Lawmakers press Trump for military support for Taiwan after Xi summit

2026-05-15 17:44 EDT / CBS News

By Patrick Maguire
Patrick Maguire is an Associate Producer at CBS News based in Washington, D.C.

Updated on: May 15, 2026 / 6:53 PM EDT / CBS News

Washington — Lawmakers in both parties say the U.S. should continue to provide arms to Taiwan after President Trump, at the end of his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, said he hasn’t decided whether to move forward with a pending arms sale to the island.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One Friday after departing Beijing, Mr. Trump said he and Xi “talked a lot about Taiwan” during their summit and confirmed the Chinese leader had brought up the U.S. weapons sale. The president said he made “no commitment either way” on the issue and declined to publicly state whether the U.S. would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack.

The comments quickly drew attention on Capitol Hill, where Taiwan has long enjoyed strong bipartisan support and lawmakers have been pushing the administration to move ahead with a delayed $14 billion arms sale that Congress approved in January.

Rep. Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican and former House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, said Friday that the U.S. must “arm Taiwan so they can defend themselves for deterrence against Chairman Xi.” McCaul said that during the summit, Xi was “very aggressive” regarding Taiwan and added that “most of what [Xi] talked about was Taiwan.”

Asked about the fact that the president has not yet made a decision on the arms sale, McCaul replied that there “there should be” a decision.

During the summit, Xi told Mr. Trump that the Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-U.S. relations, according to a Chinese readout of their meeting. A Chinese ministry spokesperson said Xi made it clear that if Taiwan “is handled properly, the bilateral relationship will enjoy overall stability.” If not, “the two countries will have clashes and even conflicts, putting the entire relationship in great jeopardy.”

The ministry said Xi also told Mr. Trump that “‘Taiwan independence’ and cross-Strait peace are as irreconcilable as fire and water.”

After meeting with Xi, Mr. Trump told Fox News’ Bret Baier he views the pending weapons sale as a “very good negotiating chip.”

“I may do it, I may not do it,” the president said, later adding: “Taiwan would be very smart to cool it a little bit. China would be very smart to cool it a little bit.”

House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Gregory Meeks, a New York Democrat, also stressed the importance of U.S. support for Taiwan’s defenses. Meeks was among a group of top House Democrats who had urged Mr. Trump ahead of the summit to approve the delayed package before meeting Xi, warning that delaying Taiwan arms sales could weaken deterrence of Chinese aggression in the Taiwan Strait.

“I think it is important for us to make sure that Taiwan does have what it needs to defend itself,” Meeks told CBS News on Friday.

Meeks also argued Xi has “leverage over the president” but not “over the United States Congress and the American people.” He said Congress has already acted on the package, and “the president is the one that’s holding it up.”

Speaker Mike Johnson also reiterated his support for Taiwan Friday, though he said he has not yet received a full readout from Trump on the talks with Xi.

“We’ve always been concerned, and we’ve made America’s interests very clear,” Johnson said. “Our position on Taiwan, they need to stay independent and secure there.”

Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick compared Taiwan to Ukraine, calling both “fortresses of democracy” that are “on the front lines.”

“We have to support Taiwan,” Fitzpatrick said. “We should be bolstering it.”

Taiwan emerged as one of the most closely watched issues ahead of Trump’s trip to Beijing, as lawmakers worried that the administration could delay or reconsider future arms sales as part of broader negotiations with China on trade and Iran.

The U.S. announced a record $11 billion arms sale to Taiwan late last year, angering Beijing and prompting Chinese military exercises near the island. The larger $14 billion package is still awaiting Mr. Trump’s signature four months after Congress approved it.

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/xi-draws-red-line-taiwan-trump-summit/

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PUBLISHED May 15, 2026, 4:45 PM ET

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Tina Peters speaks during a debate for a state leadership position in February 2023 in Hudson, Colorado.

David Zalubowski/AP

Tina Peters, the Republican former election clerk imprisoned for crimes related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election, will receive clemency from Colorado’s Democratic Gov. Jared Polis and soon be released from custody, Polis exclusively told CNN.

The decision followed a previously unreleased statement in Peters’ clemency application, obtained by CNN from Polis’ office, in which Peters acknowledged for the first time since her 2024 conviction that she “made a mistake” and “misled” Colorado election officials.

Polis said in an interview Friday that he was cutting Peters’ prison sentence in half, reducing it to 4.5 years. He said that meant she could be paroled within a month, based on the time she has already served behind bars and Colorado’s early-release rules.

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A jury in conservative-leaning Mesa County convicted Peters in 2024 of conspiring with fellow election deniers to breach her county’s election systems in hopes of proving President Donald Trump’s baseless 2020 voter-fraud claims.

Trump has waged a long pressure campaign against Colorado over Peters’ incarceration. She is the last Trump ally still in prison for 2020 election-related crimes.

