U.S. military may put armed troops on commercial ships in Strait of Hormuz to stop Iran seizures

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The U.S. military is considering putting armed personnel on commercial ships traveling through the Strait of Hormuz, in what would be an unheard of action aimed at stopping Iran from seizing and harassing civilian vessels, four American officials told The Associated Press on Thursday.

America didn’t even take the step during the “Tanker War,” which culminated with the U.S. Navy and Iran fighting a one-day naval battle in 1988 that was the Navy’s largest since World War II.

While officials offered few details of the plan, it comes as thousands of Marines and sailors on both the amphibious assault ship USS Bataan and the USS Carter Hall, a landing ship, are on their way to the Persian Gulf. Those Marines and sailors could provide the backbone for any armed guard mission in the strait, through which 20 percent of all the world’s crude oil passes.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the AP about the U.S. proposal.

Four U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the proposal, acknowledged its broad details. The officials stressed no final decision had been made and that discussions continue between U.S. military officials and America’s Gulf Arab allies in the region.

Officials said the Marines and Navy sailors would provide the security only at the request of the ships involved.

The Bataan and Carter Hall left Norfolk, Va., on July 10 on a mission the Pentagon described as being “in response to recent attempts by Iran to threaten the free flow of commerce in the Strait of Hormuz and its surrounding waters.” The Bataan passed through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean Sea last week on its way to the Mideast.

Already, the U.S. has sent A-10 Thunderbolt II warplanes, F-16 and F-35 fighters, as well as the destroyer USS Thomas Hudner, to the region over Iran’s actions at sea.

The deployment has captured Iran’s attention, with its chief diplomat telling neighboring nations that the region doesn’t need “foreigners” providing security. On Wednesday, Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard launched a surprise military drill on disputed islands in the Persian Gulf, with swarms of small fast boats, paratroopers and missile units taking part.

The renewed hostilities come as Iran now enriches uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels after the collapse of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

The U.S. also has pursued ships across the world believed to be carrying sanctioned Iranian oil. Oil industry worries over another seizure by Iran likely has left a ship allegedly carrying Iranian oil stranded off Texas as no company has yet to unload it.

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New Jersey Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver's legacy: A progressive champion and 'ideal public servant'

Sheila Oliver rose out of local politics in the Democratic stronghold of Essex County to the height of power in New Jersey — often championing progressive causes later embraced by the state.

Oliver, who died this week at age 71, was the first Black woman Assembly speaker in state history and the second to lead a legislative chamber in the country before becoming Gov. Phil Murphy’s lieutenant governor. In that role she was the first Black woman in New Jersey to hold statewide elected office.

During her four years as speaker, from 2010 to 2014, she was perhaps the most powerful progressive in state government while Republican Gov. Chris Christie was governor and centrist Democrat Steve Sweeney was Senate president. As New Jersey's third most powerful elected official, Oliver helped steer the direction of the state — crafting budgets, determining what legislation did or did not get voted on and shaping committee assignments in her chamber.

At times, Oliver was the only woman in the room, said former Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg.

“She had to deal with what was sometimes a tough environment in New Jersey to be progressive and move issues forward when she was in that backroom,” Weinberg said. “She functioned in a difficult world and she did it with grace.”

While Oliver found common ground with the Christie-led front office — helping usher through landmark reforms on public worker pension and health benefits — she also pushed for causes that hit roadblocks with the Republican governor, such as a marriage equality law, increasing the minimum wage and restoring funding for Planned Parenthood. Those causes, however, would later come to fruition in the Murphy administration.

“Christie was trying to run us over, and she really held the Democratic Party line during that time,” said Michael Muller, who was then executive director for the Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee.

He remembers Oliver pushing back when Christie defunded Planned Parenthood. Even though she lost those fights — until Murphy took office and restored funding — she still took them on.

“She fought on principle because this was about the long view,” Muller said.

Oliver also nudged Muller to invest in burgeoning Democratic districts to help build the party and its bench of candidates. One of those pushes was a 2011 race in which Vin Gopal ran for Assembly. Gopal lost that race — but now he’s a state senator.

Bill Caruso, executive director of the Assembly Majority Office during much of Oliver’s time as speaker, remembered how Oliver pushed a “quixotic effort” for marriage equality legislation even as it awaited Christie’s veto.

Caruso, along with other marriage equality proponents, recalled an impassioned 12-minute speech Oliver gave on the Assembly floor where she called on her Assembly colleagues to fight against “one of the last legalized barriers to equal rights.”

