Minnesota Speaker of the House Lisa Demuth has won the Republican primary for governor in her state, beating out the GOP-endorsed and Trump-backed candidates in the race.

The Associated Press called the race just before midnight on Tuesday as Demuth was leading with about 44% of the vote to Mike Lindell’s 32% out of the ballots counted thus far.

Demuth now heads to the general election in November, where she is expected to face an uphill battle against Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

The primary saw the three front-runners vying to become the party’s nominee in a contest between different factions of the GOP.

President Donald Trump last month publicly offered his support to Lindell, a Trump loyalist better known as the “MyPillow Guy” who garnered national attention in the aftermath of the 2020 election as a prominent election denier. The state Republican Party, meanwhile, opted to endorse Kendall Qualls, a businessman and Army veteran, at a state convention in May. Despite earning neither endorsement, Demuth remained competitive in the race—and ultimately pulled out the win.

Trump has never won Minnesota in any of his three presidential runs, but Lindell, who appeared to open a lead in the polls in recent weeks, touted the President’s endorsement days before the election.

"I have an advantage over everyone up here,” Lindell said at an event on Sunday. “I can call up and work with the President of the United States.”

The former CEO, like Trump, has vocally denied the results of the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost to Joe Biden. Lindell has faced defamation suits over comments he made related voting machines, some of which are ongoing. Last June, he was ordered to pay $2.3 million to a Dominion Voting Systems executive after a jury found that he spread false and damaging claims related to the 2020 election.

Prior to that election, Lindell had also become known for his MyPillow advertisements and his self-published memoir What Are the Odds? From Crack Addict to CEO, in which he chronicled his experience overcoming substance abuse and gambling. He stepped down as CEO of the pillow company earlier this month to focus on his campaign.

Lindell aligns largely with Trump’s approach to many issues, including slashing government spending. Among his campaign proposals was a “Minnesota DOGE,” a reference to the Trump Administration’s now-shuttered  Department of Government Efficiency.

Although he later secured the President’s public support, Lindell was beat out by both Qualls and Demuth in the contentious voting process for the state GOP endorsement, being eliminated after finishing third in the fourth round of voting. After ten ballots, Qualls just surpassed the 60% vote needed to formally secure the endorsement.

Qualls, the first Black candidate to win a major party endorsement for governor in Minnesota, called for unity in the party following his win.

“Now is the time to remind everyone what our first Republican President said on the field of Gettysburg: That a house divided cannot stand,” Qualls said. “If we’re going to win, we got to win as a united Republican Party.”

Qualls has never previously held public office, but he was not a new face on the campaign trail in Minnesota. This year’s primary marked Qualls’ third campaign for a major seat. He mounted an unsuccessful bid in the race to represent Minnesota’s third congressional district in the U.S. House in 2020 and previously ran for governor, also unsuccessfully, in 2022. 

In his bid this year, Qualls called for a “radical transformation” to the state’s tax policy and education system. “We can do a lot more with less,” he said to ABC affiliate 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS.

Demuth largely aligned on policy with Qualls, but sought to distinguish herself on the campaign trail by emphasizing her government experience as the first Black woman and Republican woman to serve as House Speaker.

“I am the best candidate who is able to look forward to November and beating Amy Klobuchar and I’ll say the Democrat machine,” Demuth said in an interview with KSTP in June. “And the reason I know I’m best-positioned to do that is when you look at my work as Speaker of the House I can draw people together.”

Demuth, who leads a state House with an even split between the two parties, touted her ability to broker deals and communicate within a thinly divided government.

“I have solid, conservative values that really do cross party lines,” she said at a news conference. “It’s not just Republican values. They’re conservative values that are supported by many Minnesotans.”

Tim Walz, who has been the governor since 2019, launched a bid for a third term but dropped out in early January amid investigations into state welfare agencies and government-affiliated programs that were widely targeted by fraud.

Minnesota hasn’t elected a Republican governor since 2006, while the last Republican senator was elected in 2002. In presidential elections, it holds the current record among the 50 states for the longest streak of voting for the Democratic candidate; it last went for a Republican in 1972, when it gave its electoral votes to Richard Nixon.

The Cook Political Report rates the Minnesota governor’s mansion as Solid Democrat, among those it deems least likely to flip in this election cycle.

The “secret flight” that President Donald Trump took out of Turkey last month following an Iranian assassination threat, newly revealed by the Washington Post this week, marked a rare occasion for a commander-in-chief: traveling without the White House press pool.

Multiple outlets have reported, citing unnamed sources, that when Trump left Turkey after the NATO Summit last month, he secretly departed the country on an alternate plane because of an assassination threat made against him from Iran.

Publicly, the Administration said that Trump would fly out of Turkey on July 8 on an older Air Force One aircraft, and the President did board that plane in the sight of cameras and reporters on that day. But the Post reported that Trump then got into a catering truck, which transported him to another plane—all unbeknownst to the journalists who were on the former Air Force One and were under the impression that they were on the same aircraft as the President.

The clandestine operation meant that, for several hours, the President’s real whereabouts were unknown to—and concealed from—both the White House press pool and the American public. 

Read More: Former Secret Service Agents: Trump’s Secret Plane Swap Unusual, Not Unprecedented

In response to the Post’s questions about the operation, White House communications director Steven Cheung shared a statement defending the plane Trump traveled on to get to Turkey, a Qatar-gifted aircraft that drew controversy.

“The new Air Force One is a state-of-the-art aircraft that has been fitted with high-level security protocols that ensure the safety of the President and his staff,” Cheung said in the statement. “As the President has said recently, there are many enemies of America who have their sights on him, and we use every tool at our disposal to address those threats.”

Historically, the journalists who make up the White House press pool travel with—or alongside—the sitting President nearly everywhere he goes. Here’s what to know about the pool, and previous instances when a commander-in-chief has made the extraordinary move of traveling without those journalists.

What is the White House press pool?

The White House press pool is a small group of journalists from various news outlets who follow the President around to various events, such as bill signings and trips. Because there is limited space to attend these events or travel with the President, the system allows news outlets to “pool” their resources; the print reporter on “pool duty” each day shares “pool reports,” which contain notes and quotes they took down as they followed the President, with the entire White House press corps. The specific journalists who are part of the press pool rotate.

