The Latest: Trump agrees to have his super PAC, not taxpayers, pay for his ads

In response to a major backlash, President Donald Trump says he will stop using taxpayer funds for television advertisements glorifying himself and instead tap his super PAC to cover such costs going forward. Trump defended the use of at least $1.5 million in federal funds to pay for the ads, saying Monday that they were “positive promotion for our Great U.S.A.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is calling Trump “deranged and dangerous” for suggesting in a campaign speech Monday night that Iran could attack cities in his Democrat-led state. “Let ’em take out Los Angeles. Let ’em take out San Diego,” Trump said. “This is a very small price to pay.”

And Paramount closed its $81 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, the companies announced Tuesday — forming a new Hollywood giant now called Skydance that brings two of America’s oldest moviemaking studios together along with streaming services, CNN and CBS. Many industry figures warned the merger would lead to American voices being silenced, but Trump promoted it while attacking network reporting.

The Latest:

Despite the welfare queen trope, there are more white Americans than Black Americans using social service programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps. The persistent right-wing rhetoric about Black Americans and public assistance often ignores how generations of structural racism have produced economic disparities that contribute to their disproportionate participation in these programs.

The bigger question, Arkansas Democratic congressional candidate Chris Jones said, is not race but “why so many people who are working hard still struggle to afford groceries, housing, health care and the basic necessities of life.”

Jones, who is Black, grew up in a family relying on food stamps. A welfare recipient is not “looking for a way out of work,” but “for a way forward,” he told AP in a statement.

A new video from Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders was standard-issue Republican messaging for promoting her state’s stricter rules for people on Medicaid: No more could able-bodied people lounge around while receiving taxpayer-funded healthcare, she said — they needed to work.

But the decision to portray an unemployed moocher as a young, white, cheeseball-chomping gamer named Brad has upset some commentators who said the video should have featured a Black woman instead.

“Republicans don’t have the balls to do this ad with ‘Shaniqua’ as the villain,” posted Matt Walsh, a conservative writer.

Sean Davis, co-founder of the Federalist website, wrote that “our government has systematically discriminated against white men for decades now, and yet now has the audacity to dishonestly mock young white men as welfare queens.”

In fact, when it comes to Medicaid expansion in Arkansas, the state says about 60% of recipients are white and around 18% are Black.

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The U.S. trade deficit in goods and services widened to $105.6 billion in August, biggest gap between what America imports and what it exports since March 2025, as booming investment in artificial intelligence drew in foreign computer chips and equipment.

The Commerce Department reported Tuesday that the August trade gap was up from $92.8 billion in July. President Donald Trump has imposed sweeping tariffs – import taxes – in an attempt to reduce the longstanding U.S. trade deficit.

So far this year, the U.S. trade deficit is down nearly 20% from January-August 2025. But the gap hit bottom at $52.9 billion in April before heading up as the AI investment surge sharply increased imports. Semiconductor imports, for instance, jumped 18% in August and are up 84% this year compared to January-August 2025.

Thousands of movie stars, writers, directors and other professionals announced their “unequivocal opposition” to the Paramount-Warner merger in an open letter that warned of fewer jobs and “less choice for audiences in the United States and around the world.” Sally Field said while accepting her Emmy award that “unique storytelling matters” and “we can’t let those voices be silenced, or compromised or merged.”

But Tom Cruise and James Cameron were among those backing the merger as David Ellison reiterated his commitment to filmmaking and said CNN would maintain editorial independence.

Trump has regularly attacked CNN’s reporting, attempting to bar the outlet from the White House altogether. Days after Paramount launched its hostile bid for Warner, the president said that CNN spread “poison and lies” and added that “it’s imperative that CNN be sold.” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told reporters after the launch of the Iran war that “the sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better.”

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Paramount closed its $81 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, the companies announced Tuesday — forming a new Hollywood giant now called Skydance.