“I made a mistake four years ago,” Peters said in the statement released Friday. “I misled the secretary of state when allowing a person to gain access to county voting equipment. That was wrong. Going forward, I will make sure that my actions always follow the law.”

Polis said he agrees with a recent appeals court ruling which found that the trial judge improperly punished Peters for her protected speech about the 2020 election, telling CNN he’d like others to come to the same conclusion as the court. But he knows, especially among Democrats in his state and beyond, that’s going to be tough.

“I hope that Democrats don’t sacrifice our deeply held belief in free speech because of political expediency or disregard for what people are saying,” Polis said. “There should be no consideration of what we say, how unpopular it is, how inaccurate it is in sentencing or in criminal proceedings.”

CNN is reaching out to Peters’ team for comment.

Polis said he also heard from Trump privately in addition to the president’s public posts demanding Peters, 70, be released. He said that the president often gets facts wrong about Peters, her crime and his ability to pardon her for state-level offenses.

“He gets her age wrong. He gets what she did wrong. My focus was doing what’s right and then looking at the merits of the case,” Polis said.

In this July 25, 2025 photo, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis speaks to the National Governors Association at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

David Zalubowski/AP

He says Peters committed a crime, and he was personally disgusted with what Peters said about the 2020 election, “but we have to make sure our justice system is blind and fair.”

The history of Peters’ case

Witnesses testified at Peters’ trial that in 2021, she gave people affiliated with pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell unauthorized access to the election offices in Mesa County, where she was the clerk. Witnesses said they made copies of sensitive election data so they could audit the 2020 results.

Until the statement released Friday, Peters had denied wrongdoing and maintained for years that she was trying to preserve election records, as required by federal law.

Last month, a state appeals court upheld Peters’ criminal convictions. However, it ordered the trial judge to re-sentence her, finding that he improperly based part of the punishment on Peters’ protected speech about elections, violating her First Amendment rights.

A date for a new sentencing hearing hadn’t been set yet. Peters was eligible for parole in 2028. CNN has reported that, even without clemency, Colorado law could have made Peters eligible to move into a halfway house or a similar arrangement as soon as this November with good behavior.

Through her allies, Peters had continued promoting debunked conspiracies about election-rigging from prison.

Her official website still says she is the victim of “politically motivated” prosecutions designed to “silence” her for “exposing what she believed were critical flaws in the election system.” Her social media feed includes unfounded claims from supposed informants who claimed American voting machines can flip votes using technology from Venezuela.

Her account reshared a post Tuesday from a radio host who urged Trump to “INVADE COLORADO if you have to” and “do whatever needs to be done” to free Peters from prison.

The governor has seen the posts and what Peters has continued to say. That’s not a reason to keep her behind bars, he said.

“I hope that she’s no longer a martyr, that she is just another person who believes in conspiracies on the street after this,” Polis said. “I hope she doesn’t believe in conspiracies, but I’m not holding my breath.”

What her release could mean

Still, Peters’ impending release is a victory for Trump and the right-wing election denier movement, which hails her as a hero who was unjustly prosecuted.

In a lawsuit against the Trump administration, Colorado officials accused the administration of a “revenge campaign” that included closing a Colorado-based climate lab, denying federal disaster assistance requests from the state, yanking federal transportation funds and threatening to withhold federal food assistance for low-income families.

Trump also vetoed a bill for a Colorado water project and moved US Space Command from Colorado Springs to Alabama. And in February, Trump tried to exclude Polis and another Democratic governor from what is traditionally a bipartisan gathering of governors at the White House.

The White House says these decisions were well-founded and legally supported.

Trump issued a symbolic federal pardon for Peters in December, but Polis is the only person who could let Peters out of prison because she was convicted of state charges.

Polis pointed out that the commutation decision is not a pardon because he believes she broke the law and wants her to live with that felony on her record.

Polis’ term ends in January, and he has bucked his party on some key issues in recent years. The Democratic Party has been in near-universal condemnation of the effort to argue Trump’s 2020 election loss was fraudulent.

Polis sloughed off talk of how the decision might affect a 2028 presidential run that some have speculated he might make.

“This has nothing to do with that,” he said. “I think we need to get past the divisive rhetoric of today and understand that just because you’re on the unpopular side of an argument – if you’re a person who believes in conservative things in a liberal state or liberal things in conservative state or conspiracy things in any state or that the earth is flat – you have that free speech.”