“For nearly a century, the story of the American presidency has been written through the eyes of the ‘press pool,’ the small team of writers, photographers and technicians assigned each day to cover the commander-in-chief on behalf of the broader corps of correspondents,” the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), which works to coordinate and ensure access for journalists covering the White House, said on its website. The WHCA went on to say that the accounts documented by the pool “provide a daily record of the presidency that forever lives in the archives of news organizations.”

“Pool duty is an essential element of the work of White House correspondents because one never knows when the world will need good information about precisely where the president of the United States is and what he is doing at any moment,” the association continued.

Members of the White House press pool have been with Presidents during a slew of historic and high-stakes moments. They were, for instance, in the motorcade when former President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963. The press pool was also present when an assassination attempt was made on former President Ronald Reagan’s life in Washington, D.C. in 1981. On Sept. 11, 2001, amid the chaos and fear that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Bush traveled with a smaller press pool to a military facility and then back to the nation’s capital. Journalists have also followed Presidents—including Trump—into dangerous war zones.

When Presidents have traveled without the press pool in the past

While it is rare for the sitting President to travel without the press pool, it has happened on occasion in the past.

In 2010, former President Barack Obama left the White House without the press pool and went to one of his daughter’s soccer games, a decision that generated controversy. The Associated Press wrote at the time that Obama had “quietly breached years of protocol” by doing so.

Soon after Trump first won the presidency in 2016, but before he was sworn into the White House, he went out to dinner without notifying the reporters who were covering him. The move prompted press organizations to release an open letter to Trump, in which they emphasized the importance of the press pool.

“As the new leader of the free world, we expect that you will preserve longstanding traditions that ensure coverage of the Trump presidency,” the organizations said in their 2016 letter. “The idea of a press pool that covers all of the president’s movements is one that dates back to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration. Every president of both parties has treated this important tradition with respect. The role of the press pool is critically important to our country, whose citizens depend on and deserve to know what the president is doing.”

Neither of those instances were a result of threats made against Obama or Trump. The operation last month, in contrast, stemmed from a threat against the President’s life that Administration officials deemed credible enough to warrant the secrecy, the Post reported.

Air Force One has been used as a “decoy” for a President’s protection in the past: former President Bill Clinton, for instance, traveled to Pakistan in a white aircraft that followed Air Force One in 2000. But he got off the unmarked plane in Islamabad in view of cameras and journalists, revealing the covert operation. And, before takeoff, Clinton Administration officials told at least one member of the White House pool about the operation.

When Trump boarded the alternate plane in secret last month, the poolers who were assigned to travel with him were not informed that he had switched to a different aircraft—nor were they notified about the adjudged credibility of the threat on the one they were on, an official told the Post.

CNN anchor Jake Tapper emphasized on Tuesday the extraordinary circumstances of the clandestine operation in Turkey.

“Obviously the life of the president is paramount, and previous White Houses have used deception to protect the president’s life,” he said in a post on X. “But no officials I’ve spoken to have ever before heard of using an [Air Force One] full of [White House] staff and journalists as a decoy during an imminent threat.”

Ronald L. Rowe Jr., a former acting director of the Secret Service, told the Post that, if the President’s location is kept secret, it is for a reason.

“We need to keep the ‘secret’ in Secret Service,” Rowe told the news outlet. “The public should know what the president is doing on a daily basis, but when it comes to the methods by which the Secret Service keeps the president safe, that should remain out of public view.”

Robert McDonald, who worked with the Secret Service for more than two decades, told TIME that the operation in Turkey appears to be a result of real-time improvisation by the President’s security team. He also cast doubt on the idea that the journalists who were on the former Air Force One were left at risk.

“I would find it incredibly hard to believe that those two planes weren’t escorted or with other assets from allies or the U.S. Air Force in the area,” he said.

McDonald went on to say that restricting the number of people who are informed of such an operation is standard practice, and stressed that the outcome of the mission was that everyone arrived home safe.

“Everybody that I’m aware of got home from that trip to Turkey,” he said. “The bottom line is everybody got home safe. That’s the main function of the Secret Service.”

Paula Kerger is navigating arguably the most challenging period of her 20-year tenure at the helm of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which has more than 330 member stations. Last spring, President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for all federal funding to PBS and NPR to be blocked, accusing the organizations of bias. Soon after, the Department of Education notified the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) that it was terminating the  2020-2025 Ready To Learn grant for educational content, affecting PBS as well as dozens of public television and radio stations. PBS and NPR sued, and in March this year a federal judge ruled that the executive order barring the federal funding violated the First Amendment. 

But the organization must still grapple with a funding shortfall created by a Congressional vote to rescind around $1.1 billion in advance appropriated federal funding for PBS and NPR, and an entirely new landscape for public media. The CPB, which was created in 1967 as a nonpartisan nonprofit to direct federal appropriations to public television and radio stations, announced in January that it would officially dissolve. PBS has since reduced its budget by 21% and cut 15% of positions, or around 100 jobs.

It’s not the first time PBS has faced such a threat, Kerger says, pointing to Newt Gingrich's “Contract with America” platform in 1994. But his idea was a “three-year glide path to zero,” she says. By contrast, the latest move gave stations just three months to find alternative funding, since they were already expecting the appropriated funds for 2026 and 2027, she says.

Since the rescission, Kerger has been touring the U.S. and speaking with affected communities. “The light bulb went off,” she says of the public’s reaction. “It's like, ‘Oh, Viewers Like You. That means us.’” Since the July 2025 rescission, PBS has seen more than a million new memberships. Philanthropy and commercial partnerships are helping. And Kerger hopes to get “some level of government funding back,” particularly to support rural communities and infrastructure, she says. 

Kerger says she is most concerned about the future of content for children. “The kids' media landscape right now is really scary. A lot of kids are on YouTube, and there is some good stuff on YouTube, but kids get caught in the algorithm and they end up in places they shouldn't. Not all of it is by educators—our stuff all is, and it's rigorously tested,” she says. PBS is also working on games and content for “the significant number of kids that are not in formal pre-K, and whose family may not have access to as much technology or broadband.” 

