LAFAYETTE, Ga. (AP) — As much as U.S. coach Emma Hayes loves winning, she has even loftier ambitions for the national team — and women’s soccer overall.
Hayes wants to fundamentally reframe the entire women's soccer ecosystem, which she laments is just the men's game applied to women. Instead, she suggests a holistic approach through a female lens, looking at how athletes are managed and trained across all levels of the sport.
"I want every little girl and woman, no matter what your practice is in our sport, to feel like this is more than just playing a game,” Hayes said. “I actually think we can impact society in some way.”
When Hayes first took over as coach of the national team shortly before the 2024 Olympics, there was little time to fully realize her vision. But early last year she spoke about the WNT Way, which is now taking shape in the run-up to both next year's Women's World Cup in Brazil, and the 2031 tournament, which is likely to be hosted by the United States, Mexico, Costa Rica and Jamaica.
Recently she hosted the “herLENS” conference for some 300 people from across the sport at U.S. Soccer’s new headquarters in Georgia. Among the topics were keeping young girls in the game, the impact of menstruation and hormones on performance, and training practices designed for women.
Of course, there are still games to play. The U.S. faces a major test starting Saturday at Washington, D.C.'s Audi Field in the first of two games against defending Women’s World Cup champion Spain. The second game is Tuesday in Chester, Pennsylvania. The matches are part of the team’s preparation for World Cup qualifying later this year.
"My head’s switched on to preparing for Spain and wanting to beat Spain, but this isn’t about me. This is about the whole ecosystem around taking a mission, a vision, and bringing it to life," Hayes said.
The United States is uniquely positioned to reimagine the women's game as a leader on the world stage, U.S. Soccer President Cindy Parlow Cone said.
“I feel as president and as a coach and as a former player that we have a responsibility to grow this game, not only here domestically but internationally as well. And when I say grow it, I don't just mean more, right? More is only part of it," Parlow Cone said. "But how do we help everyone create a more developmentally appropriate, fun, engaging environment for the female player across the landscape, regardless of the level.”
Hayes came to the national team after 12 successful seasons at Chelsea, where she started to look at how her players were impacted by their menstrual cycles. After she was named U.S. coach, she surveyed her players to gain insight into their needs.
"Having a coach care so much about the holistic person and player, I think, was something that we all were like, 'Oh, this is very new. This feels very different.' I think it’s been incredibly important,” former national team player Crystal Dunn said. “It’s been really helpful for everyone to feel like it’s a safe place to be vulnerable and speak about things that affect us all but you are always too afraid to speak about in the sense of like, you’re not feeling too good, you’re on your period. How do you voice that to a coach that hasn’t once asked you about any symptoms you have or what your cycle is like?”
Hayes' plan includes considering women's physiology to determine best practices around menstrual cycles, nutrition, sleep, mental health and intentional training to avoid injury. That means supporting research into women-specific issues. Currently only about 6% of published research into athletes focuses solely on women.
U.S. Soccer has partnered with Michele Kang, owner of the Washington Spirit in the National Women's Soccer League, the London City Lionesses in the English Women's Super League and France's OL Lyonnes. The Kang Women's Institute was founded with a $55 million donation from Kang to create standards for women and girls across soccer based on evidence.
The institute is already looking at why girls ages 8 to 18 either drop out or stay in sports, and what factors are at play in those decisions. The institute has also partnered with the University of North Carolina on a study to look at how women's health and performance data is collected and applied in soccer.
Hayes said she plans to continue to grow herLENS project, while also leading the U.S. team. She's already made structural changes within the team itself, combining the senior and under-23 teams during training camps to help evaluate talent.
“I don’t want to waste my life just talking about winning, and I don’t mean that in the derogatory way,” Hayes said. “I love winning, but it’s just not enough for me, to be honest.”