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委内瑞拉天然气处理厂发生爆炸 造成六名工人受伤

2026年5月16日 07:19 / 联合早报

委内瑞拉天然气处理厂发生爆炸 造成六名工人受伤

委内瑞拉老旧的油气设施，尤其是西部地区的设施，经常发生火灾和停电事件。图为马拉开波湖畔破败的石油基础设施。 （路透社）

委内瑞拉马拉开波湖畔一个天然气处理厂发生大爆炸并引发火灾，造成六名工人受伤，工厂也遭到损坏。

路透社报道，委内瑞拉国家石油公司（PDVSA）发声明说，星期五（5月15日）爆炸发生后，公司立即启动应急预案并疏散工厂人员，六名员工在事件中受伤。

路透社此前看到的报道和视频显示，两名跳入水中的工人严重烧伤。他们被送往西部城市马拉开波附近的一家医院，另有四名工人受轻伤。

灭火过程中，为设施供气的天然气管道被迫关闭。

据路透社看到的委内瑞拉国家石油公司内部事件报告显示，拉马加斯（Lamargas）压缩厂在进行天然气减压作业时发生火灾。

这座天然气设施属于五湖（Lago Cinco）项目，由中国协和资源有限公司运营。PDVSA已与这家公司签订，在五湖浅水区开采原油。

PDVSA说，一个技术委员会将调查事发原因，并称这起事件并未影响委内瑞拉西部油气业务的持续运营。

由于长期缺乏外国投资和美国制裁阻碍了维护工作，委内瑞拉老旧的油气设施，尤其是西部地区的设施，经常发生火灾和停电事件。

目前，华盛顿正鼓励外国资本投资委内瑞拉能源行业，此举是美国今年1月在抓捕委内瑞拉总统马杜罗后启动的千亿美元重建计划的一部分。

US Supreme Court rebuffs Virginia Democrats in bid for new voting map

May 15, 2026 10:40 PM UTC / Reuters

By John Kruzel

Updated 13 mins ago

Supporters depart a campaign rally against Virginia Democrats’ proposed state redistricting constitutional amendment ahead of the referendum special election on April 21, in Bridgewater, Virginia, April 11, 2026. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno/ File Photo

Summary

Virginia voters approved pro-Democratic map in April
Redrawn map is part of nationwide redistricting battle
Control of Congress at stake in November US elections

WASHINGTON, May 15 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday rejected a bid by Virginia Democrats to revive ​a voting map designed to help their party wrest control of the U.S. House of Representatives from President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans in November’s ‌midterm elections.

The justices declined to halt a ruling by Virginia’s top court that blocked a voter-approved pro-Democratic map for the midterms, denying a request by Democrats in the state. The court’s action came in a brief and unsigned order that provided no rationale. No justice publicly dissented.

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Democrats pursued the revised electoral map – crafted to flip four Republican-held U.S. House of Representatives seats to Democrats – ​as part of a nationwide political battle initiated last year by Trump to redraw the boundaries of U.S. electoral districts for partisan benefit.

The conservative-majority U.S. ​Supreme Court acted in the Virginia case after clearing the way on Monday for Alabama Republicans to pursue a congressional voting map ⁠more favorable to their party ahead of the midterms.

Control of Congress is at stake in the midterms, with Republicans holding slim majorities in the House and Senate. Virginia ​has 11 seats in the 435-member House.

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The Virginia Supreme Court in a 4-3 decision on May 8 threw out the state’s voter-approved map, ruling in favor of Republicans who ​challenged it. The court found that Democratic lawmakers had not followed proper procedures last year when they rushed to approve the referendum in the state legislature in time to put the ballot initiative before voters ahead of the midterms.

Don Scott, the speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, and other Democratic legislators asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to halt the ruling by ​the state’s top court, saying it had “deprived voters, candidates and the Commonwealth (Virginia) of their right to the lawfully enacted congressional districts.”

They cited a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling ​that stated that state courts “may not transgress the ordinary bounds of judicial review such that they arrogate to themselves the power vested in state legislatures to regulate federal elections.”

The Virginia referendum ‌was the ⁠final step in a complicated legislative maneuver to sidestep a state constitutional amendment that was passed by voters in 2020 to put redistricting in the hands of a bipartisan commission.

Virginia Senate Republican Leader Ryan McDougle, one of the plaintiffs in the case, welcomed the court’s ruling on Friday.

“The Supreme Court of the United States has affirmed what we always knew: you cannot violate the Constitution to change the Constitution,” McDougle said.

Virginia voters approved the Democratic-backed electoral map in an April 21 special election by a 51.7% ​to 48.3% margin, with about 3.1 million ​votes cast.

In a process called redistricting, ⁠the boundaries of legislative districts across the United States are reconfigured to reflect population changes as measured by the national U.S. census every 10 years. Redistricting traditionally has been carried out by state legislatures at the start of each new decade.

In the ​unusual mid-decade redistricting fight now unfolding, Republicans hold a clear advantage.

At Trump’s urging, Republican-governed Texas redrew its electoral map last ​year in a bid ⁠to flip five Democratic-held U.S. House seats, prompting Democratic-led California to reconfigure its congressional map to target five Republican-held seats. Multiple other states have joined the fray.

