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美军在阿曼湾登检伊朗油轮后放行 令改航向

2026年5月21日 11:35 / 联合早报

美军在阿曼湾登检一艘悬挂伊朗国旗的油轮，随后将它释放，并命令船员更改航向。

美军中央司令部星期四（5月21日）在社媒平台X上发文说，当天早些时候，美国海军陆战队员在阿曼湾登上一艘悬挂伊朗国旗的商业油轮。

贴文说，这艘船疑似试图穿越封锁，驶向伊朗港口，此举违反美国的封锁令。

美军检查完毕后放行船只，并命令船员改变航向。

美国在石油运输要道霍尔木兹海峡对与伊朗有关联的船只实施封锁行动，使得油轮无法驶离伊朗主要出口枢纽哈尔克岛（Kharg Island）。

这次登船检查由驻日第31海军陆战队远征部队成员执行。这支部队部署到中东，协助针对伊朗的行动。

美军中央司令部说：“美军继续全面执行（在霍尔木兹海峡的）封锁任务，目前已引导91艘商船改变航向，确保船只遵守封锁规定。”

Trump roasts Dem candidate as unelectable for cardinal sin in Texas

2026-05-20T16:00:11-04:00 / Fox News

Trump called Talarico a ‘defective candidate that believes in six genders’ and who ‘takes hits at Jesus Christ’

By Peter Pinedo Fox News

Published May 20, 2026 4:00pm EDT

President Trump predicts Paxton win in Texas

President Donald Trump predicted that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who he has endorsed, will win the U.S. Senate race in Texas

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President Donald Trump is confident that his pick for U.S. Senate in the Lone Star State will easily defeat Democrat James Talarico, whom he called unelectable because “he’s a vegan in Texas.”

Talarico is a prominent state lawmaker who was only recently propelled to the national stage after winning the Democratic Senate nomination in Texas earlier this year. He has been widely lambasted by conservatives for his history of controversial statements, including claiming, “God is non-binary” and that “sex is a spectrum.”

While speaking with reporters before boarding Air Force One on Wednesday morning, Trump predicted that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who he endorsed this week, will “win very substantially” in the upcoming primary runoff with incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

He then forecasted that Paxton would “go on to defeat a very defective candidate that believes in six genders, and he takes hits at Jesus Christ, and he’s wearing a mask six months ago, anybody wearing a mask six months ago doesn’t get it.”

‘GOD IS NON-BINARY’: TEXAS DEM NOMINEE TALARICO’S PAST REMARKS ON ABORTION, RACE AND GENDER DRAW SCRUTINY

President Donald Trump mocked Democrat James Talarico, whom he called unelectable because “he’s a vegan in Texas.”(iStock/Getty Images Plus; Kent Nishimura/AFP via Getty Images)

He then ripped into Talarico, saying, “And he’s vegan, he’s a vegan in Texas.”

“You can’t get elected as a vegan in Texas,” Trump insisted.

Trump’s comments reference an unearthed 2022 clip of Talarico giving a speech and calling reducing meat consumption “existential.”

“We have heard, I think, heard more and more issues of animal welfare. I think, not just because it’s the right thing to do, and it’s the moral thing to do, but also… necessary to fight climate change,” Talarico said, adding, “It is now existential that we try to reduce our meat consumption, and that we try to respect animals.”

“So, I am proud to say that our campaign has officially become a non-meat campaign,” Talarico continued. “So, we are only buying vegan products from our local vegan businesses.”

Talarico can be seen wearing a mask during the speech.

TEXAS TEEN TELLS CONGRESS HE RECEIVED DEATH THREATS AFTER REVEALING ISLAMIC BOOTH AT HIGH SCHOOL

Texas Senate candidate James Talarico speaks at a campaign rally in Houston on March 2, 2026.(Danielle Villasana/Getty Images)

His resurfaced comments caused a significant stir in Texas, where beef cattle production is a multibillion-dollar industry and the state’s largest agricultural segment.

“Who wants to tell him that cattle is the #1 commodity in Texas?” the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, wrote on X.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, labeled Talarico a “freak” who wants to “ban BBQ.”

“Vote Republican this November. The steaks couldn’t be higher,” Cornyn wrote.

Amid the backlash, the Talarico campaign blasted out a photo of the candidate wearing a Texas flag shirt and taking a large bite out of a turkey leg.

“Official Statement from James Talarico on Vegan Accusations,” the campaign wrote.

TRUMP BACKS PAXTON IN TEXAS REPUBLICAN SENATE SHOWDOWN WITH CORNYN

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, left, faces Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a GOP primary runoff election.(Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images; Antranik Tavitian/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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In response to Trump’s criticisms on Wednesday, JT Ennis, a spokesperson for Talarico’s campaign, told Fox News Digital that “as costs continue to rise and corruption in Washington runs rampant, James is focused on taking power back for working people and bringing down the price of gas, groceries, and healthcare.”

“James is building a people-powered movement to take on this broken, corrupt political system — not any one politician, not any one political party, but the billionaire mega donors and puppet politicians who have made life more expensive for Texans while enriching themselves,” said Ennis.

