Trump is visiting the Nassau County Police Academy in suburban Long Island, where the White House said he will release new FBI crime statistics showing a decrease in violent crime for 2025.

“President Trump promised to make America safe again and the data proves he has done just that,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said. “Unlike Defund-the-Police Democrats, President Trump will always stand with our law enforcement officers and deliver safer American neighborhoods.”

Trump's visit is aimed at boosting Republican candidates in closely contested races across his home state, but just how much his presence will help is in question as he faces lagging approval ratings and a deeply unpopular war in Iran with no end in sight.

Trump narrowly won Nassau County in 2024, flipping it for Republicans for the first time in more than two decades. It's home to two Democratic House seats that Republicans now see as winnable this fall, and it's home turf for Nassau County executive Bruce Blakeman, the Trump-endorsed Republican challenging Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Trump will be joined by Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel in Nassau County, which has one of the largest police forces in the nation.

Crime becoming a theme in New York races

It's the second time this year Trump has visited New York in support of Blakeman and other Republicans. He stopped by the Hudson Valley area in May for a speech in which he said Blakeman would curb “out of control” crime.

Crime has emerged as a significant issue in the governor's race, with both candidates claiming to have the better track record of making New Yorkers safe. Hochul visited a different Long Island police department in July to announce a statewide investment in policing technology.

A statement from Blakeman said he's grateful Trump is visiting “to tour our outstanding, state-of-the-art law enforcement facilities” and pay tribute to law enforcement workers.

In a Fox Business interview Thursday, Blakeman played down concerns that Trump's visit would be unpopular with voters in New York City.

“When the most powerful person in the world comes to visit you and shows that you have a relationship together, I think that’s a very good thing,” Blakeman said, adding that even voters who disagree with Trump might appreciate a governor with a direct line to the president.

Hochul campaign spokesperson Ryan Radulovacki said the governor "has invested billions in public safety to protect New Yorkers — ‘MAGA all the way’ Bruce Blakeman is bringing Donald Trump to tour the county where he let violent crime spike to decade highs and Trump’s unaccountable ICE agents abuse their power.”

For GOP, safety is seen as a winning issue

Matt Gorman, a Republican strategist, said Trump's visit stands to boost Blakeman along with Republican challengers looking to unseat a pair of Democratic incumbents in Nassau County districts. Michael LiPetri Jr. is challenging Rep. Tom Suozzi in New York's 3rd Congressional District, while Jeanine Driscoll is opposing Rep. Lauren Gillen in the 4th Congressional District.

The focus on crime is seen as a cornerstone issue for Republicans that appeals to Trump's base along with suburban swing voters, Gorman said.

“On the strategic level, crime is an issue that Republicans feel comfortable going on offense with, where the country kind of broadly agrees with them,” he said.

Trump is touting the issue as he faces low approval ratings on a number of other issues, including the economy and the Iran war. An AP-NORC poll from August 2025 found that Trump’s handling of crime was among his strongest issues, though his approval on the issue had fallen by 10 points by December 2025.

Trump lashes out over report finding he hasn't reduced crime

While many of Trump's recent swing-state speeches have focused on his tax breaks and economic policies, Trump often mentions his effort to curb crime by deploying the National Guard in Washington, New Orleans and other Democrat-led cities.

This week, Trump lashed out at the Center for American Progress and threatened to sue the liberal think tank over a report finding that the National Guard deployments failed to reduce crime. Without giving evidence, Trump said in a social media post that “crime is way down since I took Office, and they know it.”

For Trump, talking about crime reduction during his trip to New York offers a chance to reach voters across political and class divisions, said Jesse Hunt, a Republican strategist.

“The issue of crime and safety is a massive winner for Republicans,” Hunt said. “What we’ve seen from the Trump administration and Republicans in general is a real focus on that issue. And they should highlight the successes.”

The White House said the new FBI statistics will show year-over-year decreases in murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault. Crime experts often caution against drawing too much from single-year changes and encourage a focus on long-term patterns.

The dismissal marks the latest setback in swing states’ efforts to prosecute fake electors who tried to keep Trump in the White House after he lost to Joe Biden in 2020.

Three other fake elector cases in Arizona, Michigan and Georgia have been dismissed. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes recently dismissed her office’s criminal case but vowed to bring it back to a grand jury in hopes of securing another indictment. The dismissal was a legal maneuver aimed at getting around a deadline for starting new grand jury proceedings after Mayes lost an appeal earlier in June.

Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, who is also running for governor as a Democrat, brought charges relating to forgery and “offering a false instrument for filing or record” against the six Nevada Republicans, who pleaded not guilty.

