Texas House approves redrawn maps sought by Trump ahead of 2026 elections

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Texas House on Wednesday approved redrawn congressional maps that would give Republicans a bigger edge in 2026, muscling through a partisan gerrymander that launched weeks of protests by Democrats and a widening national battle over redistricting.

The approval came at the urging of President Donald Trump, who pushed for the extraordinary mid-decade revision of congressional maps to give his party a better chance at holding onto the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2026 midterm elections. The maps, which would give Republicans five more winnable seats, need to be approved by the GOP-controlled state Senate and signed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott before they become official.

But the Texas House vote had presented the best chance for Democrats to derail the redraw.

Democratic legislators delayed the vote by two weeks by fleeing Texas earlier this month in protest, and they were assigned round-the-clock police monitoring upon their return to ensure they attended Wednesday’s session.

The approval of the Texas maps on an 88-52 party-line vote is likely to prompt California’s Democratic-controlled state Legislature this week to approve of a new House map creating five new Democratic-leaning districts. But the California map would require voter approval in November.

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Hurricane Erin picking up steam as it edges along the East Coast

RODANTHE, N.C. (AP) — Hurricane Erin began strengthening again Wednesday as it crept closer to the mid-Atlantic coast, its outer bands brushing North Carolina’s Outer Banks as beaches closed across much of the U.S. East Coast.

Forecasters expect the storm to peak going into Thursday and say it could intensify again as a major hurricane.

While Erin is unlikely to make landfall along the East Coast before turning farther out to sea, its outer edge is packing tropical force winds while approaching North Carolina’s Outer Banks.

Water began pouring onto the main route connecting the barrier islands and around a handful of stilted homes precariously perched above the beach. By Wednesday evening, officials had closed Highway 12 on Hatteras Island as surge increased and waves were growing higher, while Ocracoke Island's connection to its ferry terminal was cut off.

Authorities expect the largest swells during high tide will cut off villages and vacation homes on the Outer Banks and whip up life-threatening rip currents from Florida to New England.

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Israel to mobilize 60,000 reservists ahead of an expanded Gaza City operation

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s military said Wednesday it will call up 60,000 reservists ahead of an expanded military operation in Gaza City. Many residents have chosen to stay despite the danger, fearing nowhere is safe in a territory facing shortages of food, water and other necessities.

Calling up extra military reservists is part a plan Defense Minister Israel Katz approved to begin a new phase of operations in some of Gaza’s most densely populated areas, the military said. The plan, which is expected to receive the chief of staff's final approval in the coming days, also includes extending the service of 20,000 additional reservists who are already on active duty.

In a country of fewer than 10 million people, the call-up of reservists is the largest in months and carries economic and political weight. It comes days after hundreds of thousands of Israelis rallied for a ceasefire, as negotiators scramble to get Israel and Hamas to agree to end their 22 months of fighting, and as rights groups warn that an expanded assault could deepen the crisis in the Gaza Strip, where most of the roughly 2 million inhabitants have been displaced, many areas have been reduced to rubble, and the population faces the threat of famine.

An Israeli military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity in line with military regulations, said troops will operate in parts of Gaza City where they haven't been deployed yet and where Israel believes Hamas is still active. Israeli troops in the the city's Zeitoun neighborhood and in Jabaliya, a refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, are already preparing the groundwork for the expanded operation, which could begin within days.

Though the timeline wasn't clear, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said Wednesday that Netanyahu “has directed that the timetables ... be shortened” for launching the offensive.

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Federal Reserve official says she won't be 'bullied' by Trump into resigning

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook late Wednesday said she wouldn't leave her post after Trump on social media called on her to resign over an accusation from one his officials that she committed mortgage fraud.

“I have no intention of being bullied to step down from my position because of some questions raised in a tweet,” Cook said in a statement issued by the Fed.

Bill Pulte, the head of the agency that regulates mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and a Trump appointee, alleged on the X social media platform early Wednesday that Cook had claimed two primary residences -- in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Atlanta -- in 2021 to get better mortgage terms. Mortgage rates are often higher on second homes or those purchased to rent.

Trump followed up Pulte's accusation by calling on Cook to resign, in the latest effort by the administration to exert greater control over one of the few remaining independent agencies in Washington. Trump has repeatedly attacked the Fed's chair, Jerome Powell, for not cutting its short-term interest rate, and even threatened to fire him.

If Cook is forced off the Fed's governing board, it would provide Trump an opportunity to appoint a loyalist. Trump has said he would only appoint officials who would support cutting rates.

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Judge denies Justice Department request to unseal Epstein grand jury transcripts

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday rejected the Trump administration’s request to unseal grand jury transcripts from Jeffrey Epstein ’s sex trafficking case, joining two other judges who declined to release similar records from investigations into the late financier's sexual abuse of young women and girls.

Judge Richard Berman, who presided over the 2019 case, ruled a week after another Manhattan federal judge turned down the government’s request to release transcripts from the grand jury that indicted Epstein’s longtime confidante Ghislaine Maxwell.

Barring reversal on appeal, Berman’s decision appears to foreclose the possibility of federal courts releasing Epstein-related grand jury testimony. A federal judge in Florida declined to release grand jury documents from an investigation there in 2005 and 2007, though some material from a state case against Epstein was made public last year.

The rulings were a resounding repudiation of the Justice Department's effort to unlock the records, a move the Republican administration undertook amid a fierce backlash over its refusal to release a massive trove of documents in its possession.

Berman and the judge in Maxwell's case, Paul A. Engelmayer, made clear in their rulings that the grand jury transcripts contain none of the answers likely to satisfy the immense public interest in the case.