Peter Pinedo is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.

Judge halts White House’s rollback of presidential records-retention policies

2026-05-20T21:43:33.273Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/20/politics/judge-halts-white-house-presidential-records-act

A federal judge said Wednesday that White House staff must preserve their official records, including communications that they send via non-official text message services, pushing back on attempts to free President Donald Trump from record-keeping obligations that were set by Congress.

The 54-page opinion from Judge John Bates of the DC District Court, puts on hold an attempt by the administration to roll back the Presidential Records Act, which was a major reform following the Watergate scandal and the state of then-President Richard Nixon’s records.

“Congress has the enumerated power to regulate presidential records,” Bates wrote.

“While the presidency is a singularly important institution, that gravity does not free it from modest constraint,” the judge added.

Yet Bates declined to put any restrictions directly on the president, the vice president, the National Archives and archivist, the Justice Department or the attorney general.

Still, the court proceedings are also likely to set up major additional challenges in the near future between the autonomy of the presidency, which Trump has extensively moved to expand during his second term in office, against the oversight ability of Congress and the enforcement powers of federal courts.

Attorneys representing presidential scholars, historians, the press and public transparency groups had argued to Bates that presidential records could be destroyed quickly absent court intervention.

“It could happen at any moment,” a lawyer for the American Historical Association and the group American Oversight told Bates in court last week.

Bates also wrote extensively about the history of the Presidential Records Act and the historical value of White House documents.

“The Act democratizes the history of an indispensable institution,” Bates wrote. “Access to those records allows future Presidents to pick up where their predecessors left off, Congress to identify inefficiency and misfeasance, and the public to learn from the mistakes of the past.”

The Trump administration launched its attack on the half-century-old Presidential Records Act with a memo last month from the Office of Legal Counsel, a Justice Department office that gives advice to the executive branch.

That internal opinion for the executive branch said the Justice Department concluded the law was unconstitutional. The opinion was shocking for a number of reasons, including for how it seemed to eschew Supreme Court precedent backing Congress’ power to regulate presidential record preservation.

Trump’s current White House counsel, David Warrington, in April issued internal guidance to the president’s staff, saying his guidance replaced the Presidential Records Act. The guidance came just days after the DOJ changed internal executive branch policy to say the Presidential Records Act was unsound, because it was congressional overreach.

Warrington, in his new guidance, didn’t mention the president or vice president’s own records at all. And the guidance only addressed the preservation of email and text messages, rather than all electronic records, which the PRA encompasses. The new guidance appears to leave out disappearing electronic communications like Signal chats, Bates said during his questioning of the attorneys.

Bates’ opinion Wednesday said that the guidance for when text messages should be preserved was out of step with what the law required.

A Justice Department attorney argued in court last week the “lion’s share” of presidential records are being preserved, because work being done by presidential staff on White House-issued phones is being kept. And the records of the president and the vice president are largely being handled by staff, though the president himself has “enormous discretion” on his own record-keeping, the government lawyer added.

Recently in the presidential records dispute, the Justice Department had also revealed that some of the boxes of documents the FBI seized from Mar-a-Lago in 2022 as part of the classified documents case against Trump had been returned to the president as his personal property.

That disclosure, last week in federal court in DC, was the first update in months on where the Mar-a-Lago boxes may be now. Some of those boxes had been returned to the National Archives and are still in the Archives’ control, the Justice Department and the Archives have said. Others were flown to Florida last February after Trump began his second term.

He said at that time the boxes “will someday be part of the Trump Presidential Library,” though he didn’t specify they would be in his personal possession, rather than maintained as official government documents.

The Mar-a-Lago documents include records from different parts of the government and classified records that were central to the now-dropped criminal national security mishandling case against Trump.

Trump’s belief that they were his boxes; that he had the ability to declassify at will; and that he could keep them in unsecured locations like his Florida resort, even after he was no longer president, were central to his criminal case. The case ended in 2024 when a federal judge in Florida nullified the authority of the prosecutor, then-special counsel Jack Smith.

It wasn’t known if any of the boxes back in Trump’s personal control still contained classified records, or if they were still being adequately preserved.

Trump to sign order on AI oversight as security fears mount among supporters

2026-05-20T22:26:11.835Z / https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/trump-sign-order-ai-oversight-security-fears-mount-among-supporters-2026-05-20/

Summary
Companies

Trump faces pressure from MAGA activists for stricter AI security oversight
Tech industry leaders resist mandatory AI regulations, favor voluntary collaboration
Debate over AI oversight could affect model rollout, industry profits, and national security

WASHINGTON, May 20 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order on AI and cybersecurity as soon as Thursday, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as pressure grows from parts of his ​political base to increase oversight of new AI models, such as Anthropic’s Mythos.

The order would create a voluntary framework for AI developers to engage with the U.S. government about the public ‌release of covered models, the sources said. Under the framework, the developers would be asked to provide their models to the government 90 days before public release, and also give pre-public access to critical infrastructure providers such as banks, one of the people said.

