TORONTO — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Sunday his country has no intention of pursuing a free trade deal with China. He was responding to U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to impose a 100% tariff on goods imported from Canada if America’s northern neighbor went ahead with a trade deal with Beijing.
Carney said his recent agreement with China merely cuts tariffs on a few sectors that were recently hit with the taxes.
Trump claims otherwise, posting, “China is successfully and completely taking over the once Great Country of Canada. So sad to see it happen. I only hope they leave Ice Hockey alone! President DJT”
The prime minister said under the free trade agreement with the U.S. and Mexico there are commitments not to pursue free trade agreements with nonmarket economies without prior notification.
“We have no intention of doing that with China or any other nonmarket economy,” Carney said. “What we have done with China is to rectify some issues that developed in the last couple of years.”
In 2024, Canada mirrored the United States by putting a 100% tariff on electric vehicles from Beijing and a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum. China had responded by imposing 100% import taxes on Canadian canola oil and meal and 25% on pork and seafood.
Breaking with the United States this month during a visit to China, Carney cut its 100% tariff on Chinese electric cars in return for lower tariffs on those Canadian products.
Carney has said there would be an initial annual cap of 49,000 vehicles on Chinese EV exports coming into Canada at a tariff rate of 6.1%, growing to about 70,000 over five years. He noted there was no cap before 2024. He also has said the initial cap on Chinese EV imports was about 3% of the 1.8 million vehicles sold in Canada annually and that, in exchange, China is expected to begin investing in the Canadian auto industry within three years.
Trump posted a video Sunday in which the chief executive of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association warns there will be no Canadian auto industry without U.S. access, while noting the Canadian market alone is too small to justify large scale manufacturing from China.
“A MUST WATCH. Canada is systematically destroying itself. The China deal is a disaster for them. Will go down as one of the worst deals, of any kind, in history. All their businesses are moving to the USA. I want to see Canada SURVIVE AND THRIVE! President DJT,” Trump posted on social media.
Trump’s post on Saturday said that if Carney “thinks he is going to make Canada a ‘Drop Off Port’ for China to send goods and products into the United States, he is sorely mistaken.”
“We can’t let Canada become an opening that the Chinese pour their cheap goods into the U.S,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on ABC’s This Week.
“We have a (United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement), but based off — based on that, which is going to be renegotiated this summer, and I’m not sure what Prime Minister Carney is doing here, other than trying to virtue-signal to his globalist friends at Davos.”
Carney has emerged as a leader of a movement for countries to find ways to link up and counter the U.S. under Trump. Speaking in Davos before Trump, Carney said, “Middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu” and he warned about coercion by great powers — without mentioning Trump’s name. The prime minister received widespread praise and attention for his remarks, upstaging Trump at the World Economic Forum.
Trump’s push to acquire Greenland has come after he has repeatedly needled Canada over its sovereignty and suggested it also be absorbed into the United States as a 51st state. He posted an altered image on social media this week showing a map of the United States that included Canada, Venezuela, Greenland and Cuba as part of its territory.
A massive winter storm dumped sleet, freezing rain, and snow across much of the U.S. on Sunday, bringing subzero temperatures and paralyzing air and road traffic. Power lines were draped in ice, and hundreds of thousands of people in the Southeast were left without electricity.
The ice and snowfall were expected to continue into Monday in much of the country, followed by very low temperatures, which could cause “dangerous travel and infrastructure impacts” to linger for several days, the National Weather Service said.
Heavy snow was forecast from the Ohio Valley to the Northeast, while “catastrophic ice accumulation” threatened from the Lower Mississippi Valley to the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast.
“It is a unique storm in the sense that it is so widespread,” weather service meteorologist Allison Santorelli said in a phone interview. “It was affecting areas all the way from New Mexico, Texas, all the way into New England, so we’re talking like a 2,000-mile spread.”
President Donald Trump had approved emergency declarations for at least a dozen states by Saturday, with more expected to come. The Federal Emergency Management Agency prepositioned commodities, staff, and search and rescue teams in numerous states, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said the state was bracing for the longest cold stretch and highest snow totals it has seen in years. Communities near the Canadian border have already seen record-breaking subzero temperatures, with Watertown registering minus 34 degrees Fahrenheit and Copenhagen minus 49 F, she said.
“An Arctic siege has taken over our state,” Hochul said. “It is brutal, it is bone chilling, and it is dangerous.”
Storm knocks out power and snarls flights
As of Sunday morning, about 213 million people were under some sort of winter weather warning, Santorelli said. The number of customers without power topped 900,000, according to poweroutage.us, and the number was rising.
Tennessee was hardest hit with nearly 325,000 customers out, and Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi all had more than 100,000 customers in the dark. Tens of thousands of homes and businesses were without power in Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama, and West Virginia.
Some 11,000 flights had already been canceled Sunday and more than 13,000 have been delayed, according to the flight tracker flightaware.com. Airports in Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, North Carolina, New York, and New Jersey were hit especially hard.
At Philadelphia International Airport, inside displays registered scores of canceled flights and few vehicles could be seen arriving Sunday morning. At Reagan National in Washington, virtually all flights were canceled.
Bitter cold makes things worse
Even once the ice and snow stop falling, the danger will continue, Santorelli warned.