See AP’s full soccer coverage here
FILE - United States coach Emma Hayes, center, talks to her players after a women's Group B soccer match between Australia and the United States at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Marseille, France, July 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole, File)
FILE - United States head coach Emma Hayes looks on during the first half of an international friendly women's soccer match, Oct. 26, 2025, in East Hartford, Conn. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill, File)
President Donald Trump opened another chapter in his effort to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook Friday by establishing a “committee of inquiry” to investigate allegations that she made false statements in mortgage applications.
The inquiry will include a hearing at the White House on Nov. 5 and Cook “shall” attend to answer questions from the committee, Trump said in a written memo.
Vice President JD Vance cast doubt on Friday about whether the Pentagon will livestream the execution of the Fort Hood shooter in December, telling reporters he wouldn’t watch it. “I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen,” Vance told reporters. He and Trump have both sought to highlight the shooter’s 2009 attack at Fort Hood where he killed 13 people.
Also, a federal immigration officer shot a Dominican man in the neck as he drove in a car with a 5-year-old boy Thursday afternoon, officials said.
An irate New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani called the shooting an outrage, and spent two hours Thursday night pressing President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to release the wounded man, and urging them to stop immigration enforcement operations in the city.
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The United Democracy Project, a super PAC affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, has begun spending against Michigan’s Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. The spending was revealed in a filing late Friday, and is only $94,000 to start.
The group spent close to $30 million against El-Sayed — a vocal critic of Israel — in his Democratic primary against Rep. Haley Stevens. Until Friday, the group had stayed out of the general election race. During a Senate debate Thursday, El-Sayed’s opponent, Mike Rogers, signaled he would accept AIPAC’s support when asked directly about it.
A spokesperson for AIPAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The president said conservative commentator Katie Zacharia, a communications adviser for Trump’s media company, will replace Karoline Leavitt as the chief spokesperson for the White House.
Trump announced the hire in a social media post on Friday, describing Zacharia as “a loyal and brilliant supporter, right from the beginning.”
Zacharia briefly worked as a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year and has been a commentator for Fox News and Newsmax. Trump said she was previously involved in his campaigns and helped in key swing states.
A request for comment left with Zacharia was not immediately answered. Her LinkedIn says she has a law degree from Pepperdine University.
The president has now formally confirmed that Hurricane Isaias means he won’t be attending Saturday night’s Alabama-Georgia football game.
He wrote on his social media site on Friday that “based on the fact that a huge Hurricane/Storm is coming, it is important to have our wonderful First Responders, Law Enforcement, and others, focused on that Storm, and in no way be thinking about the safety, or presence, of the President of the United States, ME!”
“Therefore, I will miss that potentially unbelievable Game, Alabama vs. Georgia,” Trump continued. “But, hopefully, the Game will go on despite the weather!”
He also promised, without providing details, “I will be visiting both of those Teams at a later date.”
The president will no longer be attending Saturday’s football game between the University of Alabama and the University of Georgia, according to a White House official speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning.
Trump had been planning to travel to Tuscaloosa for the rivalry clash after a rally planned in Tennessee on Saturday. Asked about the impact of the storm on Wednesday said “I gotta go to the game” but said his plans might change based on the weather.
Trump had said he did not want to divert resources from the emergency response.
President Donald Trump said that he has struck a deal to obtain diesel from Russia, a stunning reversal of years of U.S. pressure on Moscow over its war with Ukraine and an attempt to address high fuel prices ahead of the U.S. midterm elections.
Trump said on social media on Friday that he struck the deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a phone call in which he was expected to discuss a suspected case of plague in Russia. Instead, Trump announced that Russia will immediately supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel, followed by an additional 500,000 tons in November and 1 million tons “immediately thereafter.” Russia will deliver another 3 million tons “within a short period of time” after that, he wrote.
Trump’s shocking announcement comes after he signed a sweeping Russia sanctions law last month that aimed at clamping down on Russia’s energy economy, among other areas, that fuel its war against Ukraine.
