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NEW YORK (AP) -- Is Fox News Channel overplaying its hand or skillfully playing to its brand in dealing with Donald Trump?
The GOP presidential front-runner has dropped out of Thursday night's Republican debate following an escalating public relations battle triggered in part by his call for Fox to dump Megyn Kelly as one of the moderators.
Is there a winner in this dispute? A loser?
"Donald Trump and (Fox Chairman) Roger Ailes are birds of a feather - they're both geniuses at garnering publicity by fomenting conflict," said Mark Feldstein, a veteran broadcast journalist and now a professor at the University of Maryland.
Trump believes he's largely responsible for the campaign debates' record ratings - 24 million people for Fox's Aug. 6 faceoff, for example. Thursday may undermine that theory. Or people may turn out for the sheer theater involved, wondering if Trump might make a surprise appearance.
His discontent with Kelly dates to her question about his attitude toward women at the Aug. 6 debate. Fox responded to Trump's tweeted request to dump Kelly by pointing out that a candidate doesn't get to choose his questioners, and Ailes personally backed Kelly with a strong statement of support.
Then Fox added a sharply worded mocking statement with no name attached: "We learned from a secret back channel that the Ayatollah and Putin both intend to treat Donald Trump unfairly when they meet him if he becomes president." Fox also said Trump planned to replace the Cabinet with his Twitter followers.
The Putin statement was a tipping point and "clearly designed to incite," Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, told radio host Laura Ingraham on Wednesday.
Neither Trump nor Ailes are known for backing down from fights, and Fox's pugnacious attitude was a key in its rise to becoming one of the top-rated networks on cable TV.
The wagons circled on Wednesday: Fox's Brit Hume tweeted a photo with Trump's face superimposed on a baby's, with the statement: "Megyn Kelly was mean to me! I want my binkey!"
Fox's public response contrasts with CNN's, after Trump said he wouldn't show up for that network's first debate last fall unless its profits from televising the exchange were donated to charity. Before CNN's second debate, Trump suggested a specific donation to veterans' groups. In both cases, CNN issued no statements in response (and made no donations), and Trump showed up.
While Fox was correct in defending its right to decide which journalists should question a candidate, Lee Kamlet, dean of the Quinnipiac University School of Communications in Connecticut, said the network's "snarky" press statements were a big mistake.
"I'm old school," Kamlet said. "I happen to think presidential campaigns are important. For a news outlet to belittle any candidate as Fox News did, in my view diminishes the process."
The Fox response also plays into Trump's hand, since his supporters love when he takes on institutions, Kamet said.
There's a certain irony in these two sides fighting. The liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America said that its researchers have found that Fox has covered Trump for two and a half times as long as any other candidate.
While Fox may suffer "a short-term loss in terms of the ratings for this particular debate, it's a long-term gain for Fox in terms of their respectability and credibility," Feldstein said.
One hint at another cause of the latest dispute came in a Fox statement issued late Tuesday, in which the network accused Lewandowski of a "terrorization" of Kelly. Fox said that in a conversation with one of its executives over the weekend, the Trump campaign manager noted that Kelly had a rough couple of days following the first debate and that he would hate to see that happen again.
Lewandowski, on MSNBC, called the characterization dishonest and said he hoped Fox would keep his discussions with one of its executives private.
BURNS, Oregon (AP) — A member of an armed anti-government group who was killed in a traffic stop in Oregon vowed a few weeks ago that he would die before spending his life behind bars.
LaVoy Finicum, a 55-year-old rancher from Cain Beds, Arizona, died Tuesday after law enforcement officers initiated the stop near the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Oregon.
It's unclear what happened in the moments before the shooting, or if Finicum or any of the other activists involved exchanged gunfire with officers. Authorities wouldn't say how many shots were fired.
Eight occupiers were arrested, including group leader Ammon Bundy.
Finicum also was a leader of the armed group that took over the refuge Jan. 2 to oppose federal land restrictions and object to the prison sentences of two local ranchers convicted of setting fires.
He was a prominent presence at the refuge and frequently talked with reporters. His affable but passionate demeanor made him a popular subject for on-camera interviews.
Finicum seemed to have made up his mind about how his role in the occupation was likely to end — with his death.
Just a few days into the occupation, he came barreling to the refuge entrance in a federal truck.
Rifle in hand, Finicum sat in the middle of the driveway, telling the reporters gathered around him that he learned there was a warrant for his arrest and he wanted to make it easy for federal agents to find him.
At the time, he said he didn't know what the warrant charged him with, but he believed agents would try to arrest him soon.