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Such an approach may represent a middle ground among Trump supporters.

MAGA activists, including former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and right-wing political organizer Amy Kremer, have been pressing the White House to require AI developers to submit their most capable models for government security tests.

On the ​other side of the debate are tech industry supporters such as venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and former Trump adviser David Sacks, who are resistant to mandatory requirements. Sacks in March stepped down from his role as ​Trump’s lead AI official and is now co-chairing the president’s tech advisory committee. Trump’s AI policies in his second term have largely reflected the tech industry’s perspective.

NEW MODELS ⁠DRIVING DEBATE

A White House spokesperson called any discussion about AI policy details “speculation.” A National Security Agency spokesperson directed Reuters to contact the White House when asked about details of the president’s plan. National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross, ​who serves as Trump’s principal adviser on cybersecurity policy and strategy, did not respond to requests for comment.

The balance of power between the two groups of Trump’s supporters has shifted, driven by the release of powerful new AI ​systems, including Mythos and OpenAI’s GPT-5.5-Cyber. The companies warn the new models could supercharge complex cyberattacks, though some cybersecurity executives have said those fears are overblown.

Mythos’ arrival prompted a battle among the president’s supporters to influence how he responds. The outcome of that debate could have a significant impact on the AI industry if the president’s decision slows the rollout of large language models or prompts the companies to change how a model performs to address safety concerns. Either option could hurt profits.

Republicans have traditionally favored limited ​government and opposed regulations, but support is growing among their more vocal populist supporters to impose AI guardrails. The populist faction is asking Trump to require government approval of “potentially dangerous” AI systems before they’re deployed, according to ​a letter they sent to the White House last Friday.

Kremer said it is “antithetical” to her political views to advocate for new regulations, but AI requires a different approach.

“You can’t count on these people that are leading these AI companies to put ‌our interests at ⁠heart and do what’s right to protect the American people,” she said.

Kremer helped organize a January 6, 2021, rally that preceded the Capitol riot. She said in an interview that she was not among the thousands of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol that day.

BIG TECH SUPPORT

Tech executives are among the president’s largest political donors and most visible supporters. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google’s Sundar Pichai and OpenAI’s Sam Altman sat front and center as he was sworn into office in January 2025.

Advocates for the tech industry told Reuters they want to see the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation play a leading role in the Trump administration’s response to ​advanced AI models, adding that companies are willing to ​work with the scientists and cybersecurity specialists in ⁠that organization voluntarily.

The National Security Agency has been involved in administration-wide discussions about how to respond to Mythos, according to two other people familiar with the matter, along with Cairncross. Lawmakers asked Cairncross to work with federal agencies to set up a process that would monitor “sudden frontier AI capability jumps.”

“The past couple months have served as a ​massive wake-up call for the kinds of vulnerabilities that AI can create,” said former U.S. Representative Brad Carson, who now helps run a super PAC network whose ​funders include Anthropic.

Holding back new ⁠AI models while the federal government vets them may allow the U.S. to gain a short-term advantage over adversaries but will not keep the technology out of enemy hands in the long term, said Neil Chilson, head of AI Policy at the Abundance Institute, a nonprofit often aligned with the tech industry.

“We need to make sure we’re deploying it and getting the most out of it, including by hardening our defenses,” Chilson said.

Voluntary federal testing of new AI models has ⁠been in place ​for a few years, with companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic

submitting their products for scrutiny by the Center for AI Standards and ​Innovation, known by a different name under former President Joe Biden.

The Commerce Department announced in May that Google, xAI and Microsoft had agreed to submit their AI models for security testing, though the details later disappeared from its website. The White House and Commerce Department did not respond to ​requests for comment about why the details disappeared.

Reporting by Karen Freifeld in New York and Courtney Rozen in Washington; Additional reporting by Raphael Satter and Alexandra Alper in Washington and A.J. Vincens in Detroit; Editing by Rod Nickel

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

‘I’m not greedy’: January 6 rioters and Trump allies eye $1.8 billion ‘weaponization’ fund

2026-05-20T22:02:15.066Z / Reuters

Former national chairman of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, holds a megaphone following a march from The Ellipse to the U.S. Capitol in memory of those who died on, or in the aftermath, of the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, on the fifth anniversary of the attack in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 6, 2026. REUTERS/Leah… Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tabRead more

• Summary

• Capitol riot defendants and Trump allies seek compensation from new fund
• Democrats and some Republicans question fund’s legality and IRS audit ban
• Some Democrats, including James Comey, consider applying for compensation

WASHINGTON, May 20 (Reuters) – (This story contains strong language in paragraph 3)

Since President Donald Trump’s administration announced the creation of a $1.776 billion fund for Americans deemed to be victims of political “weaponization,” ​January 6 Capitol riot defendants and other Trump allies have scrambled to figure out how to get their share.

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Enrique Tarrio, the Proud Boys leader sentenced ‌to 22 years for seditious conspiracy over the January 6, 2021 riot, said he planned to apply to the fund, assuming he could get between $2 and $5 million.

