You know what tech startups hate? Complicated legal compliance. The problem is, Facebook isn’t a startup any more, but its competitors are.

There have been plenty of calls from congress and critics to regulate Facebook following the election interference scandal and now the Cambridge Analytica debacle. The government could require extensive ads transparency reporting or data privacy protections. That could cost Facebook a lot of money, slow down its operations, or inhibit its ability to build new products.

But the danger is that those same requirements could be much more onerous for a tiny upstart company to uphold. Without much cash or enough employees, and with product-market fit still to nail down, young startups might be anchored by the weight of regulation. It could prevent them from ever rising to become a true alternative to Facebook. Venture capitalists choosing whether to fund the next Facebook killer might look at the regulations as too high of a price of entry.

STANFORD, CA – JUNE 24: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (R) hugs U.S. President Barack Obama during the 2016 Global Entrepeneurship Summit at Stanford University on June 24, 2016 in Stanford, California. President Obama joined Silicon Valley leaders on the final day of the Global Entrepreneurship Summit. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

The lack of viable alternatives has made the #DeleteFacebook movement toothless. Where are people going to go? Instagram? WhatsApp? The government already missed its chances to stop Facebook from acquiring these companies that are massive social networks in their own right.

The only social networks to carve out communities since Facebook’s rise did so largely by being completely different, like the ephemeral Snapchat that purposefully doesn’t serve as a web identity platform, and the mostly-public Twitter that caters to thought leaders and celebrities more than normal people sharing their personal lives. Blockchain-based decentralized social networks sound nice but may be impossible to spin up.

That’s left few places for Facebook haters to migrate. This might explain why despite having so many more users, #DeleteFacebook peaked last week at substantially fewer Twitter mentions than the big #DeleteUber campaign from last January, according to financial data dashboard Sentieo. Lyft’s existence makes #DeleteUber a tenable stance, because you don’t have to change your behavior pattern, just your brand of choice.

If the government actually wants to protect the public against Facebook abusing its power, it would need to go harder than the Honest Ads Act that would put political advertising on Internet platforms under the same scrutiny regarding disclosure of buyers as the rules for TV and radio advertising. That’s basically just extra paperwork for Facebook. We’ve seen regulatory expenses deter competition amongst broadband internet service providers and in other industries. Real change would necessitate regulation that either creates alternatives to Facebook or at least doesn’t inhibit their creation.

That could mean only requiring certain transparency and privacy protections from apps over a certain size, like 200 million daily users. This would put the cap a bit above Twitter and Snapchat’s size today, giving them time to prepare for compliance, while immediately regulating Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Google’s social problem child YouTube.

Still, with Facebook earning billions in profit per quarter and a massive war chest built up, Mark Zuckerberg could effectively pay his way out of the problem. That’s why it makes perfect sense for him to have told CNN “I’m not sure we shouldn’t be regulated” and that “There are things like ad transparency regulation that I would love to see.” Particular regulatory hurdles amount to just tiny speed bumps for Facebook. Courting this level of regulation could bat down the question of whether it should be broken up or its News Feed algorithm needs to change.

Meanwhile, if the government instituted new rules for tech platforms collecting persona information going forward, it could effectively lock in Facebook’s lead in the data race. If it becomes more cumbersome to gather this kind of data, no competitor might ever amass an index of psychographic profiles and social graphs able to rival Facebook’s.

A much more consequential approach would be to break up Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Facebook is trying to preempt these drastic measures with Zuckerberg’s recent apology tour and its purchase of full-page ads in nine newspapers today claiming it understands its responsibility.

Establishing them as truly independent companies that compete would create meaningful alternatives to Facebook. Instagram and WhatsApp would have to concern themselves with actually becoming sustainable businesses. They’d all lose some economies of data scale, forfeiting the ability to share engineering, anti-spam, localization, ad sales, and other resources that a source close to Instagram told me it gained by being acquired in 2012, and that Facebook later applied to WhatsApp too.

Both permanent photo sharing and messaging would become two-horse races again. That could lead to the consumer-benefiting competition and innovation the government hopes for from regulation.

Yet with strong regulation like dismantling Facebook seeming beyond the resolve of congress, and weak regulation potentially protecting Facebook, perhaps it’s losing the moral high ground that will be Facebook’s real punishment.

Facebook chief legal officer Colin Stretch testifies before congress regarding Russian election interference

We’ve already seen that first-time download rates aren’t plummeting for Facebook, its App Store ranking has actually increased since the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke, and blue chip advertisers aren’t bailing, according to BuzzFeed. But Facebook relies on the perception of its benevolent mission to recruit top talent in Silicon Valley and beyond.