Democrats suffered a blow when the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority in April gutted a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, opening the door for Republican-led Southern states to dismantle Democratic-held majority-Black ⁠and majority-Latino ​districts ahead of the November elections. Black and Latino voters tend to support Democratic candidates.

Underscoring the stakes ​of the Virginia redistricting effort, Democratic- and Republican-affiliated groups spent close to $100 million on the referendum campaign.

The referendum has faced multiple legal challenges. In addition to the dispute before the U.S. Supreme Court, a ​judge in a separate case on April 22 also blocked the pro-Democratic map, acting in a lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee.

Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Lebanon accuses Iran of inserting IRGC terrorists into country ‘under guise of diplomatic activity’

2026-05-15T17:14:22-04:00 / Fox News

The disclosure comes amid US-facilitated Israel-Lebanon talks in Washington described as ‘exceeding expectations’

By Benjamin Weinthal, Fox News

Published May 15, 2026 5:14pm EDT | Updated May 15, 2026 5:16pm EDT

Israeli forces strike Hezbollah launchers in Lebanon

The Israel Defense Forces released footage on Saturday, May 9, showing strikes on “two loaded and ready-to-use launchers in southern Lebanon.” (Credit: IDF)

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The Lebanese government filed a sharply worded complaint with the United Nations arguing that the Islamic Republic of Iran has abused diplomatic immunity by refusing to recall its ambassador after Beirut demanded his expulsion and to stop alleged terrorist activities on its soil, according to a recently surfaced letter from late April.

The disclosure of the letter, which is reportedly a precedent-setting move by Lebanon, comes amid a second day of talks in Washington between Israel and Lebanon to normalize relations (the countries are in a state of war) and dismantle the Iranian-regime-backed Hezbollah terrorist movement in Lebanon.

A U.S. State Department spokesperson told Fox News Digital on Friday that “The United States facilitated talks between Israel and Lebanon have resumed today and are ongoing. The atmosphere of talks has been very positive, even exceeding expectations.”

FAMILY OF AMERICAN HOSTAGE TORTURED IN LEBANON WINS LANDMARK CASE AGAINST IRAN

A mourner holds a portrait of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a funeral procession on March 5, 2026, for members of Iraq’s pro-Iran paramilitary group Kataeb Hezbollah killed in a strike in Baghdad the previous day.(Ahmed Al-Rubaye/AFP via Getty Images)

State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott wrote on X on Friday that “On May 14 and 15, the United States hosted two days of highly-productive talks between Israel and Lebanon. The April 16 cessation of hostilities will be extended by 45 days to enable further progress. The State Department will reconvene the political track of negotiations on June 2 and June 3.”

He added that, “In addition, a security track will be launched at the Pentagon on May 29 with military delegations from both countries. We hope these discussions will advance lasting peace between the two countries, full recognition of each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and establishing genuine security along their shared border.”

As the sides report back to their capitals, the potentially game-changing letter in which Lebanese ambassador to the U.N. Ahmad Arafa,slammed Iran for inserting alleged terrorists from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) into Lebanon “under the guise of diplomatic activity,” has given hope to critics of Iran and Hezbollah.

Arafa said, according to the letter, that Iran committed “unlawful acts in blatant defiance of the decisions of the Government of Lebanon.” He continued, “This Iranian conduct constitutes direct and blatant interference in the internal affairs of Lebanon and drags the country into a war it did not choose to become involved in.”

Michael Needham, counselor for the U.S. Department of State, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa, Lebanese Ambassador to the U.S. Nada Hamadeh Moawad, and Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter pose for a photo before a meeting at the State Department in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 2026.(Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

The U.S. and the European Union have classified the IRGC as a terrorist entity.

The letter took the Iranian Ambassador to Beirut, Mohammad Reza Sheibani, to task for “blatant interference” in Lebanon.

According to Lebanon’s U.N. letter, Beirut argued that Iran is violating the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and interfering in Lebanon’s state of affairs.

IDF SOLDIERS ACCUSE UN PEACEKEEPERS OF ENABLING HEZBOLLAH TERRORISTS AMID INCREASING CEASE-FIRE VIOLATIONS

Iranian protesters carry flowers in front of a large banner of Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah during a protest in Tehran on Sept. 30, 2024, condemning an Israeli air strike on Hezbollah’s Beirut headquarters and the killing of Nasrallah and IRGC Quds Force commander General Abbas Nilforoushan.(Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto)

When asked about the details of the letter, a spokesperson for Lebanon’s ambassador to the U.S. declined to comment. The spokesperson also declined to weigh in on the current talks with Israel in Washington.

Walid Phares, a leading U.S. expert on Lebanon and the Mideast, told Fox News Digital that “Many have considered the Lebanese memo to the U.N. as the start of the Lebanese government change of attitude towards Iran and a sign of escalation by Beirut. While the tone of the letter and its narrative make people feel that there is a government resistance to Iran and Hezbollah reality is still lesser.”