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“I’m not greedy,” Tarrio said. “But my life was all fucked up because of this.”

Trump pardoned more than 1,500 January 6 defendants last year. Some have now begun to calculate the cost of their prosecution, jail time and businesses lost in the hope of compensation for ​what they regard as abuses by the Justice Department under former President Joe Biden.

Peter Ticktin, an attorney representing more than 400 January 6 defendants, said the fund ​may not be enough.

“People lost multi-million dollar businesses while they were locked up,” he said. “I don’t think the DOJ is ready for us ⁠yet.”

Trump also suggested the fund may be too small. “You’re talking about peanuts,” he told reporters at Joint Base Andrews. “It destroyed the lives of many, many people.”

Democrats and some Republicans ​have questioned the legality of the fund, as well as a part of the settlement “forever barring” the IRS from auditing past tax claims by Trump, his relatives and his businesses.

Two police ​officers who defended the U.S. Capitol from Trump supporters on January 6, filed a lawsuit on Wednesday seeking to halt the compensation fund, which they described as a “taxpayer-funded slush fund” for Trump followers who engaged in violence.

U.S. acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told lawmakers on Tuesday that even people who assaulted police on January 6 would not be barred from receiving money.

Tarrio, for his part, thinks those who assaulted police should get their ​share.

“The Justice Department overprosecuted for political gain,” he said. “So everyone deserves to get money.”

In a

Wednesday letter, opens new tab
, Democratic Representatives Jamie Raskin and Richard E. Neal asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, ​Blanche and IRS CEO Frank Bisignano, who negotiated the settlement, whether individual awards would be capped and what reports would be made public.

“Never in American history has a President pursued corruption this brazenly or ‌on such ⁠a colossal scale,” they wrote.

Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware said on Wednesday he would try to block the fund through spending-bill amendments, though he acknowledged the issue might have to be resolved separately.

Ticktin, the January 6 lawyer, said he plans to file hundreds of claims once the Justice Department creates the application process and the attorney general appoints the five-member commission overseeing the fund. He said he suggested the idea to Trump, his high school classmate, in a March email, but doesn’t know if that had any impact on the creation ​of the fund.

Some January 6 defendants praised the ​Justice Department for adopting terms they ⁠have long used — including “lawfare,” “weaponization” and “victims” — and cast the fund as payback for years of injustice.

“Now liberals wanna cry about righting the wrong, too bad,” wrote Jennie Carso-Heinl, who pleaded guilty to parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building, on X. “Justice is coming.”

At least one Trump ally ​has already made a formal request: Michael Caputo, a former administration official, asked Blanche for $2.7 million in “restitution” over investigations by the Biden ​administration and special counsel ⁠Robert Mueller.

Some Democrats have floated applying too, arguing that Trump’s Justice Department has pursued flimsy political cases against them. Blanche told lawmakers Tuesday the fund could pay members of both parties.

Former FBI Director James Comey, twice indicted since Trump began his second term, said on CNN that he has considered applying.

“It’s to compensate people who’ve been targeted by the Justice Department for, they say, ⁠personal, political or ​ideological reasons,” Comey said. “So I’m guessing I’ll be in line.”

For some Trump supporters, though, the fund may not ​go far enough.

Barry Ramey, a Proud Boys affiliate convicted of attacking police officers, said he is unsure whether to apply because taking money could jeopardize his claim against the Bureau of Prisons.

“My commitment to justice is not ​about the money,” he said. “I want to show they acted illegally.”

But if he could secure $2 million, he said, he might reconsider.

Reporting by Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, Editing by Michael Learmonth and Alistair Bell

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Fox News Poll: 30% think recent Trump assassination attempt was staged

May 20, 2026 6:00pm EDT / Fox News

A slim majority believes shooting at White House Correspondents’ Association dinner was real

By Dana Blanton, Fox News

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6394604592112
The WHCA Dinner shooting was clearly attempted murder, criminal defense attorney says

Criminal defense attorney Joshua Ritter discusses the state of the evidence in WHCA Dinner shooting on ‘The Story.’

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Three in 10 voters believe the recent assassination attempt against President Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner was staged, according to a Fox News national survey.

Thirty percent say the shooting was fabricated, including 13% of voters who think it was “definitely” staged.That said, a narrow 52% majority believes the attack was real, with nearly one-third saying it “definitely” happened (31%).

One in five is unsure whether it was real or fake (18%).

FOX NEWS POLL: VOTERS SEE AI AS A RISK TO PRIVACY AND PAYCHECKS

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The alleged gunman behind the April 25 attack, Cole Tomas Allen, has pleaded not guilty to the four felony charges filed against him by the Justice Department. The incident marked the third attempt on Trump’s life, following two separate assassination attempts in 2024.

Public attitudes surrounding the attack suggest the erosion of a shared reality may have reached a critical tipping point. Most notably, the partisan divide on the attack’s authenticity is stark. The survey finds almost half of Democrats (49%) and voters who backed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in 2024 (48%) believe the shooting was staged, while just 10% of Republicans say the same.