TIME spoke with Kerger on July 15 about the aftermath of the funding pullback, what people get wrong about PBS, and what gives her hope about the future for the organization.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

You've talked before about how some people don't understand what PBS is. What do people get wrong about PBS?

Media in most countries started out as government-based, and then commercial media came second, and we were the other way around here. So commercial media was actually a growing industry, and it was the first woman FCC commissioner—a woman by the name of Frieda Hennock—who was looking at what she was anticipating as something that was going to have an enormous impact on society, but that was all rooted in commercialism in the marketplace. She worried there would be limitations, that there would be things that would be in the public interest that [the] commercial marketplace wasn't going to take up, and so she lobbied to have spectrum put aside for both TV and radio, and that's how we began. 

Flash forward to Lyndon Johnson. He was particularly taken with what the BBC was able to do in terms of bringing great culture and history to the public, and he thought that our country should have that. He recognized that this loose confederation of individual stations that were mostly doing local or educational stuff wasn't exactly it, and that with some support you could create something that was more akin to the BBC, and that's when he signed the Public Broadcasting Act. Part of that was to create a network [that] could pull all these individual stations together. The second part of it was to ensure that there was federal funding available for communities that would perhaps be challenged to have their own stations. And so our funding always looked like that up until we lost the money last year. The largest percentage of most of the money went to stations, not to PBS and NPR. I think that was a confusion with some members of Congress. I'm not sure they knew exactly what they were voting on. 

Those that were in smaller communities would get a larger proportion of their budget from the federal government. In Alaska, there actually is no other media except public radio and public television stations. Almost half of their budget comes from the federal government. So, it sort of played out exactly as LBJ anticipated. Our stations are all locally owned, locally operated, locally governed. I don't tell anyone what to do, but everyone pays dues to PBS. We take that money, we raise some other money, leverage some additional money. We work with producers. We pull together a full schedule that we distribute. The whole broadcast infrastructure is all managed by PBS. The digital infrastructure that was built— apps, PBS.org that a lot of stations plug into—all built by PBS. Stations’ positions on cable and on places like YouTube TV, negotiated by PBS. The work that we do in schools, which is all distributed via broadband—free, all done by PBS. Stations then contribute their content, so that it is still very much bottom up, but the glue that pulls it all together is PBS. 

Can you talk me through where things stand today with the funding pullback?

So last year was quite a year, and we're still navigating through quite a few things. It started out with the FCC saying, "We think you're running commercials.” We actually are not. What we are running is sponsorship credits. We actually had worked with the FCC to define what is appropriate for public media, and we've worked closely with every Administration. Then we had the executive order that was going to make it illegal for any federal money to come to PBS and NPR. We won that suit. And the government [missed] the deadline to appeal, so it stands. 

And then, of course there was the rescission. The executive order took out a program that we have managed for 30 years, which has funded our kids' content: Ready To Learn. For many years, the Department of Education would fund programming out of PBS that was all built around what the Education Department's priorities were, whether that's literacy or math skills or executive function or, in the last round—which had been re-upped under the first Trump Administration—workforce preparedness. Now, you can decide what that means for preschool, but we interpreted it as giving kids a really good start on the basics, before they entered school, as a way of just helping to make sure that we were jump-starting them in their school career that would lead to a professional career. After the executive order, that money was gone. 

Then in June we lost the House vote, and this money had been advance appropriated for 2026 and 2027…I worked with the Public Media Company and within a very short period of time, we were able to raise bridge funds. That helped stabilize smaller stations that I think, some of them, would have gone dark very quickly. 

PBS have been working pretty deliberately to make sure that the public is aware that the funding is gone. In the time since the rescission, we’ve picked up more than a million new members, and most of those are people that didn't just write a check, but they agreed to give every month, so they've really signed up to be part of this. It has not solved all of our problems, but we're in at least a stable position right now. 

What I've been really focused on is our business model moving forward. Obviously, I would really love to get some level of government funding back, and I would argue [that’s] infrastructure money. If we could get that back, that would make an enormous difference. In addition to being a broadcaster, we're also the backup system for the emergency alert for this country because we operate broadcast, so we can reach everywhere. It's not just the messages to the public, but it's also using our spectrum to get information to first responders. It's a stable platform. Data and so forth can be pushed out via broadcast very effectively and very efficiently. 

The philanthropy is going to continue to be significant. We continue to look for production partners. We are streaming content on Amazon. So, some business revenue, some philanthropic investment, and the hope of trying to get at least some [funding] from the government. I think if we can get all those pieces aligned, we'll be in really strong shape.

Can you give an indication of the proportions of those different funding streams?

So historically, half of our money came from our stations, and a lot of that was contributed money. So I would say probably moving forward, I would assume that half of our money would continue to be contributed money, if we can manage this properly. Of the government money, it was 15% in aggregate. Whether some piece of that would come back, I can't even begin to quantify what that would mean. The rest of it would be some combination of increased foundation grants, as well as the contributed money. So a quarter of earned revenue, a quarter of high net worth and then foundation grants and individual giving. Individual giving is what's kept us anchored in communities. It's also what makes this so powerful, because everyone feels that they own it.

On the philanthropy side of things, how are you thinking about who you want to take funding from? You've said before that you don't really want billionaires. 

There were a lot of people that said, “Don't you have a billionaire that could solve your problems?” If people want to make more generous contributions, that’s great. We have some big needs. I just think that this idea that someone is going to sail in and save you is not good, and it's particularly not good for media. Even if someone has the very best of intentions, there's always going to be that doubt of, is someone really directing, or does someone have a thumb on the scale, or so forth. 

There are some people that really did step up this last year. I'm out talking to a lot of them, particularly around specific genres, and particularly around kids, right now. Kids have been impacted on so many different levels in the last couple of years, whether it's access to health care, there's so many children that have food insecurity now, and daycare circumstance—particularly high quality pre-K—has deteriorated, not improved. You just see that kids have borne the brunt of so much. We've got the history going all the way back to Fred Rogers and Sesame Street—we reach all those children. Our stations live in communities across the country. There are a lot of philanthropists that are looking at this, and these are areas that they care deeply about. So I'm hoping to continue to make that good case.