He added that “The subject of the last quarrel is a legal change of status regarding the presence of Iranians on Lebanese soil. The Lebanese government has decided not to grant Iranians, government, and private citizens an automatic visa waiver, which upset Iran and Hezbollah. Besides, Tehran is furious at the fact that the Lebanese government has not been helpful in dealing with the elimination of a number of IRGC members killed in Lebanon by Israel. Tehran blames the foreign ministry of Lebanon, particularly foreign minister Youssef Raggi, for the ‘lessening of solidarity with Iran.’”

Smoke rises from Israeli airstrikes in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, on April 5, 2026.(Emilio Morenatti/AP)

According to Phares, “Raggi represents a Lebanese Christian bloc in the parliament, who is not sympathetic to the regime. However, the actual talks in D.C. are designed by the Lebanese government to show the Trump administration that the ‘state wants to talk’ but not to reach an agreement that would trigger Hezbollah’s wrath. The leaders of the Lebanese state are not yet where the U.S. and Israel expect them to be.”

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A regional official well-versed in the U.N. dispute told Fox News Digital that Lebanon “argued that Iran had not given the Lebanese foreign ministry the list of all Iranians and the details about their place of stay. And that’s why Israel targeted that hotel in Lebanon in which six were killed, which is true.”

The official said that “Iran had not told the foreign ministry of Lebanon about those six people.”

Benjamin Weinthal reports on Israel, Iran, Syria, Turkey and Europe. You can follow Benjamin on Twitter @BenWeinthal, and email him at benjamin.weinthal@fox.com

US Supreme Court tosses longshot appeal from Virginians to use new congressional map that would benefit Democrats

May 15, 2026 6:37 PM ET / CNN

By John Fritze

Updated May 15, 2026, 6:56 PM ET

Signs are seen outside Fairfax Government Center during the Virginia redistricting referendum, Tuesday, April 21, 2026, in Fairfax, Va. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

The Supreme Court on Friday tossed out an emergency request from Virginia officials to reinstate a congressional map that would have benefited Democrats in this year’s midterm election, a widely expected decision that represented the court’s latest foray into a nationwide redistricting war.

The decision thwarts Democratic plans to use the new map to pick up as many as four additional seats in the House of Representatives this year.

The 6-3 conservative court has recently sided with Republicans in Louisiana and Alabama – permitting those states to quickly redraw their maps. But the Virginia case dealt more squarely with questions of state law rather than federal questions, and many experts predicted that the appeal was, at best, a Hail Mary.

There were no noted dissents. and the court did not explain its reasoning in the one-sentence order.

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, signaled this week that the state was abandoning the effort anyway, telling reporters on Wednesday that the state would move forward with the old maps regardless of how the US Supreme Court decided the emergency appeal.

Democratic officials in Virginia raced up to the US Supreme Court on Monday urging the justices to block a 4-3 decision from the state’s highest court that effectively struck down their proposed map. The state court ruling was based on what it found was a timing error in how the legislature handled a referendum empowering lawmakers to redraw their maps as part of a highly unusual mid-decade redistricting war playing out across the nation.

The state court’s ruling, Democrats said, was “deeply mistaken” and had “profound practical importance to the nation.”

The fast-track appeal landed at the 6-3 conservative court at a moment when the justices are facing significant criticism, including from within their own ranks, for a series of map decisions that have by and large favored the Republican Party. In recent days, the court has cleared the way for both Louisiana and Alabama to use new maps that are far more friendly to Republicans – tipping the balance in the monthslong redistricting race toward the GOP.

That started with a blockbuster decision in late April that weakened the scope of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, providing political cover to Republican state lawmakers eager to heed President Donald Trump’s call to redraw maps between census releases to try to retain control of the House. Several southern states have moved to redraw or have already recrafted their maps, in some cases pushing back their primary elections.

But while the political motivations in Virginia are the same as those other states, the legal issues were quite different. The challenge to Virginia’s Democratic-friendly map dealt not with racial considerations but rather with how the state sequenced an amendment to its constitution to allow the redistricting in the first place. The state’s highest court ruled that lawmakers violated the state’s constitution with that process by not holding the first vote on an amendment before a general election. Virginia lawmakers first voted to approve the measure in late October 2025, before Election Day but while early voting was already well underway.

The challenge for Democrats is that the US Supreme Court generally defers to state courts when it comes to interpreting state law.

Recognizing that challenge, Virginia Democrats engineered an argument that the state courts misinterpreted the definition of “election” in federal law, which they said clearly means only Election Day. And they resurrected an argument that has been more frequently raised by Republicans that state courts should have deferred to the state legislature on election matters under a clause of the US Constitution that requires “the legislature” of each state to set the rules for federal elections.

