By CHRIS MEGERIAN and DAVID KLEPPER

WASHINGTON (AP) — Tulsi Gabbard left no doubt when she testified to Congress about Iran’s nuclear program earlier this year.

The country was not building a nuclear weapon, the national intelligence director told lawmakers, and its supreme leader had not reauthorized the dormant program even though it had enriched uranium to higher levels.

But President Donald Trump dismissed the assessment of U.S. spy agencies during an overnight flight back to Washington as he cut short his trip to the Group of Seven summit to focus on the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran.

“I don’t care what she said,” Trump told reporters. In his view, Iran was “very close” to having a nuclear bomb.

Trump’s statement aligned him with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has described a nuclear-armed Iran as an imminent threat, rather than with his own top intelligence adviser. Trump was expected to meet with national security officials in the Situation Room on Tuesday as he plans next steps.

Gabbard brushed off the inconsistency, blaming the media for misconstruing her earlier testimony and asserting that “President Trump was saying the same thing that I said.”

“We are on the same page,” she told CNN. Asked for comment, Gabbard’s office referred to those remarks.

In her March testimony to lawmakers, Gabbard said the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”

She also said the U.S. was closely monitoring Iran’s nuclear program, noting that the country’s “enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.”

Trump’s contradiction of Gabbard echoed his feuds with U.S. spy leaders during his first term, when he viewed them as part of a “deep state” that was undermining his agenda. Most notably, he sided with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2018 when asked if Moscow had interfered in the 2016 election, saying Putin was “extremely strong and powerful in his denial.”

The latest break over Iran was striking because Trump has staffed his second administration with loyalists rather than establishment figures. Gabbard, a military veteran and former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, was narrowly confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate because of her scant experience with intelligence or managing sprawling organizations.

Gabbard, who left the Democratic Party in 2022 and endorsed Trump in last year’s election, is expected to testify Tuesday in a closed session on Capitol Hill, along with CIA Director John Ratcliffe, during a previously scheduled budget hearing.

Both officials likely would face questions about their views on Iran and Trump’s latest statements. A representative for the CIA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly warned that Iran has enough enriched uranium to make several nuclear bombs should it choose to do so. Iran maintains its nuclear program is peaceful.

An earlier intelligence report, compiled in November under then-President Joe Biden, a Democrat, also said Iran “is not building a nuclear weapon.”

However, it said the country has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce one, if it so chooses,” such as increasing stockpiles of enriched uranium and operating more advanced centrifuges. The report did not include any estimates for a timeline for how quickly a bomb could be built.

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Trump’s immigration agenda is another place where he’s split with intelligence assessments. He cited the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 wartime law, to deport Venezuelan migrants, which he justified by claiming that the Tren de Aragua gang was coordinating with the Venezuelan government. However, an intelligence assessment in April found no evidence of that.

Gabbard fired the two veteran intelligence officers who led the panel that created the assessment, saying they were terminated because of their opposition to Trump.

In response to those reports, the White House released a statement from Gabbard supporting the president.

“President Trump took necessary and historic action to safeguard our nation when he deported these violent Tren de Aragua terrorists,” the statement said. “Now that America is safer without these terrorists in our cities, deep state actors have resorted to using their propaganda arm to attack the President’s successful policies.”

By CEDAR ATTANASIO

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City comptroller and Democratic mayoral candidate Brad Lander was arrested by federal agents at an immigration court Tuesday as he was trying to accompany a person out of a courtroom.

A reporter with The Associated Press witnessed Lander’s arrest at a federal building in Manhattan. The person Lander was walking out of the courtroom was also arrested.

Lander had spent the morning observing immigration court hearings and told an AP reporter that he was there to “accompany” some immigrants out of the building.

At a press conference following the arrest, Lander’s wife, Meg Barnette, said her husband had tried to link arms with a man following his immigration court hearing when “we were swarmed by a number of federal agents.”

“They said, ‘You’re obstructing,’” Barnette said. “I was shoved out of the way.”

“What I saw was shocking and unacceptable,” she added. “What I saw today was not the rule of law.”

A video of the arrest, captured by an AP reporter, shows an agent telling Lander, “You’re obstructing.”

In the moments before Lander was handcuffed, agents could be seen trying to physically separate Lander from the man they had come to detain. Lander briefly struggled to stay close to the detainee before he was pulled away.

“I’m not obstructing, I’m standing right here in the hallway,” Lander said as he was being handcuffed.

“You don’t have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens asking for a judicial warrant,” Lander said as he was led away down a hallway and into an elevator.

One of the officers who led Lander away wore a tactical vest labeled “federal agent.” Others were in plainclothes, with surgical masks over their faces.

The episode occurred as federal immigration officials are conducting large-scale arrests outside immigration courtrooms across the country.

Lander’s detainment comes a little more than a month after Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested on a trespassing charge outside a federal immigration detention center in his city.