The current administration has turned its attention to some foundations as well. Is that a consideration when you're thinking about which foundations you will accept funding from?

I'll tell you what I pay attention to. One is, obviously, we have a firewall between our editorial and the contributed money, and that's really important. What I do pay attention to is not whether I'll take money from this foundation or that foundation for political reasons. What I do pay attention to is that we have a mix of donors that represent a range of interests, perspectives, geography, and so forth. I think there was a fallacy in the arguments around us and our funding that somehow we were left-leaning, or that we were funded by left-leaning organizations. Look at Ken Burns' recent series on the American Revolution. If you look at those funders, particularly the larger ones, you see people across the political spectrum. That's how it should be. We want all people engaged and involved. We're a public media service for the country, and we need to reflect the country in that way. 

I think the combination of doing that with the larger contributions, as well as lots and lots of small contributions, that's really always been the bedrock of public broadcasting. Every year, I think 23 years in a row, we have fielded a study that ranks us most trusted of public institutions. YouGov has been doing a similar survey in the last years. Same thing. I think we're number two after the Weather Channel. I think part of it is that if you anchor your support in a lot of grassroots philanthropy, people have to trust you, and so we take all of this really super seriously. 

And I would say that in the funding discussions in the last year, and actually on an ongoing basis, occasionally someone says—and believe me, I get these calls—”What, are you just catering to the Administration?” or “You're too hard on the Administration.” A lot of times I'll get those calls around the same broadcast, which is a little weird. People say, “Well I think you're biased” and it's like, OK, we do take this really seriously, can you give me an example? And oftentimes they can't. 

Are these the sorts of conversations that you're having with members of Congress? What is it that they are expressing they're most concerned about?

Some, I think, were surprised when we were defunded that it actually affected their local station. Ironically, a lot of the legislators spend time at the stations. That's where a lot of them end up doing town halls and debates, and they come in for various community events. I went and visited a couple of the senators that had voted against us and some of them said, well it was really the advance appropriation we were trying to get rid of and we'll look at the regular appropriations process, and it's still a dance. There was a little movement this year in looking at the infrastructure money that I'm talking about, at least reopening the program that existed where that funding had flowed before. That's a really important first step. Government funds infrastructure—it makes sense to me.

What would it take to get that through?

Getting enough people to vote from both sides of the aisle. I don't know [that], out of this budget process, we’ll be successful, but we're going to just keep plugging away at it because I think as people are setting priorities, the important thing is to get on that list. One of the things, both helpful and not, is in this last year, for the most part, people haven't seen enormous change. Unless we get some help, I think it'll become apparent in this next year we’ll likely lose a few stations, and I think that will also get people's attention, particularly if it happens to be in your legislative district. 

This isn’t the first time that PBS has faced these sorts of challenges, but to your mind, why do you think PBS has become a target in this moment? 

Well, I think media in general has been a target. I frankly think that's part of why so many people have also stepped up. I think a lot of people are very concerned about the impact of what they're seeing and how it's affecting different media organizations. It's a challenging time for media anyway because of the changes in how people are consuming content, and so we have been very much involved over a number of years, in really looking at how do we meet people where they are. YouTube has been a great partner of ours, and they helped us get all of our stations on YouTube TV, and that's opened up other possibilities on other platforms. So it's been a complicated time to navigate through. People's patterns have shifted a lot.  

Who are your audiences, in terms of demographics?

Depends on what you're watching. We have a very big audience under 5. We have a very large audience across demographics on digital. For example, the Frontline broadcast audience is well over 60. The YouTube audience is under 35 [and] is also global. 

I'd say the one commonality for a PBS viewer is that [it’s] people that are curious about the world, just want to learn more. I've been talking a lot over this last year as we've rolled into the 250th [anniversary of the U.S.]. I've always been struck by what I view as our key values of our country. The pursuit of happiness. What does that mean? I think what it means is lifelong learning. It's this idea that anyone would have the opportunity to achieve their potential, and that's who we are, and so I think that for our viewers, that very much captures who watches. 

Where would you like to see PBS over the next 10 or 15 years?

I feel like we have had a role in the life of people and families and communities across this country, and I am deeply committed to making sure that we continue to meet the needs of people that clearly will evolve over the next 10, 15 years. I think how we connect to people will continue to change. I think the power of a story well told is extraordinary, and so, however that story [is told], I want to make sure that we're there to do that. I think our place in local communities is pretty profound. 

But I think for us to thrive, we also have to make sure that we're continuing to bring in new voices and new perspectives. Our focus is around making sure that we're educating and engaging and inspiring. I really hope that as we look forward over the next 10 to 15 years, that it will continue to also be a through line. We want to embrace that whole idea of pursuit of happiness and really ensure that people see possibility. And if we do that and we do it well, then I'll be really proud of what we've accomplished at PBS.

The Trump administration's extraordinary maneuver to shield the President from an alleged assassination threat from Iran last month by secretly moving him to a different plane has raised new questions about how often the Secret Service resorts to such tactics. Former Secret Service agents tell TIME that such security measures, while rare, are not without precedent in the agency's playbook for handling credible threats. 

Multiple outlets reported that the Trump administration orchestrated an elaborate plan to get Trump out of Turkey during the NATO summit on July 8, transporting him via a catering container to a military plane, after intelligence officials flagged a specific threat tied to Iran.

Moments before Trump was shuttled off the plane, he was seen by reporters boarding the original Air Force One instead of the new one donated by Qatar due to its lack of defensive capabilities. Reporters and White House staff on the aircraft were unaware of the fact that the President was not on the plane until after he had already switched planes again in Britain.

Jason Russell, a former Secret Service Agent who spent eight years protecting presidents and planning security details ahead of presidential trips, says that the President boarding Air Force One is normally the last thing that happens before the plane closes its door and begins taking off. 

“For him [Trump] to get on a plane, and then have a catering truck pull up to the side of the plane, anybody who's actually paying any attention to how Air Force One operates, should have been, like, ‘That's strange,’” Russell said. 

Russell explained that flying is usually deemed the safest way to transport a President because airspaces are normally severely restricted for Air Force One to pass by. Yet threats remain, including drone attacks and even surface-to-air missile attacks. 

