Top USA Newspaper News – May 16, 2026
- President Trump’s China visit and talks with President Xi Jinping are dominating major U.S. newspaper front pages.
- Congress and media continue focusing on tensions involving Iran and U.S. foreign policy.
- U.S. inflation and rising consumer prices remain a major economic story this week.
- Immigration and ICE enforcement controversies are heavily discussed across U.S. media outlets.
- Public health concerns continue after reports about the hantavirus outbreak connected to a cruise ship.
Major U.S. Newspapers
- The New York Times
- The Washington Post
- USA Today
- The Wall Street Journal
- Los Angeles Times
Today’s News Themes
U.S.–China Relations
Trump and Xi meetings are being covered as a critical diplomatic event with trade and security implications.
DOJ Sues Connecticut Over State’s Mask Ban on Federal Officers
Federal officers in front of the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis on Jan. 9, 2026. John Fredricks/The Epoch TimesThe Department of Justice filed a lawsuit Friday against Connecticut over a law that prohibits federal officers from wearing face coverings.
Connecticut passed the legislation, called the “Act Concerning Democracy and Government Accountability,” in response to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in the state, with a goal of more oversight of federal agents.
The DOJ called the law an illegal attempt to regulate the federal government, a news release said.
“Law enforcement officers risk their lives every day to keep Americans safe, and they do not deserve to be doxed or harassed simply for carrying out their duties,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said, calling Connecticut’s law “anti-law enforcement.”
The DOJ lawsuit named Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, Attorney General William Tong, Chief State’s Attorney Patrick Griffin, and Deputy Chief State’s Attorney Eliot Prescott as defendants.
None immediately responded to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.
The “Act Concerning Democracy and Government Accountability,” or Senate Bill 397, was signed into law by Lamont on May 4.
State Republicans sought to block it and argued for protecting federal agents’ identities, especially those carrying out immigration operations. Republican Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding called Senate Bill 397 an attack on law enforcement.
State governments do not have the authority to tell the federal government what to do,” Harding previously said during debate on the bill.
Democrats supported the bill. Democratic state Rep. Jason Rojas spoke at a news conference following the signing of the bill and said it makes the state safer for its citizens.
“Our immigrant communities are part of the fabric of this state, and this law helps ensure their rights are upheld,” Rojas said.
The DOJ argues that the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, or the legal principle of preemption, prevents Connecticut from enacting and enforcing its mask ban on federal agents.
“This Department of Justice will not stand by idly in the face of lawless efforts that endanger our brothers and sisters in blue,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said.
In addition to federal officers being prohibited from wearing facial coverings while performing official duties, the legislation also requires agents to clearly display their badge and name tag. Additionally, it seeks to require federal officers to adhere to Connecticut’s preferred use-of-force policies.
These measures endanger agents who are already facing harassment, doxxing, and violence, the DOJ said in its news release.
If federal officers do not comply with Connecticut’s law, they could face prosecution. This ultimately chills federal law enforcement and disrupts sensitive operations, the Justice Department added.
The DOJ’s Civil Division has filed lawsuits against other states with similar policies to Connecticut, such as New York,
The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit Friday against Connecticut over a law that prohibits federal officers from wearing face coverings.
Connecticut passed the legislation, called the “Act Concerning Democracy and Government Accountability,” in response to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in the state, with a goal of more oversight of federal agents.
The DOJ called the law an illegal attempt to regulate the federal government, a news release said.
“Law enforcement officers risk their lives every day to keep Americans safe, and they do not deserve to be doxed or harassed simply for carrying out their duties,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said, calling Connecticut’s law “anti-law enforcement.”
The DOJ lawsuit named Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, Attorney General William Tong, Chief State’s Attorney Patrick Griffin, and Deputy Chief State’s Attorney Eliot Prescott as defendants.
None immediately responded to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.
The “Act Concerning Democracy and Government Accountability,” or Senate Bill 397, was signed into law by Lamont on May 4.