His office plans to appeal the ruling.

The defendants included Michael McDonald, the chair of the Nevada Republican Party, and Jesse Law, the former chair of the Clark County Republican Party.

In a Thursday statement, McDonald’s defense attorney Richard Wright called the attorney general’s plans to appeal “hasty” and “premature” and said continuing the case was politically motivated.

After the 2020 election, the six Republican electors gathered outside of the Nevada Legislature to sign a certificate giving the state’s six electoral votes to Trump, despite Biden winning the state by more than 30,000 votes. The ceremony was broadcast online, and the video footage was used as evidence in the case.

The case has revolved around the defendants’ intent behind submitting the certificate.

Prosecutors argue the defendants intended for their documents to be mistaken for actual electoral votes that then-Vice President Mike Pence would count on Jan. 6, 2021.

The defendants say submitting the certificate was an act of “political theater” designed to publicize their concerns about the election. They were preserving their rights to challenge the official election results and had no intent to deceive a government agency into accepting the GOP certificate as real, their attorneys argued.

Nevada Judge Mary Kay Holthus agreed.

She found there was a lack of evidence that showed the electors intended to deceive government officials, and she determined that the state failed to disclose exculpatory evidence to the grand jury.

“The fact that Defendants openly announced both their actions and their asserted purpose, rather than concealing their conduct or attempting to secretly induce governmental reliance, weighs against a reasonable inference that they acted with fraudulent intent,” Holthus wrote in her ruling.

Jurisdiction had also been an issue, but the case eventually landed in Clark County, which is home to Las Vegas and leans Democratic.

The case was originally scheduled for a trial in Nevada's capital of Carson City, but the attorney general's office voluntarily dismissed the case to pursue it instead in Southern Nevada, which leans more Democratic.

Courts have dismissed similar cases in Michigan and Georgia, and a special prosecutor dropped a federal case in late 2024 that charged Trump with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. Those cases ended after Trump defeated Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024. A fake electors case is ongoing in Wisconsin.

An official with the Board of Peace, the body Trump established to oversee the fragile ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, said Kushner, board high representative Nickolay Mladenov, and executive board member and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair would arrive in Israel on Sunday.

The group will then travel to Cairo, where meetings of a Palestinian technocratic group set to assume control of Gaza under a U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal have been taking place for the past several months, the official said. The trip was reported earlier by Axios.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because planning for details of the trip has not yet been finalized, said the meetings would demonstrate the determination of Trump and the Board of Peace to “see peace, prosperity and sustainable security emerge” in a demilitarized Gaza where Hamas has ceded control to allow reconstruction of the devastated territory.

But Israel has dismissed a recent deal announced by Trump for Hamas to disarm and Israel to withdraw its forces from the Palestinian territory, marking a rare public display of friction with the Trump administration. Though Hamas accepted the plan to decommission its weapons, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in recent days that Israel would not withdraw until Hamas has completely disarmed.

The deal had been seen as a potential breakthrough for ending the war in Gaza. The agreement was based on an October ceasefire that ended major military operations and brought about the release of the remaining hostages held in Gaza, but it has stalled on other fronts.

The Lincoln has been supporting the U.S. war against Iran, and its deployment has included a record-setting uninterrupted time at sea of more than 260 days. Several Democratic lawmakers are pressing for accountability from the Pentagon over conditions aboard the carrier, which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday said were “completely misrepresented.”

Extended deployments of carriers during the Iran conflict have raised concerns about the impact on service members who are away from home for long periods as well as the increasing strain on the ship and its equipment. While renewed hostilities between the U.S. and Iran have calmed in recent weeks, the Navy has reimposed a blockade on Iranian ports in the crucial Strait of Hormuz, and the Trump administration has offered no clarity on how it intends to wind down the war.

Hegseth told reporters that the U.S. can maintain the blockade “indefinitely.”

A new aircraft carrier is heading west from the Asia-Pacific

The USS George Washington left port in Da Nang, Vietnam, last week, a Navy statement said. The carrier, along with a cruiser and a destroyer, have since been spotted crossing the Singapore Strait.

A Navy official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail sensitive ship details, confirmed that the Washington was in the Strait of Malacca, which links the Pacific and Indian oceans and puts the carrier on a course to head into the Indian Ocean. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that the Washington would replace the Lincoln as one of the two aircraft carriers now stationed in the Middle East.

The move would leave the waters of the Pacific without a U.S. carrier presence for an unknown period of time. The Trump administration sees China, the dominant power in the region, as “a settled force” that only needs to be deterred from dominating the U.S. or its allies and not the top global adversary that it was under the Biden administration.

