Politics

SACRAMENTO — The Trump administration backed off its effort to block a court order returning control of National Guard troops in Los Angeles to California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

In a brief filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit on Tuesday, Justice Department lawyers said they no longer oppose lifting a partial administrative stay and formally withdrew their request to keep the troops under federal control while the appeal proceeds.

The move follows the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last week in Trump v. Illinois, which cast new doubt on the administration’s legal theory for using the National Guard in domestic law enforcement operations. Tuesday’s filing with the appeals court does not concede the merits of California’s case brought by Newsom, but it removes a major procedural obstacle to enforcing the lower court’s ruling.

In the filing, federal lawyers said they “do not oppose lifting of the partial administrative stay and hereby respectfully withdraw their motion for a stay pending appeal.”

“This admission by Trump and his occult cabinet members means this illegal intimidation tactic will finally come to an end,” Newsom wrote on X, adding that he is looking forward to the 9th Circuit making an official ruling that would return the California National Guard to state service.

The decision could mark a turning point in a contentious legal fight over Trump’s use of state National Guard troops, which the president said was necessary to quell unrest over immigration enforcement. Justice Department lawyers had argued in court that once federalized, Guard troops could remain under the president’s command indefinitely and that courts had no authority to review their deployment.

Court records show roughly 300 California troops remain under federal control, including 100 of whom were still active in Los Angeles as of earlier this month. In mid-December, video reviewed by The Times showed dozens of troops under Trump’s command quietly leaving the Roybal Federal Building downtown in the middle of the night following an appellate court’s order to decamp. That facility had been patrolled by armed soldiers since June.

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer ruled that the president had illegally seized control of California’s National Guard during protests over immigration enforcement. Breyer ordered that command of the remaining federalized troops be returned to Newsom, rejecting the administration’s argument that once federalized, Guard units could remain under presidential control indefinitely. He warned that such a theory would upend the constitutional balance between state and federal power.

The Los Angeles case is part of a broader, high-stakes legal battle over the president’s authority to deploy armed forces inside U.S. cities. Similar disputes involving Guard deployments in Oregon and Illinois are moving through the courts, with several judges, including conservative appointees, expressing skepticism about claims that such decisions are beyond judicial review.

Members of Congress have also begun scrutinizing the deployments, raising concerns about civil liberties and the growing use of military forces in civilian settings.

“Bienvenue a Bamako!” The fixer, the minder and the men linked to the Malian government were waiting for us at the airport in Bamako. Polite, smiling – and watchful.

It was late December, and we had just taken an Air Burkina flight from Dakar, Senegal across the Sahel, where a storm of political upheaval and armed violence has unsettled the region in recent years.

Mali sits at the centre of a reckoning. After two military coups in 2020 and 2021, the country severed ties with its former colonial ruler, France, expelled French forces, pushed out the United Nations peacekeeping mission, and redrew its alliances

Alongside Burkina Faso and Niger, now also ruled by military governments backed by Russian mercenaries, it formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) in September 2023. Together, the regional grouping withdrew from the wider Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) bloc, accusing it of serving foreign interests rather than African ones.

This month, leaders from the three countries converged in Bamako for the Confederal Summit of Heads of State of the AES, the second such meeting since the alliance was formed. And we were there to cover it.

The summit was a ribbon-cutting moment. Leaders of the three countries inaugurated a new Sahel Investment and Development Bank meant to finance infrastructure projects without reliance on Western lenders; a new television channel built around a shared narrative and presented as giving voice to the people of the Sahel; and a joint military force intended to operate across borders against armed groups. It was a moment to celebrate achievements more than to sign new agreements.

But the reason behind the urgency of those announcements lay beyond the summit hall.

In this layered terrain of fracture and identity, armed groups have found room not only to manoeuvre, but to grow. Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an al-Qaeda affiliate, has expanded from rural Mali, launching attacks across the region and reaching the coast of Benin, exploiting weak state presence and long-unresolved grievances.

As our plane descended toward Bamako, I looked out at an endless stretch of earth, wondering how much of it was now under the control of al-Qaeda affiliates.

From the airport, our minders drove us fast through the city. Motorbikes swerved around us, street hawkers peddled their wares, and Malian pop blared from speakers. At first, this did not feel like a capital under siege. Yet since September, armed groups have been operating a blockade around Bamako, choking off fuel and goods, the military government said.