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Katie Zacharia has been offered the job as press secretary, according to a White House official speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal hiring.
It was not immediately clear whether she has accepted. A message left with Zacharia was not immediately answered on Friday. The post has been open since Karoline Leavitt left in August.
Zacharia is a senior communications adviser for Trump Media & Technology, the company behind the Truth Social platform. She briefly worked as a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security this year, and according to her LinkedIn profile has been a commentator for Fox News and Newsmax.
Her LinkedIn profile says she has bachelor’s and law degrees from Pepperdine University.
Earlier Friday morning, the head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops condemned the U.S. government’s decision to livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan by firing squad.
Vice President Vance is a convert to the Catholic Church, which has long opposed capital punishment.
“It is with shock and great sorrow that I have learned of the Department of War’s decision to publicly livestream the execution,” Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, president of the conference, said in a statement. He added that the decision was “a barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered.”
New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will travel to Michigan next week to campaign with Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, further throwing her substantial platform behind a fellow progressive in one of the nation’s most competitive Senate races.
Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most prominent figures in the progressive movement, said at a New York City fundraiser last week that “if Abdul can win in Michigan, anybody can win anywhere.”
The two will campaign Oct. 15 in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, a heavily Republican region that will test the appeal of their progressive politics. They will then travel to southeast Michigan for campaign events Oct. 16.
“Abdul has built a winning coalition with an agenda to bring down costs for Michigan families and I could not be more excited to join him for the final stretch of this race,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a statement.
“These are accusations. You don’t take messages that people allegedly had between one person or another — or one person’s story — and say, ‘Oh, because of that, Kimberly Guilfoyle is guilty,’ the vice president told reporters.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that Guilfoyle, the U.S. ambassador to Greece, asked a donor and supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump to pay a $100,000 credit card bill just before her confirmation hearing and that she promising him access to administration officials if he did.
Vance suggested it was too early to reach conclusions about Guilfoyle and the allegations.
“Let’s actually see what the facts are. Let’s see what the truth is,” he said. “And, obviously, if there was something bad that happened, then people have to suffer consequences.”
Vice President JD Vance cast doubt on Friday whether the Pentagon will livestream the execution of of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan in December but told reporters that if it is livestreamed, “I’m not going to be watching it.”
The Republican vice president said, “I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen,” when asked about the plans that the Pentagon confirmed on Thursday. But Vance then tried to set aside the controversy over the shocking plans for a public execution and said Hasan’s crimes should not be forgotten.
“So whatever the controversy is about the method of the execution, I hope that people don’t forget that this is a guy who brutally murdered a lot of innocent people,” the Republican said.
“Now, that said, I mean, look, if it’s ultimately livestreamed, I’m not going to be watching it,” he said.
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Trump says his administration “resurrected” Christopher Columbus and other figures from American history whose statues and legacies were being threatened by what he called the “radical left.”
In a meandering address at a Columbus Day celebration at the White House, Trump said: “They want to tear down the history and heritage that makes us who we are, not only Columbus.”
He said George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had been targets too. “We had a time when they wanted to rip down the statue of Abraham Lincoln,” because “they thought he was a racist. He’s the one that freed the country,” Trump said.
There have been laws on the books for years to punish people for defacing monuments and statues. Trump signed executive orders in 2020 that ordered monuments to be rebuilt and pushed for tougher punishments for people who defaced them.
Senate Majority PAC, the outside spending group aligned with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, says it will begin airing television ads in the Kansas Senate race on Saturday. The $5 million television campaign will air on TV stations statewide through Election Day.
The ads are aimed at attacking first-term Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, who is in a competitive reelection race with Democratic challenger Adam Hamilton, the leader of the nation’s largest United Methodist Church.
Schumer’s group is weighing in a week just days after Republicans’ chief Senate super PAC, Senate Leadership Fund, announced it was reserving advertising time in the state, where no Democrat has been elected to the Senate since 1932.