Techies take the job because they wake up each day believing that they’re having a massive positive influence by connecting the world. These people could have founded or worked at a new startup where they’d have discernible input on the direction of the product, and a chance to earn huge return multiples on their stock. Many have historically worked at Facebook because its ads say it’s the “Best place to build and make an impact”.

But if workers start to see that impact as negative, they might not enlist. This is what could achieve that which surface-level regulation can’t. It’s perhaps the most important repercussion of all the backlash about fake news, election interference, well-being, and data privacy: that losing talent could lead to a slow-down of innovation at Facebook that might  leave the door open for a new challenger.

For more on Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, read our feature pieces:

Zuckerberg’s response to Cambridge scandal omits why it delayed investigating

7 much scarier questions for Zuckerberg

Facebook and the endless string of worst-case scenarios

Ms. Clifford’s interview — which made for the most anticipated episode of “60 Minutes” in recent memory — was something of a national event, one marked by viewing parties and “Dark and Stormy” cocktail specials at bars, a nod to her professional name, Stormy Daniels.

And it was a quintessential moment of the Trump presidency — a tabloid-ready scandal and must-see television — that carried potential legal implications for Mr. Trump and his longtime lawyer and personal fixer, Michael Cohen. Until Sunday’s broadcast, Ms. Clifford had kept her public appearances to the strip club circuit — what she called her “Make America Horny Again” tour. But, in speaking with Mr. Cooper, she chose businesslike attire that was in keeping with the seriousness of the legal case she is making, that she had been silenced in a cover-up effort to protect the presidential prospects of Mr. Trump.

Ms. Clifford is one of two women who have recently filed suit seeking to get out of agreements they said they entered during the last stretch of the 2016 campaign to give up the rights to their stories about what they have said were affairs with Mr. Trump. The other woman, a former Playmate named Karen McDougal, sold her rights to the company that owns The National Enquirer — which never published it — and spoke to Mr. Cooper on CNN on Thursday. Representatives for Mr. Trump have denied that he had an affair with either woman.

Both cases present potentially consequential legal challenges for Mr. Trump, forming the basis of complaints that have been filed with the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department saying that the payments constituted illegal campaign contributions.

Ms. Clifford’s appearance on “60 Minutes” showed that the effort to keep her story from public view had failed spectacularly — just as statements from Mr. Cohen that he would seek millions of dollars in damages from her for violating a hush agreement had not kept her from appearing on what is often the highest-rated program in television news.

Asked by Mr. Cooper why she was taking the legally risky route of sitting for a nationally televised interview, she said, “I was perfectly fine saying nothing at all, but I’m not O.K. with being made out to be a liar.”

Ms. Clifford had first threatened to speak out in February, after, she said, Mr. Cohen broke his part of the previously secret 2016 agreement by telling The New York Times that he had paid the $130,000 from his own pocket. He has denied Mr. Trump had an affair with Ms. Clifford.

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The White House was quiet ahead of the airing of Ms. Clifford’s interview, though an ally of Mr. Trump’s, the Newsmax founder and editor in chief, Christopher Ruddy, told ABC News earlier on Sunday that Mr. Trump considered her story “a political hoax.” Mr. Trump spent the evening before the interview dining at his club in Palm Beach, Mar-a-Lago, with Mr. Cohen.

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Ms. Clifford said during the interview that while she had seen Mr. Trump more than once, she had had sex with him a single time, unprotected. That happened shortly after they met at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe in 2006. (Ms. McDougal has also said that she, too, was intimate with Mr. Trump during that event.) Mr. Trump was 60 at the time; Ms. Clifford was 27.

Ms. Clifford said that Mr. Trump had invited her to his hotel suite for dinner, and that their banter began with him showing her a magazine cover featuring his photograph. “I was like, ‘Someone should take that magazine and spank you with it,”’ she said. “So he turned around and pulled his pants down a little — you know, had underwear on and stuff, and I just gave him a couple swats.”

It was done in a joking manner she said, and the flirtation — which included Mr. Trump comparing Ms. Clifford to his daughter — led to intercourse, though, she said, she had not been particularly attracted to Mr. Trump and had not wanted to have sex with him. (She said she nonetheless went along of her own accord.)

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“He said that it was great,” she said, and told her he had had “a great evening, and it was nothing like he expected, that I really surprised him, that a lot of people must underestimate me — that he hoped that I would be willing to see him again, and that we would discuss the things we had talked about earlier in the evening.”