“We were able to push that bill over [to the governor’s desk] because the speaker of the General Assembly said, ‘On this one, I'm stepping down as speaker and I want to speak on the bill,’” Jeannine LaRue, a longtime Trenton lobbyist, recalled in an interview.

The bill narrowly passed with 42 votes — and Christie promptly vetoed it.

Same-sex couples were allowed to marry in 2013 after the state Supreme Court declined to block a lower court’s ruling to allow same-sex marriages; the Christie administration dropped its appeal shortly after. Murphy formally codified gay marriage into law in early 2022.

Years before Murphy signed into law a gradual increase in the state’s hourly minimum wage to $15, Oliver fought to increase it to $8.50 and tie it to inflation. In the Assembly and as lieutenant governor, she opposed carve-outs to exclude raising the minimum wage to $15 for farmworkers, calling it “discriminatory.”

“Her work launched efforts that would then lead to New Jersey becoming one of the handful of states to raise the wage to $15 an hour,” Sara Cullinane, director of Make the Road New Jersey, which pushed for increasing the minimum wage, said in an interview. “She knew the impact that raising the wage could have on so many working class people of color in our state.”

Cullinane also pointed out that Oliver introduced legislation to strengthen protections for workers at temporary agencies. Separate but similar legislation aimed at helping those workers finally hit the governor’s desk earlier this year.

Oliver also worked with Christie on pension and benefits reform — though she later accused him of not keeping his end of the deal. The reforms, known as Chapter 78, were not the financial panacea proponents had hoped for and riled public sector unions, upset that their members had to pay more for their health care contributions.

Caruso, the former Oliver staffer, noted that Oliver pushed for provisions more favorable to the public sector unions, like allowing certain provisions to “sunset” after a few years — which Christie was reluctant to support but ultimately did.

In her first year as speaker, Caruso also recalled Christie proposing budget cuts, with some programs Oliver was adamant be spared.

“She stood the line on [the] general assistance, welfare benefit side of the equation,” Caruso said. “A constituency that did not have a lobby advocate at the time.”

Kevin O’Dowd, formerly a legislative liaison and chief of staff to Christie who is now co-CEO of Cooper University Health Care, recalled Oliver being a “strong, deliberative leader” who was willing to find compromise.

“She was always willing to hear out what the other side of the issue was, before ultimately reaching a final conclusion or a final position on a bill or another matter,” O’Dowd said.

While Oliver's trailblazing time as speaker and second-in-line to the state’s highest office will lead her obituary, one of her legislative running mates from Essex County politics, Assemblymember Thomas Giblin (D-Essex), remembered Oliver fighting to keep open the local hospital now known as CareWell Health Medical Center.

“I credit her a lot for saving East Orange General,” said Giblin, who has known Oliver for 35 years and ran on the same ticket as her a half dozen times.

Giblin got to know Oliver when she was working for former Newark Mayor Kenneth Gibson during one of her first forays into politics, a narrow loss against Robert Bowser, the late mayor of East Orange.

He said Oliver “left a lasting legacy as far as what an ideal public servant should be and she will be sorely missed.”

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Turkey fumes as Disney axes founding father series after Armenian outcry

Atatürk shouldn’t get the ‘Disney treatment,’ Armenian group warns.

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Senate goes into lockdown after reports of possible active shooter

Washington Metropolitan Police spokesperson Hugh Carew later said the call reporting an active shooter "appears to be a bad call" with no injuries and no shooter located.

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The Pittsburgh synagogue gunman will be sentenced to death for the nation’s worst antisemitic attack

PITTSBURGH — The gunman who stormed a synagogue in the heart of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community and killed 11 worshippers will be sentenced to death for perpetrating the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.

Robert Bowers spewed hatred of Jews and espoused white supremacist beliefs online before methodically planning and carrying out the 2018 massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue, where members of three congregations had gathered for Sabbath worship and study. Bowers, a truck driver from suburban Baldwin, also wounded two worshippers and five responding police officers.

The same federal jury that convicted the 50-year-old Bowers on 63 criminal counts recommended Wednesday that he be put to death for an attack whose impacts continue to reverberate nearly five years later. A judge will formally impose the sentence later.

