A mental health advocate suspected of killing her police officer husband was found dead Monday, six days after she disappeared from her Massachusetts home, authorities said.
Karen Solomon, an advocate who called for improvements and greater awareness of police mental health issues, had disappeared after Worcester Police Officer Kurt Solomon was found dead at their home just before 5:30 a.m. on Aug. 18. Officials had named Karen Solomon a suspect and said she was believed to be armed.
“We believe this case is a tragic murder-suicide that occurred,” Worcester Police Chief Paul Saucier said at a news conference Monday.
Two people who worked at Fairlawn Rehabilitation Hospital reported finding human remains nearby, and officers recovered a woman’s corpse, Saucier said. A final ID was still pending, but authorities said they were confident it was Karen Solomon.
A handgun found near her body was not a Worcester police service weapon, and investigators were working to determine who owned it.
On Aug. 19, authorities released doorbell camera footage of Karen Solomon walking down a street in a T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops, just minutes after officers responded to the couple’s home and found her husband’s body.
Kurt Solomon, who had served 31 years with the police department, was mortally injured with a sharp object, authorities have said.
Worcester County District Attorney Joseph Early Jr. said Karen Solomon had been at the house on the morning of her husband's death, and investigators were looking to question her. An arrest warrant issued over the weekend charged her with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.
Police handed out flyers with her photo to drivers in the area. An intensive law enforcement search that included local, state and federal agencies centered on the area near the couple's Worcester home and a reservoir about a mile (1.6 kilometers) away. Authorities had deployed drones, boats and tracking dogs.
Karen Solomon, 58, co-founded the group First H.E.L.P., which advocates for the mental health of police officers. She also wrote two books — “Hearts Beneath the Badge” and “The Price They Pay” — about the physical and psychological experiences of first responders.
In a 2020 interview on the “Dr. Phil” show with Phil McGraw, she said police departments often offered little help to the families of officers who took their own lives.
In a statement read by Saucier during Monday's news conference, the Solomon family thanked law enforcement for helping them find some answers.
“The nightmare of the past week has left our family heartbroken and rudderless," the family said. “The compassion, dedication and empathy of all agencies involved have given us light in face of darkness.”
A wake for Kurt Solomon was scheduled for Tuesday, and his funeral for Wednesday, the police chief said. The local police union president, Thomas Duffy, described him as “a tremendous human being” who was like family.
This screen grab made from video provided by WCVB-TV shows a police officer standing guard over a home in Worcester, Mass., Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026. (WCVB-TV via AP)
The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for President Donald Trump to move ahead with his executive order restricting mail-in voting, though it remains unclear how much his administration can implement before the fast-approaching midterm elections.
The decision appears to leave room for additional court challenges that could further slow Trump’s order. And with some states beginning to send mail ballots to voters in just a few weeks, time is running short to impose major changes.
Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday that new U.S. secondary sanctions in the pipeline aim to block all potential sources of revenue for Iran, telling nations to cut economic ties to Tehran or face U.S. retaliation. Tehran has withstood nearly five decades of punishing American sanctions. Ahead of the announcement, Iran’s currency hit a record low, dropping to 2.02 million to the U.S. dollar as trading opened on currency markets.
Trump threatened on Monday to impose a 50% tariff on Canadian automobiles, car parts and steel starting next year as the trade rift with Ottawa continued to deepen. The announcement comes after trade talks between the otherwise reliable trading partners collapsed last week. Long-planned U.S. tariffs on various Canadian goods went into effect after the talks broke off, and Canada has vowed to retaliate.
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The new tariff being weighed would penalize the world’s second-largest economy for flooding the global market with underpriced goods, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Two of the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations still being finalized, said Trump is considering setting the new tariff at 7.5%.
It’s a level administration officials believe would not endanger the one-year trade truce between Washington and Beijing or a planned White House meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping expected to take place in late September.
The move, if finalized, appears to be a calibrated effort by the White House to work around a Supreme Court decision earlier this year that struck down Trump’s plan to implement a sweeping, high-tariff scheme not seen since the 1930s.
