Por Kevin Liptak, Natasha Bertrand, Zachary Cohen y Kylie Atwood, CNN

Dentro de la Oficina Oval esta semana, después de que una multitud de reporteros se retirara al Jardín de las Rosas, el canciller de Alemania, Friedrich Merz, intentó obtener una respuesta del presidente Donald Trump: ¿cómo, exactamente, imaginaba él que terminaría la guerra con Irán?

A pesar de cierta presión por parte del canciller, la respuesta del presidente —como ha sido desde que comenzó el conflicto hace una semana— no fue del todo clara, según una persona familiarizada con el asunto.

A medida que la operación militar estadounidense contra Irán pasa a una nueva fase tras la oleada inicial del sábado pasado, cómo terminará la guerra sigue siendo la principal pregunta para muchos funcionarios, legisladores y aliados de Estados Unidos.

En reuniones informativas con legisladores y personal del Congreso en los últimos días, funcionarios del Pentágono se han inclinado a considerar que la misión militar estadounidense se centra estrictamente en la destrucción de los lanzadores de misiles balísticos de Irán, según personas que asistieron a las reuniones, en lugar de atacar las instalaciones nucleares iraníes o eliminar a figuras del régimen o personal militar.

El secretario de Defensa, Pete Hegseth, ha hablado de manera despectiva sobre repetir los ejercicios de “construcción de una nueva nación” de administraciones pasadas.

Al mismo tiempo, Trump ha ofrecido objetivos mucho más ambiciosos que parecen ir más allá del mandato militar. El viernes, añadió la exigencia de “RENDIMIENTO INCONDICIONAL” del actual régimen iraní como requisito adicional para la conclusión de la guerra.

La aparente desconexión solo ha alimentado las preguntas sobre el rumbo del conflicto, que ya es ampliamente impopular entre los estadounidenses.

En conversaciones con sus homólogos estadounidenses, funcionarios árabes y europeos afirman no haber detectado exactamente cuál es el plan final de Trump, o si es que existe.

Tras las reuniones informativas con altos funcionarios de la administración esta semana, los legisladores también manifestaron poca comprensión de cómo Trump sabrá que ha logrado todos sus objetivos en Irán, o si tiene un plan para lo que viene después.

Algunos legisladores también se mostraron inquietos por el hecho de que Hegseth no descartara el despliegue de tropas estadounidenses en Irán.

Hasta el momento, Estados Unidos ha rechazado las propuestas iraníes para iniciar conversaciones que podrían determinar la manera de poner fin al conflicto.

La inteligencia iraní informó esta semana a Estados Unidos que podría estar preparada para iniciar conversaciones sobre cómo poner fin a la guerra, según personas familiarizadas con los mensajes indirectos.

Sin embargo, funcionarios estadounidenses afirman que no había negociaciones en curso y que es improbable que se materialicen posibles “salidas” a corto plazo.

“Desde que esto se aceleró, hemos tenido varias iniciativas de contacto”, declaró esta semana un alto funcionario de la administración Trump, estimando que la cifra de países era de casi una docena. “No es muy diferente a lo que teníamos antes: gente que quería ver si podía ayudar a resolverlo, y hemos hablado con ellos”.

Hasta la fecha, esto no ha dado lugar a un intercambio sólido de mensajes entre Estados Unidos e Irán. “No estamos utilizando a nadie como interlocutor. Esta es una acción militar y debe seguir su curso”, declaró el funcionario.

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (KEYT) - We now have the first look of what the Summer Solstice poster could look like for the upcoming annual celebration in June.

Last night, at a special event in downtown Santa Barbara, the poster art from a recent contest, was on display.
It was part of the First Thursday event throughout downtown. This Solstice gathering was in the office of the Downtown Santa Barbara Improvement Association.
Those attending were able to cast a vote for their favorite art piece that fit this year's theme, "Wave."
Starting today, you can also vote on line.
A winner will be selected later on this month, by the Solstice board.
This year the 52nd Summer Solstice celebration will be June 19th through 21st with the colorful parade set for noon on June 20th on Santa Barbara Street.

The post Voting Begins on Summer Solstice Festival Poster appeared first on News Channel 3-12.