The Lincoln originally deployed Nov. 21 from San Diego, and it arrived in the Middle East in January, ahead of the launch of the Iran war on Feb. 28. The Navy conceded that the conflict created a “highly contested environment where traditional supply hubs in the Middle East were disrupted by combat actions.” That, in turn, led to shortages and loss of mail aboard the aircraft carrier, the Navy said in a statement.

“Leadership prioritized mission-critical supplies: first food, then hygiene items, then mail,” the statement said, before assuring that sailors aboard the ship now have access to clean water and “healthy meal options.”

Democrats call for scrutiny, while the Pentagon defends conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln

Democratic lawmakers are calling for investigations, more information and greater visibility into conditions aboard the ship, which was originally set to return home in May.

“The Lincoln’s prolonged deployment is especially significant because it is occurring in the context of continuing military operations against Iran and the possibility that substantial US naval forces will be required in the region for an extended period,” Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, wrote in a letter to Navy leadership asking for a response to several questions.

Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego, a Marine Corps veteran, said on social media that he is looking to take a bipartisan delegation on an official oversight visit to the ship and that the way sailors are being treated is “not just disgusting; it’s dangerous.”

Hegseth told reporters during ​a visit to Panama that he wants the Lincoln's sailors home and crews rotated as quickly as possible but pushed back against reports of problems aboard.

“We make sure that every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide them at every single moment. Some deployments are longer than others, and ​I have more respect and gratitude for those sailors than ​anybody. What they do in those high seas in those austere ⁠conditions with less port calls — it’s incredible.”

Navy leaders, including acting Secretary Hung Cao, last week held a tense town hall for families of troops aboard the USS Lincoln, at which the commanders of the Navy’s air and surface forces promised to do everything they could to relieve the aircraft carrier. MS NOW reported earlier on the meeting.

When reports of food shortages aboard the ship first surfaced in April, the Navy pushed back, calling those reports “false.”

Reports of mental health concerns and more aboard the ship

Reports have since emerged that sailors on the Lincoln are struggling with mental health concerns. The Navy said in its statement that it has “not observed an increase in suicidal ideations or attempts aboard the ship,” but officials declined to provide data, citing operational security and patient privacy concerns.

The Navy official said that a sailor aboard the Lincoln went overboard in early August but that the person was quickly recovered, treated by the ship’s medical department and transferred off ship for follow-on care. The official would not say if it was being considered a suicide attempt.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, pushed back on reports about poor conditions.

“The Sailors and Marines of the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group remain resilient and resolved after more than 260 days at sea, 10,000 aircraft flights, and 1.5 million pounds of ordnance expended,” the command said on social media.

Other carriers also have had long runs that have raised concerns about morale. The USS Gerald R. Ford returned home in mid-May after an 11-month deployment, the longest since the Vietnam War, during which it supported the U.S. war with Iran and the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.

During its deployment, the Ford experienced a fire in a laundry space that forced the carrier to turn around and return to the Mediterranean Sea for repairs and left hundreds of sailors without places to sleep.

Concerns about the demands of battle and the dangers of overextending ships and their crew predate the Iran war, with a number of mishaps on ships battling Houthi rebels in Yemen in 2024 and 2025, including the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman on a longer-than-expected deployment.

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Associated Press writer Ben Finley contributed to this report.

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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org.

The new mandate would likely cost billions of dollars and revert the Navy’s most advanced ships to a system that takes more sailors to operate and is more difficult to maintain.

The memo directs the Pentagon and the Navy to present Trump with plans to remove the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, also known as EMALS, within two months. It also says the Ford-class carrier's electromagnetic weapons elevators should be replaced.

The move comes after years of Trump railing against the new, magnetically powered catapult system that shoots fighter jets off the deck of the carriers. It also comes at a time when the U.S. military is trying to find funding from Congress for all its desired equipment and as the Navy is struggling to fill its ships with enough sailors.

Trump's ire with the new technology goes back to at least 2017 in his first term, when he claimed the new system is “not good” and “doesn't have the power” of the older, steam systems in an interview with Time magazine.

“You're going to goddamned steam,” Trump said at the time. The topic has frequently come up since then at rallies and other events.

While Trump is looking to roll back the latest technology, the newest Chinese aircraft carriers employ electromagnetic catapults and France said it plans to use the system on its new carrier.

Trump's memo directs the fourth Ford-class carrier, the USS Doris Miller, to be the first ship to include the new changes. That will leave the USS Gerald R. Ford, as well as the forthcoming USS John F. Kennedy and USS Enterprise, untouched.