“Obviously, the Air Force One is equipped with some countermeasures and some security that hopefully never have to be used,” Russell says, adding that there's also an airspace security division within the Secret Service that regularly works with the military to ensure the president’s safety while traveling on air.

Robert McDonald, who spent 21 years with the Secret Service, including on the Presidential Protective Division and as a supervisory agent on then-Vice President Biden's detail, said the plane-swapping operation in Turkey reflects real-time improvisation by presidential security personnel rather than a standing procedure. 

“I'm sure they started preparing as soon as they found out about the threat,” McDonald said in an interview. “I'm not sure they had the luxury of having many days or even potentially many hours.” 

McDonald described the decision-making process around such operations as a joint effort among the Secret Service, the White House Military Office and White House staff, with "no one entity" holding more authority than the others.

The Department of Defense has referred questions from TIME to the White House. TIME has reached out to the White House for comment.

White House Pool Reporters Deceived

McDonald pushed back on the idea that Air Force One and the people still aboard it, including journalists, were left exposed. “I would find it incredibly hard to believe that those two planes weren't escorted or with other assets from allies or the U.S. Air Force in the area,” he said, adding that he doubted the people on the aircraft “were dangled out there and left to fend for themselves.”

The operation broke a White House tradition that presidents rarely travel without a group of reporters known as the White House pool, to ensure the public has an independent account of the president’s activities. Former President Barack Obama broke the tradition in 2010 by leaving the White House to attend his daughter’s soccer game without telling reporters.

In 2000, President Bill Clinton secretly switched to an unmarked plane for a trip to Pakistan. At least one member of the White House pool, a reporter covering the trip for USA Today, was briefed on the operation beforehand, according to The Washington Post.

On the secrecy around the maneuver in Turkey—with even journalists traveling with Trump left in the dark—McDonald said limiting the circle of those informed is standard practice, especially now. “We're in a time now where instantaneous news articles are going out—TikTok, Instagram, Facebook,” he said. “That doesn't help the plan that the Secret Service needs to implement.” 

Ultimately, McDonald said, judgments about the optics of the operation are secondary to its outcome. “Everybody that I'm aware of got home from that trip to Turkey," he said. "The bottom line is everybody got home safe. That's the main function of the Secret Service.”

July was the hottest month on record in the contiguous United States, with an average temperature of 76.9°F—the highest average ever recorded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), going back to 1895. The previous record was shared by July 1936, during the Dust Bowl, and July 2012. Every state was at least 1 degree above its 20th-century average.

This type of observation can help communities prepare for and respond to extreme heat events. They can then take informed steps to prevent serious health issues that the World Health Organization (WHO) links to high temperatures, like heat stroke and cardiovascular disease, or even death. 

But NOAA relies on federal funding in order to keep historic records, observe weather patterns, and produce informed forecasts.

The Trump Administration reduced NOAA’s workforce in 2025, and subsequently proposed steep cuts to the agency’s funding, hampering its ability to monitor weather conditions, analyze patterns, and provide forecasts. 

The National Weather Service (NWS), which operates under NOAA, lost roughly 600 employees—about 15% of its workforce—through layoffs, buyouts and retirements. It must now respond to increasingly severe weather events—like hurricane season and wildfire season—with reduced resources. As a result, it announced last year that it was scaling back the tools used to track weather patterns, such as weather balloons.

The administration later proposed cutting NOAA’s overall budget by $1.6 billion, or roughly 26%, compared with fiscal year 2025. 

“A leaner NOAA that focuses on core operational needs, eliminates unnecessary layers of bureaucracy, terminates nonessential grant programs, and ends activities that do not warrant a Federal role, will provide better value to the American public,” its budget summary stated.

The United States will likely continue struggling to reconcile diminishing resources with increasing extreme temperatures, as the United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warned Tuesday that periods of extreme heat will become more frequent, intense, ‌and longer-lasting as climate change warms the planet.

How we know when heat is becoming dangerous

The NWS tracks weather in multiple ways—including the installation of surface stations at over 900 airports that provide 24/7 real-time surface weather observations, as well as weather balloons, marine buoys, and satellites.

Those observations feed forecast models that help meteorologists understand developing weather patterns and anticipate dangerous conditions.

“Extended periods of high day and nighttime temperature conditions create cumulative stress on the human body, increasing the risk of illness and death from heat exposure,” according to the WHO. In the United States, the NWS considers heat the leading weather-related killer. Globally, studies estimate that heat was associated with roughly 489,000 deaths annually between 2000 and 2019.

The health effects of heat waves were felt acutely this summer. Maryland’s Department of Health said that 2026 was its deadliest heat season on record, with a total of 50 heat-related fatalities since May. The state also recorded over 1,300 heat-related illnesses in that period. At the national level, the Washington Post reported that there were at least 70 deaths related to heat domes in July. And in Europe, officials said that there were more than 10,000 excess deaths during the continent’s record-breaking heat wave in June.

The NWS communicates the danger that high temperatures pose using a Heat Index that describes the “feels like” temperature to the human body based on a combination of heat and humidity. For consistency, it uses what’s called “apparent temperature,” referring to the temperature that the body “feels” in shady locations. Exposure to direct sunlight can increase values by up to 15°F.

With information from the NWS, local governments are better able to prepare infrastructure and warn vulnerable communities. At the same time, the agencies are better equipped to create and distribute useful resources, such as guidance on how to stay cool during heat waves. 

But less accurate data, and less data collected overall, can prevent experts from accurately anticipating future events. Agencies might be less prepared to inform vulnerable communities or cooperate with local and state governments to ensure outreach and preparedness. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this is more likely to impact people with chronic medical conditions, children, and adults over 65.

What happens when weather agencies have fewer resources?

Cuts at NOAA and the Federal Emergency Management Agency have left the U.S. more vulnerable to the effects of extreme weather.

In May, for instance, lawmakers expressed concerns over the NWS’s failure to launch 75% of the weather balloons typically sent aloft in Kansas to help measure atmospheric conditions. These balloons carry a device called a radiosonde that is used to collect upper-atmosphere temperature, humidity, pressure, and wind information to support forecasting. NWS blamed staffing shortages, but Kansas Rep. Sharice Davids pointed out that those disruptions were occurring during tornado season.