State Republicans sought to block it and argued for protecting federal agents’ identities, especially those carrying out immigration operations. Republican Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding called Senate Bill 397 an attack on law enforcement.
State governments do not have the authority to tell the federal government what to do,” Harding previously said during debate on the bill.
Democrats supported the bill. Democratic state Rep. Jason Rojas spoke at a news conference following the signing of the bill and said it makes the state safer for its citizens.
“Our immigrant communities are part of the fabric of this state, and this law helps ensure their rights are upheld,” Rojas said.
The DOJ argues that the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, or the legal principle of preemption, prevents Connecticut from enacting and enforcing its mask ban on federal agents.
“This Department of Justice will not stand by idly in the face of lawless efforts that endanger our brothers and sisters in blue,” Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said.
In addition to federal officers being prohibited from wearing facial coverings while performing official duties, the legislation also requires agents to clearly display their badge and name tag. Additionally, it seeks to require federal officers to adhere to Connecticut’s preferred use-of-force policies.
These measures endanger agents who are already facing harassment, doxxing, and violence, the DOJ said in its news release.
If federal officers do not comply with Connecticut’s law, they could face prosecution. This ultimately chills federal law enforcement and disrupts sensitive operations, the Justice Department added.
CDC Monitoring Ebola Developments in Congo and Uganda
A Congolese health worker prepares to administer the Ebola vaccine outside the house of a victim who died from Ebola in the village of Mangina in the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo on Aug. 18, 2018. Reuters/Olivia Acland/Fil
NBA: Officials' no-call in Cavs-Pistons Game 5 was correct
In the last seconds of regulation in Game 5 between the Cavaliers and Pistons in Detroit, officials did not call a foul on Jarrett Allen, the NBA stated on Thursday.
The no-call on Allen, who made contact with Ausar Thompson as the Pistons' guard was pursuing a loose ball, caused some controversy in the closing seconds of the fourth quarter. Cleveland went on to win 117-113 in overtime on Wednesday night.
Following the defeat, Pistons coach J.B. Bickerstaff agreed with Thompson's protests, saying: "[Allen] fouled Ausar -- plainly." He was after a lost ball when he tripped him.
STEVE KERR WALKED into the lobby of the Beverly Wilshire with a secret. Win or lose, he'd decided to retire as head coach of the Golden State Warriors. It was a Tuesday morning in mid-April, the day before the team's first postseason play-in game in Los Angeles. When this season ended, his 12-year run with the Golden State Warriors would end, too. In the airy hotel restaurant behind the concierge desk, Kerr gave his name and room number, 516 -- "Johnny Bench Joe Montana" -- and a hostess showed us to a table by the window. He looked around and lowered his voice.
"I think it's over," he said, almost mouthing the words. His sweatsuit separated him from the businessmen eating breakfast in suits and ties nearby. He put the odds at 95 percent. In the last few days he'd grown more certain. The waiter took his order, the California Breakfast. Normally he's cheerful as a sunrise but this morning he seemed melancholy. He was tired at the end of a disappointing season and mourning the fraying connections. A great basketball team stands on a shared feeling more than strategy or scouting. The team lives as long as the feeling lives and when it's gone, not only is it impossible to recapture, it's hard to even remember.
The waiter brought Kerr's eggs. Sitting in yet another hotel breakfast room at the end of yet another long season, he sifted through memories. Like the night Klay Thompson scored 37 points in a quarter, his teammates delirious at the sight of it, Steph Curry running up and down the sidelines as the crowd got louder and louder. "It felt like we were in the presence of God," Steve said, and when I asked why sometimes players reach a flow state, he said it was more than optimized mechanics.
"I think there's some mysterious spiritual thing."