The verdict came after a lengthy trial in which jurors heard in chilling detail how Bowers reloaded at least twice, stepped over the bloodied bodies of his victims to look for more people to shoot, and surrendered only when he ran out of ammunition. In the sentencing phase, grieving family members told the jury about the lives that Bowers took — a 97-year-old woman and intellectually disabled brothers among them — and the unrelenting pain of their loss. Survivors testified about their own lasting pain, both physical and emotional.

Through it all, Bowers showed little reaction to the proceeding that would decide his fate — typically looking down at papers or screens at the defense table. He even told a psychiatrist that he thought the trial was helping to spread his antisemitic message.

It was the first federal death sentence imposed during the presidency of Joe Biden, whose 2020 campaign included a pledge to end capital punishment. Biden’s Justice Department has placed a moratorium on federal executions and has declined to authorize the death penalty in hundreds of new cases where it could apply. But federal prosecutors said death was the appropriate punishment for Bowers, citing the vulnerability of his mainly elderly victims and his hate-based targeting of a religious community. Most victims’ families said Bowers should die for his crimes.

Bowers’ lawyers never contested his guilt, focusing their efforts on trying to save his life. They presented evidence of a horrific childhood marked by trauma and neglect. They also claimed Bowers had severe, untreated mental illness, saying he killed out of a delusional belief that Jews were helping to cause a genocide of white people. The defense argued that schizophrenia and brain abnormalities made Bowers more susceptible to being influenced by the extremist content he found online.

The prosecution denied mental illness had anything to do with it, saying Bowers knew exactly what he was doing when he violated the sanctity of a house of worship by opening fire on terrified congregants with an AR-15 rifle and other weapons, shooting everyone he could find.

Bowers blasted his way into Tree of Life on Oct. 27, 2018, and killed members of the Dor Hadash, New Light and Tree of Life congregations, which shared the synagogue building.

The victims were Joyce Fienberg, 75; Richard Gottfried, 65; Rose Mallinger, 97; Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, 66; brothers David Rosenthal, 54, and Cecil Rosenthal, 59; Bernice Simon, 84, and her husband, Sylvan Simon, 86; Dan Stein, 71; Melvin Wax, 87; and Irving Younger, 69.

Bowers, who traded gunfire with responding officers and was shot three times, told police at the scene that “all these Jews need to die,” according to testimony. Ahead of the attack, he posted, liked or shared a stream of virulently antisemitic content on Gab, a social media platform popular with the far right. He has expressed no remorse for the killings, telling mental health experts he saw himself as a soldier in a race war, took pride in the attack and wished he had shot more people.

In emotional testimony, the victims’ family members described what Bowers took from them. “My world has fallen apart,” Sharyn Stein, Dan Stein’s widow, told the jury.

Survivors and other affected by the attack will have another opportunity to address the court — and Bowers — when he is formally sentenced by the judge.

The synagogue has been closed since the shootings. The Tree of Life congregation is working on an overhauled synagogue complex that would house a sanctuary, museum, memorial and center for fighting antisemitism.

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From Biden to Kennedy: The storied tradition of a shirtless POTUS

When you’re the president of the free world, it seems, it only takes a little bit of skin to get a heck of a lot of attention.

A photo of President Joe Biden standing shirtless this Sunday on Delaware’s Rehoboth Beach went viral this weekend, drawing hundreds of thousands of views on social media. It even sparked some flattering comparisons between the 80-year-old president and Hollywood sweetheart Ryan Gosling, who stars as the Ken whose “job is just beach” in the summer blockbuster “Barbie.”

The surprising swoon over the bare-chested Biden doesn’t mark the first time the internet has gone wild over a shirtless POTUS. In 2020, former President Barack Obama also caused quite a stir when paparazzi caught him paddleboarding in Hawaii.

But the Biden beach bonanza does offer a friendly reminder that elected officials don’t spend all their time in stuffy suits or poorly lit offices, even if people seem flabbergasted when they learn otherwise.

So, to disprove those rumors — and, of course, because there seems to be such a big appetite for this stuff — POLITICO put together a slideshow of past presidents having some fun in the sun.

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The case for more AI in politics

The future of artificial intelligence in politics is already here. You just haven’t noticed it.

That’s according to digital strategist Eric Wilson, managing partner at Startup Caucus, an incubator for Republican campaign tech.

Wilson, who served as digital director for Marco Rubio’s 2016 campaign, has been using AI tools one way or another for years, starting with machine learning algorithms for social media and email spam filters, and is now watching the current wave of generative AI shape up as a potential disruptive force in this election cycle.

