MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s government said Saturday that two U.S. federal agents recently killed in a car crash in the country’s northern region were not authorized to participate in operations in Mexico.

The role of the two CIA agents who were returning from destroying a clandestine drug lab in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua remains unclear.

Local government officials have said they were part of a convoy when their car drove off a ravine last weekend and the vehicle exploded. Two Mexican officers also were killed.

The Americans killed were from the CIA, The Associated Press confirmed earlier this week with a U.S. official and two other people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters.

The CIA has declined to comment.

A statement from Mexico’s Ministry of Security said one U.S. agent entered Mexico as a visitor while the other entered with a diplomatic passport.

It also asserted that Mexico’s government was not aware of foreign agents operating or planning to participate in an operation on its soil.

The ministry said it is reviewing the case with local authorities and the U.S. Embassy in Mexico.

“Mexican law is clear: it does not permit the participation of foreign agents in operations within the national territory,” the ministry said in a statement.

It added: “The Government of Mexico reiterates its willingness to maintain a close, serious, and respectful relationship with the Government of the United States for the benefit of the security of both countries.”

Officials from both countries have offered contradictory accounts on the issue, with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum admitting on Wednesday that federal forces were involved after Mexico’s government said it had no knowledge of any operation or U.S. involvement.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Former Idaho Gov. and U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne has died at age 74, his family said in a written statement Saturday.

Kempthorne died Friday evening in Boise, the statement said. No cause was given, but he had been diagnosed with colon cancer last year.

“Beyond his public service, he was a devoted husband, father, and grandfather whose greatest joy came from time spent with family and the people he met along the way,” his family said. “He had a rare gift for truly seeing others — remembering names, stories, and the small details that made each person feel known and valued.”

Kempthorne, a Republican, was elected mayor of Boise at age 34 and served seven years before winning the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Sen. Steve Symms. Rather than run for reelection in 1998, he entered an open election for governor, trouncing his Democratic opponent by garnering more than two-thirds of the vote.

President George W. Bush appointed him Interior secretary in 2006, a position he held until the end of Bush’s presidency — and during which he lived on a houseboat docked in the Potomac River. Kempthorne was responsible for the polar bear being listed as a threatened species in 2008, though environmentalists often found him too accommodating of the oil and gas industry.

“As Governor, Dirk left an enduring mark on our state,” Idaho Gov. Brad Little said in a written statement. With the partnership of his wife, Patricia, Kempthorne “championed children and families, strengthened public education, and led transformational investments in our transportation system that will benefit Idahoans for generations.”

In a 2023 question-and-answer session with the George W. Bush Presidential Center, Kempthorne recalled helping evacuate nearly 400 U.S. citizens and Afghan allies from Afghanistan two years earlier, as many were being sought by the Taliban following the U.S. military’s chaotic withdrawal. Kemthorne and others worked frantically for months to raise money and garner the support of diplomatic channels to charter buses and an Airbus A340 to help resettle the evacuees in the U.S. and Canada.

At one point, with the flight fully booked, the organizers received a list of more people who needed to leave urgently.

“That night, at a total loss for answers, alone, I knelt in prayer,” Kempthorne recalled. “I said, ‘Dear God, we cannot leave these people behind, please give a path forward.’ ”

He said he then had a vision of Mother Mary holding the infant Jesus. It gave him an idea: The babies on the flight didn’t need their own seats, as their parents could hold them. The organizers confirmed that with the airline and were able to add an additional 50 people to the flight, Kempthorne said.

Kempthorne is survived by his wife, as well as their children Heather and Jeff and their families.

CHICAGO (AP) — A shooting at a hospital in Chicago has led to its campus being placed on lockdown.

The Endeavor Health Swedish Hospital campus said Saturday that patients and staff at the health facility were safe and that by midafternoon there was no active threat.

The shooting occurred at around 11 a.m. Local news reports said two police officers were injured. The Chicago Police Department did not respond to multiple requests for further information.

NAHUNTA, Ga. (AP) — Two wildfires in southeastern Georgia continued to threaten homes and lives on Saturday as officials warned that strong winds could spread the flames.

Brantley County Manager Joey Cason called it a “dynamic situation” in a video posted to social media and begged residents to “please evacuate” if ordered to do so.

“This fire is going to move rapidly once these winds get here later today,” he said.

The Highway 82 Fire has been burning since Monday and has destroyed at least 87 homes. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said Friday that is the most for a single wildfire in the state’s history.