AST NIGHT HE DROVE from Beverly Hills to Draymond Green's house for a team dinner, a last supper of sorts, where a local pitmaster smoked brisket, lamb chops, pork shoulder and burnt ends. The ride took him past his old junior high school. His memory of those halls led him back to when he and his family lived in an actual house on a hill, with sweeping views of the Pacific Ocean and Los Angeles. He grew up bouncing between Pacific Palisades and Cairo as the family followed his father's career as an American expert on the complex history and politics of the world's tinderbox. In 1982, Malcolm Kerr became president of the American University of Beirut. Steve didn't think it sounded safe but felt too young and shy to say anything in the family meeting. His silence in that meeting combined with the quiet in the car as he headed toward the team barbecue. Years fell away. His childhood home burned in the Palisades Fire last year. Only memories remain.
Coming out of high school, no major college coach thought Kerr could play at the next level. Gonzaga brought him up for a tryout but its point guard, John Stockton, embarrassed him. The only two interested schools were Cal State Fullerton and Arizona, which at the time had a long history of mediocre basketball. First-year coach Lute Olson believed he could change the culture. Kerr chose Arizona. He struggled in practice and knew it. His teammates openly wondered how he'd earned a scholarship. Olson himself admitted later that he planned to recruit someone else to replace Kerr the following season. Steve was barely playing, averaging just under six points a game. Then his life broke in two.
On January 18, 1984, an Iranian-sponsored gunman from Hezbollah shot Malcolm Kerr in the head. As a high-profile figure, he had been targeted as part of efforts to drive Americans out of Lebanon. The four Kerr children were spread across the globe when it happened. Steve's mom couldn't get through from Beirut. Steve's sister, Susan Kerr van de Ven, told veteran sportswriter and Kerr biographer Scott Howard-Cooper that Steve was the only one of the Kerr children who was alone when the news came and "he was just a boy." A family friend, Vahe Simonian, finally reached him in his dorm room at Arizona.
The phone rang at 3 a.m. He answered in the dark.
"Your father has been shot," Simonian said.
Even 42 years later, Kerr tells the story in a kind of stilted monotone.
Steve asked if he was OK.
There was a long pause.
Finally Simonian spoke.
"Your father was a great man," he said.
Kerr ran downstairs in the dorm, hysterical, pounding on the door of two teammates. Then he went and sat alone outside on the curb.
"On Speedway Boulevard," he said, remembering the cold concrete and the empty street.
He told me he started walking. He told me he hasn't slowed down since. Around town, as word of what happened spread, players and coaches rushed to his side. Basketball didn't matter, but the basketball team did. Olson told Kerr to step away, to take as much time and space as he needed. The team's next game, at home against rival Arizona State, was two days later. Steve said he wanted to play. That playing was the only time he wasn't thinking about his dad. Olson told Steve he didn't need to come out for the pregame moment of silence. Steve said he wanted to be with his team. He stood in the line and wiped his eyes. The game began. He didn't start but with 12:58 left in the first half, Olson subbed him in. Kerr hit a 25-footer. Swish. He hit a 15-footer. Swish. He made a third. The public address announcer stretched out his name, bellowing, "Steeeeeve Kerrrrr."
The crowd shouted back like a revival call and response. "Steeeeeve Kerrrrr!" Arizona State called a timeout and an Arizona manager named Todd Walsh told me later that the roof lifted off the McKale Center. Kerr sat on the bench and Walsh tried to hand him a towel or his warmup top. Kerr shook him off. Walsh took his spot behind the huddle, looking into the stands, where the front row of fans stood almost on top of the team. He looked into their faces and saw tears. He heard them cheer, a building roar, manic and hungry to heal. Kerr finished with a career-high 12 points and got a standing ovation when Olson took him out with 1:39 left. Walsh said he felt like the arena formed "a cocoon" around Steve.
You can draw a line that night. On one side, the son -- the boy -- the life interrupted. On the other, the player, the teammate, the man safe inside the simplicity of a season. Now, he thought it might be time to leave the cocoon behind. The Warriors had a meeting in 10 minutes, on the mezzanine level of the hotel, and then maybe only one more game. The waiter brought the check. Kerr shook his head. "What we had is gone," he said, "but we're trying to hang on to it. I don't know if anybody really knows if it exists anymore."