As of Friday, Senate Leadership Fund, aligned with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, had reserved $10.3 million through Nov. 3.
The Department of Homeland Security would not give The Associated Press a clear answer Friday on whether non-criminal immigration enforcement would be suspended in states impacted by Isaias during the emergency.
In past administrations, including Trump’s first, the Department of Homeland Security would sometimes issue messaging in the run up to hurricanes clarifying its immigration enforcement policies during extreme weather.
Before Hurricane Irma in 2017, the agency issued a statement that “DHS will not conduct non-criminal immigration enforcement operations in the affected area ... When it comes to rescuing people in the wake of Hurricane Irma, immigration status is not and will not be a factor.”
Asked Friday what the DHS policy is during Isaias, the department instead cited a statement about FEMA’s storm preparations. It included: “Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin’s leadership, the safety of the American people is DHS’s top priority.”
DHS did not immediately respond to follow-up questions.
The president said Nidal Malik Hasan will be getting “the death penalty through firing squad. And he deserves it.”
Trump called Hasan, who was convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 others in a shooting at the military base in 2009, “a maniac.”
Trump has long been a vocal supporter of capital punishment. But he didn’t mention plans the Pentagon has announced to livestream the execution so the broader public can see it.
During an event marking Columbus Day, the president talked excitedly about the ballroom he demolished the East Wing to build and even declared, “I’m going to do something that I rarely do.”
He then invited the event’s attendees to tour the ballroom construction site and said he’d lead the impromptu tour of construction “which nobody sees.”
That’s not true. In fact, Trump inviting attendees of unrelated events at the White House to see the ballroom construction site has become something of a Trump fixture lately.
The president led a group after a back-to-school event — including many children — to see the site. He did the same for attendees of a recent state dinner in honor of Chinese President Xi Jinping and those who came to an event marking National Hispanic Heritage Month.
The U.S. president is celebrating Christopher Columbus after erecting a statue to the nautical explorer on the north side of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus.
The statue is a replica of a Columbus statue in Baltimore that was thrown into the Baltimore harbor in 2020.
Columbus heralded the start of European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. In his Oct. 7 proclamation for Columbus Day, Trump said the explorer had started a chain of events that led to the creation of the United States.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries is set to campaign with Democratic challengers in two battleground seats in the East.
Jeffries will campaign Friday alongside Rebecca Bennett in New Jersey’s 7th District, where she’s challenging two-term incumbent Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. He’s also attending a rally in suburban Philadelphia on Saturday with Bob Harvie, the Democrat taking on five-term incumbent Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick.
The two races are viewed as among the most competitive in this year’s midterm election. Also attending the Harvie event will be Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who’s also seeking reelection this year.
The Trump administration has imposed sweeping new sanctions on the International Criminal Court as part of its campaign to dismantle the tribunal the U.S. believes has become politicized and attempted to unfairly and illegally prosecute Americans and Israelis on war crimes charges.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions Friday after the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to South African prosecutor Navi Pillay, who had led investigations into potential ICC charges against U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The move, however, long predated the Nobel Prize announcement.
“We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate against us,” Rubio said in a video address posted to social media. “The United States and the American people are not subject to the jurisdiction of this fake ICC.”
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President Trump opened another chapter in his effort to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook on Friday by establishing a “committee of inquiry” to investigate allegations that she made false statements in mortgage applications.
The inquiry will include a hearing at the White House on Nov. 5 that Cook “shall” attend to answer questions from the committee, Trump said in a written memo.
The extraordinary move follows a Supreme Court ruling in June that Cook could keep her job after Trump sought to fire her last year. That ruling found Cook should have had notice and an opportunity to respond to the charges.
Cook has denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged with a crime.
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The lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans, say Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s intent to livestream the execution must be halted.
“Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican.
Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan should face the death penalty, he said, “but making his execution public and streaming it? Beyond disgusting.”
Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington state Democrat, said: “We can seek justice in this country without glorifying violence and turning an execution into a grotesque public spectacle.”
“Kids watch what our leaders do and say, is this kind of bloodshed really what we want them seeing?” she asked in a statement. “The Pentagon must revoke this decision immediately.”
Mullin said ICE agents weren’t aware the child was in the car at the time. But he said Belgal “was aware” and chose to evade officers.
He didn’t answer a question about how officers wouldn’t know that, saying only that it’s an investigation.
Mullin also revealed that the officers involved in the incident were wearing body cameras “and they were on.”
Mullin spent much of the news conference criticizing New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani for resisting and denouncing ICE. An irate Mamdani on Thursday night called ICE “rotten to its core” and said he saw no justification for the shooting.
“Well, mayor, if you abolish ICE, who’s going to take criminals off the streets of your own town?” Mullin said Friday. “The mayor speaks with political tone. His words are dangerous and incite hostility. It doesn’t help.”
Marcos Charles, who heads Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s enforcement removal and operations division, said ICE officials attempted to arrest the Dominican man, whom officials have identified as Oscar Belgal, and attempted to use their vehicles to block him in.
Speaking to reporters, Charles said Belgal “refused to exit his vehicle” and accelerated, smashing into two government vehicles and moving toward officers, which prompted officers to fire weapons.
Facing backlash after a federal immigration officer shot a Dominican man in the neck as he drove in a car with a 5-year-old boy in New York on Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin doubled down on the Trump administration’s criticism of so-called sanctuary cities.
There’s no clear definition of sanctuary jurisdictions, but the term is generally applied to state and local governments that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Sanctuary politicians and cities “create an environment for criminal activity to thrive, not for the American citizens to be safe,” Mullin said in a news conference Friday.
For about nine decades, executions in the U.S. have been private affairs, often shrouded in secrecy. The stunning Pentagon announcement Thursday that the first military execution in more than 65 years will be livestreamed could change that.
Allowing the world to watch Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan face the firing squad in December would make it the first public execution since two hangings in the 1930s in Kentucky and Missouri drew crowds.
In 1936, a man who reportedly confessed to the rape and murder of a woman was hanged in front of thousands in Owensboro, Kentucky, while the following year, hundreds watched a man in Missouri be hanged.
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Trump said Thursday that he will not order a resumption of military strikes on Iran before the Nov. 3 midterm elections in the United States.
Trump, while stumping for Republicans this week, has hinted that he was confident that an endgame to the war could come in the days before or after the election, while also hinting that he remained open to resuming full-scale military operations against Iran.
For weeks, Trump has been threatening that a post-midterm election escalation in the seven-month-old war remains a viable option, despite his initial promises to Americans of a military campaign that would last a matter of weeks.
But Trump in a social media post on Thursday said the U.S. “will not be attacking Iran at any time prior to the Midterm Elections to be held in the United States on November 3rd.”
Trump added that his team has been “having productive discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
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A federal immigration officer shot a Dominican man in the neck as he drove in a car with a 5-year-old boy Thursday afternoon, officials said. The Department of Homeland Security said it was seeking to arrest the man in a “targeted enforcement operation,” but protesters and local officials decried it as an example of the dangers of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
DHS said in a statement that it was seeking to arrest a “criminal illegal alien” with a grand larceny conviction and a history of other arrests. But an irate New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani called the shooting an outrage.
The mayor said he had spent two hours Thursday night pressing President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to release the wounded man, to no avail, and urging them to stop immigration enforcement operations in the city. He said that late Thursday night, federal authorities removed the man from the hospital and took him away.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, also a Democrat, said in a statement that she had delivered a similar message to Trump and Mullin by phone.
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FILE - Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Lisa Cook leaves the Supreme Court in Washington, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
President Donald Trump arrives to speak at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani talks during a news conference near the scene of a shooting on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