The blaze was started by a foil balloon hitting live power lines. That created an electrical arc that ignited combustible material on the ground.

An infrared flight that detects heat was conducted overnight Friday, helping officials to better map the fire. A joint statement issued by multiple government agencies said the fire’s perimeter was more than 14.8 square miles (38 square kilometers) and it was only about 10% contained.

Meanwhile a second fire about 70 miles (110 kilometers) to the southwest in Clinch and Echols counties, near the Florida state line, has burned more than 46.9 square miles (121 square kilometers) and destroyed at least 35 homes. Started by sparks from a welding operation, that wildfire was also about 10% contained.

Firefighters have been battling more than 150 other wildfires in Georgia and Florida that have sent smoky haze into places far from the flames, triggering air quality warnings for some cities.

An unusually large number of wildfires are burning this spring across the Southeast. Scientists say the threat of fire has been amplified by a combination of extreme drought, gusty winds, climate change and dead trees still littering some forests after being toppled by Hurricane Helene in 2024.

In northern Florida, Nassau County Sheriff’s Office volunteer firefighter James “Kevin” Crews died Thursday evening after he suffered an unspecified medical emergency while suppressing a brush fire. No fire deaths or injuries have been reported in Georgia.

By Laura Matthews

NEW YORK, April 25 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump bought at least $51 million in bonds in March, according to financial disclosures released on Saturday, with the purchases spanning several sectors.

• Trump carried out 175 financial transactions last month, according to forms released by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. The forms don’t include exact values for each sale or purchase, only a range of values for each.

• Most of the assets disclosed were municipal bonds issued by states, counties, school districts and other entities with ties to government agencies or public-private partnerships.

• His 26 largest transactions, in the $1 million to $5 million range, were mainly municipal bonds or U.S. Treasuries, although two of the deals listed were purchases of corporate offerings from Weyerhaeuser and General Motors. He also invested in an exchange-traded fund tracking a high-yield bond index.

• The president bought corporate bonds across energy, technology, healthcare and financial services, with issuers including Constellation Energy, Occidental Petroleum, Broadcom, Nvidia, Meta Platforms, Microsoft and Wall Street banks Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase, along with Boeing.

• The combined maximum value of Trump’s bond purchases across all asset classes is about $161 million.

(Reporting by Laura Matthews in New YorkEditing by Rod Nickel)

Donald Trump’s expected attendance at Saturday’s annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington for his first time as president will put his administration’s often-contentious relationship with the press on full public display.

Trump will be watched closely at the event held by the organization of reporters who cover him and his administration. Past presidents who have attended have generally spoken about the importance of free speech and the First Amendment, adding in some light roasts about individual journalists.

The Republican president did not attend during his first term or the first year of his second. He came as a guest in 2011, sitting in the audience as President Barack Obama, a Democrat, made some jokes about the New York real estate developer. Trump also attended as a private citizen in 2015.

Past dinners have also featured comedians who poke at presidents. This year, the group opted to hire mentalist Oz Pearlman as the featured entertainment.

Trump’s planned appearance is rekindling a longer running debate about the dinner and events like it — in particular, whether it is poor form for journalists to be seen socializing with the people they cover. The New York Times, for example, stopped attending the dinner more than a decade ago for that reason.

“What was once (a fairly long time ago) a well-intended night of fundraising and camaraderie among professional adversaries is now simply a bad look,” wrote Kelly McBride, ethics expert at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank.

Between berating individual reporters, fighting organizations like the Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press in court and restricting press access to the Pentagon, the administration’s animus toward journalists has been a fixture of Trump’s second term.

On the eve of the dinner, nearly 500 retired journalists signed a petition calling on the association “to forcefully demonstrate opposition to President Trump’s efforts to trample freedom of the press.”

“The White House Correspondents’ dinner reinforces the importance of the First Amendment in our democracy,” said the WHCA president, Weijia Jiang, a CBS News reporter. “As we mark America’s 250th birthday, our choice to gather as journalists, newsmakers and the president in the same room is a reminder of what a free press means to this country and why it must endure. Not for the media or the president, but for the people who depend on it.”

Many reporters who attend, however, consider it a valuable opportunity get story ideas and establish personal connections with those in government, one that may pay dividends with returned telephone calls in the future.

Journalists often invite sources as guests at the dinner. It will be noticed Saturday whether administration officials who have also expressed hostility to the press will attend, and with whom they will be sitting.