The redistricting in Virginia would have given Democrats the chance to win as many as four more seats, potentially reducing the state’s GOP representation to a single district.

The Virginia appeal arrived as the justices have openly debated the court’s impact on this year’s midterm election. Following the Voting Rights Act decision last month, liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson traded barbs with conservative Justice Samuel Alito over how quickly Louisiana could redraw its map. Jackson accused the court of rolling over its “principles” in pursuit of influencing the election. Alito fired back, calling that “insulting” and saying that Jackson’s dissent raised “trivial” and “baseless” arguments.

This story is has been updated with additional details.

以色列和黎巴嫩同意将停火协议延长45天

2026年5月16日 07:26 / 联合早报

以色列和黎巴嫩同意将停火协议延长45天

以色列星期五（5月15日）在宣布同意延长停火协议同一天，持续对黎巴嫩展开空袭。图为黎巴嫩南部遭到袭击，现场窜出滚滚浓烟。 （路透社）

美国宣布，以色列和黎巴嫩同意将停火协议延长45天，并就政治解决方案举行扩大谈判。

法新社报道，以色列和黎巴嫩在华盛顿举行两天会晤后，双方星期五（5月15日）同意延长原定于星期天（17日）到期的停火协议。

美国国务院发言人皮戈特说，停火协议“将延长45天，以便取得进一步进展”。

他说，五角大楼将于5月29日召集两国军队代表团举行会晤，而美国国务院将于6月2日和3日举行旨在达成永久政治协议的谈判。

率领以色列代表团的以色列驻华盛顿大使莱特在会谈后说，首要任务是确保以色列的安全。他在社媒X发文说：“谈判过程中会有起伏，但成功的可能性很大。”

黎巴嫩代表团发声明说，延长停火期限和启动军事会谈将为“我们的公民提供至关重要的喘息之机”，目标是实现“持久稳定”。

黎巴嫩总理萨拉姆在贝鲁特的一次非政府组织晚宴上发表讲话说，黎巴嫩已经“受够这些为外国项目或利益服务的鲁莽冒险”，显然在暗讽真主党。

他说，最近一次的行动带来“一场我们并非自愿却被迫卷入的战争，导致以色列占领了68个城镇和村庄”。

以色列一直在猛烈轰炸黎巴嫩，并入侵黎巴嫩南部，以回应真主党的炮火。真主党是一个受伊朗支持的组织，并未参与停火谈判。

黎巴嫩指出，在星期五停火协议续签后不久，以军便对黎南部奈拜提耶地区发动多轮空袭，造成至少12人死亡，包括三名医护人员。以军也对提尔地区多个城镇发动空袭，造成至少37人受伤，包括医护人员、妇女和儿童。

真主党则称，他们使用无人机袭击北部城市基里亚特什莫纳的以色列军营。

以色列军方承认，有一名以色列士兵在黎巴嫩南部的冲突中丧生。自3月初以来，在与真主党的冲突中丧生的以色列士兵人数已达19人。一名平民承包商也在冲突中丧生。

黎卫生部星期五公布的数据显示，自3月2日黎以战火重燃以来，袭击已造成2951人死亡，以及8988人受伤。

Trump talks up trade deals with China, but experts see no big wins for U.S.

May 15, 2026 / 6:32 PM EDT / CBS News

By Megan Cerullo Reporter, MoneyWatch
Megan Cerullo is a New York-based reporter for CBS MoneyWatch covering small business, workplace, health care, consumer spending and personal finance topics. She regularly appears on CBS News 24/7 to discuss her reporting.

Read Full Bio

This week’s summit between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping could ease economic tensions between the countries in the short term, but failed to deliver any breakthrough trade deals, according to some experts.

“I was expecting that China would announce mega purchases of U.S. agriculture, energy and airplanes,” Wendy Cutler, a former negotiator in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, told CBS News. “So far, it doesn’t seem like Trump and his team have a lot to show for the visit.”

President Trump on Friday said the meeting in Beijing had produced “fantastic trade deals” and characterized the trip as an “incredible visit,” while Chinese officials opened the door to new areas of cooperation with the U.S.

“It looks like both sides are saying they got somewhere, but we are not there yet — we are still waiting,” said David Meale, head of the China practice at Eurasia Group, a political risk consulting firm. “Neither side has come out with a clear statement of details. I don’t think that means it’s a failure or that those deals don’t exist. They just need to cross the Ts and dot the Is on a few things.

One winner likely to emerge from the talks is Boeing. Trump said on Friday that China had agreed to purchase at least 200 aircraft from the U.S. aviation giant and that the number could eventually grow to 750 planes.

Yet the initial aircraft order is smaller than some analysts expected before the summit, according to investment advisory firm Capital Economics. Boeing shares fell 3.8% on Friday, a sign that investors were underwhelmed by the deal news.

