By DAVID KLEPPER

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Army general tapped to lead the U.S. National Security Agency assured lawmakers Thursday that he will follow the Constitution and the law when it comes to using the NSA’s powerful surveillance tools.

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Lt. Gen. Joshua Rudd, if confirmed by the Senate, would also run the Pentagon’s Cyber Command, giving him a critical role in the nation’s offensive and defensive cyber operations.

The NSA has been without a permanent director since President Donald Trump fired Gen. Tim Haugh last year. The questions at Rudd’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee reflected concerns about whether Trump has politicized the use of federal law enforcement and security programs to target his critics and political opponents.

Rudd has held senior roles in Army special forces, has served in Iraq and Afghanistan and is now the deputy commander of the Indo-Pacific Command. He told senators that the NSA’s mission is critical to protecting the lives of service members and the success of their missions while also keeping the homeland safe from espionage and digital threats.

Rudd assured skeptical Democrats that he would follow the law if asked to turn the NSA’s spying programs against Americans simply because of their speech or political beliefs, something forbidden by federal law.

“If you are directed to target people in the United States for surveillance, will you insist that there be a judicial warrant?” asked Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat.

“If confirmed, I will absolutely commit to executing the foreign intelligence mission of the NSA in accordance with the authorities it has been given and within all applicable laws,” Rudd said in response.

The NSA focuses on cybersecurity, digital surveillance and cryptography programs for American national security and works closely with other intelligence agencies and the Pentagon. Its importance has grown in recent years as the internet and digital technology created new opportunities for intelligence gathering as well as new threats from China, Russia and other adversaries.

Lawmakers also demanded assurances that he would inform them of any efforts by the White House to change surveillance policies without congressional consent.

Senators from both parties said they believe Rudd’s nomination will be confirmed by the entire Senate. A date for the vote on his nomination has not been announced.

Treaty Oak Revival, the Red Clay Strays, Minnesota’s own bluegrass favorites Trampled by Turtles and, of all acts, the Beach Boys are among the bands set to play the new country music offshoot of the Minnesota Yacht Club Festival.

The Minnesota Country Club Festival is set for July 10 and 11 at St. Paul’s Harriet Island Regional Park. Tickets start at $95 for one day and $140 for both, with numerous more pricey options available. Concertgoers can register for access to a presale that starts at 10 a.m. Friday at minnesotacountryclubfest.com.

Promoters announced the festival earlier this month in a social media post that promised “a weekend of roots, folk, country, Americana and a few surprises along the Mississippi.”

While the Yacht Club fest has featured arena-level headliners like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Alanis Morissette, Green Day and Hozier, the Country Club Festival lineup is filled with much more niche artists.

Americana acts Treaty Oak Revival and the Red Clay Strays both headlined concerts at the 8,000-capacity Armory in downtown Minneapolis last year, but the rest of the bill features artists who typically play clubs and theaters. In its first two years, Yacht Club drew about 35,000 fans each day, but it seems unlikely that Country Club will replicate those numbers.

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Day 1 lineup: Treaty Oak Revival headlines the first day’s bill, which also includes Charley Crockett, Stephen Wilson Jr., Charles Wesley Godwin, Richy Mitch and the Coal Miners, Daniel Donato’s Cosmic Country, the Last Revel, Sons of Habit and Next of Kin. The Beach Boys are billed as a “special guest.”

Day 2 lineup: The Red Clay Strays will close out the second day, which also features Jessie Murph, Trampled by Turtles, Jesse Welles, Paul Cauthen, Chance Pena, Buffalo Traffic Jam, Elizabeth Nichols, Boy Golden and Nico Welsh.

The Lumineers, Matchbox Twenty and the Strokes will headline the third annual Minnesota Yacht Club Festival, which returns to Harriet Island July 17 through 19.

It was pointed out to Bob Motzko that his team’s performance was better last weekend against Michigan State than it was two weeks prior against Michigan.

“Yep,” Motzko said on his Gophers Hockey Weekly show, “but the outcome (was the same). We’re in a tough spot.”

Minnesota has now lost seven straight games heading into its home weekend series against Wisconsin, which opens at 7 p.m. Friday. The six losses since the break have all come to teams currently ranked inside the top five in the nation.