However, redesigning an already finalized ship for such a major system change will not be an easy task.

General Atomics, the company that makes EMALS, told The Associated Press in an email that the decision not to proceed with the system on the USS Doris Miller “warrants careful reconsideration.”

Trump's memo that mandates the removal of the system also noted that one of the issues facing shipbuilding is the Navy's constant design changes, “which have resulted in cost growth, delays, and cancellations.”

General Atomics said the work on the Doris Miller's catapults and arresting gear was already halfway complete and said “changing course now would introduce significant cost, schedule, and integration risks."

The move comes as Congress will weigh the necessary budget and funding bills that the Trump administration has said they need to fund the Pentagon and the Iran war.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth estimated last month that the war's cost grew to $37.5 billion as Republicans prepared a $95 billion package to fund the military, along with other White House priorities.

Hegseth said the supplemental war funding is an “urgent, necessary” injection of money, and with Trump's proposed $1.5 trillion defense budget a generational investment in the military.

The House narrowly adopted both but the Senate still must act when it returns in September.

Some of the key advantages to the electromagnetic system are its ability to launch aircraft at faster speeds while being easier to maintain, requiring fewer sailors to operate and using less space aboard the ship.

EMALS aboard the USS Ford cut the number of sailors need to operate the catapults from about a dozen to two.

Reverting to a system that requires more people to operate it comes as the Navy has struggled to translate its recruiting successes in the past year to actually filling jobs on warships. At the start of the year, the Navy had about 20,000 unfilled posts across the fleet.

In February, the Navy touted the system in a press release that said it allowed the USS Ford to launch and recover aircraft at a higher rate than its predecessor, the Nimitz-class ships.

Gun rights activists and Republican lawmakers called the change a historic win for the Second Amendment, while gun control groups said the ruling will leave Americans less safe.

In 1934, following high-profile shootings, Congress used its taxing power to enact the National Firearms Act. The law required individuals to pay a $200 fee before transferring or making certain firearms — on top of registering them — in an effort to curtail these activities. But last year, the One Big Beautiful Bill ended that tax for some categories, including short-barrel shotguns, short-barrel rifles and silencers.

The same day President Donald Trump signed the bill into law in July 2025, firearms trade groups, gun businesses and a San Angelo gun owner sued to overturn parts of the NFA. Just over a month later, Texas and 14 other Republican-led states joined the lawsuit.

On Aug. 5, U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix in Lubbock ruled that the regulations, enacted under lawmakers’ authority to impose taxes, could not continue after the tax was revoked.

“The challenged NFA provisions are unconstitutional,” the Trump-appointed judge wrote. “Congress’s choice to eliminate the transfer and making taxes matters, and the defendants cannot save the NFA’s regulatory scheme by referring to a power that Congress never invoked. Efforts to render the NFA constitutional must come from Congress, not this Court.”

Hendrix limited the effect of his order to the states that joined the lawsuit. The judge also gave the federal government seven days to file an emergency appeal. When the Department of Justice did not, the ruling took effect Thursday.

The DOJ could still appeal within 60 days of Hendrix’s decision, but its plans are unclear.

“The Department respects Americans’ Second Amendment rights and is currently assessing the impact of the court’s ruling,” the DOJ said in a Thursday statement.

The lack of an emergency appeal also came after a group of Republicans in Congress, including nine from Texas, urged newly appointed U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche not to fight the court decision. On Thursday, they cheered the win.

“The Trump administration has delivered a decisive victory for the Second Amendment,” U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Austin, said in a post on X.

Others — including state Rep. Wes Virdell, R-Brady, and Brandon Herrera, a Republican candidate running for 23rd Congressional District who is known as “The AK Guy” — celebrated by making a purchase after the ruling took effect at midnight.

“Last night was an amazing experience to be a part of history in the making,” Virdell said in a Thursday post on X.

Gun control groups blasted the DOJ’s decision, saying short-barrel rifles and shotguns are powerful weapons that have been used in mass shootings, while silencers can make it difficult for bystanders and law enforcement to detect if and where a gun has been fired.

“Today, our government is failing us,” Brady President Kris Brown said in a statement. “Today, the gun industry and silencer dealers are celebrating, while Americans are left less safe.”

The plan to remake the flagship campus’ core curriculum replaces the sprawling menu of classes students can now take to meet core requirements with a more structured core curriculum organized around the humanities, social sciences and science, technology, engineering and math.

But how the overhaul connects to UT-Austin’s new Center for the Humanities remains unclear.