Boeing didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Trump also said that China agreed to buy more U.S. oil and agricultural products, including “billions of dollars of soybeans” from American farmers.

A White House official told CBS News that Mr. Trump’s trip had delivered important agricultural agreements that expand U.S. farmers’ exports to China and an aircraft purchase agreement that will boost U.S. manufacturing jobs. More details on the agreements are forthcoming, the official added.

The White House also said the U.S. has established what it called a “Board of Trade” and “Board of Investment” to manage the U.S.’s economic relationship with China.

Non-binding commitments

For now, specifics on the deals remain scant, energy and trade experts noted.

“As far as I can tell, this isn’t confirmed, and we haven’t seen a statement saying that China wants to buy X barrels of oil per day from the U.S.,” said China energy policy expert Erica Downs, a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University SIPA. “Saying that China wants to buy more energy from the U.S. will please Trump, but it doesn’t bind China to anything.”

Cutler, now senior vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute, a think tank focused on trade and investment, said she was expecting more details on renewed Chinese commitments to buy other U.S. farm products, including corn and beef.

Economists also noted that the deals with China Mr. Trump touted remain only verbal commitments, with no guarantee they will materialize.

For example, Mr. Trump’s 2017 trip to China led to an agreement for the state-owned China Energy Investment Corporation to invest nearly $84 billion in shale gas and chemical manufacturing projects in West Virginia. But the plans dissolved as U.S.-China tensions grew.

Trade experts emphasized that U.S. and Chinese officials could iron out such deals in the coming weeks and months.

“This is not their one and only meeting, which could lead to both sides deciding to take their time before they announce anything, rather than rushing,” Cutler noted.

Framework for stability?

Cutler also underlined the potential value of the world’s two largest economies holding constructive talks. Chinese and U.S. officials described the meeting as a way to stabilize the relationship, which deteriorated last year after Mr. Trump imposed tariffs of up to 125% on Chinese imports, prompting countermeasures from China on U.S. products.

“They get to relabel the relationship as stable, and it feels like there is a new framework for how we’re going to engage on the economic front,” Cutler said.

That framework includes the new Board of Trade, which would mediate trade disputes between the countries. As part of that mechanism, the sides would consider lifting tariffs on roughly $30 billion in goods, Reuters reported.

Still, that number is less than 10% of the value of trade between the U.S. and China in 2025, according to Capital Economics.

As of February, China faced a U.S. tariff rate of roughly 32%, according to the Penn Wharton Budget Model, a University of Pennsylvania research group that analyzes the fiscal impact of public policies. Chinese tariffs on U.S. experts average around 10%.

Edited by Alain Sherter

Federal civil rights watchdog wants to stop tracking data on race and sex

2026-05-15T21:28:09.409Z / The Washington Post

Federal civil rights watchdog wants to stop tracking data on race and sex

The EEOC has proposed ending a civil-rights-era program collecting demographic information from private companies.

May 15, 2026 at 5:28 p.m. EDT Yesterday at 5:28 p.m. EDT

(David Zalubowski/AP)

By Meryl Kornfield

The top federal agency for promoting diversity across society is proposing pulling back on its primary initiative to collect demographic data, one that it has conducted for decades.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is considering no longer collecting demographic information including race, sex and national origin from major American companies, departing from a practice that began during the civil rights era of the 1960s and was critical to the agency’s efforts to root out workplace discrimination. The EEOC also wants to ax data reporting rules for apprenticeship programs, unions, state and local governments, and schools, as well as reporting requirements in other civil rights laws that protect workers, including those who are pregnant or have disabilities.

The EEOC notified the White House on Thursday of its proposal, which will be published publicly after a review. It’s not clear what impact the proposal could have on this year’s data collection. The move would align with the administration’s efforts to end diversity programs and deprioritize a key subset of discrimination cases.

The data collection has taken place for 60 years under a plank of the Civil Rights Act called Title VII. The federal EEO-1 report provides demographic and job category data collected from companies with 100 or more employees, and certain federal contractors. The collection typically begins in May. Under the administration of President Joe Biden, the EEOC sued employers that had allegedly not complied with the federal reporting requirements.

The move to reconsider the data collection was not a surprise to those who follow the EEOC’s work. A five-year contract for the collection expired last year and was not renewed, according to federal contracting data. Some attorneys representing employers have advised their clients that they should collect the data as they usually do to comply with the law.

“Employers should continue to collect the information as a best practice, because Title VII obligations are not going away and disparate impact is not going away,” said Christy Kiely, a partner at the Seyfarth Shaw law firm. “It’s been deprioritized, but it’s still in the statute.”

The move follows the administration’s deprioritization of cases under a legal concept called “disparate impact,” which is based on the assumption that racial imbalances in the workplace are a result of discrimination.

The elimination of data collection would fulfill one of the goals listed in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, the blueprint of the second Trump administration, which outlined how the data could be used to support discrimination allegations.