“Five of the games, it’s been we make a mistake, it ends up in the back of our net, we’re chasing the game,” Motzko said on his coaches show. “And we’re fighting in there, we’re playing really good teams right now that we’re trying to catch, but we’re having to play catch up in the games.”

But the level of competition in those contests is of little solace for anyone inside the program, or out. Motzko credited the Gophers faithful with producing the best visiting crowd he’s seen at a Frozen Four three years ago in Tampa Bay. Those same ardent supporters are upset at this season’s lack of success.

“We’re fully aware of negativity, but as I reminded our guys and I reminded our staff, that’s what happens when you come to a program like this. When you’re going great, they’re great. When you’re going bad, they’re bad,” he said. “Do they have the right to be mad? Hell, yeah. We’re mad. But it’s senseless energy for our team right now.”

Motzko noted Minnesota (8-16-1 overall, 4-10 in Big Ten) isn’t the first sports team to go through struggles. It’s easy to play the blame game right now, but he’ll have none of it.

“We have to fight our way through it right now, and we can’t let negativity sneak into our group,” Motzko said. “Our guys have been terrific on that side of it. The fight continues. It will pass. It will pass. But we have to fight our way through it, and we have to go earn it.”

He likened it to a train fighting its way uphill at the moment. The challenge, he said, is to keep pushing forward until the train reaches the peak, and momentum can be gained on the downhill.

There are signs of progress, even amid the losses. Motzko noted a positive is Minnesota is getting young players more minutes than they’d otherwise see. That experience is producing flashes, and the hope is that more young players find the types of consistent success goalie Luca Di Pasquo is starting to achieve as he establishes himself as a No. 1 netminder.

With the Gophers now healthy after battling a series of injuries in the opening half of the campaign, Motzko is freed up to tinker and adjust in his efforts to concoct a winning formula. Brody Lamb moved to center last weekend, where Motzko believes he can utilize his size, skating and smarts. He’s lined up with Brodie Ziemer and LJ Mooney, a trio that’s carrying the Gophers’ power-play unit and looks to find more 5-on-5 success.

Motzko also is pushing for Minnesota’s forward to get more active on the forecheck, noting the Gophers “need to have a ground game.”

“We need to get pucks deep and we need to go to work,” he said on his coaches show. “Even this last weekend, we had far too many trying to score on the rush, score in transition when it’s not there. Because you’re playing teams now whose systems are locked in. … We need to have an attack with four lines putting pressure on the other team. We had far too many turnovers.”

Every adjustment is aimed at Minnesota playing its best hockey come March. That’s always the goal, but is especially pertinent given the Gophers’ current circumstance. Minnesota is currently No. 40 in the pairwise rankings, meaning its only path to NCAAs is winning the Big Ten Conference Tournament.

Achieving that goal starts by finding a groove now. With that in mind, Motzko’s full focus is on Wisconsin. The Badgers (15-7-2 overall, 8-6 in Big Ten) are having a nice season, but enter Friday as losers of four straight.

“It better be a weekend of two teams that are desperate, getting after it,” Motzko said. “You’re going to see good hockey, I know that.”

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By EDITH M. LEDERER and FARNOUSH AMIRI

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — President Donald Trump’s latest attempt to sidestep the United Nations through his new Board of Peace appears to have inadvertently backfired after major world powers rejected U.S. aspirations for it to have a larger international mandate beyond the Gaza ceasefire and recommitted their support for the over 80-year-old global institution.

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The board to be chaired by Trump was originally envisioned as a small group of world leaders overseeing his plan for Gaza’s future. But the Republican president’s ambitions have expanded to envisioning the board as a mediator of worldwide conflicts, a not very subtle attempt to eclipse the Security Council, which is charged with ensuring international peace and security.

The board’s charter also caused some dismay by stating Trump will lead it until he resigns, with veto power over its actions and membership.

His secretary of state, Marco Rubio, tried to ease concerns by saying the board’s focus right now is only on the next phases of the Gaza ceasefire plan.

“This is not a replacement for the U.N., but the U.N. has served very little purpose in the case of Gaza other than the food assistance,” Rubio said at a congressional hearing Wednesday.

