By FARNOUSH AMIRI and MATT BROWN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Mike Waltz told lawmakers Tuesday at his confirmation hearing to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations that he plans to make the world body “great again,” echoing President Donald Trump’s message for revamping America.

“We should have one place in the world where everyone can talk — where China, Russia, Europe and the developing world can come together and resolve conflicts,” Waltz said. “But after 80 years, it’s drifted from its core mission of peacemaking.”

Appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, it is the first time Waltz is facing lawmakers since he was ousted as national security adviser for mistakenly adding a journalist to a private Signal chat used to discuss sensitive military plans. More than an hour into the hearing, no lawmakers had mentioned the episode.

The U.N. post is the last one to be filled in Trump’s Cabinet following months of delay, including the withdrawal of the previous nominee. Waltz, a former Florida congressman, was introduced by Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Rick Scott of Florida as “a seasoned policy mind and skilled negotiator.”

“With Waltz at the helm, the U.N. will have what I regard as what should be its last chance to demonstrate its actual value to the United States,” Lee said. “Instead of progressive political virtue signaling, the Security Council has the chance to prove its value, and settling disputes and brokering deals.”

First opportunity to ask about the Signal chat

The hearing is providing senators with the first opportunity to grill Waltz over revelations in March that he added The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a private text chain on an unclassified messaging app that was used to discuss planning for strikes on Houthi militants in Yemen.

Waltz took responsibility even as criticism mounted against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who shared the sensitive plans in the chat that included several other high-level national security officials. Hegseth shared the same information in another Signal chat that included family, but Trump has made clear Hegseth has his support.

Waltz was removed as national security adviser in May — replaced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio — and nominated for the U.N. role.

Trump praised Waltz in the announcement, saying he has “worked hard to put our Nation’s Interests first.”

United Nations is facing major changes

If confirmed, Waltz would arrive at the U.N. at a moment of great change. The world body is reeling from Trump’s decision to slash foreign assistance — affecting its humanitarian aid agencies — and it anticipates U.S. funding cuts to the U.N. annual budget.

Under an “America First” foreign policy realignment, the White House has asserted that “some of the U.N.’s agencies and bodies have drifted” from their founding mission and “act contrary to the interests of the United States while attacking our allies and propagating anti-Semitism.”

With America being the largest United Nations donor, cutting U.S. funding to the U.N. budget would greatly impair operations.

Facing financial instability, the U.N. has spent months shedding jobs and consolidating projects while beginning to tackle long-delayed reforms. The U.N. is also facing growing frustration over what critics describe as a lack of efficiency and power in delivering on its mandate to end conflict and prevent wars.

John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. who was also national security adviser during Trump’s first term, was critical of the current state of the U.N.

“It’s probably in the worst shape it’s been in since it was founded,” Bolton, now an outspoken Trump critic, recently told The Associated Press.

Waltz accuses UN of antisemitism

Waltz painted a similar strategy to tackling the U.N. job as the previous nominee for the post, with a focus on combating China’s influence around the globe, review U.S. funding to U.N. agencies and initiatives as well as rooting out what he called deep antisemitism within the international body.

His priorities echo Trump and Secretary of State Rubio’s larger foreign policy platform, which has sought to reshape American diplomacy and worked aggressively to shrink the size of the federal government, including recent mass dismissals at the State Department.

Trump’s first nominee, Rep. Elise Stefanik, had a confirmation hearing in January and was expected to be confirmed, but Trump abruptly withdrew her nomination in March, citing risks to the GOP’s historically slim House majority.

At the time, the loss of a mere handful of seats could have swung the House majority to Democrats and derailed their recently successful efforts to enact Trump’s sweeping agenda.

Waltz is still on the White House payroll

Waltz, whose Florida House seat was filled during a special election earlier this year, has spent the last few months on the White House payroll despite being removed as national security adviser. The latest list of White House salaries, current as of July 1, includes Waltz earning an annual salary of $195,200.

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A White House official, granted anonymity to discuss personnel matters, said Waltz stayed on to “ensure a smooth and successful transition given the extreme importance of the role of NSA.”

Waltz was the first Green Beret elected to the House and easily won reelection for a fourth term in November before Trump asked him to join the administration.

Amiri reported from the United Nations. Associated Press writer Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.

By JESSE BEDAYN, Associated Press

DENVER (AP) — The murder trial of a Colorado dentist accused of killing his wife by poisoning her protein shakes and later trying to pay someone to kill the lead investigator on the case will begin with opening arguments Tuesday.

James Craig, 47, allegedly used cyanide and tetrahydrozoline, an ingredient in over-the-counter eye drops, to kill his wife of 23 years, Angela Craig, two years ago in suburban Denver.

FILE – This undated booking photo provided by the Aurora, Colo., Police Department shows James Craig. (Aurora Police Department via AP, File)

Craig has pleaded not guilty to several charges, including first-degree murder.

Prosecutors say that Craig allegedly purchased arsenic around the time of his wife’s symptoms — dizziness and headaches that perplexed doctors — and that after his initial attempts to poison her failed, he ordered potassium cyanide.