“Crudely categorizing employees by race or ethnicity fails to recognize the diversity of the American workforce and forces individuals into categories that do not fully reflect their racial and ethnic heritage,” wrote Project 2025 author Jonathan Berry, who is now solicitor for the Department of Labor.

Berry appeared alongside Trump-appointed EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas in a webinar in early April where the two laid out the administration’s priorities in employment law cases. Lucas — who issued a viral public appeal in December for White men who think they have experienced discrimination to contact her agency — told an audience of employment lawyers that disparate-impact cases made up a minority of the agency’s workload and the EEOC would continue to focus on intentional discrimination.

The president“wants his enforcement agencies to be focused on I think the most morally offensive type of discrimination, which is intentional discrimination, not inadvertent discrimination, at least as defined by disparate impact in Title VII,” Lucas said.

Lucas highlighted a case her EEOC has brought against a company’s women’s retreat that excluded a man from participating.

Jenny Yang, a former EEOC chair, said the data has previously helped show the enforcement agency where patterns of discrimination might exist, such as instances where qualified individuals in the labor pool are not fully represented in companies’ workforces.

Yang and other previous EEOC leaders issued a statement Friday opposing the proposed change and arguing that it would weaken the federal government’s ability to enforce antidiscrimination laws.

“The EEO-1 data was incredibly valuable, particularly in hiring and promotion investigations,” Yang said. “It’s eliminating important evidence and facts to understand where problems exist.”

Christine Webber, a civil rights and employment lawyer, said a decision to rescind reporting requirements for companies would run counter to the EEOC’s other efforts to collect data from law firms that the administration has targeted. The EEOC also recently won a court battle over requesting information about Jewish people at the University of Pennsylvania as part of an investigation into antisemitism.

“They know perfectly well that the EEOC needs data like that to do its job of enforcing the antidiscrimination laws,” Webber said. “Because if you want to show a pattern of conduct, a pattern of decision-making, data is an essential ingredient.”

Julian Mark contributed to this report.

Supreme Court rejects Virginia Democrats’ bid to revive new congressional map

May 15, 2026 / 6:38 PM EDT / CBS News

By Melissa Quinn

Washington — The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a bid by Virginia Democrats to revive its new voter-approved congressional map that was drawn to advantage the party for the upcoming midterm elections.

In an unsigned one-sentence order, the Supreme Court left intact a ruling from Virginia’s highest court that invalidated an amendment to the state constitution authorizing adoption of the new House district lines.

Virginia Democrats had mounted a last-ditch effort to restore the new voting boundaries earlier this week, but it was considered a longshot, since the Supreme Court typically does not review interpretations of state law by a state’s highest court.

Democrats have been working to counter Republican-led redistricting efforts in several states to bolster the GOP’s chances of holding onto the House majority in November.

The mid-decade redistricting push began last year after Texas, at President Trump’s urging, adopted a congressional map that could give Republicans five additional House seats. In response, California officials drew — and voters approved — new House boundaries that aimed to net Democrats five new seats, offsetting Republicans’ potential gains in Texas. The Supreme Court has allowed both of those maps to be used in the midterm elections.

State lawmakers in North Carolina, Missouri and Florida have also reconfigured their House voting lines to give Republicans more of an advantage.

In Virginia, Democratic legislative leaders began their effort to redraw the state’s congressional map in October, when the General Assembly first passed a proposed constitutional amendment allowing it to change Virginia’s House districts in the middle of the decade. The measure was approved by state lawmakers a second time in January.

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The issue went before Virginia voters in April, who approved the proposal and cleared the way for the new map.

But days later, the Supreme Court of Virginia blocked the redistricting plan. In a 4-3 decision, the court found that state lawmakers failed to follow the proper process for putting the proposal before voters, in violation of the Virginia Constitution.

State Democratic leaders sought emergency relief from the U.S. Supreme Court soon after and argued that the state court’s decision was “deeply mistaken” on issues of federal law.

“By forcing the Commonwealth to conduct its congressional elections using districts different from those adopted by the General Assembly pursuant to a constitutional amendment the people just ratified, the Supreme Court of Virginia has deprived voters, candidates, and the Commonwealth of their right to the lawfully enacted congressional districts,” they wrote in their request.

Virginia Republicans urged the high court not to grant Democrats’ request, arguing that they “have no case on the merits” and that the Supreme Court of Virginia’s decision hinged on state law, not federal law.

The request from Virginia Democrats was just the latest attempt to get the Supreme Court to intervene in state redistricting fights. While states had sought to change their maps for partisan gain, Republicans in some Southern states are also scrambling to redraw their House district boundaries after the Supreme Court weakened a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in a landmark decision last month.

Since then, officials in Louisiana, Alabama and Tennessee have said they’ll pursue new maps ahead of their primary elections.