“Kansans deserve transparency about what’s happening, why it’s happening and what’s being done to fix it,” Davids said in a statement. “Kansans deserve confidence that the systems meant to keep them safe are fully operational during tornado season and meteorologists deserve the reliable data they need to do their jobs.”

In order to preserve its work with fewer resources, NOAA has continued to evolve its use of technology. It has long used artificial intelligence and machine learning for “weather forecasting, climate modeling, and environmental monitoring.” And it announced a partnership with Google Cloud in July, explaining how the move is expected to “result in a modeling system that is more flexible and easy to update.”

That same month, China debuted Fenghe, an open-source large language model (LLM) for meteorological services. The government announced that the LLM “is trained on 50 million tokens of meteorological service data and integrated with authoritative weather datasets to support weather forecasting, risk assessment, and meteorological services.”

As NOAA faces an uncertain funding future, such tools could become increasingly important to its efforts to maintain forecasting capacity for an increasingly hot planet. 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. rose to prominence in part by criticizing America’s reliance on ultraprocessed foods and promising to make the food supply healthier. On Aug. 10, he announced proposed changes to a longstanding U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) process that determines when food companies have to tell the agency that they’re adding new ingredients to the food supply.

Previously, food companies were permitted to determine on their own that some new food ingredients—often combinations of lab-manufactured chemicals—were Generally Recognized As Safe, or GRAS, and could decide whether or not to tell the FDA that they were including them in their foods. They did that by filing a GRAS notice with the agency at the same time that the food hit the market. 

But because they were not required to file a GRAS notice, many companies didn’t. A 2026 analysis by the Environmental Working Group, a health-focused nonprofit, identified at least 111 food chemicals that companies had added to foods including cereal, snack bars, and sports drinks without informing the FDA.  

“When I came to HHS, I asked the FDA how many ingredients we have in our food, and they said they didn't know. They said it could be 4,000, it could be 12,000, it's probably somewhere around 10,000,” Kennedy said at a press conference announcing the new rule. “We don't even know exactly how many chemicals are in the food that Americans eat every day, and the food industry continues to develop novel compounds and chemical combinations that do not exist in nature.”

The new announcement, if it becomes law, would make filing a GRAS notice mandatory, meaning that any time a company adds a new chemical to a food sold to the public, it has to file a notice with the FDA.

“By proposing mandatory GRAS notifications, we are closing critical information gaps and giving the FDA greater visibility into substances entering the food supply,” said acting FDA commissioner Kyle Diamantas at the press conference about the new proposed rule. 

The proposal now has to go through a lengthy rulemaking process, and experts say that the food industry is likely to pursue litigation, which could further delay the rule from going into effect. 

What the new rule would potentially do

Food industry experts say the new rule is a good start, though they had some caveats. Melanie Benesh, vice president of government affairs at the Environmental Working Group and one of the authors of the analysis of chemicals in the food supply, calls it a “critical first step.” But “whether it will make our food safer, whether it will create real enforcement against bad actors, those things are all less clear.”

After all, she says, companies can still add new ingredients to foods and put them into the market at the same time they’re telling the FDA about those new ingredients. Right now, the FDA is under-resourced and may not have time to review the notice until long after the food has reached the public, she adds. 

“We don't know what happens without more FDA resources,” she says. “The FDA already struggles to review what's on its docket now.” 

There’s still no information about how thorough the FDA reviews will be, she says, and what the enforcement mechanism is if the FDA ends up disagreeing with the food company that the food is safe.

In other industries, companies have banded together to contribute “user fees,” which are payments of participating companies, to fund agency reviews, says Jennifer Pomeranz, a public-health lawyer and professor at the NYU School of Global Public Health. The generic drug industry, for example, found that user fees sped up review timelines and so requested Congress to implement them. Other times, Congress can add user fees. The FDA needs some sort of funding—like user fees—if it is going to be able to truly review the GRAS notices that companies submit, she says.

Ideally, she says, the FDA would require a pre-market review for new ingredients so that it could ensure their safety before they’re added to the food supply. (New color additives, for instance, are not allowed to go through GRAS and must be pre-approved by the FDA before they’re added to food.) But that might be difficult to enact in the current political climate, she says.

“MAHA conflicts with MAGA,” she says, because MAHA (the Make America Healthy Again movement) wants to force food companies to be more transparent about their ingredients, while MAGA (Make America Great Again) is about deregulation. Bloomberg News recently reported that the Trump Administration delayed a long-awaited definition of ultra-processed foods because of pressure from food industry CEOs. 

Closing the GRAS loophole

The GRAS loophole has led to illnesses in the public, which is one big reason it needs to be closed, says Thomas Galligan, principal scientist for food additives and supplements for the Center for Science in the Public Interest. In 2022, the company Daily Harvest used a new substance called tara flour in one of its plant-based products, which would become linked to hundreds of instances of people getting sick. The company had not filed a GRAS notice about the substance, and in 2024, the FDA determined that the substance was not generally recognized as safe. 

“I think the people who had to have their gallbladders removed from eating tara flour would argue that the impacts of the GRAS loophole are very real,” Galligan says. 

Galligan says he hopes that the proposed rule will change how companies act, but points out that it could be years before it actually goes into effect. The last time the FDA proposed changes to a GRAS rule was in 1997, he says; the changes were finalized in 2016.

That’s why he is looking to states to pass their own GRAS rules, a move that would force companies that sell food in those states to change how they operate. A bill that recently passed the New York Assembly and Senate and was sent to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s desk would generally make it illegal to sell or use certain GRAS substances in food unless a company has made a detailed, publicly available report about that ingredient to the New York Department of Agriculture.

 Similar bills are being considered in California and New Jersey, he says.

“We hope all these states and additional states will continue to advance GRAS reform at the state level,” he says, “because it's really uncertain what is going to happen federally.” 

In the past, Americans with disabilities were sent off to large, isolating, state-run institutions as a matter of course. In overcrowded, understaffed facilities, residents were too often neglected and stripped of privacy, autonomy, or any meaningful connection to their communities. When these conditions were brought to light, they sparked national outrage. That reckoning helped galvanize the deinstitutionalization movement, a decades-long push to create services that support people with disabilities in their homes and communities.  