But Trump’s promotion of a broadened mandate and his floating of an idea that the Board of Peace “might” replace the U.N. have put off major players and been dismissed by U.N. officials.

“In my opinion, the basic responsibility for international peace and security lies with U.N., lies with the Security Council,” Secretary General Antonio Guterres said Thursday. “Only the Security Council can adopt decisions binding on all, and no other body or other coalition can legally be required to have all member states to comply with decisions on peace and security.”

In Security Council statements, public speeches and behind closed doors, U.S. allies and adversaries have dismissed Trump’s latest plan to overturn the post-World War II international order with what he describes as a “bold new approach to resolving global conflict.”

“The U.S. rollout of the much broader Board of Peace charter turned the whole exercise into a liability,” according to the International Crisis Group’s Richard Gowan, a U.N. watcher and program director. “Countries that wanted to sign on to help Gaza saw the board turning into a Trump fan club. That was not appealing.”

“If Trump had kept the focus of the board solely on Gaza, more states, including some more Europeans, would have signed up,” he said.

President Trump sits on the podium during a session on the Board of Peace initiative of US President Donald Trump at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

Key Security Council members haven’t signed on

The four other veto-wielding members of the Security Council — China, France, Russia and the United Kingdom — have refused or have not indicated whether they would join Trump’s board, as have economic powers such as Japan and Germany.

Letters sent this month inviting various world leaders to be “founding members” of the Board of Peace coincided with Trump’s vow to take over Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark, and punish some European countries that resisted. That was met with stark rebuttal from Canada, Denmark and others, who said Trump’s demand threatened to upend an alliance that has been among the West’s most unshakeable.

Shortly after, Trump pulled a dramatic reversal on Greenland, saying he had agreed with the NATO secretary-general on a “framework of a future deal” on Arctic security.

Amid the diplomatic chaos, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who at the time had not responded to Trump’s Board of Peace invitation, met with Guterres in London and reiterated “the UK’s enduring support for the UN and the international rules-based system,” according to a statement.

Starmer emphasized the U.N.’s “pivotal role in tackling global problems which shape lives in the UK and all over the world.” The United Kingdom later declined to join the board.

France, Spain and Slovenia declined Trump’s offer by mentioning its overlapping and potentially conflicting agenda with the U.N.

French President Emmanuel Macron said last week that the board goes beyond “the framework of Gaza and raises serious questions, in particular with respect to the principles and structure of the United Nations, which cannot be called into question.”

Spain would not join because the board excluded the Palestinian Authority and because the body was “outside the framework of the United Nations,” Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said.

Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer, right, welcomes UN Secretary General António Guterres to 10 Downing Street, London, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (Henry Nicholls/Pool Photo via AP)

Some countries are urging a stronger UN

America’s adversaries also have shunned the board.

“No single country should dictate terms based on its power, and a winner-takes-all approach is unacceptable,” China’s U.N. ambassador, Fu Cong, said at a Security Council meeting Monday.

He called for the United Nations to be strengthened, not weakened, and said the Security Council’s status and role “are irreplaceable.”

In a clear reference to the Board of Peace, Fu said, “We shall not cherry-pick our commitments to the organization, nor shall we bypass the U.N. and create alternative mechanisms.”

So far, about 26 of some 60 invited countries have joined the board, and about nine European countries have declined. India did not attend Trump’s signing ceremony at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, last week but is reportedly still deciding what to do. Trump revoked Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s invitation.

“It’s hardly surprising that very few governments want to join Trump’s wannabe-U.N., which so far looks more like a pay-to-play club of human rights abusers and war crimes suspects than a serious international organization,” said Louis Charbonneau, U.N. director for Human Rights Watch. “Instead of handing Trump $1 billion checks to join his Board of Peace, governments should work on strengthening the U.N.”

Eight Muslim nations that agreed to join the board issued a joint statement that supported its mission in Gaza and advancement of Palestinian statehood. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates made no mention of Trump’s global peacemaking plan.

The Crisis Group’s Gowan said their focus could be a way to “get a foothold in discussions of Gaza” at the start, as Trump’s ceasefire plan has already faced several setbacks.

“I remain unconvinced that this is a real long-term threat to the U.N.,” Gowan said.