A report from a 22-member faculty task force appointed by UT-Austin President Jim Davis proposes 12 requirements across the core areas, compared with the current 10.

Davis described the existing core to the University of Texas System regents as a “haphazard grab bag of classes,” pointing to a course on the history of college football as an example of a specialized class that may be a worthwhile elective but, in his view, should not to fulfill half of a student’s U.S. history requirement.

UT students would have to take courses focused on Western civilization, great questions of human life, the principles of American politics, world politics and cultures, great ideas in science and computer science and artificial intelligence, according to the proposal.

Recommendations include creating a “Texas 40: Great Thinkers” list for courses on great questions of human life and three separate 40-author lists for British, American and world literature courses. Great questions courses would have to draw at least two-thirds of their content from the thinkers list.

Faculty members would have a chance to shape their own courses with their creativity and expertise, one of the taskforce members, Richard Reddick, told The Texas Tribune.

“Academic freedom is a big piece of this,” Reddick said. “I can’t imagine telling our faculty colleagues, ‘Here’s your syllabus, teach this.’ It’s not going to work.”

The task force recommends students complete four of the proposed requirements at UT-Austin, rather than accepting transfer or dual-credit coursework from elsewhere. That would include the great questions of human life, principles of American politics, great ideas in science, and computer science and artificial intelligence.

The new requirements would take 36 credit hours, down from the current 42. That would leave students six additional hours for electives, courses in their major or other classes.

Under the proposal, specialized classes not selected for the new core would remain available as electives, but university leaders acknowledged their future could depend on whether enough students enroll.

The taskforce also recommended UT-Austin offer a small-class option for every core requirement over time, prioritize in-person teaching and limit fully online core classes.

University officials plan to begin offering new courses in fall 2027 and make the redesigned core mandatory for a new incoming class in fall 2028. The taskforce has not yet identified which courses would qualify. Its report recommends three faculty-led committees decide what proposals meet the new standards.

Earlier in the meeting, three UT-Austin students criticized Davis and regents for what they described as a lack of transparency and meaningful student and faculty input into recent academic changes.

They pointed to the consolidation of gender and ethnic studies; plans to move biology operations to make room for the School of Civic Leadership; and the closure of the Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy Library.

“You have shown how little you regard the wants and needs of students, staff and professors by bulldozing prominent institutions without allowing feedback from the people they affect the most,” said Elise James, a government major who is a member of the Students for a Democratic Society.

University officials said the review included student input. Reddick, a professor of higher education leadership and policy in the College of Education, and Kristin Patterson, an associate professor of instruction in biology and undergraduate studies in the College of Natural Science, served on the core-curriculum task force.

Patterson and Reddick told the Tribune that the group met weekly for an hour and a half and heard from students and faculty across campus as well as from outside experts. Students generally praised the classes they had taken but found the current core difficult to navigate, the professors said.

Under the proposal, each requirement could be fulfilled by multiple courses, and faculty members from all departments would be invited to develop them.

UT-Austin officials are reviewing the courses all undergraduates must take after a 2025 state law required public university governing boards to certify that those courses prepare students for civic and professional life and support workforce preparation.

The law also requires boards to consider the courses’ potential cost and effect on students’ time to degree. The boards must complete their first review by Jan. 1 and repeat it at least once every five years.

The regents did not vote on UT-Austin’s proposed changes. Davis said he would return to the board for approval as officials develop and staff the new courses.

Last week, the Texas State University System regents were the first to act under the new law, approving revised core-course lists for its seven institutions. At Texas State University in San Marcos, the review changed the learning outcomes for 115 courses to focus on what students should be able to do after taking them — rather than particular attitudes, beliefs or values — and removed eight Honors courses that were no longer taught.

The law did more than require universities to review their core curriculums. At UT-Austin, it also replaced the Faculty Council, an elected body that advised university leaders on curriculum and other matters, with faculty advisory groups appointed by the president, including the core-curriculum task force.

But the push to reshape what UT-Austin students learn predates last year’s law.

Republican state leaders have long argued that Texas’ public universities are too liberal or too focused on ideas that do not prepare students for careers.

In 2021, lawmakers gave UT-Austin $6 million to create the Civitas Institute, a think tank focused on individual liberty, limited government, private enterprise and free markets. Two years later, UT regents created the School of Civic Leadership to house the institute before lawmakers could vote on a bill that would have required the university to do so.

The school and the institute had or were set to have 42 tenured or tenure-track faculty members as of Aug. 3, according to records obtained by the Tribune, nearly triple the 15 positions lawmakers proposed requiring. Its major, Civics Honors, enrolled 103 students when it began last fall.

