By Patrick Svitek, CNN

(CNN) — Nearly two months ago, President Donald Trump promised he would make an endorsement “soon” in the Republican primary runoff for US Senate in Texas.

That endorsement still has not arrived — and its absence is keeping the race highly competitive.

Three people involved in the race said they no longer expected Trump to get involved in the battle between Sen. John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. However, they cautioned he could change his mind before the May 26 runoff, keeping both sides on edge in the final weeks.

While Democrats haven’t won statewide in Texas since 1994, they have a Senate nominee in state Rep. James Talarico who is energizing liberals ahead of the November midterms and raising massive sums. Republicans long wanted to avoid a damaging runoff that could make things easier for Talarico, in part by having Trump boost one candidate and pressure the other to back down.

Trump was likely to eventually endorse Cornyn after he and Paxton advanced from a March 3 primary, sources told CNN at the time. However, Trump grew frustrated after Republican operatives leaked his expected plans, the sources said. Trump also fielded calls from some of his most ardent supporters, pushing him not to endorse Cornyn and warning it would be a mistake with his “Make America Great Again” base.

Trump met briefly with Paxton after the primary during a gala held at his Mar-a-Lago residence, part of an effort by the state attorney general to head off a Cornyn endorsement. Paxton also publicly offered to consider ending his candidacy if the Senate bypassed the filibuster to pass a Trump-backed overhaul of election requirements, the proposed Save America Act.

Trump has not said much about the race since then, including whether he still plans to pick between Cornyn and Paxton.

The president and some other Republicans have also cooled on Talarico as a formidable Democratic contender amid a deluge of opposition research released after the primary. Trump said in a March 22 post on Truth Social that “any human being running against” Talarico could win.

A poll released Wednesday by the University of Texas suggests Republicans have reason to be concerned about Talarico. He led both Cornyn and Paxton by single digits in hypothetical general-election matchups, though nearly a fifth of voters in each case said they had no opinion yet.

Washington Republicans had long hoped a Trump endorsement of Cornyn would effectively end an intraparty fight and allow the GOP to fully focus on Talarico.

“It’s a mess,” one national Republican strategist said. Speaking on condition of anonymity to assess the race, the strategist blamed a “failure by multiple entities to do their part.”

Some Cornyn supporters have conceded that Trump is unlikely to save the day for the incumbent. Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, a former chair of Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, said during a Semafor event in Washington earlier this month that he “would be surprised if the president will weigh in on that race.”

“Staying neutra

By Eric Bradner, CNN

(CNN) — Forty-five years before a gunman attempted to storm the Washington Hilton’s ballroom during President Donald Trump’s appearance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, another would-be assassin stood on the sidewalk and shot President Ronald Reagan in the chest as he exited the same hotel.

The location, and the presence of a Republican president, is likely to be where the comparison ends.

In 1981, gunman John Hinckley Jr. also shot White House press secretary James Brady, leaving him partially paralyzed. Brady would go on to become a leading gun control advocate — and the namesake of 1993’s Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, which introduced mandatory background checks and waiting periods for handgun purchases. It was backed by Reagan, who publicly supported the measure in a 1991 speech despite being a lifelong National Rifle Association member.

Today, the gun control debate is likely to remain in neutral, even after a shooting near the ballroom where Trump, Vice President JD Vance and many of the nation’s top leaders were dining with the Washington press corps. The GOP remains entrenched, younger generations who have fought unsuccessfully for new restrictions for years are frustrated and the solution generating the most discussion is a more secure ballroom for the nation’s elite.

The gunfire Saturday night occurred in a much different political climate — after decades of failed attempts to ban assault rifles and high-capacity magazines, expand background checks on gun purchases and more following mass shootings. Those efforts have been championed largely by Democrats and mostly opposed by Republicans.

“This isn’t about, in my mind, changing the law or making the laws more restrictive around possession of firearms,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in an interview earlier this week with CBS. “This is about law enforcement who are doing their jobs and a suspect who tried to do something and failed miserably.”