By Elise Hammond, Caroll Alvarado, CNN

(CNN) — Nashville journalist Estefany Rodriguez frequently reports on Immigration and Customs Enforcement action, becoming familiar with the sudden arrests that have become hallmarks of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

But when trucks surrounded her and her husband’s car Wednesday and agents approached the windows, she was confused, her husband Alejandro Medina said.

Medina realized it was ICE before his wife did, he said. “We really couldn’t understand why we’re being surrounded.”

“We’re definitely shocked,” he told CNN.

Rodriguez, who was born in Colombia, entered the United States legally, one of her lawyers said. She is a journalist for Spanish-language news outlet Nashville Noticias and has reported stories “critical of the practices” by ICE and was covering immigration arrests the day before her detainment Wednesday, a petition filed by her lawyers for her release stated.

It’s the latest instance of journalists being caught up in the Trump administration’s nationwide crackdown on immigration. Mario Guevara, a Salvadoran journalist, was deported in October after being arrested while covering a “No Kings” protest in Atlanta.

The agents swarming the car to detain Rodriguez knew a lot about her and her husband, Medina said. They knew he was born in the US, and they knew they had applied for a green card, he said.

Rodriguez also has a pending political asylum claim and a valid work permit, according to court documents. A spokesperson for ICE told CNN in a statement Rodriguez “currently has no lawful immigration status.”

“A pending green card application and work authorization does NOT give someone legal status to be in our country,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told CNN.

Rodriguez was at a detention center in Alabama as of Friday before she was set to be sent to Louisiana, according to her lawyer, Joel Coxander.

When she worked for a large broadcaster in her home country of Colombia, she reported on government agencies and instances of corruption, her dad Juan Rodriguez and Coxander said.

But then she started receiving threats, Juan Rodriguez said. She reported them to the police and the country’s prosecutor’s office, and a security detail was assigned to her for a while, but that later changed to routine check-ins, her father said.

“There are a lot of problems, including armed groups, guerrillas, corrupt politicians. When you report, you’ll find that some of these people don’t like what you’re reporting on, and they’ll get bothered and think they have to get rid of the reporter because the reporter is making too much noise and informing the public,” Juan Rodriguez said.

When her daughter turned 1, Estefany Rodriguez decided to try to find safety in the US, he said. She came to the United States on a tourist visa in 2021, according to court documents. Before it expired, she applied for political asylum, it said.

However, according to ICE, “she failed to depart the country and is in violation of the conditions of her visa and currently has no lawful immigration status. She will remain in ICE custody pending her immigration proceedings.”

While Coxander said Friday he asked the court to let him amend his initial petition to release Rodriguez to “specifically address that this is a First Amendment violation and retaliation” for her coverage of ICE activities, the agents said they were detaining her because she had failed to show up for two immigration appointments.

Rodriguez received a letter from ICE on January 8 asking her to come to the Nashville fiel

By Fiona Sinclair Scott, CNN

London (CNN) — In Trump’s America, the question of what art is shown in national galleries and museums is a potent one, and Catherine Opie believes she knows when she’s not welcome.

“There’s absolutely no way the Smithsonian will show me right now,” she says while overseeing the final installation of her highly anticipated new exhibition in London, at the UK’s National Portrait Gallery. It would be reasonable to assume a show like this, which displays photos of American people from the ’90s to now, might eventually make its way to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC but no, she says. “Absolutely not.”

Opie, one of America’s foremost photographers, has turned her lens on a wide range of subjects from Elton John to high school football players, and her own friends and family. A lot of her work challenges gender stereotypes and shines light on marginalized, queer-identifying people, through formally staged portraiture akin to paintings by Renaissance masters like Hans Holbein the Younger, who she often references.

She started making art during a complicated time in the US, amid the culture wars of the ’90s and the latter years of the AIDS crisis. But 2026 is no less complicated, in Opie’s eyes. “What we’re seeing right now is literally the worst of the worst, and I couldn’t have imagined this. I couldn’t have written this. This is a terrible dystopic novel,” she says, drawing stark contrasts between the optimism she felt during Barack Obama’s presidency versus today.

She may not have been able to imagine it, but notes that she’s certainly been a witness to critical preceding events across the political spectrum. Beyond staged portraiture, Opie documents life outside her studio – she’s photographed conservative Tea Party rallies, Obama’s presidential inauguration, Boy Scout jamborees and women’s marches.