Meanwhile, 79% of Republicans believe the event was real, as do 77% of 2024 Trump voters. That number climbs to 87% among Republicans who identify as MAGA supporters. By comparison, just 31% of Democrats agree the attack was real.

Views among independents are mixed: 41% say it was real and 34% believe it was staged.

Uncertainty about whether the incident was real or not is highest among independents, with one quarter unsure (25%), followed by 2 in 10 Democrats (21%), and 1 in 10 Republicans (11%).

FOX NEWS POLL: 56% DOUBT WHITE HOUSE’S COMPETENCE AT MANAGING GOVERNMENT

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Republicans under age 45 are more than five times as likely as older Republicans to think the shooting was staged (22% vs. 4%).

Republican pollster Daron Shaw, who conducts Fox News polls with Democrat Chris Anderson, stresses that the assassination attempt was undoubtedly real, warning that a growing denial of facts threatens the political process.

“When partisan polarization and political cynicism prevent us from agreeing on a common and obvious set of facts, it undercuts our ability to diagnose problems and develop policy solutions,” Shaw says. “This is especially troubling given that younger voters are among the most cynical about our politics and institutions.”

“These findings show what happens when public skepticism becomes embedded in the political culture,” adds Anderson. “When people are told that every major event could be manipulated or manufactured, disbelief itself becomes the default reaction.”

Voters under age 35 are nearly twice as likely as those ages 65 and over to think the shooting was fabricated (38% vs. 20%), as seniors are among those most likely to say it was real (65%).

There’s also a gender gap, as more women (35%) than men (25%) consider it staged.

More than 6 in 10 White evangelical Christians believe the shooting happened, while 2 in 10 don’t.

CLICK HERE FORCROSSTABSANDTOPLINE**

Conducted May 15-18, 2026, under the direction of Beacon Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R), this Fox News survey includes interviews with a sample of 1,002 registered voters randomly selected from a national voter file. Respondents spoke with live interviewers on landlines (109) and cellphones (635) or completed the survey online after receiving a text (258). Results based on the full sample have a margin of sampling error of ±3 percentage points. Sampling error for results among subgroups is higher. In addition to sampling error, question wording and order can influence results. Weights are generally applied to age, race, education, and area variables to ensure the demographics are representative of the registered voter population. Sources for developing weight targets include the most recent American Community Survey, Fox News Voter Analysis, and voter file data.

Fox News’ Victoria Balara contributed to this report.

As head of the polling unit, Dana Blanton runs the Fox News Poll and oversees the Fox News Voter Analysis election survey.

‘This is long overdue’: Jan. 6 rioters and election deniers celebrate Trump’s $1.8 billion compensation fund

2026-05-20T20:00:37.968Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/20/politics/trump-fund-january-6-election-deniers-want-money

Supporters of President Donald Trump who tried to overturn the 2020 election are among those eager to potentially cash in from the $1.8 billion compensation fund for people the Trump administration believes were victims of government “weaponization and lawfare.”

In interviews with CNN, convicted US Capitol rioters from January 6, 2021, fake electors and prominent election deniers said they’re hoping to tap the massive fund, which they think is long overdue.

“I can’t even find a job answering the phone at a motorcycle dealership,” said convicted January 6 rioter Dominic Box, who spent 1.5 years in jail awaiting trial and was later pardoned by Trump. “I can’t find a way to support myself right now. I lost my career. I look forward to financial compensation. I need it. This will be a welcome relief.”

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MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell told CNN he believes his company lost $400 million due to what he views as government weaponization in the aftermath of the 2020 election. He was perhaps the loudest promoter of baseless voter-fraud claims – drawing boycotts from businesses, defamation lawsuits and even FBI scrutiny.

“I would say we were the number-one company in the world hurt by our own government,” said Lindell.

A lawyer for One America News, the pro-Trump channel that promoted false 2020 vote-rigging claims, also confirmed to CNN that the company is “seriously considering pursuing rights under this fund.” OAN was later dropped by most large cable providers and also settled multiple 2020-related defamation lawsuits.

Top Trump administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, have dodged questions over whether people convicted of January 6-related crimes, including people who assaulted police, should be awarded any of the funds.

“Anybody can apply,” Blanche told lawmakers during a budget hearing Tuesday, noting that even people who stormed the Capitol can submit claims that will be reviewed by a five-member commission that he’ll appoint.

The fund is open to a much broader swath of Trump allies, far beyond the 2020 election. Potential recipients could include people who were scrutinized during special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Trump administration officials who were entangled in Trump-Ukraine impeachment in 2019, and others.

The first known potential claimant, Trump adviser Michael Caputo, was investigated by Mueller in part because of his connections to Russian officials. He was never charged and is seeking $2.7 million in restitution because, he said, the probes cost him and his family, financially and beyond.