Mr. Trump, she said, had raised the possibility that he get her onto his reality show, “Celebrity Apprentice” but it would not come to be.

She said that he had invited her to his Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow in 2007 to fill her in on that promise. The entertainment for the night, she said, was a “Shark Week” documentary. Mr. Trump, she said, wanted to have sex but this time she did not go along with it, and when he did not have an answer for her about being on the show, she left. She said he told her over the phone a month later that he would not be able to get her onto the program and that was effectively the end of it.

But when her story threatened to surface again in 2016, Ms. Clifford said, her lawyer, Keith Davidson, called her. “I think I have the best deal for you,” she said Mr. Davidson told her, presenting Mr. Cohen’s offer. (Mr. Davidson had also represented Ms. McDougal.)

When Mr. Cooper said some viewers would be skeptical that Ms. Clifford had made her decision because of a threat made years earlier, she said she “didn’t even negotiate” and “just quickly said ‘yes,’ to this very, you know, strict contract, and what most people will agree with me, extremely low number.” Ms. Clifford also said that she had “turned down a large payday multiple times.”

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Ms. Clifford said that she can remember the man’s face to this day and would recognize him immediately. Her new lawyer, Michael Avenatti, said earlier this month that she had been threatened, although he did not provide any details. At the time, the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said, “Obviously we take the safety and security of any person seriously, certainly would condemn anyone threatening any individual.”

When the story about the payoff first broke earlier this year, Ms. Clifford had signed a statement emphatically denying that an affair had taken place. She told Mr. Cooper that she had been told that if she failed to sign it, “they can make your life hell in many different ways.” That sentiment, she indicated, was based on the terms of the agreement, not on any new threat of physical violence, though, she said, she felt both “intimidated” and “bullied.”

Lawyers for Mr. Cohen have said that Ms. Clifford faces $20 million in penalties for violating an agreement to remain quiet and that the agreement was still binding.

Ms. Clifford’s suit hinges on Mr. Avenatti’s argument that the agreement is invalid because Mr. Trump had not signed it. Mr. Cohen signed the agreement, representing the Delaware shell company Essential Consultants, through which he paid Ms. Clifford.

Mr. Cohen has denied any involvement by the Trump Organization or the Trump campaign. But Mr. Avenatti, through his various media appearances, has been trying to build a case that Mr. Cohen was acting in his capacity as a lawyer at the Trump Organization when he worked on the agreement. He presented new evidence on “60 Minutes”: a FedEx envelope showing that Mr. Davidson had sent the contract to Mr. Cohen at his office at the Trump Organization, and addressed a cover letter to him in his official Trump Organization capacity.

Mr. Cooper pressed Ms. Clifford on whether she was not coming forward to cash in on her affair now that Mr. Trump had become president. She did not apologize for the extra money she says she is already making as a dancer because of the surrounding publicity, but noted that she was also opening herself up to real financial risk.

Asked what she would tell the president if he was watching, she said, “He knows I’m telling the truth.”

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LOS ANGELES — Mexican authorities today blamed “asphyxia by inhalation of toxic gases” for the deaths of four Iowa family members vacationing in the Caribbean resort town of Tulum.

The state attorney general’s office in the state of Quintana Roo said investigators were still trying to determine what kind of gas was involved.

The office said in a statement that members of the Sharp family — identified by authorities in their home state of Iowa as Kevin Sharp, 41, Amy Sharp, 38, and their children, 12-year-old Sterling and 7-year-old Adrianna — appeared to have been dead for 36 to 48 hours when their bodies were found Friday during a welfare check at the resort condominium they rented.

Officials said examinations of the bodies indicated the cause of death was hypoxia, or lack of oxygen, and that investigators thus ruled out suicide or violence.

“The bodies … showed no evidence or traces of violence, nor evidence of anything being disturbed inside the room, so violence from a possible theft was discarded,” according to a statement from the attorney general’s office.

Mexican investigators are now looking into the condo’s gas system to determine how the family was exposed to the toxic gas.

Martin Luther King Jr’s granddaughter Yolanda Renee King(L) speaks next to student Jaclyn Corin during the March for Our Lives Rally in Washington, DC on March 24, 2018. Galvanized by a massacre at a Florida high school, hundreds of thousands of Americans are expected to take to the streets in cities across the United States on Saturday in the biggest protest for gun control in a generation. / AFP PHOTO / JIM WATSON (Photo credit should read JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)

Saturday’s massive rallies for gun control around the world—more than 800 of them—were centered on the largest of them all in Washington D.C., at the focus of the cause, the capital building. While the size of the crowd was impressive, the events on the stage were even more so. Speaker after speaker delivered powerful orations. Most of the speakers were students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, survivors of the Valentine’s Day shooting that took 17 souls.