HE FIRST TALKED about retirement last June, after the 2025 season. The Warriors had been beaten in the second round of the playoffs, after Curry went down with an injury. Kerr had been down to Mexico on his annual surfing trip and in a few weeks, his coaches would meet for the preseason kickoff retreat. We met for lunch at a little café in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood. He ordered a peppermint tea. The waiter slipped across the quiet floor towards the counter.
"My wife and I have been talking about it a lot," Kerr said. "I have a year left on my contract."
Maybe one more season. Maybe two. When Steph Curry and Draymond Green leave, the franchise deserves a clean start, he said. Maybe he should have walked away already. "We are one injury from completely falling apart," he said as the waiter returned to take our order.
Kerr loves the game and its history. He's an obsessive sports fan and has been watching the last acts of sporting lives for the past 40 years. It's often ugly. The final years of Lute Olson's life were not the victory lap they should have been. Kerr doesn't want the Warriors to end up like the New England Patriots, marred by grudges and grievances. He watched Michael Jordan retire, then unretire, then retire, then unretire. His friends used to grill him about MJ.
"Why doesn't he go out on top?"
"Because he can't," Kerr told them.
For the past few years, Kerr has watched his mentor, San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, struggle through this same decision. Pop once called Steve to tell him he'd finally decided to retire. Steve congratulated him on a Hall of Fame career. A week later Pop signed an extension with San Antonio. Popovich finally officially quit six weeks before our lunch, six months after a stroke diminished him physically. People who loved him had to show him the door, as gently as possible. That hurt Steve. He respects Popovich so much. He loved playing for him and coaching with him. He once told Gregg he was the finest man he'd ever known and thanked him for all he'd done for him. Pop smiled and said his feet were made of clay like everyone else's. Steve didn't believe it then. Now he does.
"I realized he couldn't do it," Kerr said. "He couldn't walk away."
I asked how he'd avoided the trap. He laughed.
"I'm sitting here wondering," he said.
He laughed at himself again.
"How am I gonna feel exactly a year from now? Maybe two years from now? Because the job itself is so addictive. ... You wanna trust yourself but also be suspicious of your own motives. You don't want to walk away too early but you don't want to walk away too late. And you worry about what your life is gonna feel like ... ."
"What do you do the first morning?" I asked.
"Exactly. You ever see "The Hurt Locker"? You remember when the guy goes into the grocery store?"
The waiter stopped at our table. He called Kerr "Coach."
"I'm gonna do the patty melt," Steve said.
The waiter turned to me but before I could order, Steve caught his eye and switched to a fried chicken sandwich.
"I changed my mind," he said.
TWO MONTHS LATER, just before the start of this season, he started a new therapy program for his back. He called the severity of the pain over the past 12 years his "deep, dark secret." The worst part of his chronic condition was the pressure building behind his eyes. The migraines could level him. He'd always been casual about his body, he realizes now, taking his physical life for granted. When he retired from playing, he threw himself into a steady diet of golf, mixing in surfing and playing volleyball and basketball with his kids. He played a lot of tennis on hard courts. He ignored the pain in his knees and back.
"That's my own hubris," he said.
The toughest battle of his life started during Game 5 of his first NBA Finals as a head coach in 2015. He tweaked his back standing up on the bench. He ignored it, coached through the pain, feeling invincible. They won the title in six games over the Cleveland Cavaliers, his sixth title after winning five as a player, and in the weeks following the championship he played golf and beach volleyball. His back continued to hurt. A doctor offered a surgical solution that he said would have him rehabbed and ready for the start of training camp. After the operation, Kerr felt better for about 10 days then got hit by a strange headache, similar to migraines he'd suffered since around 13. Neck pain followed. Some doctors suspected the surgeon had accidentally nicked the protective membrane around Kerr's spine which caused a leak of fluid. To this day the cause of his pain remains a mystery. He was "in agony," as he said later, and in just his second year of a dream job, took a leave of absence. He spent many of his days in his family's second house in San Diego, away from his team, barely able to get out of bed. The Warriors kept rolling without him while his wife, Margot, lived on the internet searching for new treatments for leaking spinal fluid.