Former FBI Director James Comey joked on CNN that he may also have a claim to file, given that the Trump administration tried and failed in prosecuting him for allegedly lying to Congress and now filed new charges alleging that a picture of seashells on the beach spelling out “86 47” constituted a threat against Trump.

“It’s to compensate people who’ve been targeted by the Justice Department for, they say personal, political, or ideological reasons,” Comey told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “So, I’m guessing I’ll be in line. I hope I’ll be ahead of those who savagely beat police officers and sacked the Capitol.”

The largest group of potential “victims” are the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.

They all already received clemency from Trump, in the form of mass pardons and commutations, which freed hundreds of convicts from prison and ended pending prosecutions. But the new Trump fund delivers on a key goal that many in the January 6 community have clamored for: Restitution.

“This is long overdue,” Box said. “It’s not okay for hardworking, average Americans to be chewed up and destroyed as a collective boogeyman.”

Box was convicted in 2024 on all charges, including felonies, but he wasn’t accused of violence at the Capitol. After Trump granted mass pardons in 2025, the Justice Department dismissed Box’s case, before sentencing.

Box, a college graduate who lives in Georgia, said he worked as a car salesman before January 6 but struggled to find work after the insurrection.

“The car market exploded during Covid,” Box said. “Because of my inability to work in a forward-facing role, I wasn’t able to acquire any of that income. I knew guys who typically made $40,000 a year, and then got $150,000 to $200,000.”

One of the most recognizable faces from January 6 says he isn’t planning on tapping the fund.

Jacob Chansley, better known as the “QAnon Shaman,” told CNN this week he hopes to be compensated through a $40 trillion lawsuit he brought against Trump, alleging all kinds of government conspiracies. A judge dismissed the case last year. But Chansley, who is representing himself, re-filed the longshot case.

Chansley told CNN last year that he had broken with Trump over the president’s handling of the scandal surrounding sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Two attorneys who represented members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who were charged and convicted of conspiring to change the 2020 election results told CNN they would look into whether their clients might apply for the funds.

One attorney told CNN their client, a member of the Oath Keepers who infamously moved into the Capitol in a “stack formation” while dressed in camo and paramilitary garb, was “never the same” after the January 6 investigations and cases, struggling to find work and rebuild their life.

The pro-Trump “fake electors” from 2020 also stand to benefit from the fund, especially because most of them became entangled in legal cases.

These were 84 Republicans who signed certificates in seven key states like Georgia and Michigan, falsely proclaiming Trump won their state. This was part of a larger plot, overseen by the Trump campaign, to overturn Joe Biden’s victory while Congress certified the results on January 6, 2021.

Democratic prosecutors in Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada ended up charging some or all of the fake electors from their states. Most of those cases were ultimately dismissed or were stalled by appeals.

“Reading the announcement was an emotional relief,” Meshawn Maddock, one of the Republican electors from Michigan, told CNN. “I was debanked. I faced the real possibility of prison time. The trauma to my three kids and the thought of being separated from my grandchildren – it took a lot out of us.”

A judge dropped the charges against Maddock and the other Michigan fake electors last year, due to insufficient evidence of intent to break the law.

But a civil case against the GOP slate is ongoing, and legal fees are piling up. Kevin Kijewski, an attorney for fake elector Clifford Frost, said some of the 16 defendants have spent up to $300,000, and they deserve compensation.

“This commission is a good idea,” Kijewski said. “Cliff paid a price personally, professionally and financially. His realtor business still hasn’t recovered since all this happened. Personal relationships were destroyed. The dismissal of criminal charges doesn’t pay back the legal fees and undo the damage.”

Another Michigan elector, John Haggard, 84, was in the hospital for heart surgery on the day the charges were dropped in September. He attended the court hearing over Zoom, from his hospital bed, connected to machines, Kijewski said. Haggard died hours later.

“This cost him his peace of mind, his money, and to some extent, his life,” Kijewski said.

Other prominent 2020 election deniers could qualify for payments.

Lindell, the beleaguered MyPillow CEO, said the fund was Trump’s way of “looking out for these people that were attacked.”

After Trump lost the 2020 election, Lindell was one of the loudest voices promoting false claims about voting machines rigging the results. This led to several defamation lawsuits, including one where Lindell was ordered to pay $2.3 million in damages to an ex-Dominion Voting Systems executive. Lawsuits filed by Dominion and another company, Smartmatic, are ongoing.

Lindell’s pursuit of election conspiracy theories after 2020 also led major retailers to pull his pillows from their shelves, it also prompted scrutiny from law enforcement – in 2022, Lindell’s phone was seized by the FBI.

Former Colorado clerk Tina Peters could also benefit from the new DOJ fund, and her plight even received a shout-out from the Whtie House.

Peters, 70, is in state prison for her role in a criminal conspiracy with some of Lindell’s associates to breach her county’s voting systems in 2021, in hopes of proving that the 2020 election was rigged. But she’ll be released early next month, after receiving a controversial commutation last week from Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, which swiftly drew bipartisan condemnation.