We drove past petrol stations where long queues stretched into the night. Life continued even as fuel grew scarce. People sat patiently, waiting their turn. Anger seemed to have given way to indifference, while rumours swirled that the authorities had struck quiet deals with the very fighters they claimed to be fighting, simply to keep the city moving.

‘To become one country, to hold each other’s hand’

Our minders drove us on to the Sahel Alliance Square, a newly created public space built to celebrate the union of the three countries and its people.

On the way, Malian forces sped past, perhaps toward a front line that feels ever closer, as gunmen linked to JNIM have set up checkpoints disrupting trade routes to the capital in recent months. In September 2024, they also carried out coordinated attacks inside Bamako, hitting a military police school housing elite units, nearby neighbourhoods, and the military airport on the city’s outskirts. And yet, Bamako carries on, as if the war were taking place in a faraway land.

At Sahel Alliance Square, a few hundred young people gathered and cheered as the Malian forces went by, drawn by loud music, trivia questions on stage and the MC’s promise of small prizes.

The questions were simple: Name the AES countries? Name the leaders?

A microphone was handed to the children. The alliance leaders’ names were drilled in: Abdourahamane Tchiani of Niger. Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. Assimi Goita of Mali. Repeated again and again until they stuck.

Correct answers won a prize: a T-shirt stamped with the faces of the alliance leaders.

Moussa Niare, 12 years old and a resident of Bamako, clutched a shirt bearing the faces of the three military leaders.

“They’ve gathered together to become one country, to hold each other’s hand, and to fight a common enemy,” he told us with buoyant confidence, as the government’s attempt to sell the new alliance to the public appeared to be cultivating loyalty among the young.

France out, Russia in

While Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger went through separate political transitions, the paths that brought them into a shared alliance followed a similar pattern.

Between 2020 and 2023, each country saw its democratically elected leadership removed by the military, the takeovers framed as necessary corrections.

In Mali, Colonel Goita seized power after months of protest and amid claims that President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita had failed to curb corruption or halt the advance of armed groups.

In Burkina Faso, the army ousted President Roch Marc Christian Kabore in early 2022 as insecurity worsened; later that year, Captain Traore emerged from a counter-coup, promising a more decisive response to the rebellion.

In Niger, soldiers led by General Tchiani detained President Mohamed Bazoum in July 2023, accusing his government of failing to safeguard national security and of leaning too heavily on foreign partners.

What began as separate seizures of power have since become a shared political project, now expressed through a formal alliance. The gathering in Bamako was to give shape to their union.

One of the key conclusions of the AES summit was the announced launch of a joint military battalion aimed at fighting armed groups across the Sahel.

This follows months of escalating violence, as regional armies assisted by Russian mercenaries push back against armed groups who have been launching attacks for over a decade.

Under the previous civilian governments, former colonial ruler France had a strong diplomatic and military presence. French troops, whose presence in the region dates back to independence, are now being pushed out, as military rulers recast sovereignty as both a political and security imperative. The last troops left Mali in 2022, but at its peak, France had more than 5,000 soldiers deployed there. When they withdrew, the country became a symbol of strategic failure for France’s Emmanuel Macron.

But even before that, French diplomacy appeared tone deaf, and patronising at best, failing to grasp the aspirations of its former colonies. The common regional currency, the CFA franc, still anchored to the French treasury, has become a powerful symbol of that resentment.

Now, French state television and radio have been banned in Mali. In what was once the heart of Francophone West Africa, French media has become shorthand for interference. What was lost was not only influence, but credibility. France was no longer seen as guaranteeing stability, but as producing instability.

Across the Sahel and beyond, anti-French sentiment is surging, often expressed in French itself – the language of the coloniser is now also the language of resistance.

‘Like a marriage of reason’

At the end of the summit, Mali’s Goita was preparing to hand over the AES’s rotating leadership to Traore of Burkina Faso.

Young, charismatic, and the new rock star of Pan-Africanism, Traore, in particular, has captured young audiences with help from a loose ecosystem of pro-Russian messaging and Africanist influencers. Across social media platforms, short videos circulate relentlessly: speeches clipped for virality, images of defiance, and slogans reduced to shareable fragments.

Meanwhile, in Burkina Faso, journalists and civil society actors who have criticised the military rules have been sent to the front line under a conscription policy introduced by Traore. Human rights groups outspoken about alleged extrajudicial killings say they have been silenced or sidelined. But much of it is dismissed as collateral, the price, supporters argue, of sovereignty finally reclaimed.

