soon as it was delivered. Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported that Iran handed over its plan to mediators in Pakistan on Thursday night.

“They want to make a deal, I’m not satisfied with it, so we’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters Friday at the White House, without elaborating on what he saw as its shortcomings.

The shaky three-week ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran appears to still be holding though both countries have traded accusations of violations.

While the ceasefire has largely halted fighting in Iran, the U.S. and Iran are locked in a standoff over the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s traded oil and gas passes in peacetime. A U.S. Navy blockade stopping Iran’s tankers from getting out to sea has Iran’s economy reeling. The world economy is also under pressure as Iran maintains its chokehold on the strait.

Negotiations have continued by phone after Trump called off his envoys’ trip to Pakistan last week, the president said. Trump this week floated a new plan to reopen the critical passageway used by America’s Gulf allies to export their oil and gas.

On Friday, Trump expressed frustration with Iran’s leadership, describing it as fractured.

“It’s a very disjointed leadership,” Trump said. “They all want to make a deal, but they’re all messed up.”

Discussing a briefing he had Thursday with Adm. Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command, the president said the U.S. has just two options in Iran.

“I mean, do we want to go and just blast the hell out of them and finish them forever? Or do we want to try and make a deal? I mean, those are the options,” Trump said.

Trump said he believes Iran’s leadership has made some progress toward unifying around a resolution.

“They’ve made strides, but I’m not sure if they ever get there,” he said. “There’s tremendous discord, they’re having a tremendous problem getting along with each other in Iran.”

Iran’s top diplomat sought support for plan

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi held a flurry of calls on Friday with many of his regional counterparts, including from Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Azerbaijan, to brief them on his country’s latest initiatives to end the war, according to his social media.

European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas also spoke over the phone Friday with Araghchi. They discussed ongoing diplomatic efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and long-term security arrangements, Kallas’ office said in a statement. Kallas also has been in contact with the EU’s Gulf partners.

Pakistani officials have said efforts were continuing to ease tensions between Iran and the U.S.

Pakistan’s former ambassador to Washington, Masood Khan, said the continued exchange of proposals indicates that the U.S. and Iran remain engaged in seeking a diplomatic midpoint.

The proposals also come after leaders of the two countries had exchanged some of their harshest threats, Khan said, fueling fears that military hostilities could resume at any moment.

Imprisoned Iranian Nobel laureate moved to hospital

Iran’s imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi was urgently transferred from prison to a hospital in northwestern Iran after a “catastrophic deterioration” of her health, her foundation said Friday.

The Narges Mohammadi Foundation said she had two episodes of complete loss of consciousness and a severe cardiac crisis. She was believed to have suffered a heart attack in late March, according to her lawyers who visited her a few days after the incident.

The hospital transfer comes “after 140 days of systematic medical neglect,” since her arrest, the foundation said.

Mohammadi, 53, a rights lawyer who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2023 while in prison, was arrested in December and sentenced to seven more years in prison.

Explosion of leftover bombs killed 14 in Iran

An explosion of leftover bombs from strikes during the war against Iran killed 14 Revolutionary Guard members, IRNA and other Iranian media reported Friday.

A report by the Nournews website, believed to be close to Iran’s security, said the explosion happened near the northern city of Zanjan, which is northwest of Tehran.

It was the largest number of Revolutionary Guard members reported to be killed since the ceasefire began on April 7. The report said the ammunition included cluster bombs and air mines dropped during the fighting.

Since the war began on Feb. 28, at least 3,375 people have been killed in Iran, and more than 2,600 people in Lebanon, where new fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah broke out two days after the war started, according to authorities.

Additionally, 24 people have died in Israel and more than 20 in Gulf Arab states. Seventeen Israeli soldiers in Lebanon and 13 U.S. service members throughout the region have been killed.

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Ezzidin reported from Cairo and Binkley from Washington. Associated Press writers Sylvie Corbet in Paris and Sarah El Deeb in Beirut contributed to this report.

However, they also agreed to continue discussing alternative proposals and entertain new ones, which could change the plan substantially.

Nations met this week at the International Maritime Organization headquarters in London in preparation for potentially voting in the late fall on new, global regulations to clean up shipping, or the “Net-zero Framework." Instead of finishing the discussions, the delegates scheduled more meetings for the fall to keep working ahead of a vote, keeping the framework as a foundation for their negotiations.

A number of countries submitted alternative proposals and suggested changes, and said those should still be on the table, for inclusive, constructive negotiations. The meeting chairman, Harry Conway of Liberia, assured the group on Friday that these options could still be considered at the forthcoming meetings, and new documents could still be submitted. The document that outlines the work for these meetings was modified to make that explicit.

Australia and others expressed concerns that continuing to discuss alternatives would set the process back, when the impacts of climate change are being felt worldwide and the shipping industry is calling for certainty now to make investments in green technologies.

As the meeting closed, IMO Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez said “we kind of are back on track,” while urging delegates to rebuild trust and continue talking to each another.

Em Fenton, of Opportunity Green, said the framework survived, with a majority of countries supporting it, but “survival is not a victory and we cannot end up in a cycle of open-ended negotiations.”

“We must now look forward to moving toward adoption of the framework later this year in a way that maintains urgency and ambition, and delivers justice and equity for countries on the front lines of climate impacts,” said Fenton, senior director for climate diplomacy at the U.K.-based climate change nonprofit.

The regulations would establish a pricing system which would impose fees for every ton of greenhouse gases emitted by ships above allowable limits, in what is effectively the first global tax on greenhouse gas emissions. The United States and Saudi Arabia are among those that strongly oppose a fee.

Nations agreed on the Net-zero Framework last year. Delegates met in October to adopt it, a step that was widely expected to be a formality. The U.S., with trade threats from U.S. President Donald Trump, and support from Saudi Arabia and others, derailed the meeting. Delegates decided to postpone the decision by a year and adjourn.

Most ships today run on heavy fuel oil that releases carbon dioxide and other pollutants as it’s burned. Shipping emissions have grown over the past decade to about 3% of the global total as trade has grown and vessels use immense amounts of fossil fuels to transport cargo over long distances. There is a lot of interest in ammonia as an alternative fuel because the molecule doesn’t contain carbon.

The framework would set a marine fuel standard that decreases, over time, the amount of greenhouse gas emissions allowed from using shipping fuels. The regulations also would establish the pricing mechanism. The fees collected would go into an IMO fund to invest in fuels and technologies needed to transition to green shipping, reward low-emission ships and support developing countries so they aren’t left behind with dirty fuels and old ships.

This will put the global shipping industry on more sustainable footing, both environmentally and economically, than where it is today, said Mark Brownstein, senior vice president, energy transition at Environmental Defense Fund. Oil prices keep going higher since the war with Iran began.

The IMO, which regulates international shipping, set a target for the sector to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by about 2050, and has committed to ensuring that fuels with zero or near-zero emissions are used more widely.

Large ships last about 25 years, so the industry would need to make changes and investments now to reach the goal around 2050. The International Chamber of Shipping, which represents over 80% of the world’s merchant fleet, has advocated for adoption of the regulations.

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

If you can’t get a ticket to a home playoff game, you’re in luck. There are plenty of spots around town to watch the Spurs for free.

The Rock at La Cantera

Dubbed the Spurs’ “official watch party hub,” The Rock at La Cantera (1 Spurs Way) features a massive 40-foot outdoor screen along with DJs and interactive fan zones to keep the energy up throughout the game.

Organizers said all playoff games will be shown here. Both admission and parking are free.

McIntyre’s locations

Another popular option are the McIntyre’s locations in Southtown (1035 S. Presa Street) and at North Star (90 NE Interstate 410 Loop).

Both locations offer plenty of TVs and large screens for viewing. The North Star spot also boasts a giant outdoor LED display. Entry is free at both venues, which make them convenient choices on either side of town.

City Base Cinema

For fans who want to enjoy the game in a theater-style venue, City Base Cinema (2623 Southeast Military Drive) is hosting free playoff watch parties inside its theaters.

Guests can enjoy the game with surround sound, reclining seats and a big-screen experience. Admission is free; only thing that’ll cost money are snacks.

The Friendly Spot Ice House

Known for its laid-back atmosphere, The Friendly Spot Ice House in Southtown features two large LED screens and multiple backyard viewing areas.

The bonus: the venue is also kid-friendly, dog-friendly and free to get in the doors.

KSAT’s upcoming ‘Race For Seis’ coverage

The Spurs will open the series at the Frost Bank Center on Monday night. Game 2 is scheduled for Wednesday, May 6. Game 3 will be on Friday, May 8.

Fans can also catch KSAT 12’s expanded Spurs coverage with KSAT Sports Now’s “Race for Seis” specials at 6:30 p.m. ahead of Game 1 (Monday), Game 2 (Wednesday) and Game 3 (May 8) live on KSAT 12, KSAT.com and streaming live on KSAT Plus.

More recent Race For Seis coverage on KSAT:

• SCHEDULE: Spurs at home to start second round of playoffs
• San Antonio Spurs draw Minnesota Timberwolves in second round of NBA playoffs

The City of San Antonio does not have anything on the May 2 ballot, but several other cities and schools do.

Find the results in the picker above, or by clicking on the links below:

• Municipalities
• School districts

Balcones Heights, Castle Hills, Helotes, Kirby, Leon Valley, Live Oak and Shavano Park are some of the cities that have at least one council seat on the ballot. The ones that don’t have a tax and use reauthorization bond on the ballot.

Beyond Bexar County, New Braunfels, Garden Ridge, Selma, Universal City, Karnes City and others will have city council candidates going before voters.

Most counties that hold municipal elections in May have offices that do not have more than one person running for a particular seat. Generally, the elections for those seats are canceled, and the lone candidate is declared the winner. Voters may see races on their ballots with just one candidate, however.

A couple of area school districts have bonds on the ballot for school improvements, athletic facilities or transportation needs.

Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City Independent School District has three bonds totaling almost $300 million going before voters.

Comfort ISD, located in Kendall County, will put two bonds on the ballot that total just over $47 million. Other districts will have school board seats to decide, from Alamo Heights ISD to North East ISD to Karnes City ISD.

More Vote 2026 coverage on KSAT:

• Talarico leads both Cornyn, Paxton in new polls of Texas’ U.S. Senate race
• May 2 election features key municipal, school district race decisions from Bexar County to Hill Country

Trump said in a social media post that the EU “is not complying with our fully agreed to Trade Deal,” though he did not flesh out his objections in the post.

Asked by reporters on Friday about the increase in import taxes as he departed the White House for Florida, Trump said the EU was not “as usual” adhering to last year's trade framework, without detailing the source of the tension. He added that he believed the shift to higher tariffs “forces them to move their factory production much faster” to the U.S.

Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had agreed to the trade deal last July. It set a tariff ceiling of 15% on most goods, though the Supreme Court this year ruled against the legal authority that Trump had used to charge that tax. This left Trump looking for substitute authorities, and his administration has imposed a 10% tax while investigating trade imbalances and national security issues to put in new tariffs to make up for lost revenues.

Tariffs could hit a global economy already hurt by the Iran war

The tariffs hit at a moment when the Iran war has crushed the world economy with expectations of slower growth and higher inflation, as oil and natural gas prices have risen due to the effective closure of the critical Strait of Hormuz after strikes by the U.S. and Israel began at the end of February.

At the same time, Trump faces political pressure in the U.S. going into November's midterm elections because of rising levels of inflation. Trump, a Republican, returned to the White House last year on the explicit promise that he could quickly tame prices that jumped in the aftermath of the government's response to the coronavirus pandemic, but higher energy costs pushed annual inflation in March to 3.3%, which was higher than what he had inherited.

Just 30% of U.S. adults approved of Trump's handling of the economy, according to the latest poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Europe wants last year's trade deal to hold

The European Parliament has been moving slowly on finalizing last year's trade agreement but was expected to finish work on the deal next month. The EU said in a statement that it was implementing its “commitments in line with standard legislative practice” and should the U.S. “take measures inconsistent with" that agreement "we will keep our options open to protect EU interests.”

Trump administration officials have not responded to questions about the tariff increase and why Trump said the agreement had been violated. But Trump has had a testy relationship with Europe, having threatened earlier this year to take control of Greenland and later blasting NATO allies for not providing more support to the U.S. for the Iran war.

Bernd Lange, chair of the European Parliament trade committee, posted on social media that Trump's tariff hike on autos was “unacceptable” and that the Trump administration “keeps breaking its commitments,” including on import taxes for steel and aluminum products.

Jennifer Safavian, CEO of Autos Drive America, which represents the American operations of foreign auto manufacturers, said the tariff increase “would threaten the progress that has already been made to open EU markets and grow the U.S. auto industry.”

Both the U.S. and the EU had previously confirmed their commitment to preserving the trade framework, known as the Turnberry Agreement, which was named after Trump’s golf course in Scotland.

Trump's tariff plans were already upended by the Supreme Court

The status of the 2025 deal was first cast into doubt after the Supreme Court this year ruled that the president lacked the legal authority to declare an economic emergency and charge tariffs on goods from the members of the EU and other states.

The Trump administration has opened up trade investigations under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 to replace the tariffs struck down by the court. One of the investigations is looking into whether those trading partners have been lax in cracking down on forced labor. And the other is pursuing allegations that they’ve overproduced goods, driving down prices and putting American manufacturers at a disadvantage.

The alternative tariffs being explored by the Trump administration could ultimately put the agreement with the EU in risk of violation, though European Commissioner for Trade and Economic Security Maroš Šefčovič told reporters last week that the relationship with the U.S. had become more positive over the past year.

To raise tariff rates, Scott Lincicome of the libertarian Cato Institute’s Center for Trade Policy Studies said, the president would likely use Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which allows for duties on national security grounds.

Trump imposed 25% Section 232 tariffs on foreign autos in March 2025, but those tariffs were then lowered as part of the trade framework with the EU.

Lincicome also said Trump’s threats are “just another example of why these trade deals are vaporware. They all rely on handshakes and winks and hopes that Trump doesn’t get mad about something.’’

The EU had said it expected the bilateral deal would save European automakers about 500 million to 600 million euros ($585 million to $700 million) a month.

The value of EU-U.S. trade in goods and services amounted to 1.7 trillion euros ($2 trillion) in 2024, or an average of 4.6 billion euros a day, according to EU statistics agency Eurostat.

___

AP writers Paul Wiseman in Washington and Alexa St. John in Detroit contributed to this report.

Israel’s military and Hezbollah kept up their attacks despite a ceasefire in place since April 17.

Israel’s military on Friday afternoon urged residents of the Lebanese village of Habboush near the southern city of Nabatiyeh to evacuate, warning that those close to Hezbollah’s facilities would be in danger. An airstrike on Habboush that occurred around the time of the warning killed six people, including a woman and a child, and wounded eight, the Health Ministry said.

The state-run National News Agency reported that four people were killed in strikes on three other southern villages.

By Friday afternoon, Hezbollah had issued six statements saying it launched drones and rockets at Israeli military positions.

The Israeli military confirmed that Hezbollah launched an explosive drone that fell in northern Israel near the border with Lebanon. Israeli media reported that a drone strike near Margaliot in northern Israel caused a fire, and that two soldiers were lightly wounded in a separate Hezbollah drone impact in the area.

Friday’s exchanges came after paramedics in southern Lebanon recovered the bodies of five people, including a man and his three sons, from under rubble in the village of Kfar Rumman, also near Nabatiyeh, a day after they were killed.

National News Agency reported that the five were killed in an airstrike late Thursday on Kfar Rumman. The agency identified those whose bodies were recovered as Malek Hamza and his sons, Ali, Fadel and Hamza. It said the strike also killed a Lebanese soldier. The Lebanese army confirmed that a soldier, Ali Jaber, was killed in the strike.

Damaged homes and overburdened hospitals

Despite the war, residents have continued to return to homes in southern Lebanon after being displaced for weeks because of the hostilities.

One of them was Umm Ali Khodor, whose apartment in the southern port city of Tyre was damaged during the previous Israel-Hezbollah war in 2024 and again in the current conflict.

“We were displaced, we rented a house, but as you know the situation is very difficult,” the woman said. “We could not continue so we returned to our home.”

At Jabal Aamel hospital in Tyre, one of the few in the area that are still functioning, director Wael Mroueh said many of the wounded they are treating are people who initially fled but decided to return and take their chances in areas facing periodic bombardment.

The dynamic was “different from all the previous wars,” he said. Many residents left the villages surrounding Tyre in the early days of the war, "but a large number did not find places and came back.”

Many of the hospital’s staff are also displaced, and the medical facility is hosting them and their families to ensure that it can continue to operate. The hospital has enough food and supplies to last for a month, Mroueh said, and is relying on international organizations to maintain its supply chain.

Official condemns targeting of Red Cross

Also Friday, a senior official with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies condemned the targeting of Red Cross volunteers during the Israel-Hezbollah war.

IFRC Under Secretary General for National Society Development and Coordination Xavier Castellanos Mosquera, who was visiting Lebanon, said that two Lebanese Red Cross volunteers have been killed and 18 others wounded by Israeli strikes. More than 100 health workers in total have been killed in Lebanon during the war, according to the country’s health ministry.

Mosquera told The Associate Press that Red Cross volunteers in southern Lebanon have described hugging each other before departing on a call “because they don’t know if they will return.”

He added that he had seen video showing “ambulances that were hit by bullets” while trying to rescue journalist Amal Khalil, who was buried in rubble when an Israeli strike hit a building where she was sheltering in southern Lebanon last month. Her body was pulled from the rubble hours later when rescuers were able to reach the scene.

The IFRC official also recently visited Iran, where he said key facilities of the Iranian Red Crescent Society had been targeted. Two chemical plants that had been their main providers of raw materials to produce plastic syringes and dialysis components were struck and destroyed. Another strike hit close to a Red Crescent rehabilitation center in Tehran that served children, elderly people and people with disabilities, causing damage.

Israel has denied that it deliberately targets health facilities and emergency workers.

The latest war between Israel and Hezbollah began on March 2, when Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel two days after the United States and Israel launched a war on its main backer, Iran. Israel has since carried out hundreds of airstrikes and launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon, capturing dozens of towns and villages along the border.