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Appeals court allows Trump to end temporary protections for migrants from Central America and Nepal

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal appeals court on Wednesday sided with the Trump administration and halted for now a lower court’s order that had kept in place temporary protections for 60,000 migrants from Central America and Nepal.

This means that the Republican administration can move toward removing an estimated 7,000 people from Nepal whose Temporary Protected Status designations expired Aug. 5. The TPS designations and legal status of 51,000 Hondurans and 3,000 Nicaraguans are set to expire Sept. 8, at which point they will become eligible for removal.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco granted the emergency stay pending an appeal as lead plaintiff National TPS Alliance alleges that the administration acted unlawfully in ending Temporary Protected Status designations for people from Honduras, Nicaragua and Nepal.

“The district court’s order granting plaintiffs’ motion to postpone, entered July 31, 2025, is stayed pending further order of this court,” wrote the judges, who are appointees of Democrat Bill Clinton and Republicans George W. Bush and Donald Trump.

Temporary Protected Status is a designation that can be granted by the Homeland Security secretary, preventing migrants from being deported and allowing them to work. The Trump administration has aggressively sought to remove the protection, thus making more people eligible for removal. It’s part of a wider effort by the administration to carry out mass deportations of immigrants.

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China rushes to build out solar, and emissions edge downward

TALATAN, China (AP) — High on the Tibetan plateau, Chinese government officials last month showed off what they say will be the world's largest solar farm when completed — 610 square kilometers (235 square miles), the size of the American city of Chicago.

China has been installing solar panels at a blistering pace, far faster than anywhere else in the world, and the investment is starting to pay off. A study released Thursday found that the country's carbon emissions edged down 1% in the first six months of the year compared to a year earlier, extending a trend that began in March 2024.

The good news is China's carbon emissions may have peaked well ahead of a government target of doing so before 2030. But China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, will need to bring them down much more sharply to play its part in slowing global climate change.

For China to reach its declared goal of carbon neutrality by 2060, emissions would need to fall 3% on average over the next 35 years, said Lauri Myllyvirta, the Finland-based author of the study and lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

“China needs to get to that 3% territory as soon as possible,” he said.

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Brazilian police say ex-President Bolsonaro had planned to flee to Argentina seeking asylum

BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — Brazil’s federal police said messages found on the telephone of former President Jair Bolsonaro showed he once wanted to flee to Argentina and request political asylum, according to documents seen Wednesday by The Associated Press.

Bolsonaro is currently awaiting a Supreme Court ruling about an alleged coup attempt and learned Wednesday he might face another case as police formally accused him and one of his sons, Eduardo Bolsonaro, of obstruction of justice in connection with his trial.

The 170-page report said Bolsonaro had drafted a request for political asylum from Argentine President Javier Milei’s government dated Feb. 10, 2024. He saved the document two days after authorities searched his home and office as part of the alleged coup plot investigation.

Close to that date, Bolsonaro admittedly spent two nights at the Hungarian Embassy in Brasília, fueling speculation he may have been attempting to avoid arrest.

The Argentina plot is part of the wider police accusation of obstruction of justice, in which Bolsonaro has allegedly ignored precautionary measures established for his house arrest and spread content to his allies “to directly hit Brazilian democratic institutions, notably the Supreme Court and even Brazil’s Congress,” according to the report.

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Gabbard slashing intelligence office workforce and cutting budget by over $700 million

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Office of the Director of National Intelligence will dramatically reduce its workforce and cut its budget by more than $700 million annually, the Trump administration announced Wednesday.

The move amounts to a major downsizing of the office responsible for coordinating the work of 18 intelligence agencies, including on counterterrorism and counterintelligence, as President Donald Trump has tangled with assessments from the intelligence community.

His administration also this week has revoked the security clearances of dozens of former and current officials, while last month declassifying documents meant to call into question long-settled judgments about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

“Over the last 20 years, ODNI has become bloated and inefficient, and the intelligence community is rife with abuse of power, unauthorized leaks of classified intelligence, and politicized weaponization of intelligence," Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, said in a statement announcing a more than 40% workforce reduction.

She added: “Ending the weaponization of intelligence and holding bad actors accountable are essential to begin to earn the American people’s trust which has long been eroded.”

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Top White House officials turn to public appearances with troops as a tense Washington watches

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s law-enforcement crackdown on Washington expanded Wednesday and top administration officials visited National Guard troops to support a deployment that has left parts of the U.S. capital looking like occupied territory. Anger and frustration dotted the city as the vice president lauded an operation that he asserted has “brought some law and order back.”

The tense situation, which began more than a week ago when Trump took control of the local police department, appeared primed for escalating confrontations between residents who say they feel under siege and federal forces carrying out the president's vision of militarized law enforcement in Democratic cities. Other residents have said they welcome the federal efforts as a way to cut crime and bolster safety.

As Trump ratcheted up the pressure, Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared burgers with soldiers at the city’s main railroad hub as demonstrators gathered nearby. The appearance, a striking scene that also included White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, illustrated the Republican administration’s intense dedication to an initiative that has polarized the Democratic-led city.

“You guys are doing a hell of a job,” Vance told the troops assembled in the Union Station Shake Shack. While protest chants echoed through the restaurant, he rejected polling that shows city residents don’t support the National Guard deployment as a solution to crime.

Someone booed Vance loudly and repeatedly as he left. The vice president grinned and said, “This is the guy who thinks people don’t deserve law and order in their own community.”

News from © The Associated Press, 2025