Vice President JD Vance said Tuesday at a press conference that he thinks Peters is an “innocent grandmother” who got a “completely disproportionate” sentence, and therefore, it’s “reasonable for her to get some compensation.”

One of Peters’ lawyers, John Case, told CNN the DOJ fund was “great news” but it’s still unclear how claims will be processed.

Her team has argued for years that she was victimized by overzealous prosecutors and biased judges. Case noted that one of her criminal convictions, in a separate contempt case, was already overturned by an appeals court in 2024.

A state appeals court recently upheld Peters’ felony convictions in the election-breach case. But the panel threw out her sentence and ordered a re-hearing, finding that the trial judge improperly based part of Peters’ punishment on her protected speech promoting 2020 election conspiracies.

To those who oppose clemency and possible compensation for Peters, Case asked, “If a judge said you were going to prison for nine years, because of words you used to criticize the government, would you think that’s fair?”

It’s possible that pro-Trump news outlets that paid millions of dollars in 2020-related legal settlements could now seek reimbursement from the DOJ.

Chris Babcock, a lawyer for OAN, told CNN the company “is seriously considering pursuing rights under this fund and will make a decision shortly about whether to file a claim.”

OAN settled lawsuits with Dominion and Smartmatic for unclosed amounts. The cases stemmed from OAN promoting egregious lies about voting machines flipping millions of ballots from Trump to Biden in 2020.

Spokespeople for Fox News and Newsmax did not answer CNN’s questions about whether they would utilize the DOJ fund.

Fox News paid $787 million to settle a 2020-related defamation lawsuit from Dominion. Newsmax paid about $107 million to settle lawsuits from Dominion and Smartmatic.

Mojtaba Khamenei using ‘bin Laden template’ to survive, learned from Abbottabad: analyst

2026-05-20 5:01pm EDT / Fox News

His father Ali Khamenei was killed in a targeted U.S.-Israeli airstrike in Tehran during Operation Fury in February

By Emma Bussey, Fox News

Ayatollah’s threat to US in question amid lack of public appearances

Fox News correspondent Bryan Llenas joins ‘America Reports’ from Tel Aviv to break down a warning allegedly written by Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei regarding the U.S. blockade in the Strait of Hormuz and President Donald Trump’s reaction.

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Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has spent nearly three months in hiding as tensions with the U.S. escalate — a disappearance that counterterrorism analysts say mirrors the final years of al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden.

The comparison comes amid a critical standoff between Washington and Tehran that prompted President Donald Trump to pause a planned strike on May 19. On Wednesday, Trump told reporters he was in “no hurry.”

Khamenei, meanwhile, appeared to share three posts on his official X account on May 18 but remains out of public view.

“For the first time in the history of the Islamic Republic, the United States has done to Tehran what it spent two decades doing to al-Qaeda and ISIS,” counterterrorism expert Dr. Omar Mohammed told Fox News Digital.

THE MISSING MULLAH: IRAN’S ‘SUPREME LEADER’ A NO-SHOW FOR NEGOTIATIONS, THEN HID AS US POUNDED NUKE SITES

Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is shown in a portrait image.(Fox News)

“The U.S. has driven its leader into the same kind of operational invisibility that bin Laden lived in for 10 years in Abbottabad,” he added.

“Both Mojtaba Khamenei and bin Laden inherited their status on the back of an American operation, and both responded the same way: by ceasing to exist publicly,” Mohammed said before adding that bin Laden “stopped releasing dated videos around 2007 and confined himself to audio messages carried by hand.”

Bin Laden founded al-Qaeda in the late 1980s and masterminded the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States.

After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, bin Laden evaded capture for a decade by hiding inside a fortified compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

To avoid Western electronic surveillance, he severed his digital footprint and relied exclusively on a network of physical couriers, said Mohammed, an expert with the Antisemitism Research Initiative at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism.

U.S. intelligence eventually tracked one of those couriers to the compound, culminating in the 2011 Navy SEAL raid that killed the al Qaeda leader.

OPERATION EPIC FURY: HOW AMERICA’S AIR POWER IS CRUSHING IRAN’S TERROR REGIME

Portrait of former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden was killed in 2011 in a daring SEAL Team 6 raid in Pakistan.(Photo by Stephane Ruet/Sygma via Getty Images)

“Bin Laden survived with no cables out of the Abbottabad compound. Communications were carried by hand by two trusted couriers, the Kuwaiti brothers,” Mohammed said.

“Bin Laden stayed hidden for the rest of his life because the moment he surfaced was the moment he died. Mojtaba’s incentives point the same way. Mojtaba Khamenei won’t emerge,” he said.

“The Abbottabad lesson, which Tehran will have studied closely, is that the safest hiding place is not a cave in Tora Bora but a walled compound in a garrison town,” Mohammed added, recalling how U.S. forces targeted bin Laden in the cave complex before he escaped.

Bin Laden also lived roughly a mile from Pakistan’s top military academy, hiding in plain sight behind high concrete walls and barbed wire, Mohammed noted.

“The logical Iranian equivalents are hardened sites under or alongside IRGC facilities,” Mohammed added, referring to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and possible locations where Khamenei could be.

