MONTECITO, Calif. – It was timed to get in and out at the lowest tide of the day, and that’s how a beached vessel was removed from a Montecito Beach Friday.

It started at 4:30 a.m. with a crew from Marborg Industries and the non-profit Heal the Ocean, which funded the removal.

The owner was not able to deal with the wreckage. It was on the beach for more than a week.

The heavy equipment and a roll off to collect the vessel came in from Santa Barbara’s East Beach around a tight point under the cemetery and made it to the western end of Butterfly Beach.

The vessel was a 30-foot sailboat.

It was crushed and scooped up in just a few minutes.

After that, the team of workers went thorough the debris location to collect the splinters by hand to make sure the beach was cleared of hazards when the project was done.

They made it out as the tide was beginning to rise again.

Marborg and Heal the Ocean have responded several times to rid the beaches of crashed boats that are left unattended.

This insures they are not a risk to the public or the environment.

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – The Santa Barbara City Fire Department put its newest and most sophisticated fire apparatus into service Friday. It is a truck with a ladder reach of 107 feet.

“This apparatus is capable of reaching the tallest building in the city, which is the Granada Theater,” said Santa Barbara City Fire Chief Chris Mailes.

The truck was ordered in 2022 in anticipation of future needs.

It has a cost of $1.67 million. If it were to be ordered today, the price would be $2.28 million.

The crew from the previous truck transitioned their equipment after a morning ceremony, which included pushing the truck into the station house (with engine assist). That is a tradition.

This vehicle will be able to handle fire calls for all mid-rise or high-rise buildings primarily in the city of Santa Barbara, but also on mutual aid to Montecito and Carpinteria which do not have a ladder truck. “Having an aerial ladder attached to an apparatus that can extend over even a smaller building. It is by far the safest for the crew to operate. So that ladder goes up quite often,” said Mailes.

There are four in the county with the next closest in Goleta. The other two are in Solvang and Santa Maria.

“This rig has to be really, really maneuverable up to the narrowest streets of Santa Barbara,” said Mailes. It also has to make its way into the State Street promenade or for example, behind the Granada Theatre.

Fire Captain Bob Kendall said many response functions will not change, but there is a learning curve with some of the new designs and technology. “They learn mostly the equipment and everything that’s on it when they go to their engineer task. They learn how to operate it and operate safely, effectively, quickly.”

The truck has battery powered equipment stored in the side compartments.

It has a “clean cab” that will be free of fumes that could lead to health problems.

The fire truck was build by Pierce Manufacturing in Wisconsin. A special team from the fire department went back in person to make the precise order for the needs of the Santa Barbara community.

From the order and manufacturing, the rig was delivered to a site in Ontario for final testing and then it came to Santa Barbara.

It will operate out of Station 1 on Carrillo Street.

By Annette Choi, CNN

(CNN) — The US Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Tennessee’s ban on gender identity care for transgender minors earlier this summer has fueled ongoing polarization around LGBTQ issues and controversial policies across the nation. The high court has also agreed to take on more cases dealing with trans rights in its next session that begins in October.

Twenty-seven states have passed laws limiting access to gender identity health care for transgender children and teenagers, according to KFF, a nonpartisan health policy think tank. An estimated 40% of trans youth ages 13 to 17 live in these states.

There have already been more anti-LGBTQ bills introduced in state legislatures so far this year than in any full year since at least 2020, a CNN analysis of American Civil Liberties Union data found. These bills span various aspects of everyday life, including bathroom access, school sports and identification documents.

CNN is tracking where these laws are being passed and where these bills are being introduced. This story will be updated.

Gender identity care includes medically necessary, evidence-based care that uses a multidisciplinary approach to help a person transition from their assigned sex— the one the person was designated at birth — to their affirmed gender, the gender by which one wants to be known.

Most of the states limiting gender identity care for trans minors adopted their bans in 2023, a record-breaking year for such laws. So far this year, one state — Kansas — has passed a ban, prohibiting the use of state funds to provide or subsidize health care for transgender youth.

Not all laws are currently being enforced, however. The ban in Arkansas has been permanently blocked by a federal court, though the state said it would appeal the ruling. Montana’s ban is also permanently blocked, according to KFF. Though Arizona has a 2022 law on the books banning surgical care for transgender minors, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs signed an executive order in 2023 ensuring access to gender identity health care.