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The final day of South Carolina’s Republican U.S. Senate runoff campaign on Monday came with a major cash infusion for Sen. Darline Graham from MAGA Inc., the super PAC that supports Trump and aligned Republicans.
The spend of nearly $830,000 came as Graham and Rep. Ralph Norman wrapped up their compressed campaigns to win the GOP nomination in a special primary to replace late Sen. Lindsey Graham on November ballots.
Tuesday’s Senate runoff tests the heft of both a famous political last name and the endorsement of Trump, who is backing Darline Graham and campaigned in the state for her days ahead of the vote.
The matchup pits the well-known Norman — fresh off an unsuccessful gubernatorial bid earlier this summer — against Graham, the late senator’s sister who was thrust into the political spotlight with her interim appointment, then a sprint of a primary campaign.
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The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for President Donald Trump to move ahead with his executive order restricting mail-in voting, though it remains unclear how much his administration can implement before the fast-approaching midterm elections.
The decision appears to leave room for additional court challenges that could further slow Trump’s order. And with some states beginning to send mail ballots to voters in just a few weeks, time is running short to impose major changes.
Mail balloting has long been a favorite target for Trump, who has claimed that it breeds fraud despite strong evidence to the contrary and his own use of the voting method.
The case could be one of multiple voting-related challenges before the justices. The Justice Department had filed an emergency appeal asking the high court to allow work on implementing the changes before the midterms.
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The Trump administration is preparing to revoke the business and tourism visas of up to 200,000 foreigners who have applied for or are currently seeking asylum status in the United States. If it happens, the move would be the largest single mass revocation of visas in U.S. history and would likely face legal challenges.
Unless challenged or revised, the State Department is expected to announce in the coming weeks the revocation of so-called B1 and B2 visas issued between 2016 and 2026 whose holders have sought asylum or are now seeking asylum, according to State Department documents obtained by The Associated Press and two U.S. officials. The action will be taken in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security.
“We are coordinating with DHS to identify and revoke the nonimmigrant visas of foreigners who have come to the United States claiming to be short-term visitors, but then file for asylum to stay here permanently,” said State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott.
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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says he is not ruling out resuming strikes to hit Iran amid a lull in hostilities.
“By no means are we foreclosing using kinetic strikes, anywhere, in the Strait of Hormuz or around Iran,” Hegseth told reporters Monday.
It comes as the Treasury Department has announced a new round of sanctions aimed at Iran and warned nations that do business with the Islamic Republic to sever those financial ties or face retaliation from the United States.
Hegseth said that “if Iran is foolish enough to overplay their hand or mess with the American military, we’ll do what we need to do” but he added that “economic pressure we know hurts them the most right now.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the Pentagon will proceed with efforts to significantly boost production of advanced weapons, even if it Congress fails to approve President Donald Trump’s proposed $1.5 trillion budget.
Hegseth said the Pentagon has already inked multiyear deals with various contractors, with many scaling up manufacturing capacity.
“This is not a nip around the margins of a few more weapons,” Hegseth told reporters in Wisconsin. “This is a generational investment of 2X, 3X, 4X war munitions of the ones we know we’re going to need and use.”
U.S. military officials and Washington think tanks have raised concerns that the U.S. depleted many advanced weapons during the Iran war. But Hegseth pushed back, repeating the Pentagon’s stance that the U.S. military has plenty of munitions.
The Treasury announced sanctions Monday against nearly 60 Iran-linked entities over their roles in Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, malign cyber activities and oil shipments.
It is part of the administration’s economic campaign against Iran, including warnings to other countries not to do business with Iran in sectors such as shipping, technology and aviation.
The Treasury sanctioned Hong Kong-based Sweet Ocean Industrial Limited and its associated personnel and businesses, accusing them of helping Iran acquire sensitive goods such as laser optics equipment. The Treasury also sanctioned several other Hong Kong-based entities for having provided funds to Sweet Ocean and its network.
Separately, the Treasury sanctioned China-based Shenzhen Huamei, the Hong Kong branch of the Iran-based logistics company BRE Line and its director for their ties with BRE Line in support of Iran’s missile and nuclear programs.
A sanctioned company is cut off from the U.S. financial system.