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The charge was later dropped by interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba, and Baraka’s fellow Democrat, Rep. LaMonica McIver, was charged with assaulting and impeding federal agents stemming from her role at the same visit as the mayor. A federal indictment charges she grabbed, pushed and blocked officers from arresting the mayor. She’s denied the charges and said she plans to fight them. Baraka filed a federal lawsuit against Habba alleging false arrest and malicious prosecution.

Emailed inquiries to the FBI and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were not immediately returned.

Lander is a candidate in the city’s Democratic mayoral primary. Early voting in the contest is underway.

In a statement, Lander’s campaign said, “While escorting a defendant out of immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza, Brad was taken by masked agents and detained by ICE.”

With players required to return to Minnesota in a little more than a month, on Tuesday the the Vikings announced 12 of their training camp practices at TCO Performance will be open to the public.

The annual summer spectacle will give fans a chance to see presumed starting quarterback J.J. McCarthy live in action for the first time since he suffered a torn meniscus roughly 10 months ago.

Here’s more information about training camp next month.

Is there a set schedule?

Yes. The following dates will feature practices open to the public: July 26, July 28, July 29, July 30, August 1, August 2, August 3, August 4, August 6, August 7, August 11, August 13, and August 14.

Some notable dates on that list include the annual night practice at TCO Stadium on August 4, as well as joint practices with the New England Patriots on August 13 and August 14.

A full schedule is available online at www.vikings.com/camp.

Is this a ticketed event?

Yes. Those wanting to attend any of the practices open to the public will need to reserve a digital ticket online at www.vikings.com/camp. The digital tickets will be available to the public starting Wednesday at 10 a.m.

How much are tickets?

It depends.  The cost for regular practices will be $10 for adults, $5 for children 17 years old and younger, and free for children 36 inches and under. The cost of the annual night practice at TCO Stadium will be $15 for adults, $10 for children 17 years old and younger, and free for children 36 inches and under.

There is no cost for season ticket members with the exception of the annual night practice at TCO Stadium. A season ticket member can reserve up to four free digital tickets for a maximum of two days. There is no limit on paid digital tickets.

A portion of all ticket sale proceeds will go to the Minnesota Vikings Foundation.

Will there be parking?

Yes. A digital parking pass can be purchased for $10 when purchasing digital tickets. Those who do not pay for parking in advance can pay $20 upon arrival at TCO Performance Center. There will be ADA parking available in the ramp connected to the Vikings Locker Room Store and Training Haus.

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A butterfly flits past the window at the Castlewood Canyon Visitor Center, where dozens of volunteers have gathered to learn about Colorado’s declining butterfly population and how they can do their part to save it.

Shiran Hershcovich, a lepidopterist at the Westminster-based Butterfly Pavilion who’s leading the Saturday morning training, ushers the group outside to watch the mourning cloak butterfly as it settles on a blooming tree.

It lightly beats its wings until someone shuffles too close, startling it back into the sky.

Now, more than ever, scientists are calling for volunteers to help gather data on butterflies so organizations know where to focus resources to save the rapidly disappearing insects, Hershcovich said. Some volunteers undergo official training, but anyone can contribute just by posting photos online.

North American butterfly populations have declined by more than 22% over the last two decades, according to a study recently published in Science. Colorado saw roughly the same levels of loss, Hershcovich said.

The national study combined 20 years of data from 35 community science programs across the country, including the Butterfly Pavilion’s Colorado Butterfly Monitoring Network.

An average loss of 1% each year might not sound like a lot, but it dramatically affects butterfly populations, Hershcovich said.

“The results were pretty grim,” she said. “We’re really at a critical point where we can either work hard to turn those numbers around or lose our butterflies.”

Folks listen in on a Colorado Butterfly Monitoring Network training at the Castlewood Canyon State Park in Franktown on Saturday, May 3, 2025. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)

People-powered science

The first step is knowing where to direct resources and action, Hershcovich said. That’s where volunteers come in.

Cindy Cain, a nurse practitioner at the University of Colorado, was hiking in Jefferson County’s Reynolds Park five years ago when she saw a woman with a clipboard looking around. One conversation, one year and one training later, Cain had her own clipboard and was officially part of the Colorado Butterfly Monitoring Network.

She said she started with one trail but “just kept on accumulating routes.” She now monitors more than a dozen different routes for the network throughout the season.

“I know that it’s not everyone’s jam, but it makes my heart sing,” Cain said.

The monitoring network started with five volunteers in 2013. It reached nearly 100 volunteers across 12 Colorado counties in 2024 and it trained another 71 in 2025.

As of October 2024, the end of that year’s monitoring season, the network of Colorado volunteers had spent nearly 4,900 hours on trails across the state and documented more than 144,000 butterflies since its 2013 kickoff.

Change happens when everyone becomes involved in the conversation, Hershcovich said. It’s not limited to entomologists and other scientists — everyone has a stake in the game and the power to help.

“There’s a growing sense of ‘What can I do? How can I make a change?’, which is really empowering,” Hershcovich said. “(Volunteers) help us gather data and inform those collective pictures of what’s going on with the butterflies.”