Another record year for anti-LGBTQ bills

Nearly 600 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced into state legislatures as of July 11, which is already more than any other year on record, according to the ACLU.

Education and health care continue to be key targets. There were more bills restricting student and educator rights — enforcing school sports bans and targeting students’ access to facilities consistent with their gender identities, for example — than any other category of bills, according to a CNN analysis of ACLU data.

Legislators in Texas have introduced 88 anti-LGBTQ bills so far this year, more than double the number of bills being considered in any other state. Four of those — including one that limits changes to gender markers on state medical records — have been passed into law.

In late July, Texas lawmakers are reconvening for a 30-day special session. On the agenda is a transgender bathroom bill.

Lawmakers in every state, except for Vermont, have filed at least one anti-LGBTQ bill in 2025, according to a CNN analysis. Twenty-two states have signed those bills into law.

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By David Wright, CNN

(CNN) — Democrats running in next year’s midterms are pumping out videos of themselves pumping iron.

In one video, Texas Senate candidate Colin Allred stands in his home gym after a workout and, still in a sweat, criticizes President Donald Trump’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. In another, Cait Conley, an Army veteran challenging New York Rep. Mike Lawler, talks about affordability as a video plays of her pressing weights over her head.

And when a critic on social media jabbed at his bench-press form in a recent campaign ad, Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed posted a snappy dismissal correcting how many pounds he was lifting.

“That’s 315, habibi,” El-Sayed said in a post on X that has been viewed more than 5 million times.

Politicians working out in public is a bipartisan custom. But Democrats are increasingly posting weightlifting content in hopes of reaching male voters in the so-called “manosphere” that Trump mastered during his campaign. They are also trying to move past the ongoing arguments – fanned by Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill – over former President Joe Biden’s physical and mental fitness.

“People want to see vigor, they want to see action, that you’re prepared to do the job, doing more than sitting behind a podium regurgitating a litany of nonsensical acronyms,” said Democratic strategist Joe Caiazzo.

Pat Dennis, another strategist, credited candidates for exploring new ways to reach people, but warned about seeming inauthentic.

“I would caution Democrats against pulling out a checklist – ‘For young men, we’ll do some bench pressing; for young women, we’ll talk about the Barbie movie,’” he said. “People don’t like checklists and they don’t like being pandered to. They remember you for who you are. You need to be authentic, in a way that is believable.”

El-Sayed said posting his lifts allows him to reach young men who otherwise have trouble identifying with Democrats. But he argues that the weightlifting content isn’t just for men.

“As bro-coded as heavy lifting tends to be, like I said, some of the most monster lifters I’ve ever met are women over the ages of 65,” he said. “This is a discipline that is there for everybody.”

Putting politics in the gym

El-Sayed is running in a crowded primary to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters. As a physician and former public health official, El-Sayed has made health, fitness and appeals to young men hallmarks of his campaign.

“Part of the problem that we often have is folks don’t see themselves in our politics,” he told CNN. “I want to break that artificial barrier down – bringing the politics back into the gym and bringing the gym back into politics.”

This month, his campaign launched Facebook ads touting his workouts and calling for “time, effort, and discipline” in politics.

In other social media posts, El-Sayed has spoken out about the need for better male role models and discussed how leaders can improve their outreach.

And El-Sayed also acknowledged that the focus on health and fitness could address voter concerns about aging political leadership.

“I do think there’s something about vigor that you need in public leaders. Our public leaders need to be able to go all in, in the things that they do, and push themselves in all the ways that they can,” he told CNN. “What it doesn’t look like is Donald Trump. It’s hilarious to me that like, he walks around being this caricature of a macho man – buddy, we’ve all seen you in a polo shirt.”

A former linebacker tries to reach men

Allred is a retired NFL linebacker and former congressman making his second run for Senate this year in Texas, where Democrats are hoping for a statewide breakthrough against incumbent GOP Sen. John Cornyn or primary rival Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general. Allred lost a Senate bid last year to Sen. Ted Cruz.

The brawny Democrat has also made physical fitness a key part of his communications strategy, filming workout videos and using them to comment on campaign developments and news of the day.