Having witnessed the bloodshed first hand and having suffered the loss of close friends, their voices were filled with emotion. Having been the driving force behind the rally, their words were crafted with touching memories, meaningful facts, declarative sentences, and clear calls to action. And having spent the last month promoting the march in many media appearances (Time Magazine featured five of the students on this week’s cover: Jaclyn Coryn, Alex Wind, Cameron Kasky, David Hogg, and Emma Gonzalez) they delivered their words with forceful confidence.

Ms. Gonzalez—whose electrifying speech three days after the massacre in Parkland has made her a viral star with 1.2 million Twitters followers—electrified the Washington crowd again, this time with silence. She paused in the middle of her speech and stood stock still, staring straight ahead, tears streaming down her face for six minutes and twenty seconds. When she resumed, she told the audience that that was how long the Parkland shooting lasted.

However, all those eloquent teenage orators were outshone by a nine-year-old. Yvonne Renee King, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s granddaughter, walked onstage with only a hand microphone—no lectern, no notes, as all the high schoolers used—and in one minute and fifty seconds roused the crowd to a higher level than any other speaker.

Ms. King began:

My grandfather had a dream that his four little children would not be judged by the color of their skin but the content of their character. I have a dream that enough is enough and that this should be a gun free world. Period.

Then evoking her grandfather’s clerical technique of call and response, she said:

In Boston, a clutch of Second Amendment supporters gathered in front of the Statehouse with signs that said, “Come and take it.”

“We believe in the Second Amendment,” said Paul Allen, 62, a retired construction worker who lives in Salisbury, Mass. “You people will interpret it the way you want and we’ll interpret it for what it is — that law-abiding citizens who are true patriots have the right to bear arms.”

Mr. Allen described supporters of gun control as “ignorant sheep who are being spoon-fed by liberal teachers.”

“They haven’t read the Constitution and they don’t know what it means,” he said.

Gun rights organizations were mostly quiet about the demonstrations on Saturday. A spokesman for the N.R.A. did not answer several emails requesting comment.

On the eve of the march, Colion Noir, a host on NRATV, an online video channel produced by the gun group, lashed out at the Parkland students, saying that “no one would know your names” if someone with a weapon had stopped the gunman at their school.

“These kids ought to be marching against their own hypocritical belief structures,” he said in the video, adding, “The only reason we’ve ever heard of them is because the guns didn’t come soon enough.”

Demonstrators gathered in gun-friendly states.

In places where gun control is less popular, demonstrators pooled together, trying to show that support for their cause extends beyond large, predominantly liberal cities.

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In Vermont, a rural state with a rich hunting culture and some of the nation’s weakest gun laws, marchers gathered at the Capitol in Montpelier. Organizers hoped that thousands would turn out by the end of the day — an ambitious goal in a city of 7,500 people.

“I hope the national march is going to be impactful, but at least we know state by state that we can make change,” said Madison Knoop, a college freshman who organized the rally.

In Dahlonega, Ga., several hundred people gathered outside a museum, a surprising show of strength for gun control in an overwhelmingly conservative region.

“We’re going to be the generation that takes down the gun lobby,” Marisa Pyle, 20, said through a megaphone.

Ms. Pyle, a student at the University of Georgia and an organizer of Saturday’s rally in Lumpkin County, challenged critics of the demonstrations across the country.

“I’m starting to think they just want to shut us up because they’re scared of what we have to say,” Ms. Pyle said.

Young people were scattered in a crowd dominated by people in middle age and older. There were few signs of counterprotesters. But as Ms. Pyle led a roll call of the Stoneman Douglas victims, a man in a passing vehicle yelled: “Trump! Trump! Trump!”

In Anchorage, the largest city in Alaska, marchers gathered in weather that peaked above freezing around noon.

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Alaska has not seen a school shooting in two decades, but it has the highest rates of both gun-related deaths and suicides in the nation.

High schoolers turned out in jean jackets and hoodies, and shoveled snow to clear paths for one another in the 24-degree weather.

“Do you know how it feels to have the principal pretend over the intercom that the shooter is walking your way?” Elsa Hoppenworth, a 16-year-old junior at West Anchorage High School, asked a cheering crowd. “Those who do not contribute to change contribute to our death.”