They also said Craig searched Google for “how to make a murder look like a heart attack” and “is arsenic detectable in an autopsy,” and that he tried to make it appear his wife had killed herself.

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Angela Craig, 43, who had six children with James Craig, was hospitalized several times. After the first time, she can be seen on home surveillance video accusing her husband of implying to medical staff that she was suicidal.

“It’s your fault they treated me like I was a suicide risk, like I did it to myself, and like nothing I said could be believed,” she said to her husband on the video.

After Craig’s arrest in 2023, prosecutors alleged that he offered a fellow jail inmate $20,000 to kill the case’s lead investigator and offered someone else $20,000 to find people to falsely testify that Angela Craig planned to die by suicide.

In addition to first-degree murder, Craig has pleaded not guilty to the other charges, including solicitation to commit murder and solicitation to commit perjury.

Craig’s attorneys have questioned the reliability of the inmate’s claims, said the police were biased against the dentist and that tests of the protein shake containers didn’t reveal signs of poison.

Around the time of his arrest, prosecutors said Craig was experiencing financial difficulties and appeared to be having an affair with a fellow dentist, though they have not yet described a motive in his wife’s death.

Craig remains in custody, according to jail records.

ATLANTA — Seattle’s Cal Raleigh won his first All-Star Home Run Derby after leading the big leagues in long balls going into the break, defeating Tampa Bay’s Junior Caminero 18-15 in the final round Monday night.

The Mariners’ breakout slugger nicknamed Big Dumper advanced from the first round on a tiebreaker by less than an inch over the Athletics’ Brent Rooker, then won his semifinal 19-13 over Pittsburgh’s Oneil Cruz, whose 513-foot first-round drive over Truist Park’s right-center field seats was the longest of the night.

Hitting second in the final round, the 22-year-old Caminero closed within three dingers, took three pitches and hit a liner to left field.

Becoming the first switch-hitter and first catcher to win the title, Raleigh had reached the All-Star break with a major league-leading 38 home runs. He became the second Mariners player to take the title after three-time winner Ken Griffey Jr.

“Usually the guy that’s leading the league in homers doesn’t win the whole thing,” Raleigh said. “That’s as surprising to me as anybody else.”

Raleigh was pitched to by his father, Todd, former coach of Tennessee and Western Carolina. His younger brother Todd Raleigh Jr. did the catching.

“Just to do it with my family was awesome,” Raleigh said.

Just the second Derby switch-hitter after Baltimore’s Adley Rutschman in 2023, Raleigh hit his first eight left-handed, took a timeout, then hit seven right-handed. Going back to lefty, he then hit two more in the bonus round and stayed lefty for the semifinals and the final.

Caminero beat Minnesota’s Byron Buxton 8-7 in the other semifinal.

Atlanta’s Matt Olson, Washington’s James Wood, the New York Yankees’ Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Rooker were eliminated in the first round of the annual power show.

Cruz and Caminero each hit 21 long balls and Buxton had 20 in the opening round. Raleigh and Rooker had 17 apiece, but Raleigh advanced on the tiebreaker of their longest homer, 470.61 feet to 470.53.

“One little tweak in the system and I’m not even in the next round, so that’s crazy,” Raleigh said.

Cruz’s long drive was the hardest-hit at 118 mph.

The longest derby homer since Statcast started tracking in 2016 was 520 feet by Juan Soto in the mile-high air of Denver’s Coors Field in 2021. Last year, the longest drive at Arlington, Texas, was 473 feet by Atlanta’s Marcell Ozuna.

Wood hit 16 homers, including a 486-foot shot and one that landed on the roof of the Chop House behind the right-field wall. Olson, disappointing his hometown fans, did not go deep on his first nine swings and finished with 15, He also was eliminated in the first round in 2021.

Chisholm hit just three homers, the fewest since the timer format started in 2015.

By ALI SWENSON and NICHOLAS RICCARDI, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — As his supporters erupt over the Justice Department’s failure to release much-hyped records in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking investigation, President Donald Trump’s strategy has been to downplay the issue.

His problem? That nothing-to-see-here approach doesn’t work for those who have learned from him that they must not give up until the government’s deepest, darkest secrets are exposed.

Last week, the Justice Department and the FBI abruptly walked back the notion that there’s an Epstein client list of elites who participated in the wealthy New York financier’s trafficking of underage girls. Trump quickly defended Attorney General Pam Bondi and chided a reporter for daring to ask about the documents.

The online reaction was swift, with followers calling the Republican president “out of touch” and demanding transparency.

On Saturday, Trump used his Truth Social platform to again attempt to call supporters off the Epstein trail amid reports of infighting between Bondi and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino over the issue. He suggested the turmoil was undermining his administration — “all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein.”

FILE – This photo provided by the New York State Sex Offender Registry shows Jeffrey Epstein, March 28, 2017. (New York State Sex Offender Registry via AP, File)

That did little to mollify Trump’s supporters, who urged him to release the files or risk losing his base. At least one follower responded to Trump’s post by saying it seemed as though the president was just trying to make the issue go away — but assured him it wouldn’t.