“I’m at the end of my workout here, and just wanted to thank y’all for helping us have such a great launch yesterday,” he says, breathing hard and pumping weights, in a video posted the day after his campaign launch.

In another video posted last Friday, Allred commented on the escalating controversy over Epstein and his alleged links to Trump.

“Hey everybody, I just finished my workout, hope you got your workout in. So I guess we gotta talk about Jeffrey Epstein,” he says in the video.

Allred described his thinking behind the videos to CNN, saying that “it’s not something that I really planned on doing, as much as I started to feel like after my workouts, that I was doing anyway – that was when I felt I had something to say.”

Allred also said he recognized the concerns that voters have about aging politicians. “I think it’s a real concern,” he said. “I do think that we have to show folks that we have the energy and I’d say sort of the fitness in order to go to bat for them.”

Earlier this year, Allred helped found the “Speaking with American Men” project, aimed at helping the party reach those voters.

In a memo outlining their “strategic plan” for 2025, the group pledged to “develop a cohort of credible voices … to promote a constructive, aspirational vision of manhood that aligns with Democratic values without alienating other core constituencies.”

Campaign planks and pull-ups

In Colorado’s battleground 8th District, state Rep. Manny Rutinel is challenging Republican incumbent Gabe Evans with a series of social media videos that often feature Rutinel playing sports, working out, and ribbing his GOP rival.

“If I do 20 pull-ups, we’re gonna flip a red seat blue in Congress to stop the horrors of the Trump administration,” he says in one of the videos on Instagram.

J.D. Scholten, a state lawmaker and minor league pitcher seeking to challenge Iowa GOP Sen. Joni Ernst, shared a video of a “spot start” he made pitching for the independent Sioux City Explorers, writing, “We got the W and are back in first place! Still learning the game at 45 years old…”

It’s not just men who are producing fitness content. Conley, the Army veteran challenging Lawler in a top battleground district, has also made workouts and exercise a key component of her campaign communications.

“Welcome to Reps and Real Talk,” Conley, sitting in front of a bench press, says in an Instagram video promoting her campaign launch in March. “Over the coming weeks and months, I’ll be posting videos here to talk to you.”

Conley told CNN in a statement that “fitness embodies those values which have guided me my whole life – from West Point to 16 years of military service and multiple combat tours.”

Meanwhile, Colorado Rep. Jason Crow – eyeing a Senate seat potentially opening with Democratic incumbent Michael Bennet running for governor – is a former Army Ranger who says he’s training to retake the Army Combat Fitness test.

“I’m not the 27-year-old Ranger anymore,” joked Crow, 46, in an interview with CNN. “But, you know, I’m crushing the pull-ups, I’m crushing the push-ups, the sprint-drag-carry I’m doing well, the plank I’m doing well on. I just need a little bit more time on the max deadlift than I used to so, but I’ll get it there.”

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A still from a livestream shows armored personnel intercepting the Handala, with those aboard surrendering immediately. Freedom Flotilla Coalition

A Gaza-bound ship carrying aid and activists was intercepted by Israeli forces Saturday night within 70 nautical miles of its intended destination, according to the human rights group Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC).

“The occupation has disabled our cameras and all communication has been lost,” the organization’s spokesperson told CNN in a message.

CNN has reached out to the Israel Defense Forces for comment.

A YouTube livestream showed armed personnel boarding the ship while the activists on deck, all wearing life jackets, held their hands in the air in surrender. One of the helmeted personnel appears to manipulate the camera on the deck, turning it around. The group’s livestream ended soon after that.

The Handala, named for a famous Palestinian cartoon character, is part of the FFC, which has attempted numerous times to break Israel’s blockade on Gaza via sea and deliver aid to Palestinians there.

A few hours before the ship was intercepted, the FFC released a statement saying that the Handala was steering toward Egypt in an effort to avoid being boarded.

Two members of the French and European parliaments are aboard, as well as Christian Small, a US trade unionist.

More background: The apparent end of Handala’s journey toward Gaza comes a little over a month after another ship from the Freedom Flotilla, the Madleen, was similarly intercepted on its way to the enclave.

That ship, crewed by a group that included climate activist Greta Thunberg, was also laden with aid. Israeli authorities towed their ship to Ashdod, and all aboard were deported from Israel afterwards.