Blanche on Wednesday stood with gun industry leaders as he announced the Justice Department would seek to further roll back gun control measures, proposing a slew of new rules aimed at helping gun sellers more easily abide by the law. Blanche said the administration is “cutting unnecessary red tape, and we are replacing confusion with clear, straightforward language so that everyday Americans don’t need a law degree just to understand their rights.”

Entrenched positions in gun debate

Kris Brown, the president of Brady, the gun violence prevention organization the former press secretary helped to found, said in an interview that parents across the United States fear that their children “are going to a White House Correspondents’ Dinner every day when they go to school” because of those legislative failures.

Brown argued that “even in challenging circumstances, something can always be done.”

“If you look at every major federal gun law that has passed in America, it’s passed on the heels of horrific violence — and in some cases, against elected officials,” she said.

In 2022, Congress approved the first major gun safety measure in nearly 30 years with the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which passed in the wake of mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York. It expanded background checks for gun buyers under age 21 and closed the

By Kati Chitrakorn, CNN

London (CNN) — Buying a tailored suit is not something many would associate with Nigo, the Japanese multi-hyphenate designer who famously established the blueprint for modern streetwear with his loud, graphic-heavy, scarcity-driven designs. Yet one of the first things he did on his latest trip to London was visit the city’s infamous tailoring street, Savile Row.

“Recently, my suits have been from Henry Poole, but I’ve been having my suits made for the last 20 years from Huntsman, and from Anderson & Sheppard,” Nigo says, during a rare interview at the Design Museum where an exhibition spotlighting his three-decade career opens Friday.

“I wanted to see what it was like to have something that wasn’t casual,” he adds, after also naming where he gets his shoes (John Lobb and George Cleverley) and bespoke shirts (Turnbull & Asser). “It used to be that restaurants would have dress codes. Now, everyone’s in jeans. The world has changed. I think it’s boring if you’re always dressed casually. Fashion is to be enjoyed. You need a bit of variety.”

The view aligns with the wider shift in menswear towards more refined, quality focused pieces. It’s also indicative of Nigo’s notoriously vast interests, which has taken him from the bustle of Tokyo, where he spent his formative years, to the high fashion runways in Paris, where he has been the artistic director of the French label Kenzo since 2021.

Extraordinarily, the Design Museum show will be the first about the designer, who is also a DJ, collector and entrepreneur, to be staged outside of his native Japan, despite his extensive influence on creative tastemakers and collaborators, such as Pharrell Williams, Ye, Kim Jones, and the late Virgil Abloh, who have all frequently credited Nigo for his impact on their work and fashion more widely. “There wouldn’t be Joopiter if it weren’t for Nigo,” said Williams in 2024, referring to his online auction house selling rare luxury items, art and memorabilia.

The exhibition features over 700 objects, including collectibles, traditional craft and vintage objects from Nigo’s personal archive. It begins with a recreation of his teenage bedroom in Maebashi, Gunma, where he was born in 1970 as Tomoaki Nagao. He later adopted the name, Nigo, which translates to “Number Two” in Japanese, as a nod to his mentor — the legendary Japanese designer, musician and DJ, Hiroshi Fujiwara — whom he was once considered the “second” version of. The exhibition then proceeds chronologically, with sections dedicated to key moments from his life.

Asked whether he thought twice about anything that was included — perhaps something felt too personal, too private, or too contradictory? — Nigo pauses before responding: “I wanted to show everything,” and specifically, he says, items from “1980s Japan, back when we didn’t have the internet.” Among the items displayed in the bedroom are fashion and lifestyle magazines like Olive, Men’s Club and Popeye, a word processor, and a turntable from the decade. Elsewhere in the exhibition are Nigo’s creative works, including his designs for Kenzo and Human Made, and collaborations with big brands like Louis Vuitton and Uniqlo. One of the centerpieces is an electric blue ensemble that he designed for his friend, the American rapper Kid Cudi, to wear to the 2022 Met Gala.