“Behind the storm it’s just going to get bitterly cold across basically the entirety of the eastern two-thirds of the nation, east of the Rockies,” she said. That means the ice and snow won’t melt as fast, which could hinder some efforts to restore power and other infrastructure.
Along the Gulf Coast, temperatures were balmy Sunday, hitting the high 60s and low 70s, but thermometers were expected to drop into the high 20s and low 30s there by Monday morning. The National Weather Service warned of damaging winds and a slight risk of severe storms and possibly even a brief tornado.
In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at least five people died as temperatures plunged Saturday before the snows arrived in earnest.
“While it’s still too early to determine the causes of death, it is a reminder that every year New Yorkers succumb to the cold,” he wrote on X.
The Democrat also announced that Monday would be a remote learning day for students in the nation’s largest school system. Other officials across the affected areas also announced that school would be canceled or held remotely Monday.
Coping with the storm
In Corinth, Miss., where power outages were widespread, Caterpillar told employees at its remanufacturing site to stay home Monday and Tuesday.
“May God have mercy on Corinth, MS! … The sound of the trees snapping, exploding & falling through the night have been unnerving to say the least,” resident Kathy Ragan said on Facebook.
University of Georgia sophomore Eden England said there was a thin layer of ice on the ground of the campus in Athens and a mist fell as she walked with friends from the campus dining hall to her residence hall.
“It is definitely a little deserted but plenty of people chose to stay on campus,” England said.
Recovery could take a while
Nashville and the surrounding area saw ice accumulations of half an inch or more, with icicles hanging from power lines and overburdened tree limbs crashing to the ground.
In Oxford, Miss., police on Sunday morning used social media to tell residents to stay home as the danger of being outside was too great. Local utility crews were also pulled from their jobs during the overnight hours.
“Due to life-threatening conditions, Oxford Utilities has made the difficult decision to pull our crews off the road for the night,” the utility company posted on Facebook early Sunday. “Trees are actively snapping and falling around our linemen while they are in the bucket trucks.”
Tippah Electric Power in Mississippi said there was “catastrophic damage” and that it could be “weeks instead of days” to restore everyone.
The Tennessee Valley Authority provides power to some utilities across the region, and spokesperson Scott Brooks said the bulk power system remains stable but overnight icing had caused power interruptions in north Mississippi, north Alabama, southern middle Tennessee, and the Knoxville, Tenn., area.
Icy roads made travel dangerous in north Georgia, where the Cherokee County Sheriff’s office posted on Facebook, “You know it’s bad when Waffle House is closed!!!” along with a photo of a shuttered restaurant. Whether the chain’s restaurants are open — known as the Waffle House Index — has become an informal way to gauge the severity of weather disasters across the South.
Senate Democrats plan to block a sweeping government funding package after U.S. Border Patrol agents killed a man in Minneapolis on Saturday — increasing the likelihood of another shutdown at the end of the week.
Federal law enforcement agents shot and killed a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis on Saturday morning during an immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota. Federal officials alleged that Pretti approached officers with a handgun and resisted attempts to disarm him. Videos of the incident show federal agents swarming Pretti, wrestling him to the ground, and shooting him after he attempted to get up.
The shooting prompted protests and clashes between demonstrators and federal agents and drew furious recrimination from Democratic lawmakers who are expected to vote on bipartisan legislation this week that would fund most of the federal government. It is the third shooting by federal agents in Minneapolis this month: Officers also shot and killed Renée Good in her car and shot Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis in the leg as he attempted to evade arrest, according to federal officials.
Democrats said they could not vote for legislation to continue U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s funding without changes to how the agency operates.
“What’s happening in Minnesota is appalling — and unacceptable in any American city. Democrats sought common sense reforms in the Department of Homeland Security spending bill, but because of Republicans’ refusal to stand up to President Trump, the [Department of Homeland Security] bill is woefully inadequate to rein in the abuses of [Immigration and Customs Enforcement.] I will vote no,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D., N.Y.) said in a statement. “Senate Democrats will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the DHS funding bill is included.”
The legislation set to come to the Senate floor this week includes six government funding bills spanning multiple agencies — including large agencies like the Departments of Defense and Health and Human Services — and makes up the majority of discretionary spending. It would appropriate $64.4 billion for Homeland Security, including $10 billion for ICE.
Existing government funding runs out at the end of the day on Friday, and most of the government would shut down if a funding bill is not approved in time. At least seven Senate Democrats would need to vote for the legislation for it to pass in the upper chamber, where 60 votes are needed to overcome the filibuster.
Lawmakers could try to split the Homeland Security bill from the legislation to fund the rest of the government, which has stronger bipartisan support. A spokesperson for Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R., Maine) said she is “exploring all options” to pass the remaining government funding bills in time.
ICE’s immigration enforcement raids in Minneapolis and other cities across the country have enraged Democrats in Congress and brought increased pressure from their voters to block funding for Homeland Security, even though most lawmakers have little appetite for another shutdown. The whole government closed in October for the longest period in U.S. history, as Congress deadlocked over demands from Democrats to extend enhanced healthcare subsidies that expired at the end of the year.
President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem have ramped up ICE operations across the country, arguing it is necessary to deport undocumented immigrants with criminal records. Agents have been recorded aggressively detaining individuals, including many U.S. citizens or undocumented immigrants without violent criminal records.