Since then Lebanon and Israel have held their first direct talks in more than three decades. The two countries have formally been in a state of war since the founding of the state of Israel in 1948.

A 10-day ceasefire declared in Washington went into effect on April 17. The ceasefire was later extended by three weeks.

The Health Ministry said Friday that the war’s death toll reached 2,618 while 8,094 were wounded.

___

Mroue reported from Beirut. Associated Press journalist Koral Said in Abu Snan, Israel, and Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.

The message from President Donald Trump effectively skirts a May 1 legal deadline to gain approval from members of Congress to continue the war with Iran. That deadline was already set to pass without action from Republican lawmakers who are deferring to the president.

The letter brings into stark relief the bold but legally questionable assertion of presidential power at the heart of Trump’s war, which he began without congressional approval two months ago.

“The hostilities that began on February 28, 2026, have terminated,” Trump wrote House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the Senate president pro tempore.

Yet he also made it clear in the letter that the war may be far from over.

“Despite the success of United States operations against the Iranian regime and continued efforts to secure a lasting peace, the threat posed by Iran to the United States and our Armed Forces remains significant,” the Republican president said.

Under the War Powers Resolution of 1973, Congress must declare war or authorize the use of force within 60 days — Friday was the deadline — or within 90 days if the president asks for an extension. This Congress made no attempt at enforcing that requirement, leaving town Thursday for a week after the Senate rejected a Democratic attempt to halt the war for a sixth time.

Some GOP senators are growing uneasy about the war’s timeline, which Trump initially said would last a few weeks. But Trump's letter showed how the president continues to forego congressional approval. It contends the deadlines set by the law do not apply because the war in Iran effectively ended when a shaky ceasefire began in early April.

The Republican debate over the war

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Thursday he did not plan on a vote to authorize force in Iran or otherwise weigh in.

“I’m listening carefully to what the members of our conference are saying, and at this point I don’t see that,” Thune said.

The reluctance to defy Trump on the war comes at a politically perilous time for Republicans, with public frustration mounting both over the conflict and its impact on gas prices. Still, most GOP lawmakers say they are supportive of Trump’s wartime leadership or are at least willing to give him more time amid the fragile ceasefire.

Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said he would vote for an authorization of war if Trump asked for it. But Cramer questioned whether the resolution passed during the Vietnam War era, as a way for Congress to claw back its power, was constitutional.

“Our founders created a really strong executive, like it or not like it,” Cramer said.

Some GOP senators did make it clear that they eventually want Congress to have a say.

Indiana Sen. Todd Young said in a statement that lawmakers “must ensure that the people, through their elected representatives, weigh in on whether to send our military into combat.”

He added that since the Trump administration is stating that “the Iran conflict has ceased, there should be no hostilities moving forward,” and that if the conflict resumes, he expects the White House to work with Congress to pass an authorization for use of military force.

Some Republicans signal they want a vote

A handful of GOP senators have said for weeks that Congress should assert its authority over the war at some point. One of those, Maine's Susan Collins, voted for the first time with Democrats on Thursday to halt the war. She said in a statement that she wants to see a defined strategy for bringing the conflict to a close.

“The president’s authority as commander in chief is not without limits," Collins said, adding that the 60-day deadline is “not a suggestion, it is a requirement."

In addition to Collins and Young, Republican Sens. John Curtis of Utah, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Josh Hawley of Missouri, among others, have said they would eventually like to see a vote.

Curtis said he would not support continued funding for the war until Congress votes to authorize it.

“It is time for decision-making from both the administration and from Congress — and that can happen in league with one another, not in conflict,” Curtis said.

Thune suggested the White House step up its outreach to lawmakers with briefings and hearings if it wants continued support from Capitol Hill.

“Obviously, getting readouts from our military leadership on a somewhat regular basis, I think, will be helpful in terms of shaping the views of our members about how comfortable they are with everything that’s happening there, and the direction headed forward,” Thune said.

Administration argues the deadline doesn't apply

With the 60-day window under the War Powers Resolution expiring Friday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said during a congressional hearing Thursday, “We are in a ceasefire right now, which our understanding means, the 60-day clock pauses or stops.”

The administration is making that argument even though Iran maintains its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz and the U.S. Navy is maintaining a blockade to prevent Iran’s oil tankers from getting out to sea.

Trump on Friday echoed Hegseth’s argument, and stressed that other presidents had similarly not sought congressional approval as laid out under the 1973 law.

“Every other president considered it totally unconstitutional, and we agree with that,” Trump said at the White House as he departed for Florida.

Democrats scoffed at the suggestion that May 1 was not the real deadline.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said on social media, “There’s no pause button in the Constitution, or the War Powers Act. We’re at war. We’ve been at war for 60 days. The blockade alone is a continuing act of war.”

The development came as little surprise to at least one House Democrat who oversees the military.

Washington Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, told The Associated Press: "Is the expectation that the Trump administration is going to follow the law? I do not have that expectation.”

Bexar County voters have spoken in their municipalities about who will represent them on their city council for the next two or three years.

A handful of the smaller municipalities in Bexar County will head to the polls on Saturday to select city officials for the upcoming term.

>> May 2 election features key municipal, school district race decisions from Bexar County to Hill Country

Here’s what to know about the May 2 election:

Balcones Heights selected two council members, Places 1 and 2, who will join the other council members not up for election this time around. The mayor’s office was also up for election, but Mayor Johnny A. Rodriguez, Jr., ran unopposed, so he was declared elected.

Castle Hills had just one contested seat on the ballot, Place 4. Alderman Jack Joyce is not seeking re-election this year, so a new face will be joining the council. Places 1 and 5 were also up for election, but neither incumbent had a challenger. The incumbents, Place 1 Jason Smith and Place 5 Beth Daines, will continue serving on the council. Voters also voted on whether to re-authorize the city’s tax and use ordinance to pay for street maintenance and repair, which is a routine proposition that comes up for election every few years.

Helotes City Council will also be seeing some new faces. Neither Craig Sanders (Place 1) nor Jen Sones (Place 2) are seeking re-election. Gregg Michael and Mike Gutierrez are hoping to take over for Sanders. Sones’ replacement, Anne Carraway, ran unopposed. Place 4 incumbent, Sabrina McGowan, did not have an opponent in her re-election bid.

None of the candidates in Hollywood Park had opponents in the election. Therefore, those candidates were all declared elected. The only thing for voters to decide was whether to re-authorize the tax and use rate to continue for road construction and maintenance.

In Kirby, voters elect three people to join the city council. Kirby council members serve in an at-large capacity, meaning all council members represent the whole city, instead of individual districts. All voters can select up to three candidates.

Leon Valley voters only have to worry about selecting a mayor this election. Mayor Chris Riley was facing off against two challengers in her bid to maintain the position. Neither Evan Bohl nor Jed Hefner is a stranger to city council duties. Though both are known in Leon Valley, Riley is the longest-serving mayor in the city’s history. Two city council seats are up for election this year, with Places 2 and 4. However, neither incumbent, Betty Heyl (Place 2) nor Rey Orozco (Place 4) had challengers. Therefore, both of them were declared elected.

No one running for Olmos Park City Council had a challenger. Mayor Erin Harrison and new council members James Griffon (Place 4) and Will Brooks (Place 5) were all declared elected. All that was left for Olmos Park voters to decide was whether to re-authorize the city’s tax and use it for road repair and maintenance.

The incumbent mayor of Selma, Tom Daly, is running unopposed, as is the city’s Place 2 council member, Noah Washington, Jr. Daly and Washington will keep their seats. Place 3 incumbent Becky Harris, however, has a challenger in Cori Mitchell.

In Shavano Park, three alderman spots are on the ballot. Like Kirby, these seats are at large, so people will vote for as many as three candidates. Two of the candidates, T. Lee Powers and Konrad Kuykendall, are seeking re-election. A tax and use reauthorization (for street maintenance and repair) proposition is also on the ballot.

As many of the municipalities mentioned, Terrell Hills voters don’t have much to choose from on election day, outside of re-authorizing the sales and use tax for another four years. The incumbents, Mayor John B. Low, Place 1 council member Bill Mitchell and Place 2 council member Kate Parish Lanfear did not draw any challengers for this election. So, all three of them will coast into another term.

Universal City Mayor Tom Maxwell is another candidate who did not have an opponent seeking his job. Therefore, he will remain the mayor for at least for another term. On the city council, however, there are four people vying for three seats on the at-large body. Incumbents Andy Garza, Lori Putt and Bernard Rubal are hoping to hold on against challenger Mark Dunlop.

More Vote 2026 coverage on KSAT:

• Talarico leads both Cornyn, Paxton in new polls of Texas’ U.S. Senate race
• May 2 election features key municipal, school district race decisions from Bexar County to Hill Country

Though San Antonio is not holding municipal elections this year, some Bexar County voters will have things of interest on Saturday’s ballot.

A half-dozen San Antonio-area school districts have business to take before their constituents. Most of that business involves the election of school board trustees.

>> May 2 election features key municipal, school district race decisions from Bexar County to Hill Country

Alamo Heights ISD

Alamo Heights ISD has two seats on the May 2 ballot: Places 3 and 4.

Place 3 Trustee Ty Edwards is being challenged by Lindsey Saldana. Place 4 incumbent Hunter Kingman is facing Bianca Cerqueira.

Boerne ISD

Boerne ISD is largely in Kendall County, but parts of it also reach into Bexar and Comal Counties.

This year, the seats for Places 6 and 7 are up for election this year, but one of the races is contested. Kristi Schmidt, the incumbent for Place 6, is running unopposed. Rich Sena, who is the Place 7 trustee, is being challenged by Michael G. Ethridge.

Medina Valley ISD

Medina Valley ISD is mainly a concern for Medina County voters, but there is a part of Bexar County that also votes in the district. This year, voters will select two candidates to serve as at-large trustees on the school board.

Board members Nathan Fillinger and Blane Nash are being challenged by Andrew Carawan and Toby Castillo Walters for those seats on the school board.

North East ISD

Two seats on the North East ISD school board are being contested.

Incumbent Diane Sciba Villarreal is facing Mike A. Wulczyn for the District 3 seat. District 7 will be getting new representation. Either Cheri Ettinger or Caprice Garcia will earn the nod. Trustee Marsha Landry is not seeking re-election.

Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City ISD

Voters in Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City ISD will not be selecting any board members, but they will have a say in the future of the district.

The school board is putting three bond proposals on the ballot for consideration worth nearly $300 million.

Proposition A, which is worth $230 million, covers what the district described as “general facilities” designated for use in safety and security upgrades, learning additions and renovations and facility infrastructure.

Proposition B would allocate $55.3 million for the district’s stadium facility renovations, which involves seating capacity, safety updates, security, accessibility, light and sound systems among other amenities.

Proposition C, which is worth is $9.1 million, would go toward technology replacement for new computers, iPads and Chromebooks for students and staff.

Southwest ISD

Southwest ISD has two at-large seats on the ballot for May 2.

Incumbents James Gonzales and Jose Diaz are running for re-election against Pete “Pedro” Bernal and Yolanda Garcia-Lopez. Southwest ISD voters can select up to two candidates on their ballots.

More Vote 2026 coverage on KSAT:

• Talarico leads both Cornyn, Paxton in new polls of Texas’ U.S. Senate race
• May 2 election features key municipal, school district race decisions from Bexar County to Hill Country

“There are a lot of young people, mostly young men, going to blue-collar construction jobs, playing the lottery. It drives me crazy,” Bessent said in an interview, giving an example of why he has prioritized meeting with community bankers, retirees and schoolchildren to talk about how to budget, save and manage debt.

”The best thing you can do is not play the lottery," he said — rather, people should invest and “then watch it grow.”

Bessent spoke to The Associated Press about the basics of building a workable budget and saving for the future at the tail end of Financial Literacy Month, an initiative the billionaire hedge fund manager has made a priority since joining President Donald Trump's administration, driven by a childhood marred by poverty.

Former Treasury Secretaries Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner were known for helping navigate the U.S. out of the global financial crisis. Steven Mnuchin made his mark designing and promoting the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, and Janet Yellen was the only person to also head the Federal Reserve and the Council of Economic Advisers. But Bessent's passion for promoting financial literacy is what he hopes, in part, defines his legacy.

His push to boost budgeting skills comes as Americans grapple with the cost of housing, groceries, energy and everyday items and are skeptical about the Republican administration's performance on the issue. The latest AP-NORC poll data shows Trump’s approval rating on the economy dropped from 38% in March to 30% in April.

The nation is enmeshed in record levels of debt, which surpassed $39 trillion in March, and critics wonder how Bessent can persuade Americans to save for their futures when the government itself is drowning in debt.

“The Trump administration in particular has a problematic record on cutting taxes without offsets and growing spending," said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

A billionaire with humble beginnings

Bessent, 63, made his money through a long career in hedge funds, including working with George Soros, a financier and philanthropist whom Trump and other Republicans have vilified. Bessent was famously involved in the Soros firm’s 1992 currency speculation against the British pound tied to Black Wednesday, which generated massive profits. Bessent later launched his own hedge fund called the Key Square Group.

But he often talks about his humble beginnings in rural South Carolina, not far from Myrtle Beach, where at the age of 9 he got his first jobs as a busboy at a cafeteria and hustling to set up chairs and umbrellas on the beach. His father, a real estate developer, had lost generations of Bessent family wealth by overleveraging his obligations.

Bessent wanted to attend the U.S. Naval Academy in 1979 but was barred as an openly gay applicant. That also shut the door to joining the foreign service.

He went to Yale University, where his former professor David Darst recalled teaching him about new financial instruments in capital markets. Darst described Bessent as a "guy who’s working at the highest levels, but he’s interested in people learning the ABCs of finance.”

In 2025, Bessent became the nation's first openly gay treasury secretary. “I sit here knowing that President Trump chose me because he believes I’m the best candidate, not because of my sexual preference, not because treasury secretaries with green eyes do better," Bessent said at his confirmation hearing.

After reaching public office, one of Bessent's first actions was relaunching Financial Literacy Month at the agency.

“Wall Street has grown wealthier than ever before, and it can continue to grow and do well,” Bessent has peppered into various speeches over the past year, insisting that his work in the Trump administration is "focused on Main Street.”

During a roundtable with community financial institutions at the department — one of several such events Bessent hosted last month — he listened to bankers express concerns about the a surge in sophisticated fraud schemes targeting customers and their efforts to get high schoolers interested in saving.

“It could be as simple as a 14-year-old starting a savings account and watching interest compound at 4% a year,” said Thomas Fraser, CEO of First Mutual Holding Co. in Lakewood, Ohio, who attended that roundtable.

Promoting financial literacy to young people

Bessent is not a newcomer to preaching financial literacy. Geoff Canada, president of Harlem Children’s Zone, has known Bessent for 30 years and said the treasury secretary has mentored one of the program's scholars for more than a decade. Canada said Bessent has a “deep understanding that financial literacy is essential for fostering real social and economic mobility for America’s children.”

He said Bessent “has championed this issue long before joining the administration, and I know it remains a top priority.”

A conversation with Bessent about financial literacy inevitably turns to Trump Accounts — the financial vehicle meant to give $1,000 to babies born during the Trump administration. That money is then invested in the stock market by private firms, and the children can access the money when they turn 18.

Bessent said he thinks it will encourage a generation of young people to care more about investing as it shows them “the power of compounding, because that money is locked up for 18 years."

But Bessent said people of all ages and income brackets could be better at managing their money. “There’s a narrative that doctors are famously terrible at finance,” Bessent said.

Critics of the treasury secretary’s approach argue that the problem is less about Americans not knowing how to invest and more about people not having enough spare income to do so, as the cost of living has steadily increased and the war in Iran has driven energy prices higher.

“You cannot preach penny-pinching while making it harder for Americans to pay their grocery, utility and healthcare bills,” said Emily DiVito, senior adviser for economic policy at the left-leaning Groundwork Collaborative. “If Secretary Bessent is serious about advancing financial literacy, he should focus on lowering the cost of living for working families.”

Rising debt in the foreground

Bessent's desire to see Americans invest wisely comes as the U.S. debt has reached record levels — and the trajectory of those increases is a cause for concern for budgeting experts.

The U.S. national debt hit $37 trillion in August and then $38 trillion just two months later. Now, it’s at $39 trillion and has surpassed the size of the economy.

Budget advocate MacGuineas warned that the long-term trend of borrowing more and paying more in interest will force Americans to face tougher fiscal tradeoffs ahead.

She praised Bessent for having the goal to cut deficits in half and bring them down to 3% of gross domestic product but said ”it’s going to take a combination of spending reductions, revenue increases and economic growth” to get there.

The Treasury argues that the federal deficit decreased during Trump’s first year back in office and that the provisions in Republicans' tax cuts law have put money back in Americans' pockets.

“It's hard to disagree with the fact that we need more financial literacy in this country,” MacGuineas said. “The bigger picture, of course, is that we should also probably give a financial literacy class to our lawmakers."

The election is Saturday, with polls open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

One of the most common concerns among residents is whether the bond will impact their tax bills. District officials said the tax rate will remain the same and no changes are anticipated.

“We’ve got our tax rate at 41 cents. We don’t anticipate it changing here in the next year,” Board President Letticia Sever said. “We have never risen above 47 cents, and the max rate is 50 cents, so I would hope that the taxpayer would understand that they’re not — this isn’t being built off of just them. Everyone pays a small portion, and we get all the repairs that we need or the expansions that we need.”

Stadium, security among key upgrades

Among the proposed improvements are enhanced safety and security measures across district facilities.

Proposition A, which is worth $230 million, covers what the district described as “general facilities” designated for safety and security upgrades, learning additions and renovations, and facility infrastructure.

Proposition B would allocate $55.3 million for the district’s stadium facilities, which involve seating capacity, safety updates, security, accessibility, light and sound systems, among other amenities.

Proposition C, which is worth is $9.1 million, would go toward technology replacement for new computers, iPads and Chromebooks for students and staff.

Residents who spoke with KSAT say the upgrades are much needed.

“I think that would be great. I think more people would attend the events,” Schertz resident Sarah Renwick said. “We live right around the corner, and we would definitely attend more events if the seating were more accommodating.”