Melanie Anderson, a 44-year-old middle school teacher, held up a sign that said “teacher, not sharp shooter.”

Keenly aware that Alaska is a pro-gun state, the students who marched and made speeches were careful to make clear that they were seeking modest reinforcements on existing gun laws, rather than all-out bans.

The message resonated for Chicago residents all too familiar with gun violence.

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President TrumpDonald John TrumpPoll: Both parties need to do more on drug prices Senate approves .3 trillion spending bill, sending to Trump White House: Trump will delay steel tariffs for EU, six countries MORE is moving aggressively to reshape his team, and the unexpected moves are causing turmoil within his embattled staff.
 
The president’s supporters are cheering his decision to replace national security adviser H.R. McMaster with former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, whose views are more in line with those of the president. 

That sudden move comes after Trump replaced his secretary of State and national economic adviser in recent weeks — long-anticipated changes that nonetheless happened abruptly and sent shockwaves through Washington.

The staff shake-up reveals the president’s frustration with members of his old team who encouraged him to back away from or delay key policy decisions, which he frequently makes based on gut instinct.
 
Bolton, the hawkish former Bush administration official, has pledged to implement Trump’s agenda, even on matters in which they might disagree.

The president’s allies had grown frustrated with McMaster, believing he slow-walked the president’s agenda or sought to implement his own.

“Bolton is coming in to prosecute the president’s agenda, which sets him apart from McMaster who tried to advance his own policies and beliefs,” said a former White House official. “If Bolton sticks to that plan, he will be a success. The president wants people in the administration who, when he makes a decision, will follow through on it.”

Bolton will be Trump’s third national security adviser in just 14 months, adding to a level of turnover the White House not seen in decades.

The reshuffle is far from over. 
 
The National Security Council is now bracing for a shake-up under Bolton’s leadership. There is hope among Trump’s allies that Bolton will put an end to the damaging leaks from the National Security Council and rid the council of Obama-era holdovers — or anyone viewed as insufficiently loyal to the president.

Sources close to the council say spokesman Michael Anton and deputy national security adviser Nadia Schadlow could be among those on the way out. 

One of Bolton’s top advisers, Richard Grenell, will not be joining Bolton in the White House. Trump has tapped Grenell to be ambassador to Germany, although Grenell is still waiting on his Senate confirmation.

But Bolton has other advisers who could be in line for key posts, including Sarah Tinsley, a longtime ally who is currently at Bolton’s super PAC, and Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst.

“Obviously, you have some folks on the [National Security Council] who are completely against this,” said one administration official. “They are bracing for a shake-up when he comes because we know he’ll want to bring in his own people. But he’s also bringing a much different worldview than what they’ve had there. It could be a tenuous situation early on.”

Bolton is not in lockstep with Trump on all national security matters. He has a strong personality and could clash with Defense Secretary James MattisJames Norman MattisOvernight Defense: Trump replaces McMaster with Bolton | .3T omnibus awaits Senate vote | Bill gives Pentagon flexibility on spending | State approves B arms sale to Saudis State Dept. announces B in weapons sales to Saudi Arabia Mattis: Saudi Arabia ‘part of the solution’ in Yemen civil war MORE and chief of staff John KellyJohn Francis KellyMORE, both of whom eventually soured on McMaster.

Bolton is said not to be the favored pick of Kelly or Mattis. 
 
But his choice was cheered by Trump allies, who predicted he would find more success than McMaster, who also had ideological differences with Trump. 

“It is a good move,” said Walid Phares, who was one of Trump’s national security advisers during the campaign.

“The White House and Congress both need him there at this particular junction,” Phares said.

In addition to serving as George W. Bush’s U.N. ambassador, Bolton also held key roles in the George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan administrations. 

His critics have cast him as a “warmonger” whose impulse is always for military intervention.

Bolton has been vocal about ripping up the Obama administration’s deal with Iran — a position that the president shares. But he has also advocated for a military strike on North Korea at a time when the administration is pushing sanctions and potential talks between the countries.
 
Bolton’s allies say his reputation as a “warmonger” is overblown and that, at the end of the day, he and Trump both prescribe to Reagan’s “peace through strength” maxim.

“John understands that people view him as a warmonger but he’s really not,” said one person close to him. “He’s never worked in military planning or the Pentagon. He’s a diplomat who understands there’s no better reinforcement for American diplomacy than having the credible threat of military action behind you, and he uses that to gain a diplomatic edge. You need hard-edged diplomats like that to avoid wars. You get into wars with weak diplomacy.”