Before the ceremony, we met Mali’s finance minister. At first, he was confident, rehearsed, assured. But when pressed about financing for the ambitious infrastructure projects the three governments have laid out for the Sahel, his composure faltered and his words stuttered. This was a government official unaccustomed to being questioned. The microphone was removed. Later, away from the camera, he told me, “The IMF won’t release loans until Mali has ironed out its relations with France.”

The spokesperson, irritated by my questions, took me aside. As he adjusted the collar of my suit, slowly and patronisingly, he said he sometimes thought about putting journalists in jail “just for fun”.

He did not question the organisation I worked for. He questioned my French passport; my allegiance. I told him my allegiance was to the truth. He smiled, as if that answer confirmed his suspicions.

In the worldview of Mali’s military government – men shaped by years on the front line, living with a permanent sense of threat – journalists and critics are part of the problem. Creating safety was the challenge. The alliance, the spokesperson explained, was the solution to what they could not find within regional body, ECOWAS.

The half-century-old West African institution is a bloc that the three countries had once helped shape. Now, the AES leaders say its ageing, democratically elected presidents have grown detached, more invested in maintaining one another in office than in confronting the region’s crises. In response, they are promoting the AES as an alternative.

As the Sahel alliance grows, it’s also building new infrastructure.

At its new television channel in Bamako, preparations were under way. The ON AIR sign glowed. State-of-the-art cameras sat on tripods like polished weapons.

The channel’s director, Salif Sanogo, told me it would be “a tool to fight disinformation,” a way to counter Western, and more specifically French, narratives and “give voice to the people of the Sahel, by the people of the Sahel”.

The cameras had been bought abroad. The installation was overseen by a French production company. The irony went unremarked.

To defend the alliance, he offered a metaphor. “It’s like a marriage of reason,” he said. “It’s easier to make decisions when you’re married to three. When you’re married to 15, it’s a mess.” He was referring to the 15 member states of ECOWAS.

‘We will survive this, too’

Two years into the AES alliance, they have moved faster than the legacy regional bloc they left behind. A joint military force now binds their borders together, presented as a matter of survival rather than ambition. A mutual defence pact recasts coups and external pressure as shared threats, not national failures. A common Sahel investment and development bank, meant to finance roads, energy, and mineral extraction without recourse to Western lenders, offers sovereignty, they say, without conditions. A common currency is under discussion.

A shared news channel is intended to project a single narrative outward, even as space for independent media contracts at home. And after withdrawing from the International Criminal Court, they have proposed a Sahel penal court, one that would try serious crimes and human rights violations on their own terms. Justice brought home, or justice brought under control, depending on who you ask.

What is taking shape is not just an alliance, but an alternative architecture, built quickly, deliberately, and in full view of its critics.

Where ECOWAS built norms slowly, through elections, mediation, and consensus, AES is building structure. Where ECOWAS insists on patience, AES insists on speed.

To supporters, this is overdue self-determination, dignity restored after decades of dependency. To critics, it is power concentrated in uniforms, accountability postponed, repression dressed up as emancipation.

From the summit stage as he took over the alliance’s leadership, Traore redrew the enemy: Not al-Qaeda. Not ISIL. Not even France. But their African neighbours, cast as the enemy within. He warned of what he called a “black winter”, a speech that held the room and travelled far beyond it, drawing millions of viewers online.

“Why are we, Black people, trying to cultivate hatred among ourselves,” he asked, “and through hypocrisy calling ourselves brothers? We have only two choices: either we put an end to imperialism once and for all, or we remain slaves until we disappear.”

Away from the summit’s “black winter”, under a sunlit sky in Bamako, life moved on with a quieter rhythm. Music drifted through public squares and streets, carrying a familiarity that cut across the tension of speeches and slogans. It was Amadou and Mariam, Mali’s most internationally known musical duo, whose songs once carried the country’s everyday joys far beyond its borders. Amadou died suddenly this year. But the melody lingers.

Its lyrics hold the secret of the largest alliance of all. Not one forged by treaties or uniforms, but by people, across Mali and the Sahel, in all their diversity.

“Sabali”, Mariam sings.

“Forbearance.

“We have survived worse. We will survive this, too.”

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s administration announced late Tuesday that it’s freezing child care funds to Minnesota and demanding an audit of some day care centers after a series of fraud schemes involving government programs in recent years.

Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services Jim O’Neill said on the social platform X that the move is in response to “blatant fraud that appears to be rampant in Minnesota and across the country.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz pushed back on X, saying fraudsters are a serious issue that the state has spent years cracking down on but that this move is part of “Trump’s long game.”