He went to every doctor imaginable, a search for relief that would continue for a decade, flying up to Mayo, or down to Duke, or even to England for stem-cell therapy not approved in the United States. Nothing worked. In January of 2016 he returned to the team, leading the Warriors to an NBA-record 73 regular-season wins and taking them back to the finals, where they lost to the Cavaliers after being up three games to one. He made his health mostly off-limits in interviews.
One day his phone buzzed. It was Tiger Woods, who'd gotten his number from a mutual friend. Woods knew a lot about chronic pain.
"Did he have advice that worked?" I asked.
"No," Kerr said, "but we commiserated!"
The pressure in his head, right behind his eyes, mimicked the symptoms of papilledema. Oftentimes it felt like a huge vise cranking down on his temples. He got a full neuro workup from an expert at UC San Francisco, which came back totally normal. Three different ophthalmologists found no evidence of anything. It made him feel like he was going crazy.
He kept his pain private, wanting some piece of his increasingly public life to remain his alone. Privacy became a critical part of retaining his humanity, he said. After a lifetime in a supporting role, he finally understood what his more famous and successful teammates and coaches had dealt with during their prime. The Warriors won back-to-back titles over Cleveland in 2017 and 2018, his seventh and eighth. Three in four years. Two contrasting feelings were playing themselves out in him through that run, shaping him. He can see it now in hindsight. The act of coaching, which meant connecting deeply to the interior lives of his players, and allowing them to connect with him, was breaking open cracks in the walls he'd put up between himself and his traumatic memories. At the same time, his deteriorating physical life was stealing from him the movement and grind through which he'd most effectively managed that trauma over the years.
"I have a sense of humility about me," he said, "but it didn't translate to how I treated my body and myself. I'm paying for it now. I went to the Giants game the other day. I've gotten to know the manager Bob Melvin really well. He showed me the batting cages."
"Hey, you wanna step in?" Melvin asked.
Kerr moaned in mock agony as he remembered it, sitting at a café near the commercial fishing marina in San Francisco, groaning and twisting in his chair like he'd been hit with a baseball bat.
"Yes, yes, yes! I could go out to center field to shag flies ... I just miss the act of movement and flow and that zen you feel."
He'd been in pain for 11 years now. On some level he'd given up on relief. Then this offseason, while on vacation in France, he listened to a podcast with psychotherapist and back pain expert Nicole Sachs. She talked about her work with NBA star Michael Porter Jr., who like Steve has had three back surgeries. That got Kerr's attention and reminded him of a book he'd read by Alan Gordon, called "The Way Out." Several years ago, he'd made significant progress on his pain with Gordon. Both Gordon and Sachs expanded on the work of Dr. John Sarno, who believed that chronic pain like Kerr's came from unresolved, buried trauma, and the pain was the mind's way of crying out for help. It's called tension myositis syndrome, in which emotional stress causes physical responses. Kerr had discovered Sarno a decade ago and had corresponded with Gordon a few years back. Now, listening to Sachs' podcast, the ideas had come back and had somehow hit him differently. His personality type of a sensitive perfectionist fit the mold of a TMS sufferer, and when he read Sachs' book -- it opened with a C.S. Lewis quote: "It is easier to say my tooth is aching than to say my heart is broken." -- he believed the treatment might work for him.
After an introduction from Porter, Sachs and Kerr started speaking directly. She gave him homework and on the eve of the season he started her program. The treatment involved setting a timer for 20 minutes every morning and then journaling, about trauma, about anger, shame and hatred. When the timer ran out, Kerr followed Sachs' instructions and erased whatever he'd written and then would sit still and take a breath and begin a meditation, alone in the quiet of his emptying mind for no less than 10 minutes. Then he would stand, and breathe it out and go to coach his team.
Act 2: The 82
KERR CALLED A MEETING with his staff when the 2025-26 season schedule was released, feeling the obstacles between the Warriors and a playoff berth. The two most important voices in the room belonged to the travel guy and the performance guy, who needed to figure out how to move an aging team around the country, night after night, with a chance to win.