Trump’s abrupt personnel changes are still reverberating throughout the White House.

Trump’s move to replace McMaster with Bolton caught Kelly and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders by surprise. Less than a week ago, Sanders insisted there were no changes coming.
 
The Bolton episode highlighted Trump’s volatile decisionmaking process, which has frustrated some members of his team. 


Rumors of McMaster’s exit had swirled for months, and Kelly worked behind the scenes to craft a transition plan that would allow McMaster to land on his feet. 



After Trump axed Secretary of State Rex TillersonRex Wayne TillersonWhite House aides planned to announce McMaster with other departures: report Trump considered ousting Kelly and serving as his own chief of staff: report Trump replaces McMaster with Bolton as national security adviser MORE last week, speculation mounted that McMaster would be the next to go. But White House officials, including Sanders, publicly batted down the speculation after huddling with the president. 



Bolton himself seemed to be taken by surprise by the offer, which followed a Thursday afternoon meeting in the West Wing.

“Obviously it caught us off guard,” said an administration official.

But Trump’s allies say White House staff understand Trump’s volatile nature and will get over it. In the long run, they believe Bolton gives the administration a well-regarded establishment figure with broad support in the conservative foreign policy sphere.

“Bolton is a hard-nosed guy. He is not a wallflower,” the official said. “He also knows how to operate the levers of power. He is not a rookie at this, so he will be a force to be reckoned with.”

An Iowa family of four was found dead in the condominium where they stayed while on vacation in Tulum, Mexico, police confirmed Friday.

Kevin Wayne Sharp, 41, his wife, Amy Marie Sharp, 38, and their children, Sterling Wayne Sharp, 12, and Adrianna Marie Sharp, 7, were reported missing by their immediate family members early Friday morning to police in Creston, Iowa, which is about 70 miles southwest of Des Moines and 100 miles southeast of Omaha

The Sharps had planned to return home Wednesday, family members said.

Investigators quickly made contact with the U.S. State Department, Creston police said in a statement. A welfare check at the condominium where the family was thought to be staying led to the discovery of the four bodies.

Autopsies are being performed in Mexico. It is not immediately clear what led to the deaths, but Creston Police Chief Paul Ver Meer told KCCI that there were no signs of traumatic injury.

Local Mexican authorities have taken over the investigation, according to the State Department. The Mexican Tourism Board said in a statement obtained by CBS that “preliminary reports from local officials conclude that there were no signs of violence or struggle.”

[ TripAdvisor, under fire for removing claims of rape, will now flag hotels with reported incidents ]

Ashli Peterson, a relative of the Sharps’, posted about the family’s disappearance on Facebook on Thursday night, around the time that relatives contacted police. The post was shared hundreds of thousands of times. On Friday afternoon, Peterson posted an update.

“Please respect the family at this time as they go through the grieving process,” she wrote. “Thank you for all the posts, shares, and kind words.”

Kevin Sharp was an avid stock car racer known as “The Sharpshooter” in the local racing scene, and he often competed in events in a neighboring county, Cliff Baldwin, his friend and fellow racer, told the Des Moines Register. He said he knew Sharp and his family his entire life, and that he and Kevin shared a love for the University of Iowa and the Kansas City Chiefs.

“He was a great personal friend,” Baldwin told the Des Moines Register. “It’s hard to talk about. The more I think about him and the family, the harder it is.”

“Creston is close-knit like all small towns in Iowa,” he added. “He’s a big part of that community there.”

Sharp and his family left the United States for Cancun, Mexico, on March 15, according to Peterson’s post. The family then rented a car and drove to Tulum, where they were renting a condo, according to Amy Sharp’s sister Renee Hoyt, who spoke with the Creston News Advertiser.

It was the family’s second time in Mexico, according to Amy Sharp’s cousin, Jana Weland, who told ABC News that the family had planned to meet up with some friends at a water park.

But “they never showed up at that water park to meet them,” Weland said.

The Sharps were supposed to return to the United States about 2:45 p.m. Wednesday from Cancun and arrive in St. Louis about 6 p.m.

From there, they would travel to Danville, Ill., to attend Thursday’s Southwestern Community College men’s basketball game, Peterson said. The Sharps were avid Southwestern fans, and the college on Friday extended its condolences to their friends and family members. Head basketball coach Todd Lorensen called the family “loyal, caring, supportive and generous.”

“If our guys play that way we will be successful,” Lorensen wrote in a Facebook post.

The Sharps had informed their family members on March 15 that they had arrived safely at their condominium in Tulum. So when family members didn’t hear from them on Thursday — after they were supposed to have arrived in St. Louis — they became worried.