Another longtime resident pointed to the district’s rapid growth as a reason for the investment.

“I’ve lived in Schertz for like 27 years. I’ve noticed the student population has really been booming, and everything is always crowded,” Betty Booher said.

A third resident cited aging infrastructure at Clemens High School as a pressing concern.

“There was water at Clemens; they had water dripping on the older side of the building coming through the roofs,” Jose Navarro said. “So yes, that would also help get this bond passed to renovate those buildings, because they’re old buildings.”

Five other area school districts also have key measures on the ballot Saturday. Voters can find details on those races here.

More Vote 2026 coverage on KSAT:

• What to expect on the May 2 ballot in Bexar County
• 6 San Antonio-area school districts have several key measures on May 2 ballot

First responders were dispatched to the scene just before 9:30 a.m. to an area near Furnish Avenue and South San Marcos.

According to an SAPD preliminary report, officers and fire crews saw the male in the water.

Fire officials initiated a high-water rescue and recovered his body from the water, the report said.

The male was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.

The Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office will determine his identity as well as his cause and manner of death.

SAPD said its investigation is ongoing. Further information was not readily available.

Read also:

• LIVE COVERAGE: Thunderstorms, rainfall in San Antonio area on Friday
• KSAT Connect: Viewers share photos of rain, lightning in San Antonio area

According to court records, officers arrested the following four men on Wednesday:

• Bennie Jerome Damon, 41
• Jose Alfredo Portales Dominguez, 35
• David Guajardo, 55
• Hector Javier Herrera, 46

All four men were charged with solicitation of prostitution, which is a state jail felony.

Guajardo was the only suspect to face a second charge in addition to solicitation of prostitution. He was also accused of unlawfully carrying a weapon, which is considered a Class A misdemeanor.

According to a police report obtained by KSAT on Friday, two detectives were wearing plain clothes and posing as prostitutes at an unspecified location. One undercover officer began talking to Guajardo, who agreed to pay $30 for the officer to perform a sex act on him, according to the report.

The undercover officer told Guajardo to drive to a “predetermined location” where SAPD officers later performed a traffic stop, police said. Officers took Guajardo into custody and also found a firearm in a subsequent search of the vehicle.

In a statement to KSAT, an SAPD spokesperson acknowledged the four prostitution-related arrests, but the department did not disclose the location of the undercover sting “because it could affect future stings.”

Damon, Dominguez, Guajardo and Herrera all bonded out of custody on Thursday, Bexar County jail records show.

More recent crime coverage on KSAT:

• LEE High School teacher arrested, accused of improper relationship with student, school says
• Code Red Alert issued for man considered ‘armed and dangerous,’ Kerr County Sheriff’s Office says
• Man hospitalized with life-threatening injuries after Northwest Side shooting, police say

Democratic Gov. Janet Mills was forced to abandon her U.S. Senate campaign on Thursday, unable to generate sufficient fundraising or enthusiasm to compete against Graham Platner, an oyster farmer who has never served in elected office. The announcement marked a stinging defeat for Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who recruited Mills to lead the party's decades-long quest to defeat Republican Sen. Susan Collins.

The swift defenestration of a two-term governor by a political neophyte highlighted a stark reality that has begun to take hold at a pivotal moment — Democratic voters are rejecting their party’s establishment and embracing new risks, even as their confidence grows that a blue wave is coming in November's midterm elections.

Sometimes Democrats seem almost as angry at their own party's aging and entrenched leadership as they are at President Donald Trump.

“Rank-and-file Democrats don’t want the Democratic Party as we know it,” said Ezra Levin, co-founder of the Democratic resistance group Indivisible. “Rank-and-file Democrats want fighters.”

Local Indivisible chapters, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who's an independent but caucuses with Democrats, and other leaders from the party's progressive wing had already lined up behind Platner, who is now almost certain to be the Democratic nominee in one of the party’s best Senate pickup opportunities in the nation.

Platner on Friday insisted he would continue to speak out against his party's leadership, including Schumer, although he acknowledged that the two spoke privately the night before.

“The fact that we’ve been able to do all of this without the help of the establishment, it puts us in such an amazing position,” Platner said on MS NOW's “Morning Joe.” “My criticisms of the party leadership, my criticisms of the party, they have not changed, and I’ve been very vocal about that since the beginning. But we will absolutely take the help that we can get.”

Republicans, meanwhile, are giddy — and some moderate Democratic strategists are worried — that the anti-establishment shift may undermine the party’s effort to claw back control of Congress in November.

“Chuck Schumer has officially lost the first battle in his proxy war with Bernie Sanders,” said Bernadette Breslin, spokesperson for the Senate Republicans' campaign arm. “As Sanders hits the campaign trail to prop up progressives in messy Democrat primaries in Michigan and Minnesota, Schumer’s chances of getting his preferred candidates through look grim.”

The backlash is bigger than Maine

Maine is far from alone.

Prominent anti-establishment clashes are playing out in high-profile Senate races across Michigan, Minnesota and Iowa, along with House races in several states.

Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, continues to promote Platner and other critics of the Democratic Party's national leadership. The Vermont senator will campaign this weekend in Detroit with Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who is running in a three-way Senate primary against Rep. Haley Stevens and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow.

“There’s a desire to turn the page on the old guard,” Sanders' political adviser Faiz Shakir said. “It’s not even just the Democratic electorate. There’s a populist mood in this country. You’d have to be blind not to see it.”

Indeed, McMorrow is actively working to remind voters that she would not support Schumer as Democrats’ Senate leader if given the chance.

“Frankly, I was the first person in this country to say no,” McMorrow said in a video she posted Thursday on social media. “It is a different moment. This is no longer a Republican Party we’re dealing with, it is a MAGA party that has been taken over by Trump loyalists. ... You need to respond in a very different way.”

Veteran Democratic strategists like Lis Smith, who works with candidates across the country, tied the anti-establishment shift to the party's painful losses in 2024, when President Joe Biden was forced to abandon his reelection bid and Vice President Kamala Harris went on to lose to Trump.

“After 2024, voters are sick of the gerontocracy, sick of the status quo, and Chuck Schumer has completely misread that,” Smith said.

Moderates push back

Privately, Schumer's allies downplay the impact of the anti-establishment backlash.

The Senate Democratic leader's preferred picks in North Carolina, Ohio and Alaska haven't faced the same challenges as Mills did in Maine. The four states represent the party's most likely path to a majority in the chamber, which has 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats and two independents who caucus with the Democrats.

Mills is the oldest of the candidates and, at 78, would have been the oldest freshman senator in history. She promised to serve one term if elected. Platner is only 41.

Schumer's team is unwilling to make any apologies for backing Mills over Platner.

“Leader Schumer’s North Star is taking back the Senate," Schumer spokesperson Allison Biasotti said. "When no one thought a Senate majority was possible just a year ago, he made it a reality by recruiting great candidates across the country and laying out an agenda for lower costs and better lives for Americans.”

Some in the Democratic Party’s moderate wing are worried.

Matt Bennett, co-founder of the center-left group Third Way, said that Platner’s emergence in Maine “without a doubt” will make it harder for Democrats to defeat Collins in November. He warns that it could be the same elsewhere if Democratic primary voters rally behind anti-establishment candidates.

“Our message is if you would like to beat Donald Trump’s Republicans, you better nominate people who can win,” Bennett said.

Olmos Park officers responded on Tuesday to a home the 1000 block of Shook Avenue.

According to a department news release, a victim told officers she had recently returned home from a run when she saw a man peering into her home.

When the woman approached the window to yell at the man, she realized he was masturbating, police said.

Officers said the man left the area on an older, dark-colored bicycle with drop handlebars.

A second victim told officers that the same man had followed her earlier while she was out running in the neighborhood, the release said.

The man is believed to be between 5 feet 7 inches and 5 feet 10 inches tall. He appeared to have a tattoo on his right forearm and was last seen wearing a San Antonio Spurs hat and a watch on his left wrist.

Anyone with information on the man’s whereabouts is asked to contact the Olmos Park Police Department’s Criminal Investigations Division at 210-578-3236 or 210-824-3281.

More recent crime coverage on KSAT:

• San Antonio man pleads guilty to charges related to ATM explosions, gun possession, DOJ says
• Man hospitalized with life-threatening injuries after Northwest Side shooting, police say

Dustin Jay Ammons, 44, pleaded guilty to one count of felon in possession of a firearm and one count of explosive material, transport by non-license, the release stated.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives determined that Ammons used pipe bombs in an attempt to explode ATMs at two San Antonio banks in September, 2025.

Both of his attempts were unsuccessful, federal authorities said.

Federal agents raided Ammons’ home in December, 2025 and found guns, magazines, hundreds of rounds of ammunition and a pipe bomb in his vehicle, the release said.

KSAT reported on the raid when federal agents discovered a “home explosives lab” inside Ammons’ garage located in the 300 block of Eugene Sasser. He was arrested shortly after.

>> ATM bombing suspect arrested, ‘explosives lab’ found in north Bexar County home, DOJ says

The Department of Justice said the explosives contained Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate, which the National Library of Medicine describes as “an extremely dangerous explosive.”

The weapons found at Ammons’ home were not registered under his name, nor did he possess a license or permit allowing him to possess, manufacture, transfer or ship explosive materials, the release stated.

Ammons has been convicted of similar prior felonies, including possession of a stolen firearm, possession of burglary tools and multiple counts of theft and burglary of a building, the DOJ stated.

He faces up to 15 years in prison for the possession of a firearm charge and a maximum of 10 years in prison for the explosive materials, transport by non-license charge.

Read also:

• ATM bombing suspect arrested, ‘explosives lab’ found in north Bexar County home, DOJ says
• Code Red Alert issued for man considered ‘armed and dangerous,’ Kerr County Sheriff’s Office says

Christopher Wooten, 48, was taken into custody on Thursday and charged with an improper relationship between educator and student, jail records show.

In a letter sent on Friday, LEE High School Principal Alex Escamilla notified families of the arrest.

Escamilla stated that the school was made aware of the allegations against Wooten on Wednesday and “immediately began an investigation.”

The school later contacted the North East Independent School District’s Police Department, the San Antonio Police Department, Child Protective Services and NEISD Human Resources.

Wooten has since been placed on administrative leave and will not return to campus, Escamilla told families.

“We hold our staff members to the highest standards of behavior, especially when it comes to our students,” Escamilla said, in part. “We are extremely disappointed but know this is not reflective of the many fantastic teachers we have here at LEE High School.”

NEISD is in contact with the student’s family and will assist them in whatever way they can, the letter said.

Wooten has been booked into the Bexar County Adult Detention Center on a $40,000 bond, records indicate.

Warrant: Wooten worked as tennis coach, Social Studies teacher

According to Wooten’s arrest affidavit, he worked at LEE High School as a tennis coach, as well as a Social Studies teacher.

Wooten allegedly drove the student off-campus to get food during school hours multiple times, the warrant said. He also allegedly allowed the student to take his vehicle during school hours, court documents stated.

Wooten admitted to having four separate sexual encounters with the student since April 10, 2026, the affidavit said.

All of the encounters happened in Wooten’s vehicle at a parking garage down the street from the school, according to the warrant.

More crime coverage on KSAT:

• Converse surgical assistant’s license restricted after sexual abuse of child arrest
• Affidavit: Man allegedly stole copper from CPS Energy facility, caused over $3K in damages

In a social media post, the sheriff’s office said David Bryan Cox Jr., 44, was arrested just after 11 a.m. Someone spotted a suspicious male on Interstate 10 near mile marker 501 and called 911, deputies said.

After a medical evaluation, Cox is expected to be transported and booked into the Kerr County Jail.

Authorities said they are searching for Cox’s weapon and body armor.

Below is the original Friday morning story.

ORIGINAL: A Code Red Alert has been issued for a man considered “armed and dangerous,” according to the Kerr County Sheriff’s Office (KCSO).

David Bryan Cox Jr., 44, allegedly fled on foot after an assault that happened around 10 p.m. on Thursday at an RV resort in the 2800 block of Goat Creek Road.

Cox allegedly assaulted a juvenile at the residence and ran away on foot, KCSO said.

The sheriff’s office said Cox is armed and possibly under the influence of narcotics.

A witness at the resort said Cox was armed with at least one gun, a ballistic vest and a belt with multiple magazines.

Cox was last seen wearing white basketball shorts, a tactical mask, body armor and a duty belt with multiple magazines, KCSO stated.

Authorities said Cox has connections to Mountain Home and Harper, Texas, just north of Kerrville.

Anyone with information on Cox’s whereabouts should contact the KCSO at 830-896-1133 or by calling 911. If you have information and want to remain anonymous, contact Kerr County Crimestoppers at 830-896-8477.

Read also:

• LEE High School teacher arrested, accused of improper relationship with student, school says
• Converse surgical assistant’s license restricted after sexual abuse of child arrest

Talankin, who co-directed the best documentary winner “Mr. Nobody Against Putin,” didn't expect to have to check his statuette for a flight from New York's John F. Kennedy Airport bound for Frankfurt, Germany, on Wednesday. But a Transportation Security Administration agent said it couldn't go on board.

“At the airport, a TSA agent stopped him and said the Oscar could be used as a weapon,” Talankin's co-director, David Borenstein, said Thursday night in a post on Instagram.

“Pavel didn’t have a bag to check it in, so the TSA put the Oscar in a box and sent it to the bottom of the plane,” added Borenstein. “It never arrived in Frankfurt.”

After Borenstein's announcement prompted an international outcry, the airline Lufthansa on Friday said it had found the lost Oscar.

“We can confirm that the Oscar statue has now been located and is safely in our care in Frankfurt,” the airline said in statement. “We are in direct contact with the guest to arrange its personal return as quickly as possible. We sincerely regret the inconvenience caused and have apologized to the owner.”

Lufthansa added that an “internal review of the circumstances is ongoing.”

In March, “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” won the Academy Award for best documentary, and Talankin and Borenstein's acceptance speech supplied one of the most memorable moments of the ceremony.

Talankin — the “Mr. Nobody” of the film — was a teacher and activities director in a small-town school in Russia who captured on video his students’ lessons, chants and songs promoting Putin's war in Ukraine. He smuggled his hard drives out of the country to collaborate with Borenstein, who lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Talankin, speaking in Russian through a translator, said from the stage: “In the name of our future, in the name of all of our children, stop all of these wars now.”

The TSA didn't immediately respond to queries Friday.

The Locals Day planned for Friday has been canceled, the zoo said. According to the release, the zoo plans to reopen on Saturday.

The next Locals Day ticket sale is scheduled for May 10.

Guests with questions about Friday’s closure and the cancellation of Locals Day are encouraged to contact the zoo’s call center for assistance.

ORIGINAL STORY: If you don’t have any plans on Friday, the San Antonio Zoo is offering discounted admission for Bexar County residents as part of Locals Day.

On May 1, all Bexar County residents can visit the zoo for $8. The zoo will be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

According to a news release, the upcoming Locals Day celebrates Bexar County Precinct 2.

“Locals Day gives residents the opportunity to explore the Zoo’s immersive habitats, encounter incredible wildlife from around the world, and create lasting memories with family and friends at one of San Antonio’s most beloved destinations,” the release stated.

Locals Day zoo tickets can be purchased online. One guest per party must provide an ID or utility bill with a Bexar County resident address.

For anyone who can’t visit the zoo on Friday, don’t worry. There are more Locals Days planned throughout the year.

Upcoming Locals Day events:

• May 10
• May 19
• June 14
• July 15
• Aug. 6
• Sept. 5
• Sept. 13
• Oct. 9
• Nov. 27
• Dec. 4

To learn more about the zoo or its exhibits, click here.

Read also:

• San Antonio Zoo welcomes 1-year-old female giraffe from Tulsa

Judge Daniella DeSeta Lyttle’s ruling on Friday continues the pause on the ban that was granted earlier this month. Lyttle granted the Texas Hemp Business Council, Hemp Industry & Farmers of America, and several Texas-based dispensaries and manufacturers a temporary injunction against new testing requirements that create a 0.3% total THC threshold that would effectively bar the sale of natural smokeable hemp products. The ruling also prevents a 3,000% increase in licensing fees for hemp retailers from taking effect for now. 

The temporary pause on the ban will last until the next hearing, currently scheduled for July 27, but could end earlier if the state appeals the latest ruling and the court agrees to hear the appeal. Once the court agrees to the appeal, the state’s rules will go back into effect, meaning smokeable hemp will need to be pulled off the shelves once again. 

During a three-day hearing this week, lawyers for the hemp industry argued that the Texas Department of State Health Services overstepped their constitutional authority by rewriting the statutory definitions of hemp established by lawmakers in 2019. 

“The Texas Legislature must answer to the voters of Texas; that is a fundamental check and balance of our constitution. Agency bureaucrats lack accountability to the people of Texas, which is why their authority is limited,” said Jason Snell, one of the attorneys for the hemp businesses. 

Attorneys for the state argued in court that Texas law requires the health agency to prioritize Texans’ well-being in rulemaking, allowing them to implement new hemp regulations. The judge disagreed, saying the rules were doing irreparable harm to the industry.  

“The Court finds that the purpose of a temporary injunction is to preserve the last, actual, peaceable, non-contested status that preceded the controversy,” said Lyttle. 

Andrew Alvarado, an attorney representing the hemp industry, said Lyttle’s ruling upholds the separation of powers among government entities. 

“Frankly, I think it’s a win for all Texans, because fundamentally, the Court confirmed that unelected officials and state agencies cannot impose rules that conflict with the will of the people,” he said. 

In a separate decision that could harm the industry’s chances of defeating the overall ban on smokeable hemp products, the Texas Supreme Court on Friday upheld the state health agency’s prohibition on another natural intoxicating hemp compound called delta-8 THC. Delta-8 THC has been off store shelves since 2022 because of the ban, allowing delta-9 THC to proliferate and become the most commonly found intoxicating chemical in hemp products now.

The court’s decision says the delta-8 ban can remain because state law gives the agency overarching authority to protect Texans. The state could invoke this ruling to allow the state health agency to ban any or all consumable hemp products based on its statutory responsibilities to protect Texans, and that can only be undone if the Legislature tells the state agency those products are legal. 