At the end of a Back to School event near the Rose Garden, the president invited the crowd — which included dozens of children — to accompany him and see the White House ballroom being built nearby.
“If anybody would like to walk with me,” Trump said, calling it “a special way the kids could see construction.”
The president added: “I love the sound of construction.”
Trump has taken to calling the project a “ballroom slash military complex.” He noted that Chinese President Xi Jinping is visiting soon and recalled his own visit to China in May.
“We saw the Great Hall of China,” Trump said. “Well, now we’re going to have a great hall, too, in the United States.”
The president’s main public event Monday is a back-to-school event featuring Education Secretary Linda McMahon.
Many schoolchildren are in the audience during the outdoor event.
“What a nice setting this is,” Trump remarked.
The Trump administration on Monday formally removed Syria from the State Department’s “State Sponsor of Terrorism” blacklist, making permanent a series of sanctions removals that had been initially announced more than a month ago.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio had announced the recission of Syria from the list in early July, but there was a 45-day period for congressional review before it was formalized. That review period has now expired and sanctions related to the state sponsor designation have been almost completely removed, the State and Treasury departments said on Monday.
“Treasury is following through on President Trump’s promise to give the Syrian people a chance at greatness,” Bessent said in a statement. “Today’s action will help foster additional investment in Syria to promote political and economic stability.”
When asked that the U.S. could go soft on China to maintain the fragile trade truce between the world’s two largest economies, Bessent said “no one is above the reach of U.S. sanctions”
“If they facilitate transactions and are part of the ecosystem that turns Iranian oil into money, into repression, they will be targeted,” Bessent said.
Experts have said the U.S. is likely to carefully calibrate its actions on China, just a month before Chinese leader Xi Jinping is expected to visit the U.S. to keep the already-fraught relations from falling out.
The Trump administration is challenged to act big with Iran “without escalating tensions with Beijing,” said Wendy Cutler, vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute.
Asked by a reporter Monday about issuing warnings to Tehran’s financial partners instead of promising an ‘economic D-Day’, the Treasury secretary said he wanted countries to shift away from Iran before it was too late.
“Why would I want to blow up the global financial system?” Bessent said. “We believe that it is important to level set and give people a cure period.”
He added, “But they should know that that will move very quickly and that we are serious. Secondary sanctions are a very powerful tool.”
The treasury secretary said Trump has been “making phone calls to world leaders with specific request to cease their interactions” with Iran and has already seen results.
The UAE announced last week that it was suspending all trade, commercial exchanges, and financial transactions with Iran until further notice.
“I am confident the president, as you all know, is quite persuasive,” Bessent said.
Bessent said that Treasury and State Department officials are following up with calls and visits with officials from countries and entities it wants to see take action and laying out “exactly what we expect and the timelines.”
Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf on Monday said Iran’s trading partners were not taking Washington’s “statements into account,” even as the country’s economy reels from months of war and mounting pressure.
“Americans know that no one buys their bombast,” Qalibaf said in a post on X, saying that the United States was “not in an economic position to further restrict its relations with other countries.”
His comments came as Washington prepared to expand secondary sanctions targeting countries and companies doing business with Iran, in an effort to isolate Tehran from the global dollar-based financial system.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says new U.S. secondary sanctions in the pipeline aim to block all potential sources of revenue for Iran, telling nations to cut economic ties to Tehran or face U.S. retaliation.
Bessent added it’s “no longer acceptable to operate in the gray spaces” of Iran conflict as US threaten sanctions against Tehran’s trade partners.
The treasury secretary did not name what countries could face potential secondary sanctions from the United States, but China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates are Iran’s largest trade partners.
“Let there be no ambiguity as to the position of the United States,” Bessent said at a Monday afternoon news conference. “An economic engagement of any kind with this murderous regime will expose those responsible to the full reach of American power.”
Asked about the Trump administration escalating a trade war with Canada when Maine depends so heavily on cross-border trade, the vice president said, “Canada is a state” but then added, “Sorry. Freudian slip.”
As the crowd laughed and hooted, Vance added, “That was actually an accident.”