“He’s politicizing the issue to defund programs that help Minnesotans,” Walz said.

O’Neill referenced a right-wing influencer who posted a video Friday claiming he found that day care centers operated by Somali residents in Minneapolis had committed up to $100 million in fraud. O’Neill said he has demanded Walz submit an audit of these centers that includes attendance records, licenses, complaints, investigations and inspections.

“We have turned off the money spigot and we are finding the fraud,” O’Neill said.

The announcement comes one day after U.S. Homeland Security officials were in Minneapolis conducting a fraud investigation by going to unidentified businesses and questioning workers.

There have been years of investigations that included a $300 million pandemic food fraud scheme revolving around the nonprofit Feeding Our Future, for which 57 defendants in Minnesota have been convicted. Prosecutors said the organization was at the center of the country’s largest COVID-19-related fraud scam, when defendants exploited a state-run, federally funded program meant to provide food for children.

A federal prosecutor alleged earlier this month that half or more of the roughly $18 billion in federal funds that supported 14 programs in Minnesota since 2018 may have been stolen. Most of the defendants in the child nutrition, housing services and autism program schemes are Somali Americans, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Minnesota.

O’Neill, who is serving as acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also said in the social media post Tuesday that payments across the U.S. through the Administration for Children and Families, an agency within the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, will now require “justification and a receipt or photo evidence” before money is sent. They have also launched a fraud-reporting hotline and email address.

The Administration for Children and Families provides $185 million in child care funds annually to Minnesota, according to Assistant Secretary Alex Adams.

“That money should be helping 19,000 American children, including toddlers and infants,” he said in a video posted on X. “Any dollar stolen by fraudsters is stolen from those children.”

Adams said he spoke Monday with the director of Minnesota’s child care services office and she wasn’t able to say “with confidence whether those allegations of fraud are isolated or whether there’s fraud stretching statewide.”

Trump has criticized Walz’s administration over the fraud cases, capitalizing on them to target the Somalia diaspora in the state, which has the largest Somali population in the U.S.

Walz, the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, has said an audit due by late January should give a better picture of the extent of the fraud. He said his administration is taking aggressive action to prevent additional fraud. He has long defended how his administration responded.

Minnesota’s most prominent Somali American, Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, has urged people not to blame an entire community for the actions of a relative few.

Golden writes for the Associated Press.

Dec. 31 (UPI) — Bulgaria will begin using the euro as its currency on Thursday, and the country hopes it will bring an economic boost, despite concerns.

Bulgaria joined the European Union in 2007, but it’s only now adopting the currency after strong debate and political turbulence.

It’s the 21st country to join the eurozone, and lawmakers in Brussels and Sofia hope it will boost the economy of the EU’s poorest nation.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called the move one of the EU’s greatest achievements.

“This milestone reflects years of hard work and commitment, overcoming challenges,” she said in a statement. “The euro will bring benefits for the Bulgarian people making payments and travel easier. It will bring new opportunities for Bulgarian businesses, allowing them to seize better the advantages of our common single market. It will further strengthen Bulgaria’s voice in Europe. This step is good for Bulgaria, and it strengthens Europe as a whole. It makes our economy more resilient and competitive globally. Congratulations, Bulgaria! You can be proud of what you achieved.”

The country has had dual displays of prices — in the euro and the Bulgarian lev — since August, and that will continue until August 2026. Consumers can use both currencies beginning Jan. 1 through Jan. 31. On Feb. 1, they must only use the euro. The price displays are a way for consumers to monitor prices and a stopgap to prevent retailers from price gouging.

Bulgarians can exchange their currency at banks and post offices for free until July. After that, they can charge for exchanges.

The country is still divided on whether switching to the euro is a good move.

A recent survey by the Bulgarian ministry of finance showed that 51% of citizens wanted to adopt the euro, and 45% were against it, The Guardian reported.

In June, a fight broke out in the parliament when the measure was adopted by the European Commission. Parliament members from the Revival Party blocked the podium. They also organized protests against euro adoption. Revival is a far-right, pro-Russian political party.

Petar Ganev, senior research fellow at the Institute for Market Economics in Sofia, told The Guardian that the division on the euro highlights the country’s broader political tension.

“This is not surprising. The country is divided on almost everything that you can imagine,” Ganev said. “And after the political instability, we ended up in a very hostile political environment.”

Bulgaria has endured a four-year political crisis with seven parliamentary elections and widespread corruption, which has caused a lack of trust in the government.