“If the legislature desires to legalize powerful drugs, it has every tool it needs to do so—and to do so unmistakably, as we expect for such a major change to social policy. The role of the courts is merely to assess the state of the law as it is,” Texas Supreme Court Justice Evan Young said in his court opinion.  

State law defines hemp as containing less than 0.3% levels of intoxicating delta-9 THC. The health agency redefined hemp in accordance with federal law which clarified last November that hemp can’t contain total amounts of any type of THC — not just delta-9 THC — that is more than 0.3% of its dry weight, according to Zachary Berg, an attorney with the Texas Attorney General’s Office. Berg added that the federal government’s new definition doesn’t go into effect until this coming November, but the state wanted to be in compliance early with federal law.  

Snell said that by trying to mirror a federal law that isn’t yet in effect, the state clearly overstepped its regulatory authority. He also called on a slew of witnesses, including veterans, suburban mothers, rural store owners, and economists, to testify on how these new regulations are already shuttering businesses and killing off the industry.  

Hemp retailers told the court that businesses have lost over 50% of their revenue since the rules went into effect; manufacturers are shutting down production due to increased licensing fees; and farmers are not planting crops because new testing requirements are making hemp flower worthless. 

The hemp businesses also asked for a temporary injunction on other rules that increase licensing fees for retailers and manufacturers and prevent businesses from selling smokeable hemp out-of-state. Both of these were also lifted by the court for now. 

The background: Even though Texas law bans marijuana, lawmakers legalized hemp in 2019 with the Texas Farm Bill. State law defines hemp as containing less than 0.3% levels of intoxicating delta-9 THC.

To get around the law’s delta-9 THC restrictions, manufacturers started cultivating hemp plants with another type of THC, called THCA, that, when ignited in a joint or smokeable product, can produce a high. Many lawmakers have said this legal loophole has allowed a recreational THC market to appear overnight without direct approval from the state.

Last year, the Texas Legislature voted to ban the products out of fear that these intoxicating products were consistently getting into the hands of children. But, Gov. Greg Abbott vetoed the decision last summer, before asking the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission and DSHS to increase regulations on the industry instead. 

The Texas Department of State Health Services released regulations on consumable hemp-derived THC products that went into effect on March 31. These new regulations include child-resistant packaging, a significant increase in licensing fees, new labeling, testing, and bookkeeping requirements. The rules also codify the legal purchasing age to 21, which went into effect last year as an emergency directive. 

Why the hemp industry sued: Also under the new rules, laboratories tests now measure the total amount of any THC in a product. If the THC levels exceed the 0.3% threshold, even if it’s only activated upon being smoked, the product will be noncompliant under state regulations. As a result, some of the most popular hemp products, like THCA flower and pre-rolled joints, have been banned. 

Hemp businesses caught selling noncompliant products face a range of penalties and fines, including license revocation and up to $10,000 in violation fees for each day these products were sold in stores. 

Retailers cannot sell hemp to out-of-state customers either. 

Several hemp industry representatives testified on Thursday that smokable products aren’t the only items being removed from shelves due to the new testing requirements. Hair gels, bath bombs, balms, tinctures, dog treats, and much more can no longer be made because the main ingredient is hemp flower.  

“It’s like trying to regulate the sale of wine by banning grapes,” said Amanda Taylor, one of the attorneys for the hemp businesses, in court.  

The state health agency didn’t conduct a complete economic impact report on the proposed rules and regulations, which the lawyers for the hemp industry called negligence. 

Attorneys for the state said the health agency either couldn’t find or verify the data needed to confirm the economic impact of these rules or wasn’t required to do so because the well-being of Texans takes priority over industry concerns. 

Beau Whitney, the founder and chief economist at Whitney Economics, a cannabis economic research firm, told the court that his own impact report done earlier this year found that the new rules and regulations will have a $7.2 billion negative impact on the Texas economy due to job losses and reduced tax revenue from hemp retail closures. He said the process of preparing the economic report on the Texas hemp industry was simple and well within the state health agency’s reach in both economic and time terms. 

The rules also increase licensing fees for manufacturers of hemp-derived THC from $258 to $10,000 per facility and retail registrations from $155 to $5,000, which industry leaders say will fulfill the ban by forcing businesses to close. The state’s attorney said the state needs the fees to build a system to regulate the hemp industry, despite the health agency stating in its rules that it didn’t have any plans to hire additional DSHS employees for this effort. 

The hemp business community’s lawsuit is not challenging the other new regulations, including the age verification or ones they say protect consumers.  

What the state says: Concerns about the safety of these high-THC products among youth led lawmakers to attempt to ban hemp-derived THC products outright last year. While the overall ban didn’t succeed, lawmakers successfully banned vape pens containing THC and other hemp-derived intoxicating chemicals. 

Berg said in court that the state has received reports of hemp products containing 100 times the recommended amount of THCA being sold in these stores, and customers weren’t using it for wellness reasons but to get intoxicated. 

“Many are consuming recreationally and not just adults,” said Berg. 

Data provided from the Texas Poison Center Network confirms a sharp increase in cannabis-related poisoning calls starting in 2019, a year after hemp-derived THC was legalized by the federal government, from 923 to a 10-year high of 2,592 in 2024. Calls climbed to 2,669 last year. The majority of these calls involve suspected poisoning of children under the age of five and teenagers.

Drug policy experts said these numbers seem alarming, but it is natural for poisoning calls to increase when a drug has become legalized, and the data needs additional context before making conclusions from it.

What’s next: It’s not clear if Friday’s Texas Supreme Court ruling on delta-8 could affect the court case involving the smokeable hemp ban.

The state health agency added delta-8 to the controlled substance list, making it illegal in 2021. The Texas Supreme Court’s ruling upheld that, giving the agency broad authority over drugs on the list. However, Katharine Neill Harris, a drug policy fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, said that doesn’t give the state agency authority to prohibit any substance it wants.

However, if the state agency ever wanted to put any THC found in consumable hemp on the controlled substance list, the ruling could be invoked to justify making consumable hemp illegal.  

“While the Texas Farm Bill legalized hemp and its derivatives, it did not explicitly legalize or remove from scheduling all THC compounds. The delta-8 issue was not directly addressed in that legislation, and DSHS clarified back in 2021 that delta-8 was considered a controlled substance,” Harris said.  

David Sergi, an attorney representing the hemp industry, has broader legal concerns about the Texas Supreme Court’s decision, as it places the state’s health agency on the same level as lawmakers in terms of authority to make industry-shifting decisions. 

“There are some very large constitutional concerns that, I think, a result-driven case like this, an opinion like this, causes us. But those are the conversations that the legal team is having right now,” Sergi said, adding they have been speaking with lawyers around the country about the Texas Supreme Court decision and what it might mean legally. 

Separate from the Texas Supreme Court’s ruling, the federal government passed restrictions that redefined hemp so that only 0.3% of any type of THC is allowable, which effectively bans smokeable hemp nationally starting this November. There are ongoing efforts in Congress to alter the ban or allow states to opt out of following this new definition. 

The activists, Spanish-Swedish citizen of Palestinian origin Saif Abukeshek and Brazilian citizen Thiago Ávila, were among dozens of activists intercepted by the Israeli navy off the coast of Crete. They are members of the Global Sumud Flotilla's steering committee, whose mission was to break Israel's naval blockade and bring some humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territory.

In all, 22 boats and 175 activists were intercepted by the Israeli navy. Activists said Israeli forces stormed their vessels, smashed engines and detained some of those onboard. The incident occurred hundreds of miles (kilometers) from Gaza and Israel overnight from Wednesday to Thursday.

Israeli officials said they needed to take early action against the flotilla before it reached Israeli waters because of the high number of boats involved.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said Friday on X that it was taking the two activists to Israel for questioning, and that Abukeshek was “suspected of affiliation with a terrorist organization” and Ávila was “suspected of illegal activity," without providing evidence.

In a joint statement, the governments of Brazil and Spain condemned “the kidnapping of two of their citizens in international waters by the Government of Israel." Unlike other flotilla participants who were disembarked in Crete, the Spanish and Brazilian activists remained detained aboard an Israeli navy ship in Greek territorial waters.

“This flagrantly illegal action by the Israeli authorities outside their jurisdiction constitutes a violation of International Law, which may be invoked before international courts, and may constitute a crime in our respective national jurisdictions,” the statement added.

The governments of both nations demanded the immediate return of their citizens and immediate consular access.

Activists say they were mistreated by Israeli forces

The Global Sumud Flotilla appealed for international support to pressure Israel to release the activists. It said it was particularly concerned for Abukeshek, who was aboard an observer boat and did not plan on sailing to Gaza, and Ávila.

“We don’t know if they are still in Greek waters,” Ávila's spouse, Lara Souza, said. She added that Brazil's government told her that once the two activists were taken to international waters, it would become more difficult to achieve their release.

In an audio message released Friday, Spain's Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares demanded Abukeshek's immediate release. Around 30 other Spanish citizens disembarked in Crete and were assisted by the embassy in Greece, he said.

Flotilla organizers said Israeli authorities denied activists food and water and forced them "to sleep on floors that were deliberately and repeatedly flooded.”

When Israeli forces proceeded to take Abukeshek and Ávila away, the group resisted and were met with “sheer violence,” flotilla organizers said in a statement Friday. “Participants were punched, kicked and dragged across the deck with their hands bound behind their backs. They suffered broken noses, cracked ribs and bloody beatings. Shots were even fired at them in the chaos.”

Some 34 people, including citizens of the U.S., Australia, Colombia, Italy, Ukraine and others were injured and taken to the hospital upon disembarkation, organizers said.

Israeli authorities did not immediately respond to the accusations. Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said Thursday that activists “taken off the vessels were taken off unharmed.”

Of the 53 vessels that had been sailing prior to the interception, 31 reached safe waters and would continue their attempts to “break the illegal siege of Gaza,” organizers said. The flotilla set sail earlier this month from Barcelona, Spain.

The Greek Foreign Ministry said Thursday that it had asked Israel to withdraw its ships from the area and offered its “good services” for the activists to disembark in Greece and be repatriated.

US condemns the flotilla

Protests in solidarity with the flotilla erupted across several capitals including in Rome, Athens and Istanbul.

The U.S. government described the flotilla as a “pro-Hamas initiative” and called on allies to deny the vessels' port access, among other actions.

“The United States expects all our allies, particularly those who have committed to supporting President Trump’s successful 20-Point Plan, to take decisive action against this meaningless political stunt,” the State Department said.

The flotilla’s latest attempt to reach Gaza comes less than a year after Israeli authorities foiled a previous effort by the group. That attempt involved about 50 vessels and around 500 activists, including Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, Nelson Mandela’s grandson Mandla Mandela, and several lawmakers.

Israel arrested, detained and later deported the participants, including Ávila, who claimed Israeli authorities abused them while in detention. Israeli authorities denied the accusations.

But this year, delays in Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a program that has shielded her and hundreds of thousands of others from deportation, led to her missing her renewal deadline, losing her job and fearing detention in the country she has called home since she was 6 years old.

She said that as an immigrant in the U.S., fear has become her “new baseline." “But now, having a new level of vulnerability, it was a very quick increase in the fear," said Candia.

Renewal wait times for the Obama-era program that allows people who were brought to the U.S. as children to temporarily remain in the country and work have increased to levels not seen since 2016 when there were significant technical issues.

Some of the program’s more than 500,000 beneficiaries, often referred to as “Dreamers,” have waited months for an answer only to see their deadline pass without a decision. Now they’re stuck in a type of limbo in which their work authorization disappears, oftentimes along with their driver’s license, and their ability to stay in the U.S. is at risk.

“It’s not just anecdotal; it’s happening at a larger scale than we’ve ever seen before,” said Greisa Martinez Rosas, executive director of United We Dream, an immigrant youth-led network.

No numbers were available on how many people have recently missed their renewal deadline despite applying 120 to 150 days before their DACA lapses, which is what U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services recommends.

“Under the leadership of President Trump, USCIS is safeguarding the American people by more thoroughly screening and vetting all aliens, which can lengthen processing times," Zach Kahler, an agency spokesperson, said in a statement.

Wait times nearly 5 times longer

DACA grants those who qualify two-year, renewable permits to live and work in the U.S. It does not confer legal status but is meant to offer protection from deportation.

From October 2025 to the end of February 2026, the median wait time for renewals was about 70 days, compared to about 15 days in fiscal year 2025, according to USCIS. This is the longest median wait time since 2016, when it was about 79 days, according to the agency’s data, which did not include 2020 because of the pandemic.

The Department of Homeland Security attributed the 2016 delays to technical issues that emerged as it transitioned to fully processing DACA renewals in its electronic immigration system.

At the end of April 2026, USCIS was reporting that the majority of renewal requests were being completed within about 122 days. That marked a two-week increase from the processing times listed earlier that month.

Federal lawmakers and immigrant groups say some applicants recently have had to wait 6 months — about 183 days — or longer.

“The delays that people are concerned about used to be sort of a matter of weeks at a time,” U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., said in an interview. “Now it’s from a few months to many, many months.”

He is one of dozens of lawmakers behind letters sent to federal agencies that question the inflated wait times and whether people who have missed their renewal deadline are being targeted for arrest or deportation.

More than five months after Elsa Sanchez submitted her DACA renewal request, she is still waiting for an answer. When the deadline passed at the beginning of April, she was put on leave at her job at a healthcare IT company and now, as a single mother of a college freshman, has no income.

It's made her worried about everything from traveling to spending money on pricier household products like shampoos and detergents.

“I’m like, ‘I don’t know, maybe I can cut down on that. Maybe I don’t need this,'" she said. “Because I’m saving every penny.”

Sanchez said something similar happened about a decade ago, but this time she's scared of the possible repercussions amid President Donald Trump’s mass deportations agenda.

Since DACA's introduction in 2012, it's faced myriad legal battles, including two that made it to the Supreme Court. And now, while the government is still approving renewals, a 2025 federal court decision means it isn't processing first-time applications and has left the door open for another possible trip to the Supreme Court.

Hundreds of DACA recipien

ts arrested

In the first 11 months of 2025, more than 250 DACA recipients were arrested and 86 deported, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said earlier this year. She said the majority of those arrested had “criminal histories,” without indicating the nature of the crimes or if they were arrests, charges or convictions. In a separate response to a Democratic congresswoman’s inquiry, DHS reported conflicting numbers saying that 270 were arrested and 174 DACA applicants were removed in the first nine months of 2025.

Their eligibility is dependent in part on not having a felony conviction, a significant misdemeanor or three misdemeanors. Previously, if their status was in jeopardy, they would get a warning and still have the chance to fight it before immigration officers detained them and began efforts to deport them.

Kahler, from USCIS, said that DACA recipients are not automatically protected from deportation.

“Any illegal alien who is a DACA recipient may be subject to arrest and deportation for a number of reasons — including if they committed a crime,” he said.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to questions about whether DACA beneficiaries were being targeted after missing their renewal deadlines.

But federal lawmakers have recently noted people picked up by ICE after their DACA lapsed.

Their protections may have been further eroded with a precedent decision last week in which the Board of Immigration Appeals determined that DACA status alone is not enough to stop deportation.

People from certain countries may be most at risk

Experts have suggested the longer wait times could be related to the biometric appointments, which were paused during the pandemic, being restarted. Some may also not be getting approved by their deadline because they're not sending it in by the recommended time.

Maria Fernanda Madrigal is an immigration attorney and DACA recipient who submitted her renewal application about a month and a half before the deadline because she said that’s all the processing time that’s been needed in the past. She said she was also waiting for her job to hold a DACA workshop so that she could get the more than $550 fee for renewal waived.

Earlier this month, her DACA lapsed and the mother of three was let go from her job.

“My first concern was my cases, to be honest, because I knew I was going to have to hand off everything, and my team is already overworked,” said Madrigal.

Immigration attorneys have also said that USCIS has paused processing renewals for people from dozens of countries the agency described in recent policy memorandums as “high-risk” following presidential proclamations. The National Immigration Law Center estimated that as many as 3,000 to 4,000 people could be impacted.

“This process that has no timeline is leading to people from certain countries experiencing a pause. And we don’t know how long that pause will be in place," said Ignacia Rodriguez Kmec, attorney at the National Immigration Law Center.

Every day, Candia checks on her renewal. She said she's most afraid of being locked up in bad conditions in an ICE detention facility, but also thinks about what it would be like returning to Bolivia after more than 25 years.

“If God forbid that happened, it would break my heart because I’ve been in this country since I was 6," she said. “My entire life is here.”

Between the San Antonio Spurs’ run in the NBA playoffs and a packed events calendar, May has something for everyone.

Aside from sports, some events to look forward to in May include the debut of Pearl Fest, at the 44th annual Tejano Conjunto Festival at Rosedale Park and more.

Do you plan to go to any events this months? KSAT wants to see your adventures on KSAT Connect.