As UT-Austin built up the School of Civic Leadership, it accelerated plans to consolidate seven College of Liberal Arts departments, including African and African Diaspora Studies, American Studies, Mexican American and Latino Studies and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, into two new departments by fall 2026.

Davis said the restructuring followed a review that found wide disparities in student-to-faculty ratios across the college.

Lauren Gutterman, whose appointment as chair of American Studies ends Saturday, said she expects to become an associate professor in the new Department of Social and Cultural Analysis.

Gutterman said she was not aware of any faculty members in the consolidated units losing their jobs, though she added that some staff members were fired or reassigned. She worries university leaders will not replace professors who leave, retire or receive outside offers.

“They’re not going to kind of fire us wholesale, but find ways of chipping away at the faculty within these units,” Gutterman said.

Meanwhile, Davis and university leaders have said little publicly about the Center for Humanities, whose website notes it will focus on teaching and research tied to the core curriculum.

Davis did not answer questions after the regents’ meeting. UT spokesperson Mike Rosen did not respond to questions about who created, approved or funded the center or how it will fit alongside the existing Humanities Institute, which was established in 2001 to support humanities research.

The Austin American-Statesman first reported the center this month. The center’s website was created July 8, according to its underlying code. Eight of the 11 faculty members listed on the website work at the Civitas Institute while five previously worked at the University of Florida’s Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education, a state-backed program that later became a college. Neither Center for Humanities Director Robert Ingram nor Humanities Institute Director Tanya Clement responded to a request for comment.

Patterson and Reddick said the core-curriculum task force’s work is complete. They did not know about the Center for Humanities or what role, if any, it will play in the core-curriculum overhaul, the professors said. The task force’s written report lists both Ingram and Jill Ingram, a professor of humanities at the Center, as members.

Before the 2025 law, a major academic initiative — such as a new center — would generally have been developed with faculty input and presented to the Faculty Council for discussion and a vote before moving to university leaders and regents, said Liliana Garces, a professor in the UT-Austin’s College of Education.

“I was very surprised, to say the least, to learn about the center from a news article,” Garces said.

At Thursday’s meeting, regents praised Davis’ core-curriculum proposal and his leadership.

Board Chair Kevin P. Eltife said UT-Austin had “lacked that in the past.” Board Vice Chair Janiece Longoria said Davis was “proving that we’re capable of doing hard things” by replacing a core that had grown “like an amoeba, way out of control.”

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

Disclosure: Open Campus, Texas State University and The University of Texas System have been financial supporters 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 Texas Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

During an hourslong meeting that was conducted virtually, the board voted to add Trump's name to the building's facade so it would read “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump.” The plaza in front of the building would be named after Trump and most of the space at the venue would be closed for two years to allow for substantial renovations.

The changes, described by Rep. Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat who is an ex-officio board member, and her lawyers, amount to a dramatic test of U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper.

He ruled in May that letters affixed to the building that spelled out Trump's name were added illegally and he ordered their removal, a decision that the Republican administration failed to persuade courts to overturn. At the same time, Cooper blocked a two-year closure that was set to take effect July 5, saying an earlier board vote authorizing the shuttering was “ill-informed and seemingly preordained.”

“This latest development is a transparent effort to circumvent the Court’s ruling, and flies in the face of the statutes that Congress passed,” Beatty said in a statement. “I will continue to fight for this treasured national monument.”

A Kennedy Center representative did not respond to a request for comment.

Much of Thursday's board meeting was expected to focus on the extent of closures required to allow for renovations that the Kennedy Center's management says are needed to improve safety. In response to the judge's criticism of the earlier vote, the institution's leaders said they would provide the board with three options to consider.

They included a complete closure or a partial closure that would allow “some continued public access and limited programming in spaces unaffected” by the work. A third option would “consider a highly limited series of phased closures to address only the Center’s most serious infrastructure needs while scheduling and maintaining a full slate of programming.”

Ultimately, the board decided to close the building for two years while leaving the potential for some degree of programming to still happen in an outdoor space known as the Reach. The decision to move ahead with the two-year closure, in addition to the moves to memorialize Trump, could revive questions about whether the board seriously considered the full range of options, a point Democrats emphasized after the meeting.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat who is also an ex officio board member, criticized a “sham meeting.”

“What happened today was nothing more than a rubber stamp on a decision the President made months ago that the Board already tried to effectuate without doing proper due diligence,” he said in a statement.

The Kennedy Center has become a metaphor for presidential power

During Trump's second term, the Kennedy Center has become an unlikely — and highly visible — metaphor for presidential power. While he largely ignored the institution during his first term in Washington, Trump moved quickly to oust its leadership when he returned to office in January 2025 and replaced it with a board of trustees that named him chairman.

