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Senator presses Hegseth, Caine for commitment to keep US military out of the midterm elections

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday to confirm he won't send U.S. troops to polling places during November's midterm elections, as Democrats have raised concerns that the Trump administration could use the military to interfere with the vote.

"I'd ask you to confirm a simple statement: the Department of Defense will not send Federal troops to the polls or to seize election materials of any kind," Slotkin wrote to Hegseth and to Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in letters Tuesday.

The Pentagon said in an email that it will respond directly to Slotkin, as it does with all congressional correspondence. The Joint Chiefs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Slotkin told The Associated Press that Trump has been laying the groundwork to claim the midterms were stolen. She noted that Trump contemplated using the military to seize voting machines after his loss in 2020 and has deployed the National Guard to cities against the wishes of Democratic leaders. He also deployed active duty Marines to Los Angeles during his immigration crackdown in 2025.

"He's very clearly laying the breadcrumbs to be able to say the day after the election that he didn't really lose the House or he didn't really lose the Senate," Slotkin said.

Slotkin asked Hegseth during an April congressional hearing if he would follow orders to seize ballots. Hegseth called the question a "gotcha hypothetical," but said, "I've never been ordered to do anything illegal, and I won't."

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles denied in a Vanity Fair interview last year that Trump would use the military to suppress voting in the midterms.

"I say it is categorically false, will not happen. It's just wrongheaded," she said.

Federal law prohibits the deployment of armed federal forces to election locations unless "necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States." If any element of the military were to get involved, it would likely be the National Guard under state control.

Ohio death row inmate Tyrone Noling gets a rare chance to ask parole board for a pardon

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Tyrone Noling has spent 30 years on death row for the double murder of an elderly Ohio couple that he insists he didn't commit. He had a rare chance Tuesday to make his case for a full pardon to the Ohio Parole Board.

Noling, 54, of Alliance, assembled a growing body of evidence -- with the support of the Ohio Innocence Project -- to present at his clemency hearing. That includes recanted witness testimony, changed stances by the sheriff and one of the jurors at his trial, and clues pointing to an already executed killer as the possible perpetrator.

His case has been the subject of documentaries and true-crime podcasts and garnered celebrity attention from Kim Kardashian and actors Hilarie Burton and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who all support his exoneration.

Following Tuesday's hearing, the first for an Ohio death row inmate since 2020, the parole board will issue its recommendation to Gov. Mike DeWine, who has the final say. DeWine, a Republican, called in June for abolishment of the death penalty -- saying his stance has changed because he no longer views capital punishment as a deterrent to violent crime.

Death row inmates don't typically land clemency hearings until they have an execution date, which Noling does not, so winning Tuesday's hearing was a victory. He seeks release from prison and has said he would not accept a commutation to life without parole for a crime he didn't commit.

Noling was convicted in the April 5, 1990, killings of Bearnhardt and Cora Hartig, both 81, at their Portage County home. The couple's bodies were discovered on the kitchen floor of their Atwater Township home by a neighbor who noticed their lawn mower had been in front of their home for several days. Bearnhardt Hartig had been shot three times and his wife five times with a .25-caliber automatic handgun. The house had been ransacked.

Authorities said Noling, who had just turned 18 at the time, was part of a group involved in home robberies of elderly couples. Three others in the group -- 14, 15 and 16 at the time -- implicated Noling in the slayings of the Hartigs during a burglary but later retracted their statements, saying that police pressured them to name Noling as the shooter.

Initial aggravated burglary charges brought against Noling were dropped in 1992, but a grand jury reindicted him in 1995 for the Hartig murders. He was sentenced to death in 1996.

Frank Beard, drummer of boogie-rock trio ZZ Top, dies at 77

NEW YORK (AP) -- Frank Beard, the drummer for the Texas boogie-rock trio ZZ Top who kept the tempo for the band's biggest hits like "Sharp Dressed Man," "Gimme All Your Lovin'" and "Legs," has died. He was 77.

Beard was in hospice care when he died Tuesday at his ranch in Richmond, Texas, with family members at his side, according to publicist Bob Merlis. Band co-founder and guitarist Billy Gibbons, on tour with bassist Elwood Francis, hailed Beard in a statement.

"Today, Elwood and I lost a great friend and collaborator, and the world lost one of the most naturally innovative drummers and a great and true son of Texas. His signature backbeat was key to keeping ZZ on top. The band of which he was part for six decades is going to keep on keeping on as he had wished," Gibbons said.

ZZ Top sold more than 50 million records and had six singles that reached No. 1 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Airplay chart. Seven of their albums have been in the Billboard 200's Top 10 and they earned three Grammy Award nominations.

"I've found the people I was meant to play with," Beard says in the 2019 documentary "ZZ Top: That Little Ol' Band from Texas." "I never wanted to quit, and never wanted to get fired."

Drummers went to social media to pay tribute to Beard's influence, including Rage Against the Machine's Brad Wilk, who wrote his mind was blown seeing Beard's two-hand shuffle live in high school. Former Guns N' Roses drummer Matt Sorum called Beard "a very special and unique man behind the kit."

Beard, from Frankston, Texas, met Gibbons in a band called The Moving Sidewalks and later introduced bassist and vocalist Dusty Hill who had been in several bands with Beard.

The trio formed ZZ Top in 1969, naming themselves in part after blues singer Z.Z. Hill and influenced by the British power trio Cream and Jimmy Reed. They maintained their original lineup for more than five decades. Their signature look -- long, bushy beards on Gibbons and Hill, and dark sunglasses for all -- didn't change much, either.

When Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards helped induct the trio into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, he joked: "These cats know their blues and they know how to dress it up. When I first saw them, I thought, 'I hope these guys are not on the run, because that disguise is not going to work.' "

ZZ Top songs -- with their sly and humorous lyrics -- were popular in Hollywood, which used "Gimme All Your Lovin'" in "Happy Feet," "Sharp Dressed Man" in "Evan Almighty," "Legs" in "Air," "Sleeping Bag" in "I, Tonya," "Tush" in "Dazed and Confused," "Mexican Blackbird" in "From Dusk Till Dawn" and "La Grange" in "Armageddon."

Preservation group urges Supreme Court to suspend Trump's White House ballroom project

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A historic preservation group that sued to block construction of President Donald Trump's White House ballroom urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to suspend the project while it considers whether the work can continue.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation filed its request less than a week after the Trump administration asked the nation's highest court to allow the White House to continue construction on its $400 million ballroom project during the appeals process.

Lawyers for the trust accused the administration of trying to "outrun judicial review" rather than obtain permission for the work from Congress, as required by federal law.

The administration "cannot identify any statute granting them 'express authority' to destroy a third of the White House and replace it with a massive, privately funded ballroom, because none exists," trust attorneys wrote.

The building of the 90,000-square-foot ballroom has included demolishing the East Wing of the White House and is part of Trump's plans to quickly remake Washington. The project includes the addition of an underground military facility that the administration says is necessary to protect the president.

The petition comes after a divided appeals court panel upheld an order to pause aboveground construction on the project. The ruling was suspended to let the administration appeal.

The ruling left intact an order by U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, who was nominated by Republican President George W. Bush. Leon wrote that "no statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims to have."

The administration argues that the president, not Congress or the courts, has unimpeded authority to renovate the White House. The current state of the project, essentially an open construction site, makes it harder to protect the White House, the Justice Department contends.

Minnesota attorney general sues Texas governor to compel extradition of ICE agent for trial

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) -- Minnesota's attorney general sued the governor of Texas on Tuesday, seeking to compel the extradition of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent charged with wounding a man and then lying to justify the shooting during the agency's crackdown in Minneapolis.

Attorney General Keith Ellison is asking a federal judge to bar the sheriff in Cameron County, Texas, from releasing ICE agent Christian Castro, and to order Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to sign his extradition warrant so that Minnesota officers can take custody.

Minnesota officials have clashed with the federal government over who has jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute federal officers for on-duty conduct. Ellison is a Democrat and Abbott is a Republican ally of President Donald Trump.

Castro was arrested in Texas in May on Minnesota charges of assault and falsely reporting a crime in the Jan. 14 wounding of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis. Castro, 52, is accused of firing a gun through the front door of a Minneapolis home, striking Sosa-Celis in the leg with a bullet that lodged in a child's bedroom wall. Prosecutors say Castro then falsely accused Sosa-Celis and another man of attacking an ICE officer with a broom handle and a snow shovel.

Ellison told a news conference that unless he's extradited, Castro could be released from jail as early as next week -- 90 days since he was detained -- under Texas law. And if he's freed, Castro could slip into Mexico from the border town where he's being held, Ellison said. The lawsuit said Castro has been making calls from jail to a woman in Mexico, talking "about marrying her and buying a house in Mexico when he is released."

If Castro was to reach Mexico, "it may be difficult or impossible to locate and have him re-arrested," with the process slowed further by a complex international extradition process that normally requires requests from the U.S. Department of Justice, according to a legal memo filed by Ellison's office.

US Navy destroyer with 300 sailors aboard broke down for four days in the Pacific

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A U.S. Navy destroyer with about 300 sailors aboard suffered a major breakdown in the Pacific Ocean last month that left it without power for four days, the Navy confirmed in a statement.

The USS Benfold "reported an engineering casualty involving its generators, causing a loss of power" on July 24, Navy spokesman Cmdr. Matthew Comer said in the statement. The breakdown meant the crew went without drinking water, meals, functioning toilets and air conditioning for days aboard the ship, Comer said.

The incident, which only became public on Friday when it was first reported by USNI News, comes as the Pentagon grapples with serious questions about the quality of life aboard naval vessels and the military's ability to supply ships during the conflict with Iran.

Democratic lawmakers are calling for investigations into conditions aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. Reports last week revealed that the ship, which has spent a record-setting 250 uninterrupted days at sea, has experienced shortages of supplies, including food and hygiene products, while crew members have suffered from stress and poor mental health.

Comer stressed that there were no injuries to the crew of the Benfold, "who demonstrated resilience, grit, professionalism, and unwavering steadiness in their response," but that the ship needed assistance from the George Washington carrier strike group.

The cruiser USS Robert Smalls provided meals to the stricken destroyer.

Ultimately, Comer said the Benfold had to be towed to Subic Bay, in the Philippines, for repairs, arriving on July 28. The crew was then provided food and lodging off the ship. On Aug. 8, the Benfold left port "with all engineering, combat systems, and crew support systems functioning normally," the statement said.

Meanwhile, the ships from the George Washington strike group, including the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, were spotted heading toward the Middle East. The carrier was expected to replace the Lincoln, which the acting navy secretary, Hung Cao, said last week would be returning home soon.

This would leave the waters of the Pacific without a U.S. carrier presence for an unknown period of time. The Trump administration sees China, the dominant power in the region, as "a settled force" that only needs to be deterred from dominating the U.S. or its allies and not the top global adversary that it was under the Biden administration.