The merger promoted by the Trump administration brings two of America’s oldest moviemaking studios together — along with HBO Max, titles ranging from “Harry Potter” to “Sinners” and even networks like CNN will soon find themselves under the same roof as Paramount+, CBS and the likes of “Top Gun” and “The Godfather.”

“Today is a historic day, not just for Skydance but for our entire industry,” CEO David Ellison, who will lead the company alongside his new co-CEO Ynon Kreiz, said in a statement.

The government-funded television ads glorifying the president that have drawn a sharp bipartisan backlash have cost more than $11 million in federal money as of Tuesday, according to estimates from AdImpact, which tracks media spending.

Trump said Monday night he would stop using taxpayer funds to pay for the ads, instead tapping MAGA Inc, his super PAC, to cover the costs going forward. The president provided no details on whether taxpayers would be reimbursed for ads that already aired, nor how he would go about having his political organization pay for such future advertising.

The ads were slated to cost up to $20 million, with money coming from the Department of Homeland Security.

The White House has defended the ads as public service announcements.

AAA says the average price of diesel gas in the United States Tuesday is $6.32 a gallon. That’s below diesel’s all-time record of $6.53 in September, but still far above the $3.68 a gallon it was a year ago, before Trump launched his war on Iran.

Trump signed an executive order at his Nebraska rally Monday night that he claimed would bring down sky-high diesel prices by allowing anyone to purchase red-dyed diesel tax-free. Diesel fuel prices have spiked due to the war in Iran, but dyed diesel fuel is cheaper because it’s exempt from federal and state excise taxes. Trump called his order an “unprecedented step to bring down costs” amid escalating pressure to address surging prices ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections.

But Patrick De Haan of GasBuddy, which monitors national gasoline and diesel prices, noted ahead of Trump’s order that it won’t help farmers, who already use red-dyed diesel. “Taxes aren’t the problem, supply is,” De Haan wrote on X.

During his rally Monday night in Nebraska, Trump was going through his usual insistence that gas prices are only temporarily high and worth it as part of his war on Iran.

Then he added a new wrinkle, floating the idea that Tehran could “take out” two major American cities.

“They could take out a city,” he said. "Let ‘em take out Los Angeles. Let ’em take out San Diego.”

He continued as the crowd laughed and cheered: “This is a very small price to pay, and it’s going to be over with very soon.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who may run for president in 2028, answered on X, calling Trump “deranged and dangerous.”

Trump has a history of denigrating U.S. cities, especially the largest ones that lean heavily Democratic. Los Angeles was among the cities where Trump deployed federal military personnel for what he said was a crackdown on crime, despite local authorities not wanting the troops.

At a recent North Carolina campaign rally, Trump said the state’s cities are “blood-soaked killing fields.” North Carolina’s violent crime rate ranks in the middle third of states, according to FBI statistics.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio hailed the role of diplomacy in resolving conflicts as he began a three-nation tour of NATO allies in Iceland, where concerns over the Trump administration’s often brusque approach to traditional friends and partners have stirred unease.

Rubio met Tuesday with Icelandic Foreign Secretary Thorgerdur Katrín Gunnarsdóttir at Reykjavik’s Hofdi House, the site of the 1986 summit between former U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that is widely regarded as the beginning of the end of the Cold War.

“The house symbolizes diplomacy’s role in ending the Cold War and defeating communism,” Rubio posted on social media after the talks that took place just days before the 40th anniversary of the landmark Oct 11-12 meeting.

Despite an agreement signed last month between the U.S., Denmark and Greenland that eased fears of Trump taking over Greenland. Iceland has been uneasy about Trump’s intentions toward it after posting a map showing the colors of the U.S. flag sprawling across all of North America and including Iceland and Greenland.

Political advertising warns about Democratic plots to defund the police. Campaign events feature law enforcement unions and tough talk about law and order. Stump speeches boast about record low levels of violent crime.

From coast to coast, Republicans are focusing on public disorder, illegal immigration and violent crime in midterm campaigns as voters sour on their party’s handling of the cost of living and the war with Iran.