Here’s a look at all the things you can do in May:

May 1-3 events:

• ALAMO CITY LX MOPAR CAR SHOW: Get ready to enjoy a free car show from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. on May 2 at the Tower of the Americas. The show will feature Dodge Mopar vehicles, including Chargers, Challengers, Magnums and Chrysler 300s.
• BLOCKBUSTERS & BITES: Enjoy a free outdoor movie screening of “Cruella” starting at 7 p.m. on May 1 at the Rock at La Cantera. Attendees are welcomed to bring their furry friend.
• CORNYVAL: The festival will continue through until May 3 at 12210 Leslie Road in Helotes. This year’s festival marks 61 years of food, live music, a rodeo and — of course — corn. For more information on the entertainment lineup and tickets, click here.
• CHICAGO: THE MUSICAL: Three performances of the musical are scheduled for May 1-2. Tickets for Broadway’s longest-running musical can be purchased here.
• DERBY DAY: The 152nd Kentucky Derby will kick off at 9 a.m. on May 2 at Retama Park, 1 Retama Parkway. This year, guests can enjoy live wagering on the Kentucky Derby along with a full day of entertainment, wine tasting, corgi races and more. Click here for tickets.
• DUELO: Grupo Duelo is scheduled to perform at 8 p.m. on May 1 at the Freeman Coliseum. Tickets can be purchased here.
• INCLUSION FEST: The free inclusive and accessible festival will take place from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on May 2 at the Tobin Center, Will Naylor Riverwalk Plaza & Carlos Alvarez Studio Theater. Inclusion Fest will feature sensory-friendly programming, interactive activity stations, a calming area and more.
• JAZZ IN THE GARDEN: Enjoy an evening of live jazz music performed at the Japanese Tea Garden as part of San Antonio Parks Foundation’s Jazz in the Garden series from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. on May 1.
• ROCKIN’ RACE DAY: FROM DOXIES TO DERBY: Enjoy a full day of high-energy dachshund races, live music and more from noon to 8 p.m. on May 2 at the Rock at La Cantera. For those interested in having their four-legged friend face in the event, race registration is open. Click here for more information.
• ROMEO SANTOS & PRINCE ROYCE: The singers will perform their “Mejor Tarde Que Nunca” tour at 8 p.m. on May 2 at the Frost Bank Center. Tickets for the show can be purchased here.
• THE GREAT TEXAS AIRSHOW: The free airshow will return to Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph on May 2-3. Gates will open at 9 a.m. both days, featuring aerial performances scheduled to start at 11 a.m. For more information, click here.
• WINE FEST: Sip and savor wine samples during Wine Fest from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. on May 2 at the Tower of the Americas. Some featured wineries include Cline Cellars, Frei Brothers, Hamel Family Wines and Ravenswood. Presale general admission costs $55 per person. All attendees must be 21 and over. Click here for more details.

May 4-10 events:

• CAZZU: The singer will perform her “Cazzu: Latinaje en Vivo” tour at 8 p.m. on May 8 at the Boeing Center at Tech Port. Tickets for the performance are available here.
• CHELCIE LYNN: The comedian will perform her “Trailer Trash Tammy the Loose Lips” tour at 7 p.m. on May 10 at the Aztec Theatre. Tickets for the show can be found here.
• CRISTELA ALONZO: The comedian will bring her “Midlife Mixtape” tour on May 9 at the Charline McCombs Empire Theatre. Tickets to view the shows are available here.
• FLOETRY: The British R&B duo will perform at 8 p.m. on May 8 at the H-E-B Performance Hall. Tickets can be purchased here.
• H-E-B CINEMA ON WILL’S PLAZA: The Tobin Center will host a movie screening of “Clueless” at 7 p.m. on May 9.
• LATIDO FESTIVAL: The festival will kick off at 5 p.m. on May 8 at Retama Park. The Latido Festival will feature live music from Los Tucanes de Tijuana, La Mafia and Los Herederos de Nuevo León. Tickets start at $52 per person. Click here for more information.
• MOTHER’S DAY AT BRISCOE: The Briscoe Western Art Museum will offer free admission to all mothers from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on May 10. Click here for more details.
• MOVIE IN THE PARK: Gather the family and enjoy a free movie screening of “Freakier Friday” from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. on May 9 at the Tower of the Americas.
• RHYTHM & BEATS: The Rock at La Cantera will host Rhythm & Beats starting at 7 p.m. on May 9.
• ROCKFIT: The Rock at La Cantera will host a Mother’s Day-themed fitness and wellness event from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on May 9. For more details on the free event, click here.
• SECOND SATURDAY: Enjoy an evening of shopping, dining and entertainment from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. on May 9 at the Main Plaza Conservancy. For more details, click here.
• TACOS & TEQUILA FESTIVAL: The festival returns to the city with some throwback hip-hop and R&B artists of the 2000s on May 9, at Retama Park. The gates are expected to open at 2 p.m. With Three 6 Mafia as the headliner, the Tacos & Tequila Festival will also include performances from Pretty Ricky, Trina, Paul Wall, Jay Sean and more. Tickets start at $85. Click here for more information.

May 11-17 events:

• 30TH ANNUAL ZOO LA-LA: The 30th annual event will take place from 7 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. on May 14 at the San Antonio Zoo. The all-inclusive 21 and over celebration will include more than 50 San Antonio premier restaurants, and live music. For tickets, click here.
• SAN ANTONIO ZOO BIRTHDAY: Guests can enjoy a variety of events at the San Antonio Zoo as it celebrates its 112th birthday on May 13. More information can be found here.
• SUPER FUN SATURDAY: RISING STARS: Hemisfair’s Super Fun Saturday event will take place from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on May 16 at Yanaguana Garden.
• TEJANO CONJUNTO FESTIVAL: The 44th annual event will take place from May 14-17 at Rosedale Park. This year, the festival will pay a special tribute to the Late Flaco Jimenez. A three-day wristband tickets costs $50. For more information on the event’s schedule and tickets, click here.

May 18-24 events:

• CARÍN LEÓN: The singer will perform his “De Sonora Para El Mundo” tour at 8 p.m. on May 24 at the Frost Bank Center. Tickets to see Carín León are available here.
• FOURTH FRIDAY: The Rock at La Cantera will host its Fourth Friday event starting at 7:30 p.m. on May 22. The free event will feature Jason Kane & The Jive.
• PEARL FEST: Pearl Fest, featuring Los Lonely Boys, is set to make its debut on May 23 at Pearl. Tickets start at $31. For more information on the event, click here.
• TRIUMPH: The rock band will perform their “Rock & Roll Machine Reloaded” tour at 8 p.m. on May 21 at the Frost Bank Center. For tickets, click here.

May 25-31 events:

• PRIDE RIVER PARADE & FESTIVAL: The annual celebration is scheduled for May 30. This year’s parade will feature a Rainbow Rodeo theme that will celebrate San Antonio’s Texas roots and LGBTQ+ pride. More details can be found here.

Recurring events:

• FARMERS & ARTISANS MARKET: The Mission Marquee Plaza will host its market from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on May 2 and May 16. Guests can shop and explore handmade crafts, sourced foods and more.
• FARMERS MARKET: Browse from several local vendors offering farm-fresh produce and more from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. every Saturday at Pearl. Click here for more information.
• LOCALS DAY AT SAN ANTONIO ZOO: Bexar County residents can get a discounted entry to the San Antonio Zoo on May 1, May 10 and May 19 as part of Locals Day.
• MAKERS MARKET: Shop from over 40 local artisans and makers from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. every Sunday at Pearl. More information can be found here.
• OUTDOOR FAMILY FILM SERIES: The Mission Marquee Plaza is bringing back its “Outdoor Family Film Series” in May. On May 2, San Antonians can enjoy a free movie screening of “Luca” from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. The film series will continue with “How to Train Your Dragon” on May 16 and “The Princess Bride” on May 21.
• SEVEN SEAS FOOD FESTIVAL: Anyone with a SeaWorld San Antonio season pass can enjoy some nostalgic tunes from artists coming to the Alamo City this spring. Hoobastank and Fuel & Lit are scheduled to perform on May 2 while Blackstreet will take the stage on May 9. Soulji Boy & Ying Yang Twins will also perform on May 16. Reserved seating starts at $19.99. VIP section pricing starts at $74.99. Click here for more details.

This list will be updated as more events are announced.

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The Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery, which represented Baselitz, said the artist died on Thursday, citing his family. It said he died “peacefully,” but did not give a cause of death.

Born Hans-Georg Kern, Baselitz took his artistic name from the village of Deutschbaselitz in the eastern Saxony region, where he was born on Jan. 23, 1938, in Nazi-ruled Germany before the outbreak of World War II. After growing up in the ruins of the war, he left the then-East Germany in 1957 at a time of rising political pressure, and emigrated to the West.

“I was born into a destroyed order, into a destroyed landscape, into a destroyed people, into a destroyed society,” he told German news agency dpa before his 85th birthday.

The gallery called him “a titan of contemporary painting, sculpture, drawing and printmaking" and “one of the most important artists of our time," who influenced fellow artists and the international art world.

His first exhibition in 1963 reportedly caused a stir, with a vice squad identifying pornography in at least two of his paintings, and confiscating them.

He was often described as an “artist of rage,” and had a motto of "contradiction," according to dpa.

His works hang in some of the world's top galleries and have fetched millions at auction. In 2017, German police announced they had recovered 15 stolen paintings and drawings by Baselitz worth around 2.5 million euros ($2.9 million).

Baselitz recalled that some of his earliest recognition came in the 1960s through his series of golden-colored “Hero” paintings, based on fictional characters from Russian civil war novels. The works depicted broken figures staggering toward the viewer in ragged uniforms — in distorted sizes, giant hands and small heads. His battle-weary hero, “Der Hirte (The Shepherd)” from 1966 won international acclaim.

In 1969, Baselitz created “Der Wald auf dem Kopf,” (The Forest on its Head), his first “inverted” painting — featuring trees upside down, a theme that would become one of his trademarks.

“Georg Baselitz did not just turn his paintings upside down; he also turned our thinking routines upside down,” German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said. “Having experienced the destruction and suffering of the Second World War as a child, the collapse of all order forced him to question everything around him.”

Baselitz mused about his long career in a recent video, commenting that “typical painting has never appealed to me.”

“I actually wanted to be more of a black-and-white painter, and above all, I didn’t want to work spatially, perspectively, with shadows and light and such things that arise with the imitation of nature," he said while seated in a wheelchair in a paint-smudged jacket.

“I must say that throughout my life, I was not aware that I was a painter of color, even though I am constantly told that I have such wonderful colors,” Baselitz said.

Baselitz said he sought to “construct my connection to the world, to myself and to my wife,” using the most “simple and ordinary" means possible. He spoke in a video from the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice, which is hosting an exhibition of Baselitz's “Golden Heroes” works from May 6 to Sept. 27.

A “Naked Masters” exhibit at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna in 2023 spanned his half-century career and dealt with controversial themes of nudity — notably of the painter and his wife, Elke — displayed alongside oil paintings by old masters also evoking nudity.

He is survived by his wife and sons, Daniel Blau and Anton Kern, the gallery said.

The crash happened just before 4 p.m. Thursday on Southwest Loop 410 near Somerset Road.

Police said a Ford F-150 struck a barrier before it was rear-ended by a white SUV. The white SUV then hit a wall, which caused one of its tires to come off and hit a Ford Bronco.

The 24-year-old driver of the F-150 was ejected from the vehicle and suffered critical injuries, SAPD said.

Police stated that the driver and passenger of the white SUV were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries.

No other injuries were reported. SAPD said its investigation is ongoing.

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Exxon Mobil and Chevron reported quarterly results on Friday, with adjusted profits for both companies topping Wall Street expectations. The shares of both companies, up sharply this week, ticked higher before the opening bell.

With energy prices depressed at the start of the year, Exxon Mobil and Chevron had arranged hedges to offset volatility, a standard practice in the industry. Companies and investors through hedges lock in a price in advance to protect themselves from futures swings. That can provide them with some predictability on costs.

In the aftermath of an attack by the U.S. and Israel on Iran, however, the physical delivery of oil became impossible with the Strait of Hormuz essentially closed. Exxon and Chevron cannot book gains on those hedges until the crude is physically delivered.

The near closure of the Strait of Hormuz off the coast of Iran is a flashpoint in the war and the source of much of the economic pain being felt globally. About 20% of the world’s oil passes through the strait on a typical day, but the passage has been choked off since the war began in late February.

Exxon earned $4.18 billion, or $1 per share, for the period ended March 31. A year earlier it earned $7.7 billion, or $1.76 per share. The company lost almost $4 billion in the quarter on what it called “unfavorable estimated timing effects” of its hedges.

Removing such one-time impacts, Exxon earned $1.16 per share, 9 cents better than Wall Street projections, according to a survey by Zacks Investment Research predicted. Exxon does not adjust its reported results based on one-time events such as asset sales.

Revenue totaled $85.14 billion, breezing past Wall Street's expectation of $81.49 billion.

First-quarter net production was 4.6 million oil-equivalent barrels per day. That’s down from 5 million oil-equivalent barrels per day in the previous quarter.

“If you look at the unprecedented disruption in the world’s supply of oil and natural gas, the market hasn’t seen the full impact of that yet," CEO Darren Woods said during a conference call. "So there’s more to come if the strait remains closed, why haven’t we seen those impacts manifest themselves fully in the market yet? Well, I think we all know there was a lot of water and a lot of oil in transit on the water, a lot of inventory on the water.”

Chevron reported a first-quarter profit of $2.21 billion, or $1.11 per share. It earned $3.5 billion, or $2 per share, a year earlier.

The company said that its quarter included a $360 million net loss related to a legal reserve and that foreign currency effects lowered earnings by $223 million.

Chevron's adjusted profit was $1.41 per share, easily beating the 92 cents per share Wall Street was calling for. Like Exxon, Chevron does not adjust its reported results based on one-time events such as asset sales.

The company's revenue totaled $48.61 billion, also better than expected.

Exxon and Chevron are among the big drillers reporting earnings this week. On Tuesday BP said that its first-quarter profit more than doubled.

The oil companies' results come at a time when gasoline prices in the U.S. hit new multiyear highs, a point of increasing agitation for travelers, households and also businesses that are particularly sensitive to higher energy prices.

The average price of gasoline in the U.S. hit $4.39 on Friday, according to motor club AAA, up more than 8% this week.

Inflation in the U.S. rose sharply in March, fueled by the largest jump in gas prices in six decades, according to data from the U.S. Department of Labor. The surge in gas prices has squeezed the budgets of lower- and middle-income families, making it more difficult to pay for necessities.

But it’s disrupting businesses as well, particularly those sensitive to higher fuel costs. Airlines worldwide have begun canceling flights as the war in the Middle East strains jet fuel supplies and pushes up ticket prices.

Oil prices eased on Friday, helping to steady the relatively few stock markets open worldwide on the May Day holiday.

Prosecutors said they decided to charge Claire Freemantle, 49, with two counts of causing death by dangerous driving and seven counts of causing serious injury by dangerous driving after the Metropolitan Police reopened its investigation and discovered new evidence.

The London police force apologized for how it initially treated the crash and said it had referred its own officers to a watchdog agency looking into police misconduct.

Freemantle was originally not charged after prosecutors said she had an epileptic seizure. She had issued a statement expressing her “deepest sorrow” but said she had no recollection of what occurred.

Defense lawyers questioned why prosecutors reversed their original decision not to charge Freemantle and said she will plead not guilty when she makes her first court appearance June 16 in Westminster Magistrates’ Court.

It's not clear what new evidence police found, but the reinvestigation came after complaints by the parents of Nuria Sajjad and Selena Lau, who were killed in the crash outside the private Study Preparatory School in Wimbledon, south London, on July 6, 2023.

The driver plowed through a fence and into the side of the school building. More than a dozen people were treated for injuries at the scene and 10, including several pupils, were taken to the hospital for treatment.

Essa Suleiman was remanded into custody after appearing in Westminster Magistrates' Court to face two counts related to the attack in Golders Green. He also faces a third count of attempted murder over an incident elsewhere in the city earlier Wednesday that left a man with minor injuries.

Police have labeled the Golders Green attack an act of terrorism.

Suleiman, a Somalia-born British citizen who lives in London, did not enter a plea. His case was transferred to the Central Criminal Court for a May 15 hearing.

Prosecutor Emma Harraway said Suleiman attacked Ishmail Hussein, his friend of 20 years, in south London before taking a train to the north part of the city where he targeted Jews hours later.

Shloime Rand, 34, was stabbed in the chest outside a synagogue, puncturing his lung, and Norman Shine, 76, who was wearing a traditional Jewish skullcap, was stabbed in the neck at a bus stop.

“As Mr. Shine adjusted his kippah, Suleiman ran towards him and set upon him, launching a series of aggressive blows," Harraway said.

Rand was discharged from the hospital and Shine is in stable condition.

Police said Suleiman was referred in 2020 to the government’s Prevent program, which tries to steer individuals away from extremism. The police force said his file was closed later the same year, and didn’t disclose the reason for the referral.

The British government pledged to tackle antisemitism after the stabbings in an area in north London that is an epicenter of Britain’s Jewish community. The assault followed a string of arson attacks on synagogues and other Jewish sites in London in recent weeks.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that his government would increase security for the Jewish community and “do everything in our power to stamp this hatred out.”

Britain’s official terror threat level was raised from substantial to severe after Wednesday’s stabbing attack. Severe is the second-highest rung on a five-point scale and means intelligence agencies consider an attack highly likely in the next six months.

The government said the change was not due solely to the Golders Green attack but also due to increased danger “from Islamist and extreme right-wing terrorist threat from individuals and small groups based in the U.K.”

The bill, rolled out along with several other proposals under the Congressional Progressive Caucus’ “New Affordability Agenda,” takes aim at what Casar argues are excessive profits being hauled in by utility companies. Under the bill, federal regulators would have to establish a “reasonable” return on equity — the profit utilities collect beyond what’s needed to cover infrastructure costs — that accounts for the lower risk faced by electric and gas utilities due to their captive customer bases.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission would then have to apply this new figure when approving the rates that for-profit utilities can charge customers. Utility companies would also be required to use that “reasonable” number when asking state regulators — such as the Texas Public Utility Commission — to authorize rate hikes.

“They pay basically no risk, but pay themselves more than anybody else can get investing in the stock market, and then you are forced to pick up the tab,” Casar said during a Wednesday news conference.

Casar’s bill, dubbed the Lowering Utility Bills Act, was filed Wednesday with the support of 21 co-sponsors, including Houston Reps. Al Green and Christian Menefee, along with numerous members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which Casar chairs.

Additionally, the bill would prevent transmission providers and investor-owned utilities from charging customers higher rates to pay for things like lobbying, political contributions or private plane travel and entertainment for executives. And it would require utilities to prioritize cost-saving investments such as “grid-enhancing technologies.”

“This bill is about a simple idea. You should not pay more so that a private utility CEO can rent a private jet,” Casar said during the news conference.

Violators could face a $1 million penalty per day, per violation, according to a draft of the bill from Casar’s office.