Valdis Dombrovskis, European Commission economy minister, said in a November speech in Sofia that the adoption of the euro was especially important during Russia’s war with Ukraine, rising geopolitical tensions and global economic uncertainty.

“Most European countries — including Bulgaria — are far too small to shape today’s world on their own. They only stand to gain necessary weight by fully integrating into the European Union’s larger political and economic structures,” he said.

“The euro area is not just a group of countries sharing a common currency,” Dombrovskis said in his speech. “It is a powerful symbol to the world of European integration, economic stability, and geopolitical strength. It gives Europe a collective economic weight that allows it to shape global trade, investment, and financial markets.”

The latest Eurobarometer, a survey conducted by the EU in Autumn 2025, showed that 74% of Europeans said their country has benefited from being a member of the EU, and 59% are optimistic about the future of the EU.

Many Bulgarians fear that prices will spike during the transition. The average monthly income is about $1,500 in the country, so rising prices could be detrimental to some. But the European Commission has said there is no evidence that inflation will rise.

Victor Papazov, macroeconomist and adviser to the Revival party, claimed Bulgaria was heading for a crisis similar to what Greece endured in 2009.

“Any person in their right mind would oppose adopting the euro,” Papazov said in a written statement to The Guardian. “Joining now will make things worse and faster. In my opinion there is not a single serious positive in adopting the euro.”

Maria Valentinova, 35, a pharmacist from Sofia, told The Guardian that she is glad her young son will grow up in the eurozone. She said the currency “will be good for the economy of the country in the long run.”

Valentinova called the transition period “a bit stressful” but said, “I think it will be a good thing in the end.”

Ganev said Bulgarians will get used to the new currency quickly. “What will happen to our country and if we are going to be a good example in the eurozone or a bad example … depends entirely on us.”

SEOUL Dec. 31 (UPI) — Against a backdrop of North Korea’s accelerating nuclear program and a fracturing geopolitical landscape, senior military officials and lawmakers from the United States and South Korea gathered in Seoul earlier this week to seek a fundamental redesign of their decades-old military partnership.

The second annual ROK-U.S. Combined Policy Forum, held at the Royal Park Convention, arrived at what participants described as a historical inflection point. As the security environment shifts from traditional border defense to a complex web of regional threats, the discussion centered on transitioning the alliance into a modern, multi-domain force.

“Korea is not simply responding to threats on the peninsula,” Gen. Xavier T. Brunson, commander of the ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Command, said in a keynote address.

He characterized the current era as a “pivotal moment” and stressed that alliance modernization “should be more than a slogan.”

Brunson noted that South Korea now sits at the crossroads of regional dynamics that shape the balance of power across Northeast Asia.

The forum, attended by influential figures including Rep. Yoo Yong-won of the National Assembly’s Defense Committee, reflected a growing urgency to adapt. While the alliance remains anchored by 28,500 U.S. troops, the conversation shifted toward two pressing themes: the expansion of South Korea’s operational role and the credibility of integrated deterrence.

A primary focus was the modernization of the command framework. Experts proposed integrating South Korean forces more deeply into the combined defense system, reflecting Seoul’s desire for a role that matches its military sophistication. This shift is seen as a response to demands for more visible burden-sharing and strategic autonomy.

The afternoon sessions turned to the reality of North Korea’s nuclear advancements. With Pyongyang officially designating the South as its “primary foe,” speakers underscored the need for closer integration of nuclear consultation mechanisms. The goal is to move beyond abstract promises toward a structural reform that addresses “multi-theater” challenges.

As the forum concluded, the underlying message was clear: While the alliance remains the bedrock of security, the status quo is no longer sufficient. Under the administration of Lee Jae Myung, the partnership is attempting to bridge the gap between a 70-year-old treaty and the high-tech, nuclear-charged reality of the 21st century.

For faith leaders supporting and ministering to anxious immigrants across the United States, 2025 was fraught with challenges and setbacks. For many in these religious circles, the coming year could be worse.

The essence of their fears: President Trump has become harsher with his contemptuous rhetoric and policy proposals, blaming immigrants for problems from crime to housing shortages and, in a social media post, demanding “REVERSE MIGRATION.”

Haitians who fled gang violence in their homeland, as well as Afghans allowed entry after assisting the U.S. in Afghanistan before the Taliban takeover, now fear that their refuge in America may end due to get-tough policy changes. Somali Americans, notably in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, worry about their future after Trump referred to them as “garbage.”