Some Democrats were already urging their colleagues not to vote for the funding package even before the Saturday shooting in Minneapolis. The House passed the Homeland Security funding measure last week, largely on party lines.
“I don’t think we will look sincere in our moral outrage about what’s happening in DHS if we vote to fund a budget that puts no constraints on their illegal, inhumane operations,” Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.), the top Democrat on the Homeland Security appropriations subcommittee, said Thursday in an interview.
Sen. Tim Kaine (Va.), one of a handful of Senate Democrats who voted to end last year’s shutdown in November, said Friday that he would not vote for the Homeland Security bill “without significant amendment” due to concerns over ICE.
By Saturday, it was clear that Democrats wouldn’t support the Homeland Security funding unless it included additional accountability measures for ICE.
The top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), wrote on X on Saturday that she would no longer support the Homeland Security bill. Last week, she had advocated for the legislation, arguing that a funding extension or a shutdown would give the Trump administration more leeway over spending decisions at the agency.
“Federal agents cannot murder people in broad daylight and face zero consequences,” she wrote Saturday. “The DHS bill needs to be split off from the larger funding package before the Senate — Republicans must work with us to do that. I will continue fighting to rein in DHS and ICE.”
Another Democratic senator who voted to reopen the government last year, Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), said in a statement Saturday that the Trump administration is “putting undertrained, combative federal agents on the streets with no accountability” and “oppressing Americans.”
Some Republicans, too, raised concerns with ICE’s actions in Minnesota.
“The events in Minneapolis are incredibly disturbing,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R., La.) said on X. “The credibility of ICE and DHS are at stake. There must be a full joint federal and state investigation. We can trust the American people with the truth.”
But others defended the federal operation. Sen. Bill Hagerty (R., Tenn.) argued that Schumer wants to shut down the government “because he puts illegal immigrants above law enforcement.”
“Instead of bowing to his socialist flank, what Schumer should be doing is telling [Gov. Tim Walz] to stop encouraging violence and let law enforcement do its job,” Hagerty wrote on X. “He must turn the rhetoric down and all the chaos is on his hands.”
WATER VALLEY, Miss. — A crowd turned out to hear a politician talk big about improving schools, but it wasn’t a Republican railing about transgender athletes or school vouchers or any of the issues the GOP has used to put Democrats into a defensive crouch.
On this night, the politician taking questions was a Democrat — former Chicago mayor and President Barack Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel — talking about reading. For the past several years, Republicans have dominated the education debate with a focus on culture war politics. Emanuel, who is exploring a 2028 presidential run, makes the case for returning to the education part of education: achievement and learning rather than book bans and gender identity.
That would benefit students and, he says, Democrats, who have not led a national conversation about student achievement since Obama was president. Instead, Republicans have been able to make up ground, capitalizing on anger about school closures during the pandemic and heated fights over transgender rights, race and other subjects.
Emanuel talks about school achievement with a frequency and urgency rarely heard from Democrats in recent years. And he says both parties have wasted time on education culture wars.
“This distracts us from the priorities of education,” he said in an interview. Questions around gender identity, he said, affect “less than 1 percent of the population and yet dominate 99 percent of the conversation. … You want to pick a pronoun? Great. Now can we focus on the other 35 kids that don’t know what a goddamn pronoun is?”
While a dozen or more Democratic presidential hopefuls scramble to carve out their identities in advance of the 2028 election, many of them better known than he is, Emanuel is betting that a renewed focus on education can fuel a Democratic victory — and more immediately, his own prospects.
As Chicago mayor, Emanuel successfully pushed several school reforms, including a longer school day, and saw graduation rates jump. But he had a contentious relationship with the teachers union and his tenure was marred by a seven-day strike. He also angered many Chicagoans by closing 50 schools. He says he has learned from his mistakes and hopes to take some of his successes national.
Emanuel traveled to Mississippi this month to examine and promote the state’s success in teaching reading. On fourth-grade tests, the state moved from 49th in the nation in 2013 to ninth in 2024 by focusing on what’s called the science of reading — instruction built on sound-it-out phonics. The state combined that withincreased funding, a heavy dose of teacher training and support, and a requirement that third graders pass a reading test to advance to fourth grade.
Emanuel argues that Washington should use federal dollars to incentivize other states to do the same. And he is proposing renewed federal standards and accountability, ideas that faded a decade ago.
At the town hall meeting in Water Valley, a tiny town in the north of the state, more than 125 people gathered. There were no questions about race, gender or culture wars, giving Emanuel space to drive home his central thesis.
“We’ve got a 30-year low in reading scores,” he said. “Has a single governor called for an emergency meeting of the governors association?”
Left unsaid was that he might run against some of those governors in a 2028 Democratic primary.
Emanuel brought a film crew with him, and within a day of leaving the state, he had posted video from the visit to his social media accounts.
Rahm Emanuel in 2023, when he served as U.S. ambassador to Japan.
An education evolution
Emanuel likes to hark back to anera when education reform was in vogue. A national movement centered on standards and accountability began in the states and culminated with the bipartisan passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001. Schools were required to make progress on annual tests or face escalating consequences.
Eight years later, Obama continued pressing for accountability with the Race to the Top competition that awarded states with extra federal money for adopting favored policies such as Common Core standards and using student scores to measure teacher quality.