The new legislation comes as Texans grapple with higher day-to-day costs and rising utility bills, which in Texas have risen by 30% since 2020, according to the Texas Energy Poverty Research Institute. Across the country, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated the average household’s electric costs rose by 6% in 2025 from the year before, more than double the rate of inflation, with Texas coming in right at the nationwide average.

The American Economic Liberties Project estimated that the bill would save the average family $500 a year, Casar said.

Since joining Congress in 2023, Casar has called on Democrats to focus on affordability and cost of living, urging an economic populist approach that talks about taking on billionaires and special interests.

That framework was evident throughout the “affordability agenda” from the Casar-led Congressional Progressive Caucus, which also introduced bills this week aimed at lowering the costs of necessities like groceries, housing, childcare and prescription drugs. One proposal would create a federal program to manufacture generic drugs like insulin and asthma inhalers and sell them at lower prices.

A memo unveiling the caucus’ suite of bills says that, amid rising everyday costs, “Democrats are searching for a vision that wins back the trust of working families and provides a mandate to deliver the big changes our country needs in 2026.”

The memo goes on to describe the caucus’ “affordability agenda” as a collection of “bold new policies that will make things cheaper in America by taking on wealthy special interests and corrupt billionaires.”

Casar is unlikely to get the Republican support needed to advance his utility bill through both GOP-controlled chambers of Congress, and the prospects appear similarly dim for the caucus’ other proposals. But they could provide a policy framework for Democrats if they win control of the House in the midterm elections, a prospect that political forecasters rate as increasingly likely.

“I hope we can get Republican support, but I hope and expect you’ll see a large amount of Democratic support very quickly,” Casar said. “This is just a kind of issue that’s hitting everybody.”

The House Republican Study Committee, a key driver of policy on the right, laid out an affordability framework of its own in January, calling for a second reconciliation bill that centers on lowering costs for housing, healthcare and energy. It aims to rein in higher prices that Republicans attribute to the Biden administration.

“The RSC released a comprehensive affordability agenda in January to actually lower costs for hardworking families, not expand the same big-government policies that drove up prices in the first place,” Rep. August Pfluger, a San Angelo Republican who chairs the committee, said in a statement. “Progressives think Washington should run your life. We know government is the problem, not the solution, and I’m committed to getting it out of the way for Texas families.”

Casar’s utility bill is one in a slew that lawmakers in Congress have introduced this year focused on protecting ratepayers from rising energy and utility costs.

This week, lawmakers on the House Subcommittee on Energy took up seven of these bills, each related to artificial intelligence and its impact on the power grid. The proposals included requiring data center developers, rather than consumers, to shoulder costs stemming from the facilities’ energy demand, and requiring federal regulators to meet with operators about controlling costs for residential and small commercial ratepayers.

The matter is especially top of mind for many Texans as the number of data centers in the state continues to balloon. Texas is home to more of the facilities than all but Virginia, which has spurred concerns about impacts on local utility rates and the state’s water crisis.

“The American people are understandably uneasy. Many question whether AI, and the data centers that power it, will ultimately do more harm than good, particularly when it comes to individual energy costs,” House Subcommittee on Energy Chair Bob Latta, R-Ohio, said during his opening statement at Wednesday’s hearing. “These concerns deserve to be taken seriously.”

These AI-related energy bills have been introduced by members of both parties, setting up a clash with the Trump administration, which has pledged to accelerate data center development with hopes of bolstering AI innovation.

In a nod to rising electric costs, President Donald Trump invited major tech executives to the White House to sign a “ratepayer protection pledge” in which they promised to supply their own power for AI data centers. The pledge included few specifics, however, and experts say it would not fully insulate consumers from data center-related costs.

Police said the unnamed man was arrested after the attack Wednesday near David’s Tomb — a holy site outside Zion’s Gate on the southern side of the Old City — “on suspicion of a racially motivated attack,” and remained in custody.

Police video showed the nun bruised and the attacker wearing tzitzit, a fringed undergarment worn by some observant Jewish men.

Olivier Poquillon, the director of the French School of Biblical and Archaeological Research, said the nun was a researcher at the school. He called the attack an “act of sectarian violence" in a post on X.

The Old City in Israel-annexed east Jerusalem is a centuries-old walled enclave built atop millennia of history and home to some of the holiest sites for Jews, Christians and Muslims. It is a flash point for tensions as access and ownership to the sites are deeply entangled with the historic and political claims that lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Religious groups have documented a rise in acts of harassment and violence against Christian pilgrims and clergy as well as Palestinian Christian residents, including assaults and spitting, often by ultra-Orthodox Jewish yeshiva students.

Wadie Abunassar, the coordinator of the Holy Land Christian Forum, called attacks targeting Christians a growing phenomenon. He attributed the quick response to the attack on the nun to the fact that it was caught on video.

He said he felt “great anger on the system and great sadness because I feel that this will not end anytime soon.” One of the problems, he said, was the deterrence against such violence.

“Many times in such cases there are no arrests and if there are arrests, sometimes after one or two days, (suspects) are released,” he added. “In some cases, the police do not recommend the prosecution to file charges or to indict them. And in some cases, when there is indictment, the indictment is mild.”

The arrest comes as Israeli treatment of religious minorities is under scrutiny, weeks after police limited access for holiday worship to Muslims as well as Christians, up to Latin Patriarch Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa.

Israel also drew international criticism after a soldier photographed himself having bludgeoned a fallen statue of Jesus on the cross with an ax in southern Lebanon. Israeli leaders later disavowed the incident and said he would be reprimanded.

“In a city sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike, we remain committed to protecting all communities and ensuring those responsible for violence are held accountable,” Israeli police said in a social media post about the man arrested for attacking the nun.

>> Rounds of storms could bring heavy rain through Friday evening

At least one area district has announced that classes will be canceled. Here’s what to know as of 6:30 a.m. Friday:

• IDEA San Antonio: Two-hour delay.
• Marion ISD: Two-hour delay.
• Northside ISD: Buses may be delayed.
• North East ISD: Buses may be delayed.
• Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City ISD: Schools and offices closed Friday.
• Southwest ISD: Buses may be delayed.
• University of the Incarnate Word: Delayed until 10 a.m.

A Flood Warning is in effect for Bexar, Medina, Comal, and Guadalupe counties until 10 a.m. as the next wave of storms approaches during the morning commute. Be prepared and watch out for water on the roads.

While much of the rainfall will be beneficial, locally heavy rainfall is likely but could cause street flooding.

Low‑lying and poor‑drainage areas (especially construction zones) are the main concerns, along with the chance for gusty winds and localized hail.

QUICK WEATHER LINKS

• WATCH LIVE: Doppler Radar
• Hourly and 10-Day Forecast
• Download FREE KSAT Weather Authority App: Up-to-date forecast information and livestreams from trusted local meteorologists.
• KSAT Connect: Share your weather photos.

The postseason switch sure got flipped against the rival Denver Nuggets, as the players promised all along. The energy and urgency was never greater than in the series-clinching Game 6 victory on Thursday, when the determined Timberwolves shook off the absence of their three best guards and beat the Nuggets 110-98.

“Still part of our growth,” coach Chris Finch said. “We’ve been really good with the high moments. Our consistency sometimes throughout the season isn’t always there, which we don’t really like about ourselves, but we know we have it in ourselves to meet these moments.”

Jaden McDaniels clearly does.

Nobody on the Timberwolves embodies the mercurial nature of this close-knit but often-moody team than McDaniels, the sixth-year forward who made a name for himself in this series.

Tirelessly chasing All-Star guard Jamal Murray around screens and everywhere he tried to go along the perimeter, limiting him to 4-for-17 shooting in Game 6, McDaniels did even more on the offensive end.

With a big chunk of the team's shot creation missing due to injuries to Anthony Edwards, Donte DiVincenzo and Ayo Dosunmu, McDaniels went 13 for 25 from the floor for 32 points with 10 rebounds.

“What I was the most proud about him was just his emotional control, being able to stay poised, not overreact to adversity, calls or missed shots, or mistakes,” teammate Rudy Gobert said. "He stayed present, and he stepped up big time when we needed him the most, so I’m really, really proud of him.”

McDaniels tossed even more spice into this well-developed rivalry early in the series with his blanket “ bad defenders ” jab at the opponent, and he made no secret of the motivation he gets from seeing “Denver” or “Nuggets” sewed on the other team's jersey.

“The only thing I said to him, after he had made his comments, was, ‘Now it’s time to back it up,’” Finch said. “And talking doesn’t matter. You've got to go do it. I knew he was going to put the effort in, so he was ready for it, and he owned it, and he responded.”

McDaniels later irked Nuggets star Nikola Jokic by taking an uncontested layup in the closing seconds of Minnesota's blowout win in Game 4, sparking a brief shoving match.

McDaniels had his worst game of the series in the loss in Game 5 on Monday, when he was booed often by the Denver crowd, but he responded on his home court with one of the best games of his career.

With the Timberwolves trying to put away the game, McDaniels delivered the dagger shot — swishing his signature mid-range pull-up to give them a seven-point lead with 1:06 to play. Then he intercepted a harried pass by Jokic to get the ball back and start a parade to the line.

Jokic gave McDaniels a hug after the final horn, a sign of respect from the three-time NBA MVP despite the irritation he caused all series long.

“I’m just happy it’s over, happy we were able to come out on top,” McDaniels said. “Stuff was said. I’m just happy we were all able to prove our point, get the win and move on to the next round.”

Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs have been waiting. They'll host Game 1 on Monday.

“I figured the real winner of this series was going to be San Antonio, because both these teams were going to take a lot of pieces out of each other, and did,” Finch said. “So I’m not sure what we have left standing there before we go down there.”

Even if they're short-handed and overmatched, the Timberwolves are a good bet to put up a strong fight.

“You have to believe that you can win, no matter what,” Gobert said. "Obviously we’re missing some pretty important players, right? But no matter who’s out there, we believe in our defense. We believe in trusting one another. Anything’s possible.”

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AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA

Herrera, who works two jobs at Atlanta's airport, never imagined he would own a home at the age of 27.

“It’s special. It’s magical,” he said.

In May, nearly 1,000 volunteers with Habitat for Humanity will complete Herrera's new home and 23 other affordable housing units in Atlanta's Sylvan Hills neighborhood for the 40th Carter Work Project.

The intensive, weeklong building sessions named after former President Jimmy Carter and his late wife Rosalynn have constructed roughly 5,000 homes in 14 countries since 1984. The project is returning to Atlanta for the first time since 1988, when the Carters helped construct 21 homes in another neighborhood.

Habitat is not just a homebuilder anymore

The Sylvan Hills construction also reflects a new shift into real estate development for Habitat for Humanity, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year amid a growing crisis in affordable housing and a broadening political battle over affordability more generally.

“The gap between what a family can afford and what it costs to create that unit of housing is the widest it has been in modern history,” said Jonathan Reckford, CEO of the international organization.

The nonprofit plans to serve as a developer on more of its projects because many smaller developers still haven’t recovered from the losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic or have gone out of business altogether.

The Sylvan Hills project includes another first for Habitat

In Sylvan Hills, Habitat for Humanity is building on 8 acres (3 hectares) of land that it purchased in 2015. It also worked to get the site, which used to house a saw-blade manufacturer, rezoned for residential use. The 24 housing units will be a mix of single-family homes and townhomes, forming a new community called Langston Park. It's the first time Atlanta Habitat for Humanity will build multifamily townhomes.

“We do believe it’s important to get the best use out of every precious piece of land that we’re able to acquire and come by so that we can serve more families,” said Atlanta Habitat for Humanity President and CEO Rosalyn Merrick.

The homes in Langston Park will cost about $200,000 each to build. The new homeowners will pay a monthly mortgage based on their income, but Habitat does not charge them interest. The goal is to eventually build 40 more homes on the site.

Phileena Daniel, 27, also qualified to buy one of the homes. She and her 7-year-old son have struggled with housing over the past two years, including living in a unit infested with rats and roaches. She’s grateful for the stability a permanent home in Langston Park will bring.

“You know, sometimes we don’t see ourselves going far in life as young Black women in this society,” she said. “This is giving us an opportunity to expand.”

Habitat's shift earns praise

Habitat for Humanity’s move into community development is “a classic example of a nonprofit organization really trying to be responsive to community needs,” said Vincent Reina, urban economics and planning professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

“They can still be true to their core mission, which is advancing homeownership opportunities, but they are also acknowledging that we need a diverse set of housing solutions to really meet the needs of individuals,” said Reina, who is also founder and faculty director of the Housing Initiative at Penn.

High home prices and 30-year mortgage interest rates over 7% have made it impossible for even moderate-income households to afford a home in all but a handful of the 98 most expensive metro areas in the country, according to research published last year by Reina and Benjamin J. Keys, a Wharton real estate and finance professor.

That shift has made affordable housing a major issue around the country.

Congress steps in

In Congress, both the House and the Senate have passed different affordable housing bills. Lawmakers are working to reconcile differences to send a final bill to President Donald Trump for approval.

Trump has signed executive orders to reduce housing regulatory burdens and help smaller banks provide mortgages. His proposed 2027 budget, however, seeks cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the elimination of numerous community development programs that currently help cities build affordable housing.

Herrera is hopeful

Back in Atlanta, Herrera couldn't stop thinking about all the possibilities homeownership could unlock. His mother had breast cancer, and she and his father could come live with him if the need arose. A low, stable monthly payment for housing would also help him pursue his goal of owning a coffee shop. Herrera said rising rents in the Atlanta area had forced him to move previously, taking time and money away from that project.

“Now, I can finally take some risks,” he said.

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Gamboa reported from Cleveland. Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

Officers responded to the shooting around 4:25 a.m. in the 6100 block of Valley Bay Drive, which is located near Les Harrison Drive.

Upon arrival, officers said they found a man with a gunshot wound to his stomach.

The man was later transported to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries, according to police.

Authorities said two individuals argued with the victim when, at some point, one of them pulled out a gun and fired at least one shot.

Police said the two individuals fled the scene after the shooting and stole the victim’s vehicle.

This is a developing story. We will update the article once more information becomes available.

To some degree, he has. Gone are the social media video clips of now-retired Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino clashing with protesters. Mullin's predecessor, Kristi Noem, made her first trip as secretary to New York City to make arrests with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In contrast, Mullin went to North Carolina to review hurricane recovery efforts.

The Republican administration appears to be recalibrating its approach to a centerpiece policy that helped bring Trump back to the White House, moving in many ways away from aggressive, public-facing tactics toward a quieter approach to enforcement. Despite that shift, the administration insists it is not backing down from its lofty deportation goals.

“Clearly they’ve stepped back from the, for want of a better word, the Bovinoist tactics of before," said Mark Krikorian, the president of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for immigration restrictions. "But it’s not clear this means they’re actually stepping back from immigration.”

The Trump administration launched a series of immigration enforcement operations last year in mostly Democratic-led cities, which drove up arrests in large-scale sweeps. The crackdown sparked clashes between protesters and enforcement officers and led to the shooting deaths in Minneapolis of two U.S. citizens.

Since then, the president’s hard-line anti-immigration agenda has lost popularity with voters and there have been no new high-profile city-based operations launched, raising questions about the administration's strategy.

“We’re still enforcing immigration laws. We’re still deporting illegals that shouldn’t be here. We’re still going after the worst of the worst — but we’re doing it in a more quiet way,” Mullin said in an interview April 16 with CNBC.

Immigration arrests have dropped, but deportation goals remain

ICE arrests have fallen in recent months, and the number of people in immigration detention has dropped from a high of roughly 72,000 in January to 58,000 this week, according to data obtained by The Associated Press.

But in a sign of its continued determination, ICE in budget documents says it plans to remove 1 million people this fiscal year and the next compared with roughly 442,000 people last year. The agency also has plenty of money to carry out its mission, with Congress granting the Department of Homeland Security more than $170 billion for Trump's immigration agenda last year.

The administration aims to have enough space to detain roughly 100,000 people this fiscal year, which would more than double the average daily number held in ICE detention last year. The administration has already expanded its detention capacity with the purchase of 11 warehouses across the country.

“They are working on really building a juggernaut of a system,” said Doris Meissner, who headed the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, a predecessor to ICE, during President Bill Clinton's Democratic administration and is now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said there had been no change to Trump's strategy.

"President Trump’s highest priority has always been the deportation of illegal alien criminals who endanger American communities,” Jackson said.

ICE did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Stripping away legal protections to ramp up deportations

Advocates for immigrants are bracing for the Trump administration to turn its attention more intently to stripping away protections for migrants with temporary legal status to remain in the U.S. while their cases are being adjudicated.

In one example of this, the number of green cards approved by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services dropped by half over the course of a year under the Trump administration, according to an analysis by the Cato Institute, which supports immigration into the U.S. Humanitarian visas for refugees or people who qualified for asylum saw the biggest declines.

USCIS spokesman Zach Kahler said the drop was due to increased vetting of applicants by the administration.

The Trump administration has also pushed to strip Temporary Protected Status from hundreds of thousands of people, with a key case weighing whether it's overstepped its power to do so being heard at the Supreme Court this week.

Advocates see it as a way to send a chilling message to immigrant communities and make more people vulnerable to deportation. It also enables the department to operate without the public spectacle of workplace raids or home arrests.

ICE has also focused over the past year on creating agreements with jurisdictions around the country that allow local and state law enforcement to carry out an expanding array of immigration enforcement tasks, ranging from checking the immigration status of people in their jails to incorporating immigration checks during routine traffic stops.

These agreements, known as 287g, have grown from 135 in 20 states before Trump took office to more than 1,400 in 41 states and territories now.

Some states, most noticeably Florida and Texas, have mandated various forms of cooperation between local law enforcement and ICE.

Meissner, from MPI, said Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, is likely to prioritize further discussions about how cities and states can cooperate with ICE.

“At the end of the day, some of this may very well succeed in increasing the numbers,” Meissner said.

Calls to enforce work restrictions

Conservatives who want more deportations say the only way to truly crack down on illegal immigration is to make it so difficult for the migrants to work that they’ll leave on their own.

The Trump administration has already taken steps to make life harder for people in the country illegally including limiting who can live in public housing by immigration status, sharing Medicaid information with ICE and requiring people in the country illegally to register with the federal government.