After Trump’s slurs, the chair of the Catholic bishops conference’s subcommittee on racial justice urged public officials to refrain from dehumanizing language.

“Each child of God has value and dignity,” said the bishop of Austin, Texas, Daniel Garcia. “Language that denigrates a person or community based on his or her ethnicity or country of origin is incompatible with this truth.”

Here’s a look at what lies ahead for these targeted immigrant communities, and the faith leaders supporting them.

Haitians in limbo

In 2024, Trump falsely accused Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, of eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs. It worsened fears about anti-immigrant sentiment in the mostly white, blue-collar city of about 59,000, where more than 15,000 Haitians live and work.

Thousands of them settled in Springfield in recent years under the Temporary Protected Status program.

Their prospects now seem dire. The TPS program, allowing many Haitians to remain legally in Springfield and elsewhere, expires in early February.

“It’s going to be an economic and humanitarian disaster,” said the Rev. Carl Ruby, pastor of Central Christian Church — one of several Springfield churches supporting the Haitians.

Ruby and Viles Dorsainvil, a leader of Springfield’s Haitian community, traveled recently to Washington to seek help from members of Congress.

“Every single legislator we’ve talked to has said nothing is going to happen legislatively. Trump’s rhetoric keeps getting harsher,” Ruby said. “It just doesn’t feel like anything is going our way.”

Many Haitians fear for their lives if they return to their gang-plagued homeland.

Faith communities have come together to support immigrants in the face of Trump’s crackdown, Ruby said.

“It’s increasing our resolve to oppose this,” he said. “There are more and more churches in Springfield saying we will provide sanctuary. … We will do whatever it takes to protect our members.”

Afghan refugees

Trump suspended the U.S. refugee program on the first day of his second term. Halting the program and its federal funding affected hundreds of faith-based organizations assisting refugees.

Among them was Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area, which serves the region around Washington, D.C., and lost 68% of its budget this year. The organization laid off two-thirds of its staff, shrinking from nearly 300 employees to 100.

Many of its employees and nearly two-thirds of its clients are Afghans. Many worked with the U.S. in Afghanistan and fled after the Taliban’s takeover from a U.S.-backed government in 2021.

The Trump administration announced new immigration restrictions after an Afghan national became the suspect in the Nov. 26 shooting of two National Guard members in Washington.

“It shook up our team. It was awful,” said Kristyn Peck, CEO of LSSNCA.

Peck said there is increased fear among Afghans on her staff and a false public narrative that Afghan immigrants are a threat.

“A whole group of people have now been targeted and blamed for this senseless act of violence,” she said.

She still finds reasons for hope.

“We continue to do the good work,” Peck said. “Even in challenging moments, we just continue to see people putting their faith into action.”

Volunteers have stepped up to provide services that employees no longer have funding to provide, including a program that helps Afghan women with English-language and job-skills training.

U.S.-based World Relief, a global Christian humanitarian organization overseen by the National Association of Evangelicals, has joined left-of-center religious groups decrying the new crackdown on Afghan refugees.

“When President Trump announces his intention to ‘permanently halt’ all migration from ‘Third World countries,’ he’s insulting the majority of the global Church,” declared World Relief CEO Myal Greene. “When his administration halts processing for all Afghans on account of the evil actions of one person, he risks abandoning tens of thousands of others who risked their lives alongside the U.S. military.”

Somalis targeted by Trump

In mid-December, imams and other leaders of Minnesota’s Somali community established a task force to tackle the fallout from major fraud scandals, a surge in immigration enforcement, and Trump’s contemptuous words toward the largest group of Somali refugees in the U.S.

“We’re not minimizing the crime, but we’re amplifying the successes,” said imam Yusuf Abdulle.

He directs the Islamic Association of North America, a network of more than three dozen mostly East African mosques. About half are in Minnesota, which, since the late 1990s, has been home to growing numbers of Somali refugees who are increasingly visible in local and U.S. politics.

“For unfortunate things like fraud or youth violence, every immigrant community has been through tough times,” Abdulle said. “For the number of years here, Somali is a very resilient, very successful community.”

Even though most Somalis in Minnesota are U.S. citizens or lawfully present, Abdulle said, many deserted local businesses and mosques when immigration enforcement surged.

The new task force includes more than two dozen faith and business leaders, as well as community organizers. Addressing their community’s fears is the first challenge, followed by increased advocacy ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

“Every election year the rhetoric goes up. And so we want to push back against these hateful rhetorics, but also bring our community together,” said community leader Abdullahi Farah.