The AP has invited Taylor Budowich, a former White House deputy chief of staff who left last fall for the private sector. The invitation is notable because Budowich, in his role crafting White House communications policy, was a named defendant last year when the AP sued the administration after it reduced its access to the president because the news outlet did not follow Trump’s lead in renaming the Gulf of Mexico.

“We maintain professional relationships with people across the political spectrum because we are nonpartisan by design — focused on reporting the facts in the public’s interest,” AP spokesman Patrick Maks said.

The White House correspondents will also hand out awards for exemplary reporting. That includes some stories that displeased Trump, such as one from the Journal about a birthday message Trump once sent to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The story led to a presidential lawsuit.

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David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for The Associated Press. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.

At the peak of the crackdown, carloads of masked immigration officers were a common sight in the streets of Minneapolis, while thousands of people were being arrested every week in Texas, Florida and California.

“Turn and burn,” top Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino called the strategy, with relentless displays of force and teams of agents descending on restaurant kitchens, bus stops and Home Depot parking lots.

In December, arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents peaked at nearly 40,000 nationwide and were nearly as high the next month, according to data provided to UC Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project and analyzed by The Associated Press.

In late January, the killings in Minneapolis of two American citizens by immigration officers and growing concerns over the government’s heavy-handed tactics led to a shake-up of top immigration officials. In the weeks that followed, ICE arrests across the country dropped on average by nearly 12%.

Polling has found the general public felt the immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota went too far, a factor that may have contributed to the abrupt firing of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in early March.

Bovino, who swaggered through raid scenes in tactical gear and was the public face of the Trump administration crackdown, was pushed aside following the killings in Minneapolis of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Border czar Tom Homan was then sent to the Twin Cities to chart a new course for immigration enforcement, and he announced the drawdown of immigration agents in the state on Feb. 4.

An AP analysis of ICE arrest records show the department averaged 7,369 weekly arrests nationwide in the five weeks after Homan’s drawdown announcement, , the most recent period for which data is available, down from 8,347 per week in the previous five weeks. Those arrest numbers were still higher on average than during much of the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, and were dramatically higher than during the Biden administration.

The numbers were not, however, uniform across the country.

ICE arrests rose significantly in Kentucky, Indiana, North Carolina and Florida during those five weeks, in some cases hitting their highest weekly count since the start of Trump’s second term.. In Kentucky alone, weekly arrests more than doubled, reaching 86 by early March.

Those increases were offset by steep drops in a handful of large states, including Minnesota and Texas.

The Trump administration insists it is targeting the most vicious criminals living illegally in the U.S., and the president has referred to them as “the worst of the worst.”

In some cases the description is accurate, but the reality is complicated.

Many of the toughest criminals taken into ICE custody were already in prison, but many others who were arrested have no criminal history.

Nationally, some 46% of the people ICE arrested in the five weeks before Feb. 4 had no criminal charges or convictions, dropping to 41% in the five weeks that followed.

Yet that’s still above the 35% weekly average for the time since Trump returned to office. And in a number of states, even after Feb. 4, the share of noncriminals being arrested went up, not down.

Across the country, thousands of federal court filings offer an imperfect window into how the Trump administration’s deportation tactics remain in high gear, even if activity has waned.

Like the 21-year-old Honduran man with no criminal record who has filed a petition for release after being arrested Feb. 22 in a suburban San Diego traffic stop. The father of three U.S. citizen children — ages 5, 3 and 10 months — had been under ICE surveillance, the petition says, before officers in tactical gear pulled him over.

Or the 33-year-old Venezuelan woman, a well-known South Texas doctor who worked in a region designated as medically underserved, who was arrested earlier this month with her five-year-old daughter, a U.S. citizen, on her way to her husband’s asylum hearing.

She was arrested, officials said, for overstaying her visa.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the research and advocacy group the American Immigration Council, says he sees signs of change in lower arrest and detention numbers but warns it’s too early to know if those shifts are permanent.

“The Trump administration says: ‘We’re not slowing down,’ ‘Nothing has changed,’” in immigration enforcement, he said. “But it’s very clear that they have pulled back from some of the tactics of Operation Metro Surge,” the crackdown that swept Minneapolis.

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Kessler reported from Washington and Sullivan from Minneapolis. Associated Press reporters Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Gisela Salomon in Miami contributed.