"I don't think it really matters. There's enough things they could make a warrant for us, I believe," he said.
Finicum said he had neither threatened nor harmed anyone during the occupation.
"I have grown up loving the fresh air. I love the elements. And this is where I'm going to breathe my last breath," he said. "... I'm not going to spend my last days in a cell. This world is too beautiful to spend it in a cell."
He then gave a message to his family: "And kids, if I don't come, you know I love you and I'm proud of every damn one of you."
The rancher was media-savvy and tried to popularize and monetize his political beliefs on his website, www.onecowboystandforfreedom.com. He used the site to sell his book, a 252-page paperback titled "Only by Blood and Suffering," as well as T-shirts, bumper stickers and posters emblazoned with slogans like "Let Freedom Ring" and "Defend the Constitution Original Intent."
He described himself as a longtime friend of Cliven Bundy, and he participated in the standoff with federal authorities over grazing fees at the elder Bundy's Nevada ranch in 2014.
Finicum and his wife, Jeanette, raised dozens of foster children, though social workers removed the kids from the couple's home a few days after the occupation began.
Finicum said the foster kids were the family's main source of income.
Catholic Charities paid the family more than $115,000 in 2009 to foster children, according to tax filings. Foster parents are generally paid a small per-child amount by the government. It's intended to reimburse them for the costs incurred in fostering. The money sometimes is disbursed through nonprofit partners.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A bill requiring state police to track refugees coming to South Carolina and to hold their sponsors liable for damages if they commit an act of terrorism is on its way to the floor of the state Senate.
A Senate committee approved the measure on Wednesday. A spokesman for an organization focused on protecting the civil rights of Muslims said South Carolina is the first state he knows of that has proposed such a registry.
The proposal has wide support among conservative Republicans, but its future could be bleak. Three Democrats on the General Committee voted against it Wednesday, with one of them blocking floor debate. A Republican who initially supported the bill said she could not support a provision requiring that refugees' addresses be placed on an Internet registry.
"Everybody doesn't need to know where they live," said Sen. Katrina Shealy, R-Lexington.
The ongoing civil war in Syria has created thousands of refugees and European countries have placed pressure on the United States to take in some of the people fleeing the violence. But terror attacks in Paris and California have heightened worries that refugees angry with the United States could slip through or become radicalized when they get to this country. The U.S. House passed a bill requiring new FBI background checks and individual sign-offs from three high-ranking federal officials before any refugee from Syria or Iraq could come to the United States.
Governors and attorneys general in a number of conservative states have asked the federal government to not put refugees in their states. But South Carolina appears to be the first state to take Legislative action.
State backers of the move got a boost from Republican U.S. Reps. Jeff Duncan and Mick Mulvaney, who accepted invitations to speak.
Mulvaney spoke about efforts at the national level to tighten the vetting process for Syrian refugees seeking to enter the United States.
"If you let in the wrong Irishman, the downside is really not that serious. You let in the wrong Syrian refugee — one — and people could die," Mulvaney said.
The issue popped up in the state in the first week of the legislative session, and some senators wanted to push measures through immediately. Instead, they were sent to the General Committee, which has held four hearings in 13 days to get the bill back to the Senate floor quickly.
Democratic Sen. Kevin Johnson was there for all the hearings, and said he was saddened that people didn't realize nearly all refugees are fleeing terrorism and only want the chance for a new life and success in America. The Democrat from Manning, who is black, said he had a new appreciation of what his grandparents and great-grandparents went through in the segregated South.
"They were told the same thing," Johnson said. "We don't want you in our state. We don't want you in our neighborhood. We don't want you in our schools. All you want to do is kill, rape, steal, whatever."
The bill would require any refugees relocating into South Carolina to register with the Department of Social Services within 30 days. The social welfare agency would share that information with the State Law Enforcement Division, which would track the refugees. The bill requires any groups helping to settle refugees in South Carolina to be liable if any refugee commits an act of terrorism.
The proposal is another ugly attempt to paint all Muslims as supporting violence and disruption, said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
"It raises all kinds of questions, legally and ethically, when you treat a religious minority like they were sex offenders," Hooper said.
Hooper said South Carolina is the first state he knows of that has proposed such a tracking registry for refugees.
Sen. Marlon Kimpson asked Duncan why he supports registering refugees and not taking any steps toward gun control when what he called domestic terrorists kill many more people on American soil in mass shootings, including nine shot to death in a Charleston church in the Democrat's district.
"I don't consider them domestic terrorists. I consider them deranged individuals," Duncan said.