The political crisis is especially challenging for Trump because it’s one of his own making. The president has spent years stoking dark theories and embracing QAnon-tinged propaganda that casts him as the only savior who can demolish the “deep state.”

Now that he’s running the federal government, the community he helped build is coming back to haunt him. It’s demanding answers he either isn’t able to or does not want to provide.

“The faulty assumption Trump and others make is they can peddle conspiracy theories without any blowback,” said Matt Dallek, a political scientist at George Washington University. “The Epstein case is a neat encapsulation that it is hard to put the genie back in the bottle.”

A problem that’s not going away

Last week’s two-page statement from the Justice Department and the FBI saying they had concluded that Epstein did not possess a client list roiled Trump’s supporters, who pointed to past statements from several administration officials that the list ought to be revealed.

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Bondi had suggested in February that such a document was sitting on her desk waiting for review, though last week she said she had been referring generally to the Epstein case file and not a specific client list.

Conservative influencers have since demanded to see all the files related to Epstein’s crimes, even as Trump has tried to put the issue to bed.

Far-right commentator Jack Posobiec said at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit on Saturday that he would not rest “until we go full Jan. 6 committee on the Jeffrey Epstein files.”

Trump’s weekend post sought to divert attention by calling on supporters to focus instead on investigating Democrats and arresting criminals rather than “spending month after month looking at nothing but the same old, Radical Left inspired Documents on Jeffrey Epstein.” His first-term national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, pleaded with him to reconsider.

“@realdonaldtrump please understand the EPSTEIN AFFAIR is not going away,” Flynn wrote, adding that failing to address unanswered Epstein questions would make facing other national challenges “much harder.”

Other Trump allies continue to push for answers, among them far-right activist Laura Loomer, who has called for Bondi to resign. She told Politico’s Playbook newsletter on Sunday that a special counsel should be appointed to investigate the handling of the files on Epstein, who was found dead in his federal jail cell in 2019 about a month after he was arrested.

Experts who study conspiracy theories warned that more sunlight does not necessarily make far-fetched narratives disappear.

“For some portion of this set of conspiracy theory believers, no amount of contradictory evidence will ever be enough,” said Josephine Lukito, who studies conspiracy theorists at the University of Texas at Austin.

Trump and his colleagues set their own trap

The president and many figures in his administration — including Bondi,Bongino and FBI Director Kash Patel — earned their political capital over the years in part by encouraging disproven conspiracy theories on a range of topics, from elections to vaccines.

Now, they’re tasked with trying to reveal the evidence they’d long insisted was there — a challenge that’s reached across the government.

Last week, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin posted on X what seemed like an endorsement of a notorious conspiracy theory that the contrails left by aircraft are releasing chemicals for potentially nefarious reasons. But a second post from Zeldin underscored the fine line the Trump administration is trying to walk by linking to a new page on the EPA website that essentially debunked the theory.

The value of conspiratorial fabrications is that they help people get political power, said Russell Muirhead, who teaches political science at Dartmouth College. He said Trump has exploited that “more ably than anybody probably in American history.”

But the Epstein case brings unique challenges, he said. That’s because it’s rooted in truth: A wealthy and well-connected financier did spend years abusing large numbers of young girls while escaping justice.

As a result, Trump needs to come forward with truth and transparency on the topic, Muirhead said. If he doesn’t, “large segments of his most enthusiastic and devoted supporters are going to lose faith in him.”

A potentially costly distraction

As right-wing outrage over Epstein dominates the political conversation, Democrats and other Trump rivals have been taking advantage.

Several Democratic lawmakers have called for the release of all Epstein files and suggested Trump could be resisting because he or someone close to him is featured in them. Conservatives expressed concerns that Trump’s approach on Epstein could hurt them in the midterms.

“For this to go away, you’re going to lose 10% of the MAGA movement,” right-wing podcaster Steve Bannon said during the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit on Friday.

There’s also the challenge of governing.

Bondi and Bongino had a tense exchange last week at the White House over a story about Epstein, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private conversation.

FILE – Daniel Bongino speaks during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on proposed changes to police practices and accountability on Capitol Hill, June 10, 2020, in Washington. (Greg Nash/Pool via AP, File)

And Loomer, who is close to Trump, said Friday she was told that Bongino was “seriously thinking about resigning.” Bongino showed up at work Monday, according to a person familiar with the matter who insisted on anonymity to discuss personnel issues. The FBI declined to comment.

Patel also took to social media Friday to dismiss what he called “conspiracy theories” that he himself would be leaving the administration.

FILE – FBI Director Kash Patel testifies during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, May 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

Dallek, the George Washington University professor, said it’s alarming that the country’s top law enforcement officials are feuding over a conspiracy theory.

“It’s possible at some time voters are going to notice the things they want or expect government to do aren’t being done because the people in charge are either incompetent or off chasing rabbits,” he said. “Who is fulfilling the mission of the FBI to protect the American people?”

Riccardi reported from Denver. Associated Press writers Eric Tucker, Melissa Goldin and Gary Fields in Washington contributed to this report.