Kerr circled the opening 17 games, including 13 on the road and five back-to-backs. They played three games in the first four days of the season.
"That's a pretty rough start," someone in the room said.
They won the first two games. The third game was in Portland. One of his preseason fears had been that the Warriors' dynasty would be eulogized one injury report and one exhausted aging star at a time. That would come terrifyingly true in that third game. "We got destroyed," Kerr said a few weeks later. "I think we turned it over 25 times. I regretted not resting all our stars that night."
The league won't let him rest Curry and Jimmy Butler if the game is on national television. If a player has made an All-Star team or an All-NBA team in the previous three years, they must be injured to sit out. Designated stars, they're called.
"This is the first year that Draymond is not a designated star," he said.
"Is he happy about that or a little pissed?" I asked.
"He might be a little pissed," he said with a smile.
Kerr wanted something from this season, even if he couldn't quite articulate it in the beginning. He sensed Steph and Dray wanted it, too. They all missed what Steph calls "meaningful basketball." They have these memories of the championship seasons that can be accessed only by experiencing them anew, as if the feeling itself unlocks some mental vault, and when their careers end, those feelings will slowly move out of reach. At the same time, those memories are themselves the enemy of this last act, which requires redefined goals, the reward structure shifting from external to internal. Everything in Steve's life was pushing him inward. They weren't chasing titles, only the feeling of saddling up one last time together, wanting most of all to feel justified when the ride is done. This was Steve's 30th start to a new season but it was different than all the others, which made every step forward uncertain and new.
He believed they would have won a second playoff series last year if Steph hadn't gotten hurt against the Timberwolves. He believed they could win a playoff series or more if they found some shared reason to fight together this year, too. It was the fourth quarter for Golden State. Some of the most dramatic basketball stories ever told are about the rise and peak of the Warriors but this year would be about the fall, and the end, and how they responded, how they honored the past.
They waded together into the first 17.
KERR BELIEVED WITH his whole heart that there was honor in not chasing rings but something more primal, to prove to themselves that they never lost their fighting spirit. He took the podium early in the season and got a question about their recalibrated goals. The Warriors were not the 2017 world-beaters any longer, he said.
"We are ... " he said, shrugging his shoulders as he searched for the words.
" ... a fading dynasty."
A few days later he walked with his dog, Lulu, and his daughter's dog, Mabel, through the redwood grove in the Presidio. Both dogs are English cream retrievers. Mabel rolled around in a patch of mud. Steve laughed hard. We passed through green shafts of light, cool beneath the towering canopies. The air smelled like eucalyptus. It felt prehistoric. We wound down several switchbacks and the whole bay emerged sparkling blue, with the red spans of the Golden Gate Bridge high above.
"I said, 'We're a fading dynasty,'" he said. "There is beauty in the struggle, fans enjoying us trying to fight until the last breath."
He stopped and wheeled around, like the crack of a fallen branch had loosed something in him. His body language changed, a switch flipped. Clawing to the eighth seed could offer its own rewards, he thought.
His voice rose.
"There's such honor in that!"
He looked out at the bay and the ocean beyond, at the beautiful reach of it. At the light flashing and dancing on the water. At the currents and patterns forming and disappearing. Like karesansui, the Japanese art of arcing sand designs, a season has an ephemeral beauty, part intention and part surrender, something cherished and then lost.
"This is what it's all about," he said.
His voice rose again.
"You compete. Until the last breath!"https://dutchrelay.com/regef7219c?key=d26f046d77045c805cf7655456802f03
Kerr had gotten a call from someone on the team's business side. They wanted him to stop calling the team a fading dynasty. Season ticket renewals were going out. They were looking to strike a rosier note. He agreed to stop but he thought they were letting an opportunity pass, that he could sell this idea to the team, especially Steph and Draymond, who would feel most alive in the struggle. That he could sell this idea to himself.
"How are we gonna finish this?" he asked.
Lulu tugged at the leash.
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