A natural-born tastemaker

An avid collector of everything from furniture to figurines, Nigo insists that each purchase occurs from a place of genuine interest, rather than a decision made based on potential resale value. Though, he seems to have a knack for investing in things that will become popular and, subsequently, valuable.

When Nigo was a teenager, he would often hop on a train to

By Brad Lendon, CNN

(CNN) — The German submarine captain saw his target’s silhouette against the evening sky off the coast of southern England and gave the command to fire a single torpedo.

It was the last anyone would see of the US Coast Guard Cutter Tampa and its 131 crew members for more than 107 years.

Three minutes after that German torpedo struck the vessel amidships, the Tampa was on the bottom of the Atlantic with all crew lost, the largest naval loss for US forces during World War I.

On Wednesday, the Coast Guard announced a team of British divers had located the wreck of the Tampa last weekend at a depth of 300 feet (91 meters) some 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the Cornwall coast.

The wreckage was found by the British Gasperados Dive Team, a volunteer technical-diving team that worked with historians and researchers to find wrecks around the UK, according to its Facebook page.

The team had been looking for the Tampa since 2023.

“This discovery is the result of three years of research and exploration. TAMPA is of huge importance to the United States and the relatives of everyone who died that day. Their final resting place is known at last,” dive team leader Steve Mortimer said in a Facebook post.

“Finding TAMPA didn’t just happen last weekend. This was the tenth trip to dive possible targets and everyone – whether skipper, crew, researcher, liaison or diver – played a part. We’re still buzzing. We did it!” another Facebook post said.

The Coast Guard said it provided the group with records and data to confirm the wreck was the Tampa.

“This included the archival images of the deck fittings, ship’s wheel, bell, weaponry and archival images of the Tampa,” William Thiesen, Coast Guard Atlantic area historian, said in the statement.

A Coast Guard history of the Tampa gives details of its final voyage.

On September 17, 1918, the ship began convoy duty in the Atlantic waters. But on September 26, the Tampa’s captain requested permission to leave the convoy it was escorting as his ship was running dangerously low on coal to power its boilers and needed to refuel.

Commanders granted the captain’s request, and the ship headed to a port in Wales at full speed around 4 p.m.

Around 8:15 p.m., it was spotted by the German sub UB-41 which fired a lone torpedo. The blast from the torpedo was followed by a secondary explosion, caused by either coal dust igniting or depth charges aboard the Tampa detonating, according to the Coast Guard history.

A plane sent out to search for the ship when it did not arrive at its destination found pieces of its wreckage the next day.

Aboard were 111 Coast Guardsmen, four US Navy sailors, and 16 Britons, including Royal Navy personnel and civilians.

The Coast Guardsmen came from all walks of life and regions of the US and included immigrants from Russia and Norway. Eleven of the lost crew were Black according to a Coast Guard history of the ship. They were the first minority Coast Guardsmen killed in combat.

“When the Tampa was lost with all hands in 1918, it left an enduring grief in our service,” Coast Guard commandant Adm. Kevin Lunday said in a statement. “Locating the wreck connects us to their sacrifice and reminds us that devotion that devotion to duty endures.”

The Coast Guard said it is developing plans to explore the wreck further using autonomous systems and robotics.

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SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (KEYT) - San Marcos girls beach volleyball had just three losses and two of them are to the top-ranked team in CIF-Southern Section Mira Costa.

The visiting Mustangs ended the Royals season with a 5-0 win in the CIF-SS Division 1 semifinals.

San Marcos finishes 24-3 on the year.

Despite the sweep many of the matches were competitive especially between the #1 teams.

The Royals duo of Cora Loomer/Evyn Miller pushed the Stanford-bound pairs of Ruby Cochrane/Olga Nikolaeva in a 3-set thriller.

Loomer, a UCLA-commit and San Jose State signee Miller had a couple of match points in the second set but were denied the win as they lost 21-19, 22-24, 17-19.

The post Sensational beach volleyball season ends in CIF semifinals for San Marcos appeared first on News Channel 3-12.