He likened Canada to China in what he called unfair trade practices, saying that “Canada allows itself to be a backdoor for Chinese goods” that eventually are imported into the U.S.
Vance said negotiations between Canada and the U.S. were ongoing and that he thought there’d have been an agreement easing trade disputes by now — but Canada had made “unreasonable” demands.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins was not accompanying Vice President JD Vance during his manufacturing stop in Brewer, Maine on Monday.
But he still made sure that her presence was felt.
“Whenever I’m in Maine, I got to give Susan a little bit of crap,” Vance told the crowd as he began his remarks. “Because as you know, Susan is the most independent member of the United States Senate, and as the president of the United States Senate, she sometimes makes my job just a little bit harder.”
Vance said Collins, who is up for reelection in the Democratic-leaning state, has visited the vice president’s residence about a half-dozen times. In those meetings, Vance said, Collins is constantly pressing him about how certain policies affect her state.
Vance ended his brief aside on the senator by asking the crowd to give a shoutout to “our very independent friend, Susan Collins.”
“After wrongfully firing me last year, an independent arbitrator has ordered the @washingtonpost to reinstate me immediately, with back pay,” Karen Attiah posted on Instagram on Monday, calling it “a victory for journalists everywhere.”
The ruling found insufficient cause to terminate Karen Attiah, the last Black full-time member of the Post’s opinion desk at the time.
Kirk, a top conservative podcaster and Trump ally, made provocative statements about race, gender and politics, including calling George Floyd, whose 2020 murder at the hands of Minneapolis police sparked protests, a “scumbag.”
Kirk’s killing on Sept. 10 elicited a torrent of comments, and some who spoke out against him faced sanctions or dismissal at work. One post Attiah made said “Refusing to tear my clothes and smear ashes on my face in performative mourning for a white man that espoused violence is … not the same as violence.”
A Post statement said it respects the arbitration process and declined further comment.
Six people who were deported by the United States to Liberia last week resisted getting off the plane and instead were sent to Equatorial Guinea, a person on the plane and a lawyer in contact with them said Monday.
Under a series of often secret agreements, the Trump administration has deported thousands of people to two dozen countries that aren’t their own as it pushes ahead with its immigration crackdown, advocates say.
The four Cuban men, a Brazilian man and a Cameroonian woman are now being held with other migrants in worsening conditions in a hotel that lacks medical staff, said Meredyth Yoon, litigation director for Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta.
Equatorial Guinea’s all-powerful president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, turned the hotel owned by his family into a prison for deported asylum seekers under an opaque $7.5 million deal with the Trump administration. His government did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.
By Mark Banchereau
The U.S. plans to reopen a border crossing in Arizona to cattle from Mexico on Monday as part of a broader Trump administration effort to reduce record-high beef prices. Economists doubt grocery store shoppers will see any savings soon.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said concerns about the New World screwworm’s spread lessened enough to allow the movement of cattle from Mexico.
Beef prices clearly are a concern for Trump, who announced Friday that he would allow up to 331,000 tons of ground beef imports, tariff-free, to be sold at below-market prices over the next 90 days.
But the phased reopening means it will take months for Mexican imports to regain their traditional 3% of the U.S. supply, according to Derrell Peel, a professor of agribusiness at Oklahoma State University.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks at a news conference, Monday, Aug. 24, 2026, at the Treasury Department in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Rolled coils of steel sit in the yard at the ArcelorMittal Dofasco steel plant in Hamilton, Ont. on Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026. (Nick Iwanyshyn /The Canadian Press via AP)
Air Force One and four F-35's pass over as President Donald Trump, in the presidential limousine known as "The Beast," does a lap around the track before the IndyCar Freedom 250 Grand Prix auto race in Washington, Sunday, Aug. 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump, left, and first lady Melania Trump attend the IndyCar Freedom 250 Grand Prix auto race, Sunday, Aug. 23, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Christian Rasmussen (21), of Denmark, leads a pack of cars during the IndyCar Freedom 250 Grand Prix auto race in Washington, Sunday, Aug. 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)
Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks about Canada's response to new U.S. tariffs during a news conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Saturday, Aug. 22, 2026. (Patrick Doyle/The Canadian Press via AP)