Faith leaders respond

In mid-November, U.S. Catholic bishops voted overwhelmingly to issue a “special message” decrying developments causing fear and anxiety among immigrants. It marked the first time in 12 years that the bishops invoked this urgent way of speaking collectively.

“We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care,” said the message. “We oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people. We pray for an end to dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement.”

The bishops thanked priests, nuns and lay Catholics accompanying and assisting immigrants.

“We urge all people of goodwill to continue and expand such efforts,” the message said.

The presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Yehiel Curry, issued a similar pastoral message last month thanking ELCA congregations for supporting immigrants amid “aggressive and indiscriminate immigration enforcement.”

“The racial profiling and harm to our immigrant neighbors show no signs of diminishing, so we will heed God’s call to show up alongside these neighbors,” Curry wrote.

HIAS, an international Jewish nonprofit serving refugees and asylum-seekers, has condemned recent Trump administration moves.

“As a Jewish organization, we also know all too well what it means for an entire community to be targeted because of the actions of one person,” HIAS said.

“We will always stand in solidarity with people seeking the opportunity to rebuild their lives in safety, including those being targeted now by harmful policies and hateful rhetoric in the Afghan American and Somali American communities.”

Crary, Dell’Orto, Henao and Stanley write for the Associated Press.

A ‘great leap forward’

But Schwartz told Al Jazeera that the trend towards government data consolidation has continued in the decades since, under both Democratic leaders and Republicans.

“Surveillance is bipartisan, unfortunately,” he said.

With Trump’s second term, however, the process hit warp speed. Schwartz argues that the Trump administration’s actions violate laws like the Privacy Act, marking a “dangerous” shift away from Nixon-era protections.

“The number-one problem with the federal government in the last year when it comes to surveillance is the demolition of the Watergate-era safeguards that were intended to keep databases separated,” he said.

Schwartz noted that Trump’s consolidation efforts have been coupled with a lack of transparency about how the new, integrated data systems are being used.

“Just as the current administration has done a great leap forward on surveillance and invading privacy, so it also has been a less transparent government in terms of the public understanding what it is doing,” Schwartz said.

Already, on March 20, Trump signed an executive order that called on government agencies to take “all necessary steps” for the dissolution of what he called “data silos”.

Shortly afterwards, in April, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) inked a deal with the IRS to exchange personal information, including the names and addresses of taxpayers.

The memo was seen as an effort to turn private taxpayer data into a tool to carry out Trump’s goal of deporting immigrants.

A federal court in November paused the agencies’ data-sharing agreement. But other efforts continue.

In June, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of giving DOGE access to sensitive Social Security data. And just this month, the Trump administration pressured states to share information about the recipients of food assistance, or else face a loss of funding.

While immigrants appear to be one of the main targets of the data consolidation project, Venzke said that Americans of all stripes should not be surprised if their personal information is weaponised down the line.

“There is no reason that it will be limited to undocumented people. They are taking a system that’s traditionally limited to non-citizens and vastly expanding it to include all sorts of information on US citizens,” Venzke said.

“That was unthinkable just five years ago, but we’re seeing it happen now, and consequently, its potential abuses are widespread.”

Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.) charged that the Administration and Budget Director David A. Stockman put out “deliberately misleading” information on the Job Corps in their effort to kill the $617-million program, which aids disadvantaged youths. To support his point he released six government-sponsored reports and studies–including one that found that for every $1 spent on the Job Corps there was a return to society of $1.46.

Democrats are starting the new year on a high.

A series of 2025 victories, in red and blue states alike, was marked by a striking improvement over the party’s 2024 showing. That over-performance, to use the political term of art, means candidates — including even some who lost — received a significantly higher percentage of the vote than presidential candidate Kamala Harris managed.

That’s a strong signal ahead of the midterm election, suggesting Democratic partisans are energized, a key ingredient in any successful campaign, and the party is winning support among independents and perhaps even a few disaffected Republicans.

If history is a guide and the uneven economy a portent, Democrats will very likely seize control of the House in November, picking up at least the three seats needed to erase the GOP’s bare majority. The Senate looks to be a longer — though not impossible — reach, given the Republican lean of the states being contested.

In short, Democrats are in much better shape than all the black crepe and existential ideations suggested a year ago.

Yes, the party suffered a soul-crushing defeat in the presidential race. But 2024 was never the disaster some made it out to be. Democrats gained two House seats and held their own in most contests apart from the fight for the Senate, where several Republican states reverted to form and ousted the chamber’s few remaining Democratic holdouts.