But by the end of Obama’s tenure, opposition had built to the high-stakes testing that the accountability system was built on. The Race to the Top program ended, and most of the requirements under the 2001 law were reversed. The bipartisan consensus collapsed, and soon the political parties gravitated to their partisan corners.
Democrats backed increased funding for public schools and racial equity initiatives. They adopted policies in support of transgender students. Today, most Democratic governors continue to focus on new funding — for prekindergarten, community schools, teacher pay, free meals, and other priorities.
Republicans promoted tax dollars for private school vouchers. During the pandemic, they blamed Democrats for keeping schools closed too long and for requiring measures like masks once school buildings reopened. Conservative parent groups that formed around pandemic issues soon used that momentum to build support for book bans and influence how educators address race and LGBTQ+ issues. GOP legislatures and conservative school boards passed laws and policies restricting how those topics could be dealt with in school.
Republicans began eating into Democrats’ commanding lead on education issues. In 2006, a Fox News poll found Democrats with a 17-percentage-point lead when asked whom they trust on education issues, though their advantage was not that big in other surveys. By 2022,Republicans had narrowed the gap significantly – som— polls found the parties virtually tied. (Several newerpolls have found that Democrats regained their advantage following President Donald Trump’s election.)
In the wake of the pandemic, scores on national math and reading exams slid to a 30-year low.
The Trump administration repeatedly cites this data in making the case for closing the Education Department and for backing school choice policies. Now, some Democrats are arguing that their party needs its own response to the slide.
“It is deeply frustrating to me as a Democrat that we completely ceded this issue,” said Lanae Erickson, senior vice president for social policy, education, and politics at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank. “We have absolutely no ideas on the table.”
In the 2024 presidential election, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who took his place on the ticket, put forward only vague education goals. One day before the election, the Center for American Progress, a leading Democratic think tank, published a set of education recommendations. Even then, there was not muchabout student achievement.
Jared Bass, senior vice president for education at CAP, said the group is now working on a new set of proposals that will squarely address academics.
“There’s a real sense of humility within the party. We used to be the party that was trusted on education,” he said. “We need to get it right.”
Even with a hunger for action among Democrats, Emanuel’s ideas are likely to face pushback inside his party and beyond. Many progressives argue that racial inequity and racism are to blame for the low achievement rates of many students of color, and they may resist leaders who want to pivot away from those topics. Teachers unions, who are active in the Democratic Party, strongly oppose the accountability systems that rely on standardized testing that Emanuel hopes to bring back.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers and a longtime power in the Democratic Party, said she would oppose a return to accountability systems that too often, in her view, devolved into blaming teachers. Still, she agrees that Democrats need a new vision.
“Democrats are all too reactive and as a result they have lost ground on education,” she said. “It’s very frustrating.”
A new Race to the Top
Emanuel is betting that while other Democratic presidential candidates concentrate on standing up to Trump, voters will want a candidate more focused on their daily concerns.
On his trip to Mississippi, Emanuel toured an elementary school in Hattiesburg, crouching beside children’s desks to peek at their work and hearing from the principal about what has succeeded. And he met with Jim Barksdale, whose $100 million donation beginning 25 years ago set Mississippi on its path to a new reading program.
“When do we get to geek out?” he asked Barksdale as they took seats in his living room with a trio of people involved in education in Mississippi. He turned to the group and asked, simply, “How did you do it?”
After a long conversation about the reading program, Barksdale told Emanuel that a lot of people say they want to learn from Mississippi’s success. “They say, ‘I’m all for it. How’d you do this?’” he said. “And then they don’t do it because it costs money.”
“It also costs guts,” Emanuel replied.
Emanuel, long known as a partisan brawler, says he is ready to fight for this.
In an interview, Emanuel sketched the outlines of the federal program he would like to see. He suggested a new version of Obama’s Race to the Top that would incentivize states to adopt science of reading curriculums — what Mississippi uses — and other policy changes.
The program, he said, also could encourage high schools to offer more college courses, and he favors a policy he advanced in Chicago requiring all seniors to have a plan for college, trade school or the military to graduate from high school. He also wants to incentivize states to replicate Chicago’s promise of free community college for students who graduate from high school with a B average.
States would have to adopt these types of changes to get the new federal money, he said. He contrasted that approach with the unprecedented $130 billion in COVID funding that went to K-12 schools under the Biden administration, which Emanuel slammed as having too few requirements. For instance, the program was sold as a way to reopen schools, but districts were not required to reopen.
He argues that the No Child Left Behind system was too test-driven, but that the country “overcorrected.” The right answer, he said, lies somewhere in between.
As for the culture wars, he is trying to stay far away. He dismisses some of the racial equity efforts that swept through schools, mocking San Francisco’s effort to rename schools, including one named for Abraham Lincoln.
He also opposes allowing trans athletes to compete in girls’ and women’s sports, saying it’s not fair to other competitors. But he said he does not know whether he would, if elected president, pull federal funding from schools that resist, as Trump has done, and he said he is not interested in discussing the finer points of these policies. The entire debate, he said, has been a “dead-bang loser” — both politically and for the young people involved.