The messaging reflects a belief that lawlessness is safer political ground in the midterms despite Donald Trump’s own criminal record for paying hush money to a porn star, making him the only president to be convicted of a felony. Democrats have tried to counter the attacks by recruiting candidates with law enforcement backgrounds and emphasizing their own anti-crime plans, but Republicans believe it’s a rare opportunity to go on the offensive in an otherwise challenging year.

Trump returned to the topic on Monday night in Nebraska, warning about how the country used to be before he returned to the White House.

“We had a border with people pouring in, crime like nobody’s ever seen,” he said.

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Trump has approved the execution by firing squad of Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan for the 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas.

The U.S. military has not carried out the death penalty since 1961. The Army secretary will decide a time and place for the execution, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell wrote in a post on X.

Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, walked into a medical building where soldiers were getting medical checkups, shouted “Allahu akbar” — Arabic for “God is great!” — and opened fire with a laser-sighted handgun. Thirteen people were killed and more than 30 injured.

He said it was an effort to stop them from going to Afghanistan and killing his fellow Muslims and made almost no effort to defend himself at trial. He told jurors that evidence would show he was the shooter and described himself as a soldier who had “switched sides.”

Trump’s approval triggers a series of procedural steps toward carrying out the execution, but Hasan could put them on hold — potentially for years — with a habeas corpus appeal in the civilian federal court system, according to an article published in May in the magazine Army Lawyer.

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Trump on Monday criticized election officials in Arizona’s Maricopa County after about 3,000 ballots were mistakenly mailed early to voters.

The miscue, blamed on a vendor error, would have no effect on the voters who received the ballots, the county recorder’s office said. Maricopa County has about 2.5 million registered voters.

The president, as he typically does ahead of an election, has been ramping up his rhetoric around voting as Election Day draws near in this year’s midterm elections, with control of Congress at stake.

His latest comments referred to a vendor error that came to light over the weekend. The Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, which is run by Republican Recorder Justin Heap, said Sunday that Runbeck Election Services told the office that it “mistakenly mailed 3,126 early ballots the previous day,” six days before they were scheduled to be sent to voters for this year’s midterm elections.

The ballots were mailed to the correct voters, are still valid and can be completed and returned normally by those voters, the recorder’s office said in a statement.

Jeff Ellington, president and CEO of Runbeck Election Services, said Monday that Maricopa County was not at fault in the snafu.

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President Donald Trump said Monday that he will stop using taxpayer funds for television advertisements glorifying himself, which sparked a major backlash, and instead tap his super PAC to cover costs going forward.

In a post on his social media site, Trump defended the ads, which cost at least $1.5 million in federal funds and have drawn intense criticism. Trump said they were “positive promotion for our Great U.S.A.”

“This is a rather standard thing to do,” the president wrote, while blaming intense criticism for using taxpayer funds on the ads on the “Radical Left.” But the president added that he’d “decided to do the Patriotic Ads, among others, and pay for them myself, and with money I raised for MAGA, Inc.”

That is Trump’s political war chest, which had amassed more than $400 million by the end of July. Trump has begun to tap it to boost Republican candidates around the country ahead of midterm elections.

Trump provided no details on reimbursing taxpayers for ads that already aired, nor how he would go about having his political organization pay for such future advertising.

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A motorist drives past a sign posting the per-gallon prices for regular unleaded and diesel fuel at a Shell gasoline station Monday, Oct. 5, 2026, in Evergreen, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

CEO of Paramount Skydance David Ellison, right, and wife Sandra Lynn Modic walk to the White House to attend a state dinner hosted for China's President Xi Jinping, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom displays one of the conservation bills he signed during a visit to the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

President Donald Trump pumps his fist as he arrives on Air Force One, Monday, Oct. 5, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

GENEVA (AP) — The World Health Organization says a possible case of pneumonic plague in Russia presents a “very low” risk outside the country as investigators look into what caused the death of a lab employee there last week.