His name was quickly added to the building, before coming down in June in response to Cooper's order. The area where it once stood is now covered by a massive tarp.

The Kennedy Center moves are part of Trump's broader push to reshape the physical landscape of the nation's capital in ways that have few modern parallels.

He demolished the East Wing of the White House and is building a controversial ballroom in its place, though an appeals court ruled last week that construction should stop because Congress didn't approve the project. Trump has said he will take the case to the Supreme Court.

His remodel of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has also stumbled after algae returned and U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro refuted his claims that a vandal was responsible for the damage.

Meanwhile, Trump is planning extensive renovations of a golf course in East Potomac Park, which could significantly reduce the public’s access to running and biking paths. He is also moving forward with a triumphal arch that will sit near Arlington National Cemetery.

Trump has derided the Kennedy Center as “rusted, rotted, and rat and bug infested” and threatened to hand the building over to Congress after Cooper rejected the closure and the addition of the president’s name to the building.

The institution’s leadership has argued that it’s in genuine need of repair and updating.

Matt Floca, the Kennedy Center’s executive director and chief operating officer, guided a group of journalists through the building in April, highlighting severe water damage that he said corroded steel in some places as thin as tissue paper. Some pieces of equipment, including several 800-ton chillers that help cool the building, are decades old and in need of replacement.

At the time, Floca said he considered doing the repairs individually but insisted it was his recommendation to Trump to close the building and move forward with the renovation all at once.

“When the president asked, ‘How do you make these projects the best? How do you make them really excellent and deliver them efficiently?’ My recommendation was you close the building and you do everything over a definite period of time, two years,” he said.

More recently, the legal battles became the subject of barbs and jokes as comedian Bill Maher accepted the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in late June. At the start of the program, Pamella Roland DeVos, a Kennedy Center trustee appointed by Trump, described the institution as a “national cultural center open not just for some but for every American patron who wants to experience the greatest art and expression the world has to offer.”

“The responsibility that comes with it is one our board takes very seriously,” she said.

McALLEN — A federal judge upheld a temporary restraining order against government contractors building a border wall along the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, pausing construction until Aug. 27.

Spencer Construction LLC and Royal Concrete Products LLC were prohibited from continuing construction or related work and from entering the property that belongs to Hidalgo County Irrigation District No. 2, according to the judge’s ruling, which upholds a temporary restraining order issued by a state district court in Hidalgo County on July 30.

The irrigation district petitioned the state district court for the restraining order, arguing that the contractors trespassed onto their property and began work on the border wall without its consent.

The irrigation district, which is a public corporation that distributes water for agriculture, owns a 120-foot strip of land that housed one of its irrigation canals, as well as 60 feet on either side of the canal.

The irrigation district claimed that Spencer, a Tucson-based company, began interfering with and altering the property on July 20, according to the petition. It also alleged that the company’s activities “recklessly allowed large amounts of dirt to fall into the irrigation canal,” which interfered with the infrastructure.

Royal, a local subcontractor, delivered and poured concrete materials for the border wall construction, which the irrigation district said constituted an ongoing trespass of the property and interfered with the infrastructure.

Prior to seeking a restraining order, the irrigation district said it had contacted Spencer demanding that the company halt its work, but that the company did not stop.

Ruben R. Peña, the attorney representing Spencer, said the company is complying with the restraining order, but that it was only acting as a contractor for the government.

“We don’t have a dog in that fight,” Peña said.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to questions about the restraining order.

The Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge has been a possible site for border infrastructure since President Donald Trump’s first term, given its location along the Rio Grande. Anti-border wall activists protested and held rallies calling for the refuge’s protection, fearing that a border wall would interfere with the environment and the natural movement of wildlife.

Federal lawmakers had secured protections against border wall construction for the site during Trump’s first term, by preventing funds to be appropriated for border wall construction in certain environmentally or historically significant areas.

But last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill, Trump’s signature spending bill, channeled funding for border wall construction that bypassed the appropriations process, allowing construction to move forward at Santa Ana.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has said that the border wall in Santa Ana will measure 30 feet tall and will include access gates so visitors will still be able to access land south of the wall.

Reporting in the Rio Grande Valley is supported in part by the Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, Inc.

Monday’s announcement by the Republican president calls for separating combination shots — including the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine — into separate injections. Appointments for that and other vaccinations should be spaced out whenever possible, the order states.