A former University of South Florida student has been charged with killing his roommate and the roommate’s girlfriend — two doctoral students from Bangladesh who disappeared earlier this month, authorities said Saturday.

Hisham Abugharbieh, 26, is facing two counts of premeditated murder in the first degree with a weapon in the deaths of Zamil Limon and Nahida Bristy, students at USF, according to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office. He made an initial court appearance Saturday in Tampa, where he was ordered held without bond. A hearing is set for April 28.

Limon’s remains were found on the Howard Frankland bridge Friday morning, but Bristy is still missing, Hillsborough County Chief Deputy Joseph Maurer said on Friday.

Abugharbieh, a native-born U.S. citizen, was initially taken into custody on Friday at his family’s home on preliminary charges that include unlawfully moving a dead body, failure to report a death, tampering with evidence, false imprisonment and battery. Online court records do not list an attorney for him. Messages were sent via email and phone to the public defender’s office in Hillsborough County.

Officers encountered Abugharbieh as they responded to a report of domestic violence at his family’s home, just north of the campus, and were able to move his relatives to safety. But then he barricaded himself inside and refused to come out. A SWAT team responded — along with a drone, a robot and crisis negotiators — before Abugharbieh came out with his hands up, apparently wearing nothing but a blue towel.

Limon and Bristy, both 27, were considering getting married, a relative said. They disappeared from campus on April 16. Limon was last seen at his home in an off-campus apartment complex where he lived with Abugharbieh. Bristy, who lived off campus, was last seen an hour later at a campus science building.

An autopsy is being done on the remains to determine the manner and cause of Limon’s death, and those results are expected Saturday morning, Maurer said Friday.

Abugharbieh had been a USF student but was not currently enrolled. University records showed he had attended the school from Spring 2021 through Spring 2023, and had pursued a BS in Management, a university spokesperson said.

Limon was studying geography, environmental science and policy, and Bristy was studying chemical engineering. She was a graduate of Noakhali Science and Technology University. The school, which spelled her last name as Brishti, said in a statement Saturday that she was a Ph.D. candidate and described her as a talented and promising student.

“Her sudden passing has deeply saddened all of us,” Vice Chancellor Mohammad Ismail said. “The university family pays deep respect to her memory. At the same time, we demand punishment for those involved in her death and compensation for the victim’s family.”

The search for Bristy continues. Anyone with information regarding her disappearance is asked to contact the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office.

Abugharbieh had several previous arrests, the sheriff’s office said. He was charged with battery and burglary of an unoccupied dwelling in September 2023, and with battery that May — both classified in court records as misdemeanors.

Court records show Abugharbieh entered into a diversion program for first-time offenders charged with misdemeanors. He completed the program in 2024 and the charges were discontinued. A phone call to his lawyer in that case was not immediately returned.

Hillsborough County Court records also showed two domestic violence petitions filed by a family member in 2023. A judge granted an injunction in one case and denied the other petition. He also was accused of traffic violations.

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This story corrects that Bristy lived off campus.

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Ramer reported from Concord, New Hampshire.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says the U.S. Navy is clearing Iranian mines from the Strait of Hormuz, a vital sea route for oil shipments whose disruption is increasingly threatening the global economy.

Sweeping for underwater explosives could take months despite a tenuous ceasefire between the United States and Iran in the weekslong war, experts say. Any future claims that the U.S. cleared the waterway where 20% of the world’s oil typically passes might fail to convince commercial freighters and their insurers that it is finally safe.

“You don’t even have to have lain mines — you just have to make people believe that you’ve laid mines,” said Emma Salisbury, a scholar at the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s National Security Program.

“And even if the U.S. sweeps the strait and says everything’s clear, all the Iranians have to do is say, ‘Well, actually, you haven’t found them all yet,’” said Salisbury, who is also a fellow at the Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre. “There’s only so much the U.S. can do to give that confidence back to commercial shipping.”

Seeking out mines is one of the latest tactics announced by the Trump administration to get traffic moving again through the strait as rising energy prices and wider economic effects pose a political risk. The U.S. also has blockaded Iran’s ports and seized ships tied to Tehran, but the president said Saturday he had instructed his envoys not to travel to Pakistan for the latest ceasefire talks after Iran’s top diplomat left Islamabad.

Pentagon officials told lawmakers it would likely take six months to clear the mines that Iran has set in the strait, according a person familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive information. The information was delivered during a classified briefing at the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

When asked about the estimate, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters Friday that the military would not speculate on a timeline, but he did not deny it.