She’s also turned the camera on herself. Three self-portraits are some of her most recognized works: “Self-Portrait/Cutting” (1993) shows Opie, back turned, with a childlike scene of a house and two figures holding hands cut into her. “Self-Portrait/Pervert” (1994) shows Opie in a leather gimp mask, needles piercing her arms and this time with the word “pervert” etched into her bare chest. Ten years later, she photographed herself in “Self-Portrait/Nursing” while feeding her infant son. Traces of “pervert” are still visible as a scar. (When her son would start to ask her what the letters mean, she’d tell him they say “perfect.”)

The ability of a single image to evoke feelings of hope and acceptance in some viewers while unsettling others is a fascinating reality of our culture and one Opie is unbothered by. “So guess what, I’m a disrupter,” she says when asked the question while standing in front of a series of portraits of women wearing cheap store-bought mustaches, staring down the camera with looks that might make the male gaze go weak at the knees. “Men don’t like to be toyed with, apparently,” she laughs.

Opie addresses the topic of masculinity in many ways throughout her work – she subverts it, performs it and celebrates it (there’s a particularly beautiful photo of her newborn grandson being cradled by his father in the show), and she’s not done with it yet. She hints at a new project about cowboy culture. She has questions for these men she calls the “Taylor Sheridans” of the world, referring to the creator of popular show “Yellowstone.”

“I invite him to sit and I would love to talk about masculinity with him in terms of representation,” she says.

She’s open about her “own problem” with masculinity and how that played out after she gave birth to a baby boy, her son Oliver. “I had such a hard time fitting into the world as a girl,” says Opie, explaining that when she realized she

By Kevin Liptak, Natasha Bertrand, Zachary Cohen, Kylie Atwood, CNN

(CNN) — Inside the Oval Office this week, after a crowd of jostling reporters departed into the Rose Garden, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz tried to get an answer from President Donald Trump: how, exactly, did he envision the war with Iran ending?

Despite some pressing by the chancellor, the answer from the president — as it has been since the conflict began a week ago — wasn’t quite clear, according to a person familiar.

As the US military operation against Iran shifts into a new phase following last Saturday’s opening salvo, how the war ends remains the top question for many officials, lawmakers and US allies.

In briefings with lawmakers and congressional staff in recent days, Pentagon officials have leaned into the US military mission being narrowly focused on destroying Iran’s ballistic missile launchers, people who attended the briefings said, rather than on targeting Iranian nuclear facilities or taking out regime figures or military personnel. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has spoken dismissively of repeating the “nation building” exercises of past administrations.

At the same time, Trump has offered far more expansive goals that appear to extend beyond the military’s stated remit. On Friday, he lumped in the “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER” of Iran’s current regime as an additional requirement for the war to conclude.

The apparent disconnect has only fueled questions about where the conflict, which is already broadly unpopular among Americans, is headed. In conversations with their US counterparts, Arab and European officials say they haven’t detected what exactly Trump’s endgame looks like, or if it exists at all.

Emerging from briefings with senior administration officials this week, lawmakers similarly professed little understanding of how Trump will know he has achieved all his goals in Iran, or whether he has a plan for what comes afterward. Some lawmakers also appeared unnerved by the fact that Hegseth would not rule out putting US troops on the ground in Iran.

Who will take over?

The US has so far rejected Iranian overtures to begin talks that could suss out ways to end the conflict. Iranian intelligence sent word this week to the US it could be prepared to open talks on how to end the war, according to people familiar with the indirect messages, but US officials say there were no negotiations underway and that potential “off-ramps” are unlikely to materialize in the near term.

“Since this thing went kinetic, we’ve had a number of reach-outs,” a senior Trump administration official said this week, putting the number of nations at nearly a dozen. “It’s not dissimilar to what we had before, people wanting to see if they can help solve it, and we’ve talked to them.”

To date, that has not resulted in any robust exchange of messages between the United States and Iran. “We’re not using anyone as an interlocutor. This is a military action, and it’s got to run its course,” the official said.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Trump alone would determine when Iran was in a state of “unconditional surrender.”

“What the president means is that when he, as commander in chief of the US Armed Forces, determines that Iran no longer poses a threat to the United States of America and the goals of Operation Epic Fury has been fully realized, then Iran will essentially be in a place of unconditional surrender, whether the