Krikorian, of the Center for Immigration Studies, said the Social Security Administration could send out letters alerting employers when an employee's name doesn't match their Social Security number. Authorities could repeatedly and consistently carry out audits of I-9 forms, which companies are supposed to fill out and submit to the federal government showing that new hires are legally able to work. And they could require banks to collect citizenship information on customers.

Whatever the strategy going forward, the administration is facing heavy pressure not to back away from its goals.

“The numbers are too low," said Mike Howell, part of the Mass Deportation Coalition, which launched a playbook for how the administration can actually get to a million deportations a year by using tactics such as worksite enforcement.

“The deportation numbers are just too low," Howell said, "and they need to be much higher, and they can be much higher.”

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This story has been corrected to show Meissner’s quote was “working on really building a juggernaut,” not “working really on building a juggernaut.”

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Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and Will Weissert contributed to this report.

The China deal covers Africa's 20 largest economies, including South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, Algeria and Kenya. China had already dropped tariffs on 33 poorer African countries, meaning 53 of the continent's 54 nations are now eligible for “tariff-free treatment” for their goods, according to China.

The country not eligible is the small nation of Eswatini because it is the only one in Africa that maintains formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan.

China says it'll help mutual development

The Customs Tariff Commission of the State Council in China said the agreement would promote the common development of China and Africa. China's official Xinhua News Agency said a shipment of 24 metric tons of apples from South Africa that cleared customs in Shenzhen in the early hours of Friday was the first batch of goods to enter under the new zero-tariff policy.

According to Xinhua, China's Commerce Ministry said it would especially benefit African products like cocoa from Ivory Coast and Ghana, coffee and avocados from Kenya, and citrus fruits and wine from South Africa, which used to face tariffs of between 8% and 30%.

Ivory Coast is by far the world's biggest cocoa producer and it and Ghana account for more than 50% of the global supply. South Africa is a major citrus fruit exporter.

African nations looking away from the US

Several of Africa's top economies said they would look for new markets for some of their U.S.-bound products after the Trump administration imposed reciprocal tariffs a year ago — at one point with rates of 30% for Africa's leading economy, South Africa, and higher than 40% for some other African countries.

“South Africa looks forward to working with China in a friendly, pragmatic and flexible manner,” South African Trade Minister Parks Tau said in February during bilateral talks in China.

While the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Trump's far-reaching global tariffs as unconstitutional in February, the Republican president said his administration had "very powerful alternatives” and promptly rolled out temporary import taxes to replace them.

China is already the biggest trade partner for Africa, a continent of 1.5 billion people that's expected to nearly double to 2.5 billion by 2050, according to the United Nations, when it would have more than a quarter of the world's people.

China dominates a large trade imbalance with Africa

China hailed its tariff-free deal as promoting common development, but there is a large trade imbalance between it and Africa, while African nations owe Beijing billions in debt repayments.

China-Africa trade reached a record $348 billion in 2025, though China's exports to Africa increased by around 25% to $225 billion, while its imports from Africa increased by only around 5% to $123 billion, widening the trade deficit for Africa.

China has long imported raw materials from Africa and sent back manufactured goods. Thierry Pairault, a China-Africa expert at France's National Center for Scientific Research, said that while the new policy might have some benefits for agricultural products, most African raw material exports like oil and minerals already had tariff-free access to China.

“(Chinese leader) Xi Jinping is positioning China as the antithesis of Western protectionism. This gesture is intended to appeal to both African public opinion and global markets,” Pairault wrote in an assessment published by the China Global South Project, which analyzes China's relationship with poor countries.

But the policy “only applies where it costs (China) almost nothing,” Pairault wrote.

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AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa

The trade deal was signed Jan. 17 at a meeting of the South American group. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's move to provisionally enact the deal, effectively sidestepping the EU Parliament, is being challenged by EU lawmakers at the bloc’s judiciary. The agreement will be halted if the European body rules against it.

“This is good news for EU businesses of all sizes, good news for our consumers and good news for our farmers, who will gain valuable new export opportunities, with full protection for sensitive sectors,” she said Thursday.

Von der Leyen is expected to hold a videoconference Friday with leaders of Mercosur nations Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay to celebrate the agreement.

Earlier this week, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, one of the key supporters of the agreement, signed a decree validating the deal in his country. He said it is a response to unilateral tariffs imposed last year by U.S. President Donald Trump and a reaffirmation of multilateralism.

“Nothing better than believing in the exercise of democracy, in multilateralism, and in cordial relations between nations,” Lula said in a ceremony in the capital, Brasilia, to celebrate the milestone after more than 25 years of negotiations.

Last week, Brazil's vice president and one of the negotiators of the deal, Geraldo Alckmin, said in an interview with The Associated Press and other news agencies that not striking the deal with the EU would have meant staying behind while competitor nations made other agreements.

Brazil is by far Mercosur’s largest economy, with a gross domestic product estimated at over $2.3 trillion in 2025.

Lia Valls, an associate researcher at the think-tank Fundacao Getulio Vargas based in Rio de Janeiro, agrees that the deal offers better perspectives against unilateralism worldwide.

“The EU and Mercosur are showing that it is possible for big blocs to reach a deal in this world where that multilateral system is being very weakened and where the U.S. clearly operates to do that,” Valls told the AP. “It is a very positive sign.”

The agreement faced opposition from European farmers and environmental groups and was delayed in December, before being referred to the EU’s top court.

South American agribusiness industries, chiefly beef, fruit and minerals, are expecting a boost in exports to Europe. European automakers, pharmaceutical companies and technology firms also look forward to making new inroads in Mercosur markets.

While companies based in Mercosur countries have expressed fear of tough competition from European peers in hi-tech industries, European farmers have shown concerns about price pressures and imports that do not follow similar environmental standards.

French President Emmanuel Macron, one of the critics of the deal, has long demanded safeguards to monitor and stop large economic disruption in the EU, increased regulations in the Mercosur nations like pesticide restrictions, and more inspections of imports at EU ports.

The agreement gradually removes trade barriers and tariffs in the two blocs, but it also keeps economic safeguard clauses for European countries to protect some sectors from excessive competition, such as poultry, beef, sugar, and fruit.

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Game 1 of a Western Conference semifinal series between San Antonio and Minnesota — which ousted Denver — will be Monday night in Texas.

It'll be the third series between the franchises, after the Spurs beat the Timberwolves in both 1999 and 2001. Both of those were first-round, best-of-five matchups where San Antonio prevailed in four games.

New York is through to Round 2 as well, after a 51-point rout in Atlanta eliminated the Hawks.

The Knicks await the Philadelphia-Boston winner; that series is going to Game 7, after the 76ers staved off elimination yet again with a win on Thursday night. The Timberwolves are about to enter a showdown of French centers — Rudy Gobert for Minnesota, Victor Wembanyama for the Spurs.

On Friday, Detroit (trailing 3-2) plays at Orlando, Cleveland (up 3-2) goes to Toronto and the Los Angeles Lakers (up 3-2 after losing closeout chances in Games 4 and 5) head to Houston.

Friday's schedule

— Game 6, Detroit at Orlando, 7 p.m. EDT (Prime)

Series: Orlando, 3-2.

Odds: Detroit by 3.5.

Eighth-seeded Orlando let a 3-1 lead slip away against top-seeded Detroit in Round 1 in 2003. The Magic get another chance Friday night to ensure that such a fate won’t happen again this time.

— Game 6, Cleveland at Toronto, 7:30 p.m. EDT (Prime)

Series: Cleveland, 3-2.

Odds: Cleveland by 3.5.

The Raptors pushed Cleveland to the limit in Game 5 even with Brandon Ingram (heel) limited to one point in 11 minutes. The Cavaliers went 18 of 36 from 3-point range to win Game 5 at home.

— Game 6, LA Lakers at Houston, 9:30 p.m. EDT (Prime)

Series: Lakers, 3-2.

Odds: Houston by 3.5.

The Lakers are 0-2 in closeout chances in this series, and a Rockets team that isn’t lacking for swagger suddenly looks to be brimming with confidence. Lakers do not seem to be panicked, yet.

Saturday's schedule

— Game 7, Philadelphia at Boston, 7:30 p.m. EDT (NBC/Peacock)

Series: Tied, 3-3.

Odds: Boston by 7.5.

The Celtics are 27-10 all-time in Game 7s, the 76ers are 6-12 in such games and are 0-4 in them since 2001. It'll be the ninth Game 7 between these two franchises, with Boston going 6-2 in the previous ones.

Thursday recaps

— Knicks 140, Hawks 89 to win series 4-2. Inside NY's numbers, and Atlanta's collapse.

— 76ers 106, Celtics 93 to even series at 3-3. George goes from ‘rock bottom’ to Game 7.

— Timberwolves 110, Nuggets 98 to win series 4-2. Nikola Jokic wants to stay in Denver.

Awards watch

A breakdown of this season's NBA awards:

— Twyman-Stokes Teammate of the Year: DeAndre Jordan, New Orleans.

— Hustle Award: Moussa Diabaté, Charlotte.

— Defensive Player of the Year: Victor Wembanyama, San Antonio.

— Clutch Player of the Year: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Oklahoma City.

— Sixth Man of the Year: Keldon Johnson, San Antonio.

— Sportsmanship Award: Derrick White, Boston.

— Most Improved Player: Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Atlanta.

— Rookie of the Year: Cooper Flagg, Dallas.

— Executive of the Year: Brad Stevens, Boston.

Among the announcements still to come:

— Most Valuable Player: Gilgeous-Alexander, Wembanyama or Denver's Nikola Jokic.

— Coach of the Year: Detroit's J.B. Bickerstaff, San Antonio's Mitch Johnson or Boston's Joe Mazzulla.

Betting odds

Defending champion Oklahoma City (-130) is favored to win the NBA title, oddsmakers say.

The Thunder are followed by San Antonio (+425), Boston (+600), Cleveland (+1300), New York (+1800), the Los Angeles Lakers (+2500) and Detroit (+3500). Philadelphia (+12500) is next, followed by Minnesota (+20000).

Orlando, even with a 3-2 series lead on Detroit, entered Friday at +25000. The only teams that entered Friday with longer odds than the Magic were Houston (+50000) and Toronto (+100000).

Key dates

— Sunday, Monday and/or Tuesday: Conference semifinals begin.

— May 10: NBA draft lottery.

— May 10-17: NBA draft combine.

— May 17 or 19: Eastern Conference finals begin on ESPN and ABC.

— May 18 or 20: Western Conference finals begin on NBC and Peacock.

— June 3: Game 1, NBA Finals on ABC. (Other finals dates: June 5, June 8, June 10, June 13, June 16 and June 19).

— June 23: Round 1, NBA draft

— June 24: Round 2, NBA draft

Quote of the day

“If we were in Serbia, we would all get fired." — Denver's Nikola Jokic, after the Nuggets were eliminated from the playoffs by short-handed Minnesota.

Stats of the day

— Boston led by five on Thursday, then lost by 13. Denver led by five on Thursday, then lost by 12. Atlanta led by four on Thursday ... then lost by 51.

— The Knicks are the first reigning NBA Cup champion to win a playoff series. The Los Angeles Lakers (the 2023 Cup champs) and the Milwaukee Bucks (the 2024 Cup champs) both lost in Round 1 of those season's playoffs.

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AP NBA: https://apnews.com/nba

One of the world's most sprawling and populated urban areas, at 3,000 square miles (about 7,800 square kilometers) and some 22 million people, the Mexican capital and surrounding cities were built atop an ancient lake bed. Many downtown streets were once canals, a tradition that continues in the rural fringes.

Extensive groundwater pumping and urban development have dramatically shrunk the aquifer, meaning that Mexico City has been sinking for more than a century, leaving many monuments and older buildings — like the Metropolitan Cathedral, where construction began in 1573 — visibly tilted to the side. The contracting aquifer has also contributed to a chronic water crisis that is only expected to worsen.

“It damages part of the critical infrastructure of Mexico City, such as the subway, the drainage system, the water, the potable water system, housing and streets,” said Enrique Cabral, a researcher studying geophysics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “It’s a very big problem.”

Mexico City is sinking so fast that the subsidence can be spotted from space.

In some parts it is happening at an average rate of 0.78 inches (2 centimeters) a month, according to NASA’s newly released report, such as at the main airport and the iconic monument commonly known as the Angel of Independence.

Overall that means a yearly subsidence rate of about 9.5 inches (24 centimeters). Over the course of less than a century, the drop has been more than 39 feet (12 meters), according to Cabral.

“We have one of the fastest velocities of land subsidence in the whole world,” he said.

The NASA estimates are based on measurements taken between October 2025 and January 2026 by a powerful satellite known as NISAR, which can track real-time changes on the Earth’s surface and is a joint initiative between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization.

NISAR scientist Paul Rosen said that by capturing details of the Earth from space, the project is also “telling us something about what’s actually happening below the surface.”

“It’s basically documentation of all of these changes within a city,” Rosen said. He added: “You can see the full magnitude of the problem.”

With time the team hopes to be able to zoom in even more on specific areas and someday get measurements on a building-by-building basis.

More broadly, researchers hope to apply the technology around the world to track things like natural disasters, changes in fault lines, the effects of climate change in regions like Antarctica and more.

Rosen said it could be used to bolster alert systems, letting scientists alert governments to the need for evacuations in cases of volcano eruptions, for example.

For Mexico City the technology amounts to a big advance in studying the subsidence issue and mitigating its worst effects, according to Cabral.

For decades the government has largely ignored the problem other than stabilizing foundations under monuments like the cathedral. But following recent flare-ups of the water crisis, Cabral said, officials have begun to fund more research.

Imagery from the NISAR satellite and the data that comes with it will be key for scientists and officials as they plan on how to address the problem.

“To do long-term mitigation of the situation,” Cabral said, “the first step is to just understand.”

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It was already decided when the scuffle took place. OG Anunoby extended the Knicks' lead to 50 points with a pair of free throws and 4:39 remaining in the first half.

Robinson boxed out Daniels and things got heated, with an official even taking a tumble as many people tried to calm them down. The Hawks' Onyeka Okongwu and the Knicks' Jalen Brunson held Robinson back as the fight inched toward fans sitting courtside.

“It’s tough because when you’re up that big, stuff happens," Knicks coach Mike Brown said after New York's 140-89 series-clinching win. “If somebody feels like something that shouldn’t happen to them happened, it’s hard to keep your composure in that moment.”

Nickeil Alexander-Walker and several coaches pulled Daniels away, including Hawks head coach Quin Snyder.

It was easy to understand why the Hawks were frustrated. Atlanta's 83-36 deficit was the largest at halftime in NBA playoff history.

“I couldn’t see the details of the situation, who did what to whom," Snyder said. “I know that both teams were competing and they were having their way with us on many, many levels — as evidenced by the scoreboard.”

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Instead, she gave the Indiana Fever and fans a scare Thursday night.

Clark crumpled to the ground early in the third quarter when Dallas forward Alanna Smith collided with her leg on a shot attempt, and then limped toward the bench as she walked off the injury during a replay review that resulted in a Flagrant 1 call. The two-time All-Star then made two free throws before departing and watching the rest of the game from the bench.

“I feel good. I just landed on my kneecap really hard,” Clark said after scoring 21 points in a 95-80 loss to the Wings. “I know there's a committee of people that really wanted them (the refs) to start calling things, and I thought they did a great job of that. Honestly, I thought the refs were great, and it's preseason so you're probably going to see more fouls called. I expect that number to drop. But I think overall, it's going to improve the product.”

Initially, it looked as if little had changed since Clark last suited up in Gainbridge Fieldhouse on July 13, when the Fever beat Dallas.

The pregame autograph line snaked through the seats, the No. 22 jerseys and Clark T-shirts were as fashionable Thursday night as they were during her record-breaking rookie season, and, naturally, Clark was greeted with the usual loud cheers during player introductions.

Sure, it was only a preseason game, but it did feature the league's last two Rookie of the Year award winners — Clark and Paige Bueckers. Yet Fever fans had been yearning for this moment since Clark went down July 15 with a right groin injury that forced her to miss the All-Star Game and the All-Star weekend festivities in Indianapolis, as well as Indiana's final 22 regular-season games and its incredible run to the WNBA semifinals.

The long absence only made Thursday's game an even bigger deal.

“This is the first (Fever) game I've been to — ever,” said Nikki Niccun, dressed in a No. 22 jersey. “I've seen every one on TV, but this is the first time in person. I know it's a preseason game, but I'm excited."

Clark first returned to the court for Team USA in the FIBA Women's World Cup qualifying games in early March, then helped the Fever open the preseason with a 109-91 victory at New York despite a 2-for-10 shooting performance.

This time, Clark looked more like herself. She scored 14 of her 21 points in the first quarter, had four assists, three turnovers and two rebounds while going 4 of 6 from the field and 11 of 13 at the free throw line in 16 minutes.

“We had planned for her to come out about that time anyway," coach Stephanie White said. “It was just an extra precaution getting her out in that moment, but the plan was for her to start the third quarter and then get her out quickly.”

White also held out All-Star center Aliyah Boston for the second straight game because of a lower leg injury. All-Star guard Kelsey Mitchell finished with 10 points in 17 minutes.

Not everyone came to see Clark, though.

A smattering of fans also showed up in Bueckers jerseys, and she dazzled the crowd by scoring 20 points in 20 minutes on 8-of-12 shooting. Rookie Azzi Fudd, the No. 1 overall draft pick, added four points in 16 minutes as the Wings used a 22-5 second quarter run to seize control with a 53-26 lead. They never trailed again.

Whether that's an indication one of last season's 10-win teams could be headed for major improvement remains to be seen.

And though there were plenty of empty seats Thursday night, a rarity when Clark takes the stage, longtime Clark admirers welcomed the chance to get an early look at what they anticipate will be a big season.

“They're going to bounce back,” Niccun said. “We're going to be all right.”

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AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA

The tax accountant said he “got the same high” on those platforms that he got from gambling. “That was how I relapsed — with Kalshi and Polymarket. I lost a bunch of money.”