“Allegedly that was something that was said,” Hegseth said at a Pentagon news conference. “But we feel confident in our ability, in the correct period of time, to clear any mines that we identify.”

Trump said he has ordered the Navy to attack any boat laying mines in the strait.

“Additionally, our mine ‘sweepers’ are clearing the Strait right now,” the president said on social media Thursday. “I am hereby ordering that activity to continue, but at a tripled up level!”

Adm. Brad Cooper, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, recently told reporters that the military would be working to clear mines from the strait. He did not offer details.

There is no indication that the U.S. military is using warships, its most visible mine-clearing assets, in the strait now.

But the Navy also has divers and small teams of explosive ordnance disposal technicians in the region that are capable of clearing mines. They are a less obvious target than a large warship.

Experts also say some mine-clearing equipment could be moved off ships and deployed from land.

It is unclear whether a single mine has been deployed. Iran has mentioned only the “likelihood” of mines in the strait’s prewar routes.

Estimates of Iran’s mine stockpiles are in the low thousands, said Salisbury, of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Most of its underwater explosives are believed to be older Soviet models. Some of its newer ones may be from China or made domestically.

“Minelaying is a lot easier than minesweeping, so you can literally push these things off the back of a speedboat,” Salisbury said, though she noted the U.S. could likely see that.

Iran also has small submarines that can lay mines and are much harder to detect, Salisbury added. She said she has not seen indications that they have been destroyed in the war.

If Iran has set mines in the strait, they are not the spiky balls floating on the surface seen in the movies, Salisbury said. The explosives are likely sitting on the seabed or moored to it by a cable and floating under the surface. They can be triggered by the water pressure changing when a ship passes or by the sound of its engine.

The U.S. Navy now has two littoral combat ships in the Middle East that are capable of sweeping for mines, said a defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military movements.

Two U.S. Avenger-class minesweepers based in Japan also have departed for the Middle East but were in the Pacific Ocean as of Friday, the official said.

Steven Wills, a retired lieutenant commander who served on an Avenger-class ship, said the Navy is likely looking for sea explosives in order to create a safe channel through the strait. Minesweeping is a slower process that usually occurs after a conflict.

“Minehunting is walking through your yard pulling individual weeds and dandelions so that you can walk safely from one side to the other. Minesweeping is more like mowing the grass,” said Wills, an expert at the Center for Maritime Strategy at the Navy League of the United States.

Scott Savitz, a researcher with the RAND Corp. who focuses on naval operations and mine clearing, said the Navy does not necessarily have to remove every last mine.

“There’s still areas that have not been cleared from World War II — and in some cases, World War I — just because it is so resource intensive and it takes a lot of time,” he said.

Teams on the Navy’s littoral combat ships can deploy remotely operated, uncrewed vehicles that use sonar and other technology to find mines, Wills said. They also carry charges to destroy the explosives.

U.S. Navy ships may also have explosive ordnance disposal teams, including divers, that can hunt for and destroy mines, Wills said. Helicopters can search for mines using lasers.

Eventually, shipping companies will be willing to take some risks to travel through the strait “particularly given how lucrative it is,” Savitz said.

Under Iran’s approval procedure for vessels wanting to transit the strait, ships must take a different route than before the war — to the north, near Iran’s coastline.

Insurers are adding a clause that requires ship owners to contact Iranian authorities to ensure safe passage, said Dylan Mortimer, U.K. marine war leader for insurance broker Marsh.

That certification does not mention mines specifically and is intended to protect against the entire spectrum of threats, including missile and drone attacks or seizures, Mortimer said.

But mines do, at the very least, play a psychological role, a phenomenon Mortimer called the “specter of threat.”

“That plays in the Iranians’ favor, because whether there are mines there or not, people think there’s mines there and they will operate accordingly,” Mortimer said.

Those fears could mean it takes longer to restore confidence that the strait is safe even after the war.

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McHugh reported from Frankfurt, Germany. AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

PORTSMOUTH, Va. (AP) — When President Donald Trump tried to cancel five massive offshore wind projects under construction along the East Coast, it wasn’t just environmentalists who cried foul. Nine Republicans in the U.S. House sent a letter to administration officials demanding an explanation.

“America’s energy policy should be grounded in facts, fiscal responsibility, and the national interest — not ideology or politics,″ they wrote.