As previously reported by Fox News Digital, one of Khamenei’s few recent communications was an X post declaring a “holy war,” framing the geopolitical clash as a mandatory religious obligation.

INSIDE IRAN’S RULING IDEOLOGY: HOW A ‘HOLY MISSION’ AND MESSIANIC DOCTRINE FUEL REGIME EXTREMISM

President Donald Trump said, “I got him before he got me” after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several top leaders were killed in an Israeli strike in Tehran during the U.S.-Israeli military offensive called Operation Epic Fury.(Majid Saeedi/Getty Images; Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“This is a religious leader calling for sacred war against America and the Jews from an undisclosed location because his enemies have publicly vowed to kill him on sight,” Mohammed said, describing the narrative as “the bin Laden template, almost line for line.”

Mohammed also suggested Khamenei’s retreat into the shadows marks a watershed moment for Washington and the future of the Iranian regime.

His predecessor and father, Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed Feb. 28 in a targeted U.S.-Israeli airstrike in Tehran during Operation Epic Fury.

“This regime that for 47 years projected its power through a single visible Supreme Leader at the Friday prayer pulpit can no longer produce that figure on demand,” he said, calling it a “strategic milestone.”

“Predecessors killed by U.S. strikes and successors who cannot show their faces. Real power exercised by a security apparatus rather than by the nominal figurehead.”

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“Now one side is announcing operations on three continents through its president; the other is governed on paper by a man whose own population is uncertain where he is or what state he is in,” Mohammed said.

“The contrast is also about the optics of leadership during this war,” he added.

Emma Bussey is a breaking news writer for Fox News Digital. Before joining Fox, she worked at The Telegraph with the U.S. overnight team, across desks including foreign, politics, news, sport and culture.

US military surveillance blimp on loan to CBP is lost at the southern border, wreckage found in Mexico

2026-05-20T20:35:59.876Z / CNN

By Davis Winkie

PUBLISHED May 20, 2026, 4:35 PM ET

This 2010 image shows a Persistent Ground Surveillance System blimp in Arizona. A similar military-owned surveillance blimp broke free from its tether on Monday evening near Laredo, Texas, and crashed in Mexico.

Tech. Sgt. Vanessa Valentine/U.S. Joint Forces Command/File

Summary

• A US military surveillance blimp, on loan to CBP, broke free from its tether near Laredo, Texas.
• The 66-foot helium-filled aircraft floated across the border and crashed in a remote area of Mexico.
• CBP operates surveillance blimps across the region. Some are equipped with high-powered cameras, and others carry radar systems that detect drones and other aircraft operated by smugglers.

AI-generated summary was reviewed by a CNN editor.

A US military-owned surveillance blimp operated by Customs and Border Protection contractors near Laredo, Texas, broke free from its tether on Monday evening and later crashed in Mexico.

The blimp did not carry a crew when in the air, and no ground personnel were injured in the incident.

The 66-foot surveillance blimp’s tether cable, which secures the balloon to the ground, became tangled with other cables amid storms on Monday, a spokesperson for Joint Task Force-Southern Border, confirmed in a statement to CNN.

That evening, a nearby airport experienced heavy thunderstorms that brought wind gusts as high as 44 miles per hour, according to National Weather Service data.

The aircraft’s operators tried to untangle the cables, the spokesperson said, but the helium-filled blimp “became untethered” and floated away. The military declined to say which specific model of balloon was lost, only describing the aircraft as a “medium aerostat.”

CBP operates surveillance blimps across the region. Some are equipped with high-powered cameras, and others carry radar systems that detect drones and other aircraft operated by smugglers.

The runaway balloon’s location was unknown until Mexico’s military discovered it “in a remote location … southwest of Laredo,” according to the spokesperson. Mexican and US troops are coordinating to recover the aerostat.

A CBP spokesperson did not reply to a request for comment.

Border Patrol began using small “tactical” blimps for surveillance in 2012, but the program has periodically run out of funding. Many of the aircraft belong to the Department of Defense, which spent more than $5 billion to develop and purchase more than 140 surveillance blimps during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, according to a Government Accountability Office report published in 2012.

CBP lost an even larger surveillance blimp in March 2025, when a 200-foot aerostat operating on South Padre Island, Texas, broke free from its tether and floated nearly 600 miles before careening into power lines near Dallas.

CPB, which oversees Border Patrol, plays a crucial role in President Donald Trump’s efforts to secure the US-Mexico border and restrict illegal immigration.

Trump’s emphasis on hardening the border has brought CBP a litany of military manpower and equipment as well, sometimes with unintended consequences.

In February, CBP’s use of a high-energy anti-drone laser system furnished by the Pentagon to shoot down balloons led the Federal Aviation Administration to suddenly shut down civilian airspace over El Paso, Texas.

_Davis Winkie’s work at CNN is supported by a partnership between_Outrider Foundation_and Journalism Funding Partners (JFP). CNN retains full editorial control of the reporting._

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