The rapid growth of prediction markets has sparked a high-stakes debate that is playing out in courts and legislatures all over the country. Operators of those companies believe they should be regulated like the stock exchange because of federal law and their customer-to-customer structure, while sportsbooks and state officials think they should be supervised the same way as sports gambling platforms.

While that argument continues with no sign of resolution, the clinicians who treat gambling disorders are more concerned about what they are seeing with their patients. In their spaces, when it comes to sports gambling and prediction markets, the end result is virtually the same.

Two gambling addicts who spoke to The Associated Press — the soccer coach and tax accountant — say they had relapses on prediction markets after they took legal action to protect themselves from the allure of sports betting. They are being identified by their occupations because of the sensitivity of their situations. Their stories reflect what experts say they see with some of their clients.

“There may be real differences in how these products are defined or regulated, but in the therapy room, we are often seeing the same cycle of anticipation, action and reaction play out again and again,” said Dr. Cynthia Grant, the vice president of clinical for Birches Health, which operates a national network of providers for treating gambling addiction.

“I sometimes think of it like different doors into the same room. The label on the door may change, but once someone’s inside, the experience can feel very familiar.”

The road from sportsbooks to prediction markets

Sportsbooks and prediction markets offer a lot of similar options. Wagers on games, individual performances and other possibilities. But the format is different.

Sportsbooks have in-house experts who set odds that dictate payouts for winning bets. It's the house versus the gamblers. Traders on predictions markets swap contracts of yes-or-no questions, and profits and losses are dictated by the market. Win a “yes” holding on an event contract where most of the market guessed “no,” and the payout is bigger. Prediction markets generally make money through fees on contracts.

For addicts, they are two paths to the same result.

The soccer coach who spoke to the AP started gambling when he was 16. Small bets against friends in his New York neighborhood, everything from cards to basketball and tennis. When he turned 18, he started going to casinos and making bets at sportsbooks. Amid mounting losses, he turned to prediction markets.

“I would be in all this debt and get a paycheck for $2,000 on a Friday and it would be gone by Saturday or Sunday,” said the coach, 21. “I wouldn’t have money to fill up my gas tank.”

He was struggling with loans and maxed-out credit cards while working and going to college before he stepped away in January to confront his addiction problems, which also included smoking marijuana.

He joined Gamblers Anonymous, and he was told he had to stop associating with people who gamble.

“For a younger crowd, that’s difficult because it’s everywhere,” the coach said. “My friends from childhood — most of them all gamble."

The coach and the tax accountant had formally self-excluded from sportsbooks before they started trading on prediction markets. Self-exclusion programs provide an opportunity for gamblers to ban themselves from gambling facilities and betting apps. They are offered in many states as part of gambling regulations, but there is no widely adopted national system.

The landscape for self-exclusion programs becomes even more fragmented when predictions markets are included. Kalshi started a voluntary opt-out program when it launched a customer protection hub in March 2025, and it's one of several platforms — including Polymarket — collaborating on a national self-exclusion program for prediction markets. But it's not clear if that program would ever overlap with the systems used by state gambling regulators.

The accountant, 33, said his gambling problems started after New York launched legalized mobile sports betting in January 2022. He had “a boatload of debt” in August 2023 when he told his then-fiancée about what was going on with him.

She married him anyway. Looking to save money after the wedding, they moved into a rental house owned by his parents. He self-excluded from sportsbooks. Then, after the couple lost their first pregnancy, the accountant started day-trading before signing up for Kalshi.

“Prediction markets are the same thing packaged in a different way,” the accountant said. “It’s a dangerous loophole. ... How can you do all that and say you’re not a sportsbook?”

Tennis was his go-to sport — he liked the speed of the matches — before he went to rehab in Virginia last year.

He had a relapse in December when he downloaded Polymarket and made a free $10 wager. He was confronted by his wife, who had his email connected to her phone and reached out to his sponsor.

While there has been no substantive research into the effect of prediction markets on sports gambling addiction, the experiences of the coach and the accountant are not uncommon for treatment experts.

“You’re seeing a lot of the same behaviors, whether it’s a prediction market or it’s gambling,” said Jody Bechtold, the CEO of The Better Institute, a Pennsylvania practice that works with people impacted by gambling disorders. “You’re seeing, you know, wagering more and more. Chasing losses, so ‘Oh, today was a bad day, I have to work tomorrow at the prediction markets to get my money back.’ ... The lies, the secrecy, and that it’s impacting everyday life.”

Kalshi spokeswoman Elisabeth Diana highlighted its programs for responsible trading — such as trading breaks and self-limits — and said it's working on other measures to further facilitate healthy trading behavior.

Compared to casinos, Diana said, Kalshi is “fairer, more transparent, and less predatory.”

"There is no house that wins when customers lose,” she said. "This means that Kalshi doesn’t hook losers and penalize winners.”

A message was left seeking comment from Polymarket.

Event contracts are increasingly popular on prediction markets

Sports have become a major category for prediction markets. Kalshi had more than $2 billion in total trading volume on this year’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament, according to Diana. Michigan’s 69-63 victory over Connecticut in the championship had $10.6 million in volume on Polymarket.

The U.S. market for sports-focused event contracts could grow to approximately $1.1 trillion in annual volume, according to a Bank of America report.

“A year ago, if you said prediction markets, I mean I don’t know what that is, I don’t see it,” said Dr. Timothy Fong, the co-director of the UCLA Gambling Studies Program. “Now we’re starting to see it more and more in our patients that come into the clinic. And it’s usually not one, it’s multiple platforms they’re betting on, right? ... When you have something that’s available, that’s accessible, that’s anonymous, is super easy to use, multiple times in a day, of course that’s going to raise the risk of addiction for any human on Earth.”

There are multiple ongoing lawsuits involving states and prediction markets, and the ramifications of the legal dispute are being felt on a variety of levels.

Marlene Warner, the CEO of the Massachusetts Council on Gaming and Health — a private nonprofit health organization that provides educational programs on gambling along with other services — said the situation with prediction markets “feels a bit like the wild, wild west right now.”

“We’re very used to like going to our state regulator or, you know, seeing a process go through where all of a sudden now you’re like, ‘OK, a piece of legislation has outlined what is appropriate for a licensed sports betting operator to do,’" Warner said. “And then you see the regulation come into place. And so you can track it. But right now, nobody knows kind of what the limits are.”

In most states with legal sports gambling, it is limited to ages 21 and older, while prediction markets are open for 18- to 20-year-olds with some exceptions. Prediction markets also have a presence in states where sports betting is illegal, including Texas and California.

“I don’t know enough frankly, we don’t know enough, nothing’s been studied about them, I can’t tell you whether they’re more less or exactly the same in terms of risk level,” Warner said. “But what I do know is they're in a very gray, unregulated space and that alone makes it difficult.”

Prediction markets fall under the jurisdiction of the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has a regulation that prohibits an event contract “that involves, relates to, or references terrorism, assassination, war, gaming, or an activity that is unlawful under any state or federal law.”

CFTC chairman Michael Selig is backing prediction markets in their legal proceedings against several states, asserting the commission's “exclusive jurisdiction over these markets.”

While that argument continues, the soccer coach and tax accountant are rebuilding their lives — while doing their best to stay vigilant with their addictions.

“You have to face this stuff or it just keeps getting worse,” the coach said.

___

AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports

___

The Associated Press receives support from Charles Schwab Foundation for educational and explanatory reporting to improve financial literacy. The independent foundation is separate from Charles Schwab and Co. Inc. The AP is solely responsible for its journalism.

Last weekend Fisher took the stage in a former Presbyterian church that he bought for a song and converted into a performance space and recording studio he calls Ragamuffin Hall, in the rural Pennsylvania community of McCoysville.

Fisher performed two sold-out concerts with Ben and Rose Stoltzfus, a married couple whose Amish background and church choir harmonies have drawn millions of YouTube clicks. It was a sort of warmup for shows they're playing together in the coming months at much larger theaters in Pennsylvania and Indiana.

“Ragamuffin Hall,” Fisher said, "is supposed to be a place where those weird things that'll get you ostracized everywhere else, we're like, 'Oh, no, that's a gift. And here's how you use it.'”

Fisher's parents were both raised in Amish families but his father joined a Mennonite congregation as a young adult. Among the Mennonite churches Fisher attended as a boy, musical instruments were rarely used.

Nonetheless, his father was a fan of Johnny Cash and didn't look too closely at what was on Fisher's MP3 player. When Fisher's brother came home from a camping trip with a mix CD featuring Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers and the Beach Boys, it changed his life.

“It blew my mind, right?” Fisher, now 31, recalled. He started learning keyboards and then guitar, bass and drums before adding music production — “mostly because I was dead set on making a living with music.”

“My buddies would be like, ‘Hey, I wrote a song for my girlfriend. Can you do a track?' And I’m like, sure.”

Recording in a converted church

He moved to Tennessee as a young adult and for three years immersed himself in the songwriting industry — the Oak Ridge Boys even recorded one of his tunes. But the road life didn't suit him — particularly bar gigs.

“There's drinking and carrying on,” Fisher said. “It's just not me. I'm not a prude, but I just don't enjoy that scene.”

Fisher considers his wife and three children his main priority and he remains a faithful Mennonite — his pastor once asked him why he didn’t just start a cabinetry business and launch a prison ministry. Yet his music production work eventually grew to the point three years ago that he could stop working as a carpenter.

In 2022, Fisher learned an old brick church several miles from his home was up for sale. After he laid out his vision for making it into a music incubator, they sold it to him below market value.

Musicians now regularly find their way to Ragamuffin Hall, mostly to record “clean country music" and rootsy bluegrass with a heavy dose of gospel. The acts he's recorded include an Amish man who played steel guitar with his son's band, a musician who drove for hours from Missouri and an Amish band from Ohio.

Last Saturday, he sprinkled his own songs between tunes made popular by Waylon Jennings, Alison Krauss and Don Williams. After a short set by Fisher's five-piece band, they stayed on stage to back up Ben and Rose. Fisher used an electric guitar fashioned from a beam recovered during his renovations of a church stairwell.

The overwhelmingly white matinee crowd consisted mostly of older people and included several of the musicians' family members. Downstairs, Ragamuffin Hall T-shirts were for sale alongside $3 homemade whoopie pies, a regionally ubiquitous Pennsylvania Dutch dessert.

A paradigm shift on stage

The insular culture and unadorned lives of conservative Anabaptist people aren't often associated with music, but Amish sacred music dates back half a millennium. Their 900-page hymnal — the “Ausbund” — was composed in part by Anabaptist prisoners in 16th century Germany and is still used today.

Fisher’s Amish roots and ability to speak Pennsylvania Dutch, the Old Order Amish dialect, has helped build rapport with likeminded musicians.

But Amish church music is almost always group singing only, without instruments or soloists. And the community generally discourages public performances and other “acts of pride.”

“There's a lot of great talent in that community that goes undeveloped because," Fisher said — using a Pennsylvania German phrase — "that's just, ‘we don’t do that,' you know.”

That's the sort of pushback he received in February after uploading a rollicking, live version of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” to YouTube. Fisher felt compelled to respond.

“I'm a believer, I'm a man of faith, and I'm not ashamed of that,” he replied in a video message. “But I do play a lot of different kinds of music, just like, you know, if you're a shed builder you build sheds for all kinds of people, not just churches and schools.”

Elam Stoltzfus, director of the Nicholas Stoltzfus Homestead in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, said it was “one of the shocks of my life” to attend a charity fundraiser last year at a farm where Ben and Rose performed. (Stoltzfus is a common name among the Amish.) There were bright lights, a video screen, barbecued chicken and vendors selling T-shirts, CDs and books.

Stoltzfus, whose family left the Old Order in the mid-1960s when he was 10, said the gathering was packed with Mennonite and Amish people. They weren’t dancing, but they did clap.

“I was thrilled to see this happen, because I knew this was a paradigm shift," he said. “When I was a teenager, it would never have happened.”

Legions of fans on social media

Amos Raber, of Goshen, Indiana, also grew up in a “horse and buggy” Amish family and considered himself Amish until he turned 22. Nowadays, he supports his family with concert performances and revenues garnered from what he says are millions of clicks a month on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music and Facebook.

In recent decades, Raber said, he's seen Amish youth increasingly come together with guitars to sing. But they can still run up against prohibitions on public performances.

“Most times, if you see someone who's really Amish doing that kind of thing, they're probably not going to be Amish long,” Raber said. Since they began recording and performing music, Ben and Rose have left their Amish church and joined a different Christian congregation. They declined comment for this story.

LeRoy Stoltzfus, a singer-songwriter living near Lancaster, was 13 when his family left the Amish church. He said changes in the Lancaster Amish settlement in recent years have made it easier for people to leave without losing contact with families and friends, a process called “shunning” that has long fascinated outsiders.

After years of playing guitar as a church worship leader and after spending four years at a Colorado Bible college, he's now making a living as a musician, stitching together concerts with online ad revenue and recordings for a fan base that includes many Amish and formerly Amish people.

“Ever since I can remember I wanted to be a star,” LeRoy Stoltzfus said. “But the older I got, I realized it wasn't about me — it was about putting out music and helping people.”

‘I would have laughed at you’

Justin Hiltner, a Nashville-based banjo player and songwriter who serves as managing editor of the roots music blog “The Bluegrass Situation,” said after delving into the music he was impressed with its quality. He said he also got the sense that Ben and Rose and Conrad Fisher and the others are building a musical community.

“This is clearly not just insular music that’s just facing other Amish folks or other Mennonite folks,” Hiltner said. “Clearly it’s ‘broken containment’ here.”

Hiltner called the music -- and Fisher’s videos -- “really compelling.”

“To kind of an outsider, this is the performance of American essentialism, the rural American ideal, right?” said Hiltner. “I did hear a level of talent that’s very clearly pushing and pulling these folks towards bringing their music to a wider audience.”

Religiously conservative musicians can market their recordings through a network of bookstores across the U.S. and Canada. At one of them, Ken’s Educational Joys in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, racks of CDs are sold alongside a floor-to-ceiling selection of Bibles.

Proprietor Lydell Zimmerman said his biggest music sellers are a cappella recordings, but he's noticed Ben and Rose have drawn a real following.

“I think their presence as an Amish couple singing online is what brought people’s attention to them,” Zimmerman said.

Ben and Rose came to Fisher's studio when Ben's brother, a friend of Fisher's from Lancaster, booked a session there.

He realized right away Ben and Rose had talent. Tapping into Fisher’s production skills, they've amassed more than 30 million views for their videos on YouTube. Eventually he proposed some live shows and the couple agreed.

“I started recording when I was 14,” Fisher said. “If you would have told me two years ago that what's going to put me on the map or boost my business in a big way, it's going to be an Old Order Amish couple, I would have laughed at you.”

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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All-night sessions. Hours of dead zones with no action on the floor. Legislation being written on the fly, behind closed doors. Sudden votes scheduled. Spectacular failures. And, as happened this week, stunning turnarounds in which the House actually passes bills.

"Sometimes it’s an ugly process, sometimes it’s a long process," Johnson said after House passage of a bipartisan bill to fund much of the Department of Homeland Security, ending the longest agency shutdown in history. "But we got it done."

Republicans, who face an uphill climb this election year to keep hold of their paper-thin House majority, appear at times as if they are still learning on the job, years after having returned to power in 2022, while they are also about to ask voters in November to rehire them for another term.

This week's starts and stops — for example, five hours of delay as Johnson huddled behind closed doors to salvage his agenda, then a sudden vote tally near 11 p.m. — would typically have been the kind of situation that shocked the political and procedural senses. Now, it's just another Wednesday.

Or two weeks ago, when a routine House Rules Committee hearing ended up becoming a midnight forum to debut a just-produced 14-page bill to revise a surveillance bill, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, before it was rushed to the floor for a 2 a.m. vote. It failed.

“House Republicans have shown again that they can’t govern,” said Rep. Ted Lieu of California, part of Democratic leadership.

“They routinely pass bills to the Senate that are way too extreme, then it ends up that we have all these floor session days where we’re just doing nothing,” he said.

House GOP's slim majority makes leader's job challenging

Johnson, who took over for the ousted Kevin McCarthy more than two years ago, is presiding over one of the slimmest House majorities in modern times, leaving him no room to spare if he's trying to pass legislation on party line votes, without Democrats.

The speaker is juggling not only President Donald Trump's priorities but also those of the various factions that make up his majority, from the conservative House Freedom Caucus to what remains of the GOP's more pragmatic conservatives.

And Johnson’s own future is always in question, after Republicans chased other speakers, including McCarthy, John Boehner and Newt Gingrich, to early exits.

Last year Johnson, of Louisiana, led passage of the party's signature achievement, a big bill of tax breaks and safety net cuts, which Trump signed into law. At the time, he quipped about the difficulty of getting it over the finish line.

“I do so deeply desire to have just a normal Congress,” the speaker said in July.

“But it doesn’t happen anymore," he said. “Our way is to plow through and get it done."

What's ahead as House GOP tries to stay in power

Ahead of the fall elections, Johnson and other Republican lawmakers have discussed an agenda that includes the promise of another GOP-only budget package like the tax cuts bill that they could push through the House and the Senate, without Democratic votes.

Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, said Thursday that he expects “the centerpiece” of that package "will be supporting our troops" with more than $100 billion in funding for the war against Iran as well as money to replenish defense munitions and other Pentagon-related needs.

Despite the turbulent week in the House, Arrington said what they're calling budget reconciliation 3.0 should be the “next order of business.”

Yet GOP lawmakers may decide it's better to skip the hard work of legislating, and the dramatic upheavals that tend to come with it, and hit the campaign trail to win over voters instead.

Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., the chairman of the House GOP's campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee, acknowledged that trying to pass legislation with such a tight majority "can be rough. It's ugly."

“I'd be fine with letting us go home and campaign,” Hudson said. “But we've got a lot of important work still to do.”

Some of Johnson's most ardent sparring partners, those most conservative Republican lawmakers, turned their blame for the messy process not on Johnson's leadership but on their own GOP allies across the Capitol in the Senate, who often dismiss the House's work.

“Yeah, sometimes, it gets a little tense,” said Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas. “But we’re still getting stuff done. We’re sending it over to the Senate. So we look forward to them doing their job.”

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