The U.N. health agency said Tuesday that it has been in contact with Russian authorities following reports of the death last week of a woman who worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East.

The case and the investigation, led by Russian officials, have revived memories of the COVID-19 pandemic and allegations the coronavirus may have emerged at a Chinese lab. WHO has not provided a definitive answer to how the pandemic began.

“There is currently no indication that we are dealing with anything similar to the pandemic," WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told The Associated Press, referring to the woman's illness.

Here's what to know about the case and how experts are mobilizing after her death:

The incubation period for pneumonic plague — which means lung-based, and is the most virulent form of the disease — can be as short as 24 hours, according to WHO. It’s a less common but severe form that can spread between people through respiratory particles.

If untreated, the illness can be fatal, but recovery rates are high if detected and treated in time, WHO says.

Symptoms include shortness of breath and coughing, often involving the coughing up of blood.

The more common form of plague — bubonic plague — is caused by the bite of an infected flea, and can develop into open sores filled with pus.

Pneumonia is a form of acute respiratory infection that is mostly caused by viruses or bacteria, and is spread generally through contact with infected people or from airborne droplets. WHO says pneumonia is the single largest infectious cause of death in children worldwide.

Through an international health alert system, Russian health officials on Tuesday said a full range of preventive measures had been carried out — including tracing of the deceased woman's contacts, medical monitoring and lab tests.

“Test results showed no presence of dangerous infectious disease pathogens in any of the contacts,” said the note from Russian authorities, which was relayed to The Associated Press by WHO.

"Based on available data, laboratory test results, and health status, medical monitoring for 100% of the contacts has now been concluded," it said. “The epidemiological situation is stable and remains under monitoring.”

The woman died at a hospital in Shelekhov, a town just outside the city of Irkutsk, and its mayor said the hospital was placed under quarantine. The top officials from Russia’s national public health watchdog traveled to the region Friday.

On Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov advised the public to follow official statements from the watchdog agency, Rospotrebnadzor, rather than “rumors or speculation.”

Lindmeier, the WHO spokesman, told a U.N. briefing Tuesday that the institute where the woman worked “studies dangerous pathogens,” including plague in a part of Siberia where the disease "occurs naturally in wild animals.”

He said Russian officials have not yet asked for WHO experts to deploy to Russia, where authorities are "looking into whether pneumonic plague caused her death.”

Russian authorities later told WHO that no case of plague has been recorded in Irkutsk, Lindmeier said.

“According to the authorities, the woman’s illness initially presented as a typical acute respiratory viral infection," he said. “No case of plague or other high threat pathogen has been found."

U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday that he was watching the situation with concern and that the United States would be willing to help, though he said he had not spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the case.

Asked about Trump’s remarks, Kremlin spokesman Peskov said Tuesday that “it is always very good when mutual assistance is offered.” He wouldn’t elaborate further, deferring to Rospotrebnadzor.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged Russian authorities to share more information.

“Maybe there’s nothing there. Maybe it’s bigger than we thought. We don’t know,” he said at a news conference in Iceland.

“We encourage Russia to be more transparent and share more information with the world,” Rubio said, adding this has so far been “quite limited, but hopefully that will change in the next few hours and days.”

Ian Jones, professor of virology at the University of Reading, said that “plague carries a huge history and is still present in many parts of the world, including Russia,” although because of modern living conditions and antibiotics, its potential was limited.

Dr. Glenn Wortmann, at the MedStar Washington Hospital Center, said the bacteria that cause plague don't “travel very far” and a person would “really need to be face-to-face” with an infected person to get pneumonic plague.

“The chance of this spreading widely in Russia and then extending here to the U.S. will not happen, not with this type of bacteria, because it’s not spread easily and we have antibiotics to stop it from spreading,” he added.

Associated Press writers Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, and Matthew Lee in Reykjavik, Iceland, contributed to this report.

This undated photo released in 2019 by the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and Far East, shows the institute workers in a lab. (The Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and Far East via AP) ADDITION: adding photo was released in 2019