Butterflies at risk — both in Colorado and nationally

The mountain-prairie region that encompasses Colorado is seeing the second-most severe annual butterfly declines and some of the most rapidly warming climate, according to the national study in Science.

“Places like Colorado are already dry,” said Ryan St Laurent, an evolutionary biologist and entomologist at the University of Colorado Boulder. “With increased droughts that we’re seeing with climate change, it’s exacerbating the existing problems that we’re already having with butterfly decline.”

The impacts of widespread butterfly loss and other invertebrate insects are almost unthinkable, St Laurent said.

“They pollinate plants, and they basically fill every ecological role you can imagine in terrestrial environments,” St Laurent said. “When you’re seeing declines, even if it’s a percentage here, a percentage there, … we are going to be feeling the impact of that in ways that we probably don’t even realize yet.”

The extent of the loss varies across both butterfly species and regions, but the overall theme is the same: butterflies are in danger, Hershcovich said.

“It’s a complex picture of ups and downs, but what we do know for certain is that, overall, we are losing more butterflies than we are gaining,” she said. “It’s a pretty scary picture.”

Colorado’s diverse wildlife habitats are home to more than 250 types of butterflies, roughly a third of the species found in North America.

The Colorado Butterfly Monitoring Network has captured data on 173 of those, Hershcovich said.

Most of Colorado’s butterfly monitors are concentrated in the Front Range, so the network’s data on butterflies native to Colorado’s Eastern Plains or high mountains is sparse, she said.

But the network will never turn away a volunteer, no matter where they’re based, Hershcovich said. More eyes are always needed, including across the Front Range.

“We need to know what’s going on with butterflies everywhere, not just in the high mountains, but … in our neighborhoods and in our backyards and in our gardens and in our community spaces,” Hershcovich said.

The other barrier to fully understanding Colorado’s butterfly populations is the difficulty of accurately surveying the pollinators, said Gillian Bowser, a wildlife biologist and ecologist with Colorado State University.

“Data is dependent on what people perceive and record,” Bowser said. “We see monarchs and we value monarchs, but we often fail to perceive blue butterflies because they’re so small. … We have huge data gaps.”

Butterflies are active for very short, dynamic periods, she said. If scientists aren’t consistently surveying butterfly populations from early spring to late fall, they miss the entire lifespans of multiple species.

Butterflies are on display during a special preview of The Butterfly Conservatory: Tropical Butterflies Alive in Winter at the American Museum of Natural History in New York October 4, 2017. – The Butterfly Conservatory houses up to 500 iridescent butterflies that hover above visitors in a 1,200-square-foot vivarium. (Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP) (Photo credit should read TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images)

The combination of staffing, timing and difficulty spotting certain butterflies means scientists have solid trend data on less than half of known butterfly populations, Bowser said.

“There’s just not enough people out there collecting data,” St Laurent said.

But data collection isn’t just limited to scientists or formally trained volunteers — it’s as easy as snapping a photo and posting it on social media or a community science platform like iNaturalist, Bowser said.

Scientists use photos from social media and other platforms to track butterfly populations across the state, see how early or late they’re appearing in the season, determine if they’re shifting habitats and more, Bowser said.

“Engaging nonexpert participants in butterfly data is probably more critical than almost anything else,” she said. “Everybody’s got a cellphone and everybody has access to the internet. You can take a picture and post it somewhere, and that’s … really good data.”

Monarch butterflies are seen in the trees as they overwinter in and around the Pacific Grove Monarch Sanctuary in Pacific Grove, California on January 26, 2023. – As devastating storms pounded California, nature lovers feared for fragile, endangered monarch butterflies that winter here as part of a seemingly magical migration pattern.
The colorfully winged insects that travel vast distances over the course of generations have been closely watched here since they neared extinction just three years ago.
As soon as the sun rose one January morning, volunteers began counting monarch butterflies, finding them clustered atop cypress trees in a sanctuary in the California coast town of Pacific Grove. (Photo by Amy Osborne / AFP) (Photo by AMY OSBORNE/AFP via Getty Images)

The public needs to be engaged, Bowser said. There are so many species to track that it takes the entire community’s help.

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“Glimmers of hope”

It’s still possible for butterflies to completely recover and flourish, St Laurent said, noting that even the national butterfly decline study provided some “glimmers of hope” for the future.

“Insects are some of the most resilient animals on this planet and, should they have the right conditions, they can once more thrive,” Hershcovich said. “It will require some work. It will require a lot of action. It really is an all-hands-on-deck moment.”

The good news is that scientists know what butterflies need and how to help, she said. The monitoring network helps scientists know where to focus their efforts and if they’re moving in the right direction.

It starts with planting native vegetation and pollinator gardens, reducing pesticide use and protecting open spaces.

“As soon as our natural spaces are degraded or damaged, butterflies are going to be one of the first things that respond to those changes,” Hershcovich said. “That’s why it’s so important to study them, track them, understand them and see how they fluctuate year after year, because they’re an important piece in getting a holistic picture of how Colorado is doing overall.”