As Democrats begin to rethink their positions on education, they will need to weigh whether Emanuel’s prescriptions are the right ones and also whether he is the right messenger for them. For now, though, Emanuel is one of the fewpeople making this case.
At the town hall meeting, a questioner asked what he had done right and wrong as mayor, and Emanuel replied that he mishandled his relationship with the teachers union at first, specifically by unilaterally canceling a scheduled pay raise.
“It created a lot of animosity,” he said, describing his first term as “hand-to-hand combat.” He said he should have tried to work with the union president to find a solution together.
“You can’t drive reform if people don’t feel part of it,” he said. “That’s like 101, and I screwed it up — Mr. Smarty Pants over here. And I learned a lot.”
Jim Mooney has launched a high-wattage campaign to elevate the flamingo to Florida’s state bird.
The Republican has handed out flamingo lapel pins and 11-by-16 prints of flamingo artwork to his 119 colleagues in the state legislature. He sported a suit with a pink shirt, a pink pocket square, and a tie festooned with flamingos to testify on behalf of his legislation.
But the gangly pink bird must unseat the mockingbird, which has been Florida’s official bird for 99 years, to gain the distinction Mooney says it deeply deserves.
To accomplish this, the lawmaker is hoping to reach a political compromise with supporters of the sprightly and charming Florida scrub jay, who have torpedoed his legislation in the past. The scrub jay would be honored as the state’s songbird under Mooney’s bill, while the flamingo would become the state bird.
“It’s unbelievable how this has taken on a life of its own,” said Mooney, a retired high school sports coach and former mayor of Islamorada. “I’m seeing flamingos everywhere I go. Across the state, everywhere I turn around, it’s a flamingo here and a flamingo there. People are sending me texts and letters about it. Everybody is on board for the flamingo.”
He quickly added, “And the scrub jay.”
Florida struck a similar deal in 2022 when strawberry growers lobbied the state to honor the strawberry shortcake. Many in the state especially in Mooney’s Florida Keys district — were outraged at the prospect that the key lime pie, the official state pie, could be pushed aside. Instead, state lawmakers just created a new category — state dessert — and awarded it to the strawberry shortcake.
“There’s room for both, just like there’s room for both the flamingo and the scrub jay,” Mooney said.
At stake are mostly bragging rights, though supporters also hope to secure more money for the study and conservation of flamingos. The American flamingo is already protected by the U.S. Migratory Bird Treaty Act, but conservationists say it should also be considered a threatened species, offering it even more protection after it was nearly wiped out in Florida in the past century by plume hunters and, later, habitat loss.
Audubon Florida Executive Director Julie Wraithmell refuses to choose a favorite among the flamingo, mockingbird, and scrub jay — “we don’t choose between our kids” — but hopes the bird competition will lead to them all receiving more recognition.
“If you’re Team Flamingo, you should put your influence and your support where your loyalty lies and really support Everglades restoration,” Wraithmell said. “If you’re Team Scrub Jay, you need to be paying attention to if the state is appropriating enough funding for upland land management for our parks and preserves.”
Supporters have been campaigning for flamingos, one of the state’s most celebrated symbols, for years. But a debate among scientists about whether the wading bird, which on average can stand five feet tall, is native to the Sunshine State has hampered those efforts. Skeptics noted that few were seen in the wild, or outside a zoo, for more than 100 years.
But Mooney, who has sponsored pro-flamingo legislation for four years, said a new University of Central Florida study may finally settle the dispute. Flamingos are native to the state and “genetically fit for restoration,” according to the study released in December. Audubon Florida also found that more than 101 flamingos landed in the state during Hurricane Idalia in 2023 and didn’t leave.
The exact number of flamingos in Florida is unknown — the state doesn’t keep track — but residents regularly report sightings, including Mooney, who likes to show everyone he encounters a video of nearly three dozen flamingos serenely feeding in the Florida Bay in early January. A scientist spotted a flamboyance of 125 flamingos in the Everglades in July.
The proposal, being debated during the current legislative session, isn’t as weighty as some of the other topics Florida lawmakers are expected to tackle, including the cost of property insurance, Mooney said, but is still important.
“We seldom have bills that make you feel good,” he said. “This bill does, and it also has some real intrinsic value. It shows that our restoration projects are bearing fruit, and that flamingos are here to stay.”
He was thrilled when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gave the birds a shout-out during his State of the State address Jan. 13. “Even the flamingos have returned,” DeSantis said while touting the state’s Everglades restoration work.
Efforts to elevate the flamingo have overtaken a decades-long pro-scrub jay campaign. The friendly blue-and-white bird has fans among Florida schoolchildren, who have formed clubs and written lawmakers in support of the scrub jay being named state bird. It also has a devoted following among environmentalists who often argue against overdevelopment that would disturb their habitats.
In 1999, Marion Hammer, the first female president of the National Rifle Association and considered among the most formidable lobbyists in Tallahassee, helped derail scrub jay supporters. They are “evil little birds that rob the nests of other birds and eat their eggs and kill their babies,” she said.
A northern mockingbird keeps a keen eye out for intruders in 2015 n Houston. After nearly a century on its lofty perch, the northern mockingbird may be singing its last melodies as the state bird of Florida.
Hammer was on Team Mockingbird and in an op-ed in 2016 noted that they are good parents and also remarkable songbirds, while the scrub jay “can’t even sing — it can only squawk.”