To accomplish that, drugmakers would need to revive a slate of individual vaccines that have not been widely used in the U.S. for decades. They would also have to build new manufacturing plants capable of producing millions more vaccine doses than the nation currently uses.

For parents, unbundling the MMR vaccine and spacing out the shots would mean returning to the doctor’s office many more times than is currently needed. Those appointments could also strain pediatricians who typically administer the shots, while driving up costs tied to syringes and other medical supplies.

Studies in the U.S. and other countries have shown that combination vaccines increase the likelihood that children will be fully protected from infectious diseases before starting school.

Health experts say there is no scientific basis for changing course.

“We do things that are less convenient and more expensive if there’s a good reason to do it,” said Dr. Anna Durbin, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “There is no good justification for this. I think it’s very bad public health policy.”

Trump's plan would require vaccine manufacturing overhaul

Under Trump's executive order, federal officials are instructed to develop within 90 days plans for breaking up the MMR shot and spacing out other vaccines.

But pharmaceutical scientists and former regulators say those changes would likely take years and require drugmakers to spend tens of millions of dollars on new studies and manufacturing facilities.

Currently, there are no individual vaccines in the U.S. for measles, mumps or rubella. All the vaccines approved for those viruses by the Food and Drug Administration are combination shots. That three-in-one approach has been the standard in the U.S. since the 1970s.

Dr. Jesse Goodman, a former FDA vaccine chief, said companies may have to conduct large studies showing their new individual shots produce immune system-boosting reactions in children similar to the current versions. The specifics would depend upon the quality of data from the original standalone vaccines and how it's viewed by FDA regulators.

“The question is how much has changed since then and how comfortable will the FDA and the companies be relying on those comparisons?” said Goodman, who is now a professor at Georgetown University.

Manufacturers may also have to demonstrate the safety of new manufacturing facilities and procedures, given that individual measles shots haven’t been widely produced in the U.S. for decades.

Designing, constructing and getting federal sign-off for new vaccine plants typically takes about five years, according to industry experts.

Additionally, Goodman said the FDA would have to review and license each unbundled vaccine separately, a process with no precedent.

“I don’t think there’s any comparable example of removing hugely effective public health measures that protect babies for no documented scientific reason,” he said.

Individual shots for measles and related diseases tend to be used by lower-income countries that can’t afford the MMR shot. Merck, GSK and the handful of other companies that supply U.S. childhood vaccines make only the combination shot.

In separate statements, Merck and GSK said they stand by the safety and effectiveness of their products. Neither discussed plans to unbundle their shots.

“To date, there has been no published scientific evidence that shows any benefit in separating the combination MMR vaccine into three individual shots,” Merck said in an emailed statement.

Parents would need to make many more trips to the doctor

The MMR shot is currently delivered in two doses — the first at the age of 1 and the second dose after age 4. Splitting up the shot into its three separate components would mean six office visits. Spacing out other shots for pertussis and other infectious diseases could multiply the number of visits many more times.

As the number of visits goes up, parents are more likely to miss appointments or stop making them, according to Durbin.

“It’s going to be less convenient, more expensive and you’re going to have fewer people getting vaccinated,” she said.

For well over a decade, Trump has expressed his view — against medical groups’ guidance — that American children receive too many vaccines and that they should be given in smaller doses over a longer period of time. Last year he called on called on Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to look at reducing the number. Kennedy and other officials have pointed to smaller countries, such as Denmark, that recommended slightly fewer vaccinations than the U.S.

But breaking up combination shots will result in kids receiving many more individual shots than other comparable nations, Durbin notes.

White House spokesman Kush Desai said the Trump administration’s efforts on the MMR vaccine “will give parents more options on timing and frequency for their children, which ultimately will increase vaccination rates for all three diseases.”

Vaccine order is not legally binding

Despite the precedent-breaking nature of Trump’s order, some experts are skeptical it will result in meaningful changes.

Neither the White House nor the FDA can compel drugmakers to develop and seek approval for new vaccines. And from a business perspective, companies have little incentive to develop individual versions of vaccines they already sell in combination shots.

“They’d be competing against themselves, and there’s no reason to do that,” said Dr. Paul Offit, a Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia vaccine researcher and former government adviser.

While Trump’s order calls for more federal research and recommendations, only state governments have the legal authority to require vaccinations for schoolchildren. The order simply advises states to consider updating their laws to reflect the Trump administration’s approach.

“I think states will ignore this,” Offit said. “I think that bottom line is that we don’t need to look to Donald Trump for our medical advice.”

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AP videojournalist Mary Conlon in New York contributed to this report.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Follow the AP's coverage of immunizations at https://apnews.com/hub/immunizations.