Decades of advocacy to “deinstitutionalize” have fortunately transformed quality of life for people with disabilities, but it wasn’t until just 27 years ago that the Supreme Court's 1999 decision in Olmstead v. Lois Curtis made it so disabled Americans could rest easy knowing forced segregation wasn’t inevitable. 

For much of our history, few options existed between mass institutionalization in expensive and confining facilities on one end of the spectrum, and fully independent living absent any supports on the other end of the spectrum. The legal precedent rooted in Olmstead, plus the proliferation of once-nonexistent community-based services, changed that.

Now, however, the foundation that underpins our nation’s wide spectrum of community-based services is crumbling.

Olmstead affirmed that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) grants people with disabilities the right to live, work, and participate in their communities with the supports they need. That’s why we found it especially egregious that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) released a legal memo last month coinciding with the decision’s anniversary, calling into question the established right of people with disabilities to receive services in the most integrated setting possible. The memo doesn’t change the law, but it seeks to erode decades of settled civil rights protections.

The DOJ memo follows a range of other actions by the Trump Administration, including significant cuts to federal Medicaid spending set to go into effect next year and the withholding of hundreds of millions of dollars of funding for community-based services in the name of protecting program integrity. In July 2026, the administration paused more than one billion dollars in Medicaid payments to California and Minnesota, citing fraud but offering little specificity to support their claim. Taken together, these moves seem to falsely imply that home- and community-based services (HCBS) are wasteful, rather than essential. 

The Trump Administration has repeatedly questioned the value of HCBS by suggesting that Medicaid is paying professionals to carry out responsibilities families should simply provide themselves. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy told lawmakers that the waivers pay family members “for picking up the groceries, for driving somebody to a doctor’s appointment,” insisting that these family members are “getting paid to do things that they used to do [...] for free.” Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz has echoed that message, describing personal care services as helping “Medicaid patients do something that our families would normally do for us, like carrying groceries.”

Statements such as these have real-world implications and could serve to justify gutting these HCBS services—potentially forcing people with disabilities back into large public institutions, while pushing family caregivers and direct support professionals out of their respective workforces and into poverty. 

The debate over how we invest in Medicaid cannot be separated from the debate over civil rights for people with disabilities. Olmstead’s promise of community living is only meaningful if people have access to the services that make community living viable. For millions, Medicaid is a lifeline. It funds the direct support professional who helps someone get dressed each morning. It funds the job coach who helps build skills needed to succeed in the workforce. It funds transportation to medical appointments, support to navigate public transportation, and countless other activities that enable people to participate fully in community life. 

These activities are neither optional nor negotiable—they’re the foundation of the inclusion that this country promised through the ADA.

The notion that families should provide care without additional support is unrealistic and shortsighted, especially for families of people with highly complex medical or behavioral needs. Direct support professionals are trained to implement individualized care plans with a person-centered approach, respond to behavioral crises, administer medications, and more. 

Moreover, this thinking also ignores reality. For instance, many disabled adults’ parents are elderly or deceased. Many of their spouses work full time, sometimes in multiple jobs to meet their families’ financial needs. Many of their siblings are in the same boat but may live hundreds of miles away. Some have no family to fall back on at all. 

Suggesting that people don’t have the right to community-based support while insisting families provide needed care for free risks undoing more than a quarter-century of civil rights progress made possible by Olmstead. Furthermore, dismantling the spectrum of community-based services is expected to have negative down-the-line ramifications. We anticipate that more families will languish on states’ waiting lists for longer, more providers will reduce services or go out of business altogether, more professionals will leave the workforce to fill caregiving gaps, and more people with disabilities will be left with no other choice but expensive, isolating institutions. 

All of this threatens to devastate families and local economies. If protecting taxpayers is truly the goal, community-based services shouldn’t be slashed—they should be upheld as the gold standard, especially given the dramatic cost savings they make possible. Supporting someone with an intellectual or developmental disability through home- and community-based services costs about $70,500 per year, versus more than $395,000 annually in a public institution. 

While the DOJ’s memo and the administration’s other actions don’t overturn Olmstead, they do place another crack in the fragile foundation on which community living for millions of Americans is built. As we wrote last summer on the 35th anniversary of the ADA, we must reaffirm, not reinterpret or undo, the rights Olmstead upheld.

Two teenagers from each of the 50 U.S. states, as well as several territories and tribal nations, are competing this week for a hefty scholarship fund in President Donald Trump’s “Patriot Games” as part of the U.S. government’s commemoration of the country’s 250th birthday. 

The games consist of a series of physical challenges that are “designed to test strength, endurance, agility, teamwork, and perseverance,” the Freedom 250 website reads. 

Participating athletes arrived at the campus of SPIRE Academy, a sports-focused boarding school in Geneva, Ohio, late last week and began competing on Sunday. The events will continue through the finale, which is set to take place at 7 p.m. ET on Tuesday, and a one-hour special recapping the event is then set to air on Thursday. 

Trump is expected to attend the finale, according to Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

“President Trump looks forward to attending the Patriot Games in Ohio on Tuesday as we continue to celebrate 250 years of American greatness!” Leavitt posted on X. 

The games follow a number of other semiquincentennial celebrations that have been organized by Freedom250, a nonprofit effort created by President Trump for the purpose, including a UFC fight on the White House lawn, a presidential State Fair on the National Mall, and the largest fireworks show in history on July 4th.

“This once-in-a-generation event will showcase the extraordinary talents that thrive across our country, proving to the world that the American competitive spirit is stronger and more vibrant than ever before,” Trump said in May of the Patriot Games.  

Here’s what to know about the competition.

Who's competing?

A total of 120 student athletes ranging in age from 14 to 17 are competing in the games. 

They are “representing America's great states and territories, alongside athletes from tribal nations,” in the competition, according to the Freedom 250 website.One boy and one girl were chosen from each of the 50 states to compete. The games also include athletes from some U.S. territories, including Puerto Rico and Guam; military bases; and tribal nations, though the event’s website does not specify which.

To be eligible to compete, each of the athletes is required to be a U.S. citizen; a resident of the state, territory, or tribal nation they are representing; and in good academic standing. 