“We have filed a missing persons report through the US Embassy in Mexico already. We have also pinged cells phones and show that they are still in Mexico with no movement on their phones. Social media is also inactive,” Peterson said in her Facebook post late Thursday night.

UPDATE: The Sharps have been located. They were found last night in their condo deceased. There was no foul play! At…

Posted by Ashli Peterson on Thursday, March 22, 2018

Hoyt, Amy Sharp’s sister, told the Creston News Advertiser that Kevin Sharp’s phone was tracked using Apple’s Find iPhone app, which it pinged in Mexico. The phone had not moved from its location since Thursday morning.

Relatives of the Sharp family could not immediately be reached for comment.

The family’s mysterious deaths come amid increased warnings about travel to Quintana Roo state, which is home to Tulum — a popular destination for those looking to explore Mayan ruins or snorkel in limestone sinkholes. The State Department issued a level 2 advisory to those traveling to Quintana Roo on March 16, meaning visitors should be cautious because of increased crime there. Department officials cited a surge in Quintana Roo’s homicide rate since 2016.

Last month, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published an investigation that identified more than 150 reports from travelers who said they blacked out or became violently ill after having just one or two drinks at dozens of Mexican resorts in Cancun, Playa del Carmen, Puerta Vallarta and Los Cabos. It is unclear whether those tourists were deliberately drugged or became random victims of tainted alcohol, according to the investigation.

Another Journal Sentinel investigation from November looked at repeated instances where the travel and restaurant review website TripAdvisor removed posts warning of alleged rape, assault or other injuries at some Mexican resorts. And a July investigation into the death of a Wisconsin college student in Mexico uncovered widespread safety shortcoming, including those tied to tainted alcohol, at Mexican resorts.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

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President Trump jolted Washington on Friday when he began the day tweeting that he might veto a massive spending bill needed to prevent a government shutdown — and then appearing in front of cameras five hours later to say that he had signed the legislation.

Trump ripped into the $1.3 trillion funding package in remarks at the White House shortly after 1 p.m., calling it a “ridiculous situation,” filled with overspending yet lacking enough money for his border wall or a deal to resolve the future of the young, undocumented immigrants known as “dreamers.” He said he was only signing the bill because it contained a boost for the military. 

“I looked very seriously at the veto,” Trump told reporters. “I was thinking about doing the veto. But because of the incredible gains that we’ve been able to make for the military, that overrode any of our thinking.” 

Friday’s five hours of confusion showed once again how nothing is certain in Trump’s Washington and any deal is at risk of being blown up by the mercurial president. On Thursday, administration officials and congressional leaders said that the president would sign the bill — even though for days he had privately complained about the package in late-night phone calls and early morning rants — and the White House issued a news release touting its accomplishments.

It also highlighted Trump’s desire to be seen as his own political entity and still an outsider, separate at times from the Republican Party he leads. During his remarks at the White House, Trump sought to distance himself from a bill unpopular with his base but that his aides helped craft and the GOP-led Congress passed. At times he went so far as to portray himself as being almost helpless and having little choice but to accept the spending package. 

“As a matter of national security, I’ve signed this omnibus budget bill,” he said. “There are a lot of things that I’m unhappy about in this bill. There are a lot of things that we shouldn’t have had in this bill, but we were, in a sense, forced — if we want to build our military — we were forced to have.”

The president’s unhappiness was fueled Friday morning, as it often is, with Trump in the residence watching “Fox and Friends.” For days, he heard that Republicans were getting rolled in the spending negotiations, and that message was now being delivered by his favorite morning show.

“This is a swamp budget, this is a Mitch McConnell special, this is a dysfunctional Senate,” Fox News personality Pete Hegseth vented, referring to the Senate majority leader. “There’s no wall. Ultimately, the Democrats controlled the process in the Senate. That’s why Chuck Schumer was so happy.”

Trump had confided to several advisers that he was tired of watching Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) crow on TV — or hearing that he was being snookered by Democrats. He gets particularly agitated over Schumer’s statements, two of these people said. 

On Friday morning, he also heard from Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), who said that he should not sign the spending package. Trump seemed to agree. The president had already talked to a number of other conservatives and friends, including Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), the leader of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus. 

None of the reviews coming in from his favorite media outlets, including Fox News and the conservative website Newsmax, about the bill were positive, even with a big uptick in military spending that Trump so prized. The president was told about radio show host Rush Limbaugh’s rant against the bill. 