One of the lawmakers is Rep. Jen Kiggans, a former Navy helicopter pilot who represents a coastal district in Virginia where an $11.5 billion wind farm is expected to create 1,000 jobs. Her support for an initiative targeted by Trump shows the scrambled politics of clean energy in an election year where Republicans are at risk of losing the House.

Kiggans could be even more at risk after Virginia voters on Tuesday approved a new congressional map that makes her competitive district more Democratic than before.

Trump’s broader campaign against clean energy resulted in the cancellation of nearly $35 billion in U.S. projects last year, according to a report by E2, a clean energy business group. Republican-held congressional districts lost nearly twice as much in investments than did Democratic districts, the report said.

For now, the Virginia project is back on track, along with the other four, because of federal court rulings. But Elaine Luria, a former congresswoman who is seeking the Democratic nomination in the 2nd Congressional District represented by Kiggans, said the incumbent’s efforts have been futile in the face of Trump’s onslaught.

“Her advocacy did nothing,” Luria said. Kiggans did not respond to requests for comment.

Trump has treated energy issues as another front in the nation’s cultural clashes, referring to Democrats’ support for clean energy as the “Green New Scam.” He frequently talks about his hatred of “windmills,” which he described as “STUPID AND UGLY” on social media. He issued an executive order on the first day of his second term blocking wind projects and he has insisted that “smart countries” do not use wind power.

Solar farms are not much better in his mind.

“You go around and you see all these things that are 3 miles long by 3 miles wide and you say what the hell is that,” Trump said at the White House last summer.

The administration even agreed to pay $1 billion to a French company to walk away from two U.S. offshore wind leases and instead invest in oil and natural gas projects.

Kiggans voted in favor of Republican legislation to gut clean energy tax credits as part of Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill even though she has long portrayed herself as a champion of renewable energy. Democrats have turned the issue into campaign advertisements, and Luria said it undermines Kiggans’ attempt to “sell herself as if she’s a moderate.”

Luria said Kiggans “voted for a bill to make energy more expensive.”

In a Facebook post after the bill was passed in July, Kiggans said her vote “wasn’t about politics — it was about overall results.”

“I had ONE vote, and I voted YES on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act not because it was perfect but because it delivers permanent tax relief for families & small businesses, rebuilds our Navy & invests in national defense,” she wrote.

Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia, said front-line Republicans have been put in a difficult position.

“Kiggans is not the only Republican being squeezed” as Trump focuses on his own priorities and the country faces economic headwinds exacerbated by the war with Iran, he said. Although few want to risk upsetting the president, Farnsworth said, “in coastal Virginia politics, there’s not much upside to opposing wind.”

U.S. Rep. Tom Kean Jr., R-N.J., has been caught up in a controversy over the Gateway Tunnel, which will add new rail tracks under the Hudson River to alleviate congestion between his state and New York City. Trump tried to block federal funding, a potential setback for commuters in towns that Kean represents. A judge ordered the administration to restore money for the project after Democratic leaders in New Jersey and New York went to court.

Although Trump has dismissed offshore wind turbines as ugly, the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project is about 27 miles (43 kilometers) out into the ocean, making it difficult to see from land. On a recent visit to the Portsmouth Marine Terminal, where construction is staged, the turbines were impossible to discern along the horizon.

Dominion Energy, which operates the wind farm, says it delivered its first power to the grid last month. The project, first announced in 2013, is expected to create 1,000 jobs and generate about $2 billion in economic activity, the company said.

Once finished, the 176-turbine project could deliver 2.6 gigawatts of power to the grid — enough to supply more than 660,000 homes — at a time when Virginia faces growing energy demand from an expanding hub of artificial intelligence data centers.

“There’s an opportunity here for Hampton Roads to be a national leader in offshore wind,” said Andrew Nissman, a spokesman for the Hampton Roads Workforce Council, which has trained maritime workers for the project.

Nissman declined to comment on the congressional race, saying, ”as with any stop-and-start challenge, it’s important the project is moving forward.”

While the wind farm is now partially online, “Kiggans nearly cost her constituents this project by standing with an administration dead set on dismantling the offshore wind industry and voting to repeal critical clean energy tax credits last year,” said Dan Taylor, Southeast regional field manager for the BlueGreen Alliance, which coordinates labor unions and environmental groups.

“Kiggans claims to prioritize jobs, lower energy costs for Virginians and reducing emissions,” Taylor added. “Yet she voted to kill jobs, skyrocket energy costs to families and increase the emissions driving climate change.”