Still, Democrats being Democrats, all is not happiness and light in the party of Jefferson, Jackson, Clinton and Obama.

Campaigning to become the party’s chairman, Ken Martin last winter promised to conduct a thorough review of the 2024 election and to make its findings public, as a step toward redressing Democrats’ mistakes and bolstering the party going forward.

”What we need to do right now is really start to get a handle around what happened,” he told reporters before his election.

Now Martin has decided to bury that autopsy report.

“Here’s our North Star: Does this help us win?” he said in a mid-December statement announcing his turnabout and the study’s unceremonious interment. “If the answer is no, it’s a distraction from the core mission.”

There is certainly no shortage of 2024 election analyses for the asking. The sifting of rubble, pointing of fingers and laying of blame began an eye blink after Donald Trump was declared the winner.

There are prescriptions from the moderate and progressive wings of the party — suggesting, naturally, that Democrats absolutely must move their direction to stand any chance of ever winning again. There are diagnoses from a welter of 2028 presidential hopefuls, declared and undeclared, offering themselves as both seer and Democratic savior.

The report Martin commissioned was, however, supposed to be the definitive word from the party, offering both a clear-eyed look back and a clarion way forward.

“We know that we lost ground with Latino voters,” he said in those searching days before he became party chairman. “We know we lost ground with women and younger voters and, of course, working-class voters. We don’t know the how and why yet.”

As part of the investigation, more than 300 Democrats were interviewed in each of the 50 states. But there was good reason to doubt the integrity of the report, even before Martin pulled out his shovel and started digging.

According to the New York Times and others, there was no plan to examine President Biden’s headstrong decision to seek reelection despite his advanced age and no intention to second-guess any of the strategic decisions Harris made in her hurry-up campaign.

Which is like setting out to solve a murder by ignoring the weapon used and skipping past the cause of death.

Curious, indeed.

Still, there was predictable outrage when Martin went back on his promise.

“This is a very bad decision that reeks of the caution and complacency that brought us to this moment,” Dan Pfeiffer, an alumnus of the Obama White House, posted on social media.

“The people who volunteered, donated and voted deserve to know what went wrong,” Jamal Simmons, a former Harris vice presidential advisor, told the Hill newspaper. “The DNC should tell them.”

In 2013, Republicans commissioned a similar after-action assessment following Mitt Romney’s loss to President Obama. It was scathing in its blunt-force commentary.

The 98-page report said a smug, uncaring, ideologically rigid party was turning off voters with stale policies that had changed little in decades and was unhelpfully projecting an image that alienated minorities and young voters.

Among its recommendation, the postmortem called on the party to develop “a more welcoming brand of conservatism” and suggested an extensive set of “inclusion” proposals for minority groups, including Latinos, Asians and African Americans. (DEI, anyone?)

“Unless changes are made,” the report concluded, “it will be increasingly difficult for Republicans to win another presidential election in the near future.”

Trump, of course, won the White House three years later doing precisely none of what the report recommended.

Which suggests the Democratic autopsy, buried or otherwise, is not likely to matter a whole lot when voters go to the polls. (It’s the affordability, stupid.)

That said, Martin should have released the appraisal and not just because of the time and effort invested. There was already Democratic hostility toward the chairman, particularly among donors unhappy with his leadership and performance, and his entombing of the autopsy report won’t help.

Martin gave his word, and breaking it is a needless distraction and blemish on the party.

Besides, a bit of thoughtful self-reflection is never a bad thing. It’s hard to look forward when you’ve got your head stuck in the sand.

When Virginia Guevara moved into a studio apartment in Orange County in 2024 after nearly a decade of homelessness, she needed far more than a roof and a bed.

Scattered visits to free clinics notwithstanding, Guevara hadn’t had a full medical checkup in years. She required dental work. She wanted to start looking for a job. And she was overwhelmed by the maze of paperwork needed simply to get her off the street, much less to make any of the other things happen.

But Guevara had help. The Jamboree Housing Corp., an affordable-housing nonprofit that renovated a former hotel in Stanton that Guevara now calls home, didn’t just move her in — it also provided her a fleet of wraparound services. Jamboree counselors helped Guevara navigate the healthcare system to see a doctor and a dentist, buy a few things for her apartment, and get training to become a caregiver.

“I was years on the street before I got the kind of help I needed so I could help myself,” said Guevara, 68.

Amid the Trump administration’s apparent opposition to using Medicaid