Applicants for the games submitted short videos explaining their desire to compete. A Patriot Games Selection Committee then reviewed the submissions and selected the final competitors for the games. 

Tylee Herrmann, a 16-year-old from Arizona representing the Cherokee Nation, said that she wanted to “bring patriotism back to the U.S.” in her application video, according to CNN. “I think we need something to bring us all together, because we’re the United States of America, and we need to be a little more united,” she told the outlet.

Addalee Taflinger, another 16-year-old representing the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory located in the western Pacific Ocean north of Guam, told the Marianas Press that she was “shocked” to be accepted and wants to “bring awareness about Saipan, the typhoons, and all that we’ve been through and how we’re still able to go out and do cool things like this after.”

What are the events?

The events include a “Presidential Fitness Test, a military-inspired boot camp circuit, an obstacle course, and team competitions such as Kickball, Dodgeball, Tug of War, and Victory Hoops,” according to the Patriot Games website. 

Qualifying rounds, along with kickball and dodgeball, took place on Sunday. On Monday, male and female competitors participated in a “varsity circuit” that strung together many sports: athletes had to throw footballs at targets, catch tennis balls out of the air, kick a soccer ball at a target, spike volleyballs over a net, hit wiffle balls with a bat, and sprint around a baseball diamond. Also on Monday, athletes competed in “operation endurance,” in which they had to maneuver through an obstacle course that involved army crawling, climbing nets, lifting heavy tires, monkey bars, and balance beams.

Tuesday’s events consist of tug of war; “victory hoops,” in which competitors shoot basketballs into an arcade-style hoop; the semifinal; and the final. 

What's the prize for the winners?

One male winner and one female winner will each receive a $125,000 scholarship. Competitions are separated between male and female athletes.   

How can you watch?

The games are being streamed live on ESPN from August 9-11. 

The one-hour prime time special will air on ABC on August 13 at 9 p.m. ET. 

The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments this fall in a landmark case to determine whether local and state governments can sue fossil fuel companies for climate-related disaster costs. 

The case, Suncor v. Boulder, will be heard on Oct. 5, when the court returns from summer recess. The decision—which will likely come months after the case is heard—will set a precedent for some two dozen other climate accountability cases that have been brought forward by states, counties, and cities. 

“This lawsuit is really about ensuring that corporations that have caused harm pay their fair share, rather than the burden being on the public and local governments for escalating climate impacts,” says Nikki Reisch, director of the climate and energy program at the Center for International Environmental Law.

Read more: Her Mother Died in a Heat Wave. Is Big Oil Responsible?

Fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas are the largest contributor to global climate change, accounting for around 68% of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90% of all carbon dioxide emissions. Major fossil fuel companies have long known—and sometimes hidden—the role their products have had in fueling the climate crisis. With climate change intensifying the impact of natural disasters, states and local governments are now facing billions of dollars in climate change-driven damages—and seeking accountability. 

What is the main question in Suncor v. Boulder that the U.S. Supreme Court must decide on? 

The case set to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court will determine which government body is able to take action on these types of climate lawsuits. “The main issue is whether state courts have the power to issue money damages over climate change, or whether that's exclusively a matter of federal law that has to be decided by federal courts or by Congress or the president,” says Michael Gerrard, founder of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.

In May, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that the city of Boulder had the legal authority to hold energy companies accountable for local damage caused by climate change and could make a case against polluters. The U.S. Supreme Court will determine whether local governments have the authority to seek damages from fossil fuel companies—but will hear the case before the accountability lawsuit has gone to trial in Boulder, which could create an opening for the federal case to be sent back to Colorado. “It is possible that the Supreme Court will rule that this case is too early…because there hasn't been a trial yet,” says Gerrard.

The case comes as the Trump Administration continues to target climate action on the state and federal level. Last April, President Trump signed an executive order to “stop the enforcement of State laws” on climate change, with a particular focus on California, New York, and Vermont. He has also struck five deals worth roughly $3.9 billion to block offshore wind projects, with the companies instead investing in fossil fuel projects. Justice Samuel Alito has also come under fire for refusing to recuse himself from the Suncor case, despite his financial investments in fossil fuel companies. (Alito is not personally invested in either of the companies named in the lawsuit.)

In a May statement to NBC News, a court spokesperson said that “Justice Alito does not have a financial interest in any party” involved in the case, and the court’s legal counsel advised that “his recusal is not required.”

Several major insurance trade groups also submitted a friend-of-the-Court brief in support of the fossil fuel company defendants.

“You would think that insurance companies that are on the front lines of witnessing the scale of losses that community members and homeowners are facing would be siding with the majority of their policyholders, who have a stake in seeing the responsible parties bear the cost of climate losses,” says Reisch. “But instead, we saw them basically acting as a mouthpiece of the fossil fuel industry and sounding the alarm that cases like this will somehow make it more difficult for energy companies, and particularly fossil fuel companies, to obtain liability insurance.”

What precedent will the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on Suncor v. Boulder set?

A win for the plaintiffs could pave the way for local authorities to seek compensation from the biggest emitters. “If the plaintiffs win on the issue that it's within the power of state courts to issue money damages against the fossil fuel companies over climate change, then these two two dozen other cases that are pending will move forward, and it may be that other similar cases might be filed around the country,” says Gerrard. 

However, a loss in the U.S. Supreme Court could put a halt to the many other local cases seeking damages from fossil fuel companies. “If the Supreme Court were to really narrow and prevent claims like this from going forward, it could have a significant effect on whether other cases, grounded in similar arguments and on similar state law claims, could proceed as well,” says Reisch. 

The case’s significance cannot be understated, says Reisch. “This is the biggest climate-related case that the Supreme Court has heard, and it really goes to fundamental issues of fairness about whether or not communities can hold the companies that have been major drivers of climate change, and contributors to climate harm through the deceptive marketing and [upstream production and sales] of fossil fuel products, … accountable [for their contributions to] the mounting losses.” 

But a loss in court doesn’t mean the fight is over. Experts say they still expect to see cases brought against fossil fuel companies under other legal grounds, as well as cases brought in other countries. 

“These lawsuits are one piece of the picture of trying to hold the oil companies accountable for climate change,” says Gerrard. “It's not the only piece.”