The scrub jay lets out a soft trill during courtship but is often lumped in with songbirds, like blue jays, that it is related to. Flamingos, meanwhile, make squawky sounds.
The mockingbird should remain the state bird, just as it has been since 1927, Hammer argued. (It’s also the state bird in Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas.)
Hammer couldn’t be reached for comment on the latest bird competition, but the scrub jay also has adversaries among Florida developers. It is at the center of a federal lawsuit filed in 2024 over homeowner rights in southwest Florida, where Charlotte County officials charge a fee to build in the bird’s habitat.
“The scrub jay has just been commandeered to really violate property rights across Florida, and I just cannot allow it to be elevated to this level,” state Rep. Monique Miller, a Central Florida Republican, said during a committee meeting in December. “I wish these were decoupled because I want to make the flamingo your bird so badly.”
Jackson Oberlink, a third-generation Floridian, has testified on behalf of the flamingo for the past three years, only to see his hopes dashed. He’s not nearly as optimistic as Mooney that it will succeed this time.
“Every year, there seems to be a few more flamingo props in a committee room, and it seems like there’s a bit more enthusiasm. And then every year, it kind of peters out,” said Oberlink, the former legislative director for Florida for All, a liberal lobbying group.
But he’s not ready to give up.
Oberlink said he became enchanted with the gangly pink birds when he encountered Pinky, a flamingo that was blown into the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge in north Florida by Hurricane Michael in 2018.
“I have a tattoo of Pinky and the St. Marks Lighthouse. So it definitely left a mark on me, and I’ll always be rooting for the flamingo in Florida.”
F. Eugene Dixon, former chair of the Philadelphia Art Commission, was asked in the early ’80s whether the Rocky statue should be placed atop the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Mr. Dixon responded, “Surely you jest.”
City officials had argued that the statue was “not art but a movie prop,” and it was moved to the old Spectrum arena. For the filming of Rocky V, the statue was temporarily moved to the top of the steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. For many years, it has been at the bottom of the steps. The Philadelphia Art Commission, not jesting, recently voted 4-1 to move the statue back to the top of the steps.
The kerfuffle over the Rocky statue is as artificial as the celluloid boxer. If a Rocky statue defining grit belongs at the Art Museum, cast it in the image of the real Rocky Balboa who fought the real Apollo Creed. Chuck Wepner lost a 1975 bloodbath to Muhammad Ali when he was knocked out in the 15th round. Sylvester Stallone used the fight (and much of Wepner’s persona) to create a billion-dollar franchise. Wepner sued Stallone, claiming he was unjustly enriched by Wepner’s story, settling out of court.
Philadelphia produced many great fighters who demonstrated grit and courage. Harold Johnson, Joey Giardello, and Bernard Hopkins come to mind. Matthew Saad Muhammad — abandoned at the Benjamin Franklin Parkway at age 5 — began boxing as Matt Franklin, changing his name when he converted to Islam. He was a champion who fought the best of his generation with power and determination. After winning the championship, he defended it eight times. He remained in Philadelphia after retiring, where he died broke, homeless, and largely forgotten.
Joe Frazier had an equally difficult upbringing. After moving to Philadelphia alone at age 15, he became an Olympic gold medalist and heavyweight champion. He fought Ali three times, beating him in the 1971 title bout that riveted a nation.
Rocky’s sculptor stated that “Rocky is the DNA” of Philadelphia. Nope. Fighters such as the above, and many others who worked in gritty blue-collar jobs, provided the DNA, giving Philadelphia the tough, hardworking ethic it claims, not a celluloid fighter. If the Rocky statue belongs anywhere, it would be near the shuttered Blue Horizon boxing venue in North Philadelphia, which Ring magazine once called the greatest boxing venue in the world. The fictional Rocky is tied to boxing far more than to art.
Stewart Speck, Wynnewood
Expensive ICE
As a lifelong Democrat, I am profoundly disappointed in my party’s apparent capitulation on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement funding. $10 billion? People not making half of any Congress member’s salary are out in the cold in Minnesota, peacefully registering outrage at the city’s brutal occupation by ICE, and my party is compromising on $10 billion so ICE can have a fleet of Boeing airliners, too. No budget cut for ICE, no congressional imposition of policing standards common in every city in America to protect due process and privacy rights. Democrats had better put up some real opposition now — or they may fail to convince voters later this year that they are a true alternative. Congress, please stand up for the poor folks in Minnesota.
William Culleton,Philadelphia
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DEAR ABBY: It seems that everywhere I go, people expect tips. Yesterday, I pulled up to the drive-through at a cookie store, and before I paid or was handed my cookies, the clerk asked, “Would you like to leave a tip?” My niece recently told me that after she left a tip at a restaurant, the server followed her outside and asked if she hadn’t been a very good server because the tip was small. I can give you more examples just from my family regarding their experience with tipping.
In this economy, I don’t feel the 20% rule should apply. For the price of a lunch for two at a sit-down restaurant these days, the tip costs as much as a small entree. When I go through a drive-through, I don’t feel I need to tip because I’m not inside using their facility. But if I don’t, I get a disappointed look from the gal who gets paid to make and hand me my drink. What are your thoughts?