Currently a senior vice president for strategy at the public affairs firm Bullpen Strategy Group, Wilson says the handful of AI-enhanced ads that have run in the opening stages of the 2024 race are just the tip of the iceberg. There’s already a lot of AI being deployed beneath the surface of politics, in less dramatic ways.

But political operatives like Wilson also face a hurdle: Many of the most popular and powerful new generative AI models, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Meta’s Llama, impose restrictions on certain types of political content.

Though AI companies’ policies are still evolving, and the internal workings of their models are opaque, their applications regularly decline to engage with requests that seem overtly political. Asked Tuesday morning to generate a case for voting for Donald Trump over Joe Biden, the Llama-2-70b model responded, “[I]t goes against my programming rules to promote harmful, unethical, racist, sexist, toxic, dangerous, or illegal content.” Asked to write a fundraising email for Biden, it refused to “assist with drafting fundraising emails or any other form of political campaigning.”

In an interview, Wilson vented his frustration with the limits imposed by AI platforms on campaign applications — and also argued that Microsoft’s late-July decision to ban political ads from its in-house advertising platform bodes poorly for campaigns’ ability to access large tech firms’ offerings in general.

Wilson would like to see tech platforms loosen their restrictive approach to political use, at least when it comes to properly registered campaigns and committees.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

We’ve seen a lot of warnings about AI’s potential effect on politics. You’re not worried about opening the floodgates?

The moral panic around AI, especially in politics, is way overblown. The way it’s going to be integrated into this cycle is very mundane, which is like helping write press releases and social media copy, and just speeding up the process as we’re seeing it in any other industry.

The real applications are fundamentally boring and don’t live up to the panic around “Robots are going to take our democracy.”

How are you actually using it?

It’s definitely top of mind for me in all the projects that I’m working on. I use it personally to help with drafting blog posts, editing transcripts for my podcast, generating ideas for social media copy, and to generate the images I use for websites.

On a professional level, we’re investing in companies from Startup Caucus that have used AI for a while, but we’re also starting to look at what the possibilities are with large language models. We’re building products for clients that incorporate the latest in artificial intelligence to help them transcribe videos, and analyze videos. It’s a sea change.

What’s the biggest obstacle to injecting AI into the political process?

The biggest roadblock is corporate policies around politics. It’s always nerve-racking building software on dependencies that you might not be allowed to use in the future. Microsoft, for example, banned all political ads on their advertising network last week. You have OpenAI saying it can’t be used for these political use cases.

Are there alternatives to the big corporate platforms? Are people using open-source models?

Yeah, if you’re serious about building for the political space, you start with one of the open large language models, and then the important part is training it on your data sets.

How else are campaigns getting around these roadblocks?

You say, “Draft a marketing email about this topic” and then you go in and change it to have a fundraising call to action. Current AI models are set off by certain political terms or pitching candidates.

That sounds like a pain.

There are also purpose-built tools on the right and the left for writing emails on behalf of campaigns.

Democrats have invested in a company called Quiller that helps write fundraising emails and they’ve got a number of candidates doing that. There’s another platform called Localist that’s nonpartisan, that helps campaigns with copywriting.

Elon Musk has marketed his new xAI as a politically incorrect alternative to existing chatbots. Does it have the potential to become the preferred AI for Republican campaigns?

I haven’t followed it.

What is happening in the world of professional politics, talking about the actual campaigns and people supporting candidates, is more mundane. It’s the ways to make operations smarter, more effective, more efficient, and that doesn’t have to be partisan.

That’s part of the frustration with these tech companies shutting off legitimate political actors, campaigns that are registered with the FEC, the IRS, that should be able to use cutting-edge technology to reach voters and advance their message.

Is that the standard you think should apply to political use cases for AI? Permit political use by properly registered campaigns and committees?

That’s one place I would start. Addressing the challenges of political speech requires more nuance than an outright ban, which is the preferred policy approach of big tech right now.

What about deepfakes?

We haven’t had a single instance of a deepfake used by legitimate political actors, unless it’s been disclosed.

What about the concern that less scrupulous political actors will be able to use deepfakes to fool voters?

That risk exists in every industry, not just politics, and you just made a very compelling reason for why official candidates, campaigns and parties should be able to respond to the best of their abilities with all the tools that are available.

The way you stop the bad actors is not by punishing the good guys.

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