“The president was really sold a bill of goods here,” said Christopher Ruddy, Newsmax’s chief executive, who speaks frequently to the president. “Conservatives look at this omnibus bill and say, ‘This is not why they elected Donald Trump. This is not a good bill for him to sign.’ ” 

The spending bill is widely expected to be the last major piece of legislation that Congress will pass before the November midterm elections, which increased pressure to jam it full of legislative odds and ends, including provisions on guns and combating invasive carp. The bill funds the federal government through Sept. 30, and provides $700 billion for the military and $591 billion for domestic agencies. 

Conservatives and some of Trump’s top supporters found plenty they did not like about the package. The House and Senate both passed it just more than 24 hours after it was released, drawing complaints that there was little time to review its contents. Overall, critics on the right said that it spent too much money, yet only included a pittance for Trump’s proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Immigration seemed to frustrate Trump the most. He secured $1.6 billion for some fencing and levees on the border; it comes with strings attached and the amount fell far short of the $25 billion requested for a wall. He was also eager to blame Democrats for the failure to reach a deal to protect dreamers by coming up with an alternative to the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) that he ended last year.

Even Friday morning, Trump asked aides how he could still get more money for the border wall and whether some of the items that Democrats celebrated were in the bill — such as money for what are known as sanctuary cities and Planned Parenthood — were really included in the package, according to people familiar with the discussions who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity.

He was told that it was unlikely he could get more wall funding and that Democrats did secure the items they were touting. He grew angry. So, shortly before 9 a.m., Trump took to Twitter. 

“I am considering a VETO of the Omnibus Spending Bill based on the fact that the 800,000 plus DACA recipients have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill) and the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded,” Trump tweeted. 

Inside the White House, senior officials such as Vice President Pence, legislative director Marc Short and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis were summoned to persuade the president to sign the bill and avoid a shutdown.

Mattis stressed that the Pentagon desperately needed the funding boost — a $66 billion increase over last year’s levels — that the bill would provide. Aides told Trump it would be “historic” funding, a word that he likes to hear.

Short argued that the funding package would give the president money for immigration and infrastructure programs and that the White House had already committed to signing the bill. 

Trump was given a list of all the planes, submarines and other military equipment the bill would fund, a list the president would rattle off later in his hastily organized appearance in the White House’s Diplomatic Reception Room.

 House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) made his own pitch, calling the president about 30 minutes after the veto threat. Trump continued to say the bill was terrible, but Ryan again touted benefits for the military. McConnell (R-Ky.) called Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, two White House aides said, to keep tabs on the situation. 

Hill staffers and lawmakers were frustrated, if not surprised.

Last year, Trump also threatened to veto a large spending bill in April on the day he was supposed to sign it, leading Ryan to rush over to the White House. Trump was set off by an episode of “Fox and Friends” and was confused about the legislation, advisers said. 

The details of this spending package should not have been new to the president. Short, Jonathan Slemrod and Kathleen Kraninger — all administration aides — were involved in the negotiations in recent days that went until the wee hours of the morning with congressional appropriators, according to three people familiar with the talks.

At times, they would go outside to call others in the White House to ask for approval on certain parts of the bill. The arguments were sometimes tense and lasted until 3 a.m. 

So members were perplexed when Trump, all of a sudden, seemed to not know what was in the bill Friday and said he might not sign it. 

One senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that Stephen Miller, the White House’s senior policy adviser, and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen were critical of the spending measure because it did not do enough to advance Trump’s priorities on combating illegal immigration. Miller had eventually relented after realizing that there were no good options if the president vetoed the bill, officials said. 

While Trump was not all that concerned about the cost, he kept reminding aides that many legislators, including the Freedom Caucus, hated the spending. 

“The president’s instincts were right,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a member of the caucus. “The bill is terrible. We still wish he would have vetoed it. It is a bill that funds items we said we would not fund while not funding items we promised we would.”

Some lawmakers and White House officials were confident that Trump’s veto tweet was a bluff and that he was just letting off steam. 

Eventually, White House officials said, Trump demanded having a public event, where he could show his political supporters that he didn’t like the bill while attacking Democrats — and labeling it all for the military. 

Before cameras at the White House, Trump vented about the parts of the bill he disliked and called for the power to issue line-item vetoes — something the Supreme Court has deemed unconstitutional — and urged the Senate to junk the legislative filibuster, which has little support among senators.

But this battle was already over. He signed the bill before appearing before reporters.

John Wagner, Mike DeBonis, Erica Werner and Sean Sullivan contributed to this report.