— TIPPED OUT IN IDAHO
DEAR TIPPED OUT: The server you mentioned may need tips to survive on her subminimum or minimum wage income. However, a tip should never be requested, and for a server to follow your niece out of a restaurant to discuss a small tip is beyond the pale. Although some establishments “suggest” tips that can go as high as 35%, most customers give 15% or 20% of the total bill.
Since you asked for my opinion, here it is: Quit complaining. If you think you received adequate service, leave a tip, and you will be warmly welcomed at whatever eatery you choose to patronize.
** ** **
DEAR ABBY: Once a month, my wife and I play music trivia with my brother and his wife at our local pub. We invited them, thinking it would be a great way for us to get closer. (I have an older brother we are closer to.) As it turns out, my sister-in-law belittles my brother in front of us if he questions an answer someone might give (which we all do at one point or another).
At first, we laughed and considered it to be playful banter, but now it has become really uncomfortable. My brother doesn’t say anything back because he doesn’t want to create a scene, so the night always ends on a sour note for me and my wife.
Abby, we’re to the point of telling my brother we no longer want them as partners on our team, but I’m not sure how to go about it. What can we say without creating a major blowup? Help, please.
— SOUR NOTE IN MICHIGAN
DEAR SOUR NOTE: Tell your brother and sister-in-law privately, together, that if she has any criticisms to make about your brother, you would prefer that it not be in public or in front of you because it makes you UNCOMFORTABLE. It is the truth. It may cause them to stop playing music trivia with you, which will solve your problem. However, if they show up and she does it again, end your participation, with no additional explanation needed.
ARIES (March 21-April 19). Your energy needs to come first today. Relationships and projects have been too demanding of you. Get back to honoring yourself by choosing what gives you strength and joy. Perhaps anything that drains you doesn’t have to be your concern.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20). Today’s commercial offers come with hidden costs, conditions or disappointments that make them a poor use of your energy. Skip the new purchase and you’ll find you can use what you already have, and it will work just fine.
GEMINI (May 21-June 21). There’s satisfaction in finishing something you started. Completion frees attention and makes room for the next chapter. Make quick work of it. It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be done.
CANCER (June 22-July 22). The day offers permission to relax, stop comparing yourself and focus on your own effort rather than the scoreboard. The usual focus on “winning” or “losing” is irrelevant. The end result won’t define the experience.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22). When you consider what can go wrong, do it briefly, just long enough to understand necessary precautions to take. Visualization works whether you use it to see a desirable or an undesirable outcome, so be careful what mental pictures you paint.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). There is one person who you haven’t talked to in a long while. This will be an auspicious time to catch up. You’ll discover how you can help one another, even if it’s just by being a witness to what’s happening in their world.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23). Boundaries are universal in nature, and ignoring them can lead to conflict. So stay aware of the animal instinct inside every human that is always scanning the environment for signals that assure their territory will be respected.
SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 21). Let fantasy help you. Reality always wins in the end, but you don’t have to give it the beginning and middle, too. Wishes, plans, hopes and dreams can keep you motivated. They help you bend reality to your vision.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21). The need for novelty is real. You may even feel agitated by overly familiar circumstances, the way songs that repeat too much get irritating. Doing something different from your usual routine is very important. Put something new on the books.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19). Relationships are a dance. It helps if everyone is listening to the same music. And even when that is the case, it can be difficult not to step on toes. You’ll achieve grace with your timing and awareness of others.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18). Success is built one brick at a time. Even the most lavish and lovely construction in the world is done bit by bit, which can feel very unglamorous in practice, but at least this one is a beauty — it will be worthwhile to inhabit.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20). You’re in the thrust of life, expressing your talents, skills and passions, and there’s nothing more attractive than that. You’re not in it for the attention, but you’ll get it anyway. What do you want? This is the time to ask for it.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY (Jan. 25). Welcome to your Year of Quiet Triumphs. You’ll master subtle forms of winning, and with your timing, restraint and diplomacy you will use each win to propel you to your goal of amassing the power to make a difference in the lives of others. More highlights: Family dynamics improve as you navigate with patience and humor. Love steadies, and respect deepens all around you. Gemini and Leo adore you. Your lucky numbers are: 3, 21, 11, 2 and 41.
Alex Jeffrey Pretti, 37, was an avid outdoorsman who enjoyed getting in adventures with Joule, his beloved Catahoula leopard dog who also recently died. He had participated in protests following the killing of Renee Good by a U.S. Immigration and Customs officer on Jan. 7.
“He cared about people deeply and he was very upset with what was happening in Minneapolis and throughout the United States with ICE, as millions of other people are upset,” said Michael Pretti, Alex’s father. “He thought it was terrible, you know, kidnapping children, just grabbing people off the street. He cared about those people, and he knew it was wrong, so he did participate in protests.”
Pretti was a U.S. citizen, born in Illinois. Like Good, court records showed he had no criminal record and his family said he had never had any interactions with law enforcement beyond a handful of traffic tickets.
In a recent conversation with their son, his parents, who live in Colorado, told him to be careful when protesting.
“We had this discussion with him two weeks ago or so, you know, that go ahead and protest, but do not engage, do not do anything stupid, basically,” Michael Pretti said. “And he said he knows that. He knew that.”
The Department of Homeland Security said that the man was shot after he “approached” Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun. Officials did not specify if Pretti brandished the gun. In bystander videos of the shooting that emerged soon after, Pretti is seen with a phone in his hand but none appears to show him with a visible weapon.
Family members said Pretti owned a handgun and had a permit to carry a concealed handgun in Minnesota. They said they had never known him to carry it.
Alex Pretti’s family struggles for information about what happened
The family first learned of the shooting when they were called by an Associated Press reporter. They watched the video and said the man killed appeared to be their son. They then tried reaching out to officials in Minnesota.
“I can’t get any information from anybody,” Michael Pretti said Saturday. “The police, they said call Border Patrol, Border Patrol’s closed, the hospitals won’t answer any questions.”
Eventually, the family called the Hennepin County Medical Examiner, who they said confirmed had a body matching the name and description of their son.
Alex Pretti grew up in Green Bay, Wisc., where he played football and baseball and ran track for Preble High School. He was a Boy Scout and sang in the Green Bay Boy Choir.
After graduation, he went to the University of Minnesota, graduating in 2011 with a bachelor’s degree in biology, society, and the environment, according to the family. He worked as a research scientist before returning to school to become a registered nurse.
Pretti had protested before
Pretti’s ex-wife, Rachel N. Canoun, said she was not surprised he would have been involved in protesting Trump’s immigration crackdown. She said she had not spoken to him since they divorced more than two years ago and she moved to another state.
She said he was a Democratic voter and that he had participated in the wave of street protests following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020, not far from the couple’s neighborhood. She described him as someone who might shout at law enforcement officers at a protest, but she had never known him to be physically confrontational.
“These kinds of things, you know, he felt the injustice to it,” Canoun said. “So it doesn’t surprise me that he would be involved.”
Canoun said Pretti got a permit to carry a concealed firearm about three years ago and that he owned at least one semiautomatic handgun when they separated.
“He didn’t carry it around me, because it made me uncomfortable,” she said.
Pretti had ‘a great heart’
Pretti lived in a four-unit condominium building about 2 miles from where he was shot. Neighbors described him as quiet and warmhearted.
“He’s a wonderful person,” said Sue Gitar, who lived downstairs from Pretti and said he moved into the building about three years ago. “He has a great heart.”
If there was something suspicious going on in the neighborhood, or when they worried the building might have a gas leak, he would jump in to help.
Pretti lived alone and worked long hours as a nurse, but he was not a loner, his neighbors said, and would sometimes have friends over.
His neighbors knew he had guns — he’d occasionally take a rifle to shoot at a gun range — but were surprised at the idea that he might carry a pistol on the streets.
“I never thought of him as a person who carried a gun,” said Gitar.
Pretti was passionate about the outdoors
A competitive bicycle racer who lavished care on his new Audi, Pretti had also been deeply attached to his dog, who died about a year ago.
His parents said their last conversation with their son was a couple of days before his death. They talked about repairs he had done to the garage door of his home. The worker was a Latino man, and they said with all that was happening in Minneapolis he gave the man a $100 tip.
Pretti’s mother said her son cared immensely about the direction the county was headed, especially the Trump administration’s rollback of environmental regulations.
“He hated that, you know, people were just trashing the land,” Susan Pretti said. “He was an outdoorsman. He took his dog everywhere he went. You know, he loved this country, but he hated what people were doing to it.”
LONDON — U.S. President Donald Trump heaped praise Saturday on British soldiers who fought in Afghanistan, in a post on social media that represented a partial reversal of comments he made this week that drew a cascade of criticism in the U.K., particularly from families of those killed and seriously injured in the conflict.
In the wake of a conversation earlier with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Trump said on Truth Social that the “great and very brave soldiers of the United Kingdom will always be with the United States of America.”
He described the 457 British servicemen and women who died in Afghanistan and those that were badly injured as “among the greatest of all warriors.”
Trump added that the bond between the two countries’ militaries is “too strong to ever be broken” and that the U.K. “with tremendous heart and soul, is second to none (except for the USA).”
Trump’s comments follow an interview with Fox Business Network on Thursday in Davos, Switzerland, when he said he wasn’t sure the other 31 nations in NATO would be there to support the United States if and when requested and that troops from those countries stayed “a little off the front lines.”
Trump did not apologize directly for those comments, nor retract them, as Starmer had suggested in his initial response on Friday when he described the words of the president as “insulting and frankly appalling.”
Starmer’s office in No. 10 Downing Street said the issue was raised in a conversation between the pair on Saturday, in which other topics were discussed, including the war in Ukraine and security in the Arctic region.
“The prime minister raised the brave and heroic British and American soldiers who fought side by side in Afghanistan, many of whom never returned home,” Downing Street said in a statement. “We must never forget their sacrifice.”
Trump’s view as expressed in the Fox Business interview stands at odds with the reality that in October 2001, nearly a month after the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. led an international coalition in Afghanistan to destroy al-Qaida, which had used the country as its base, and the group’s Taliban hosts.
Alongside the U.S. were troops from dozens of countries, including from NATO, whose mutual-defense mandate had been triggered for the first time after the attacks on New York and Washington. More than 150,000 British troops served in Afghanistan in the years after the invasion, the largest contingent after the American one.
The Italian and French governments also expressed their disapproval Saturday at Trump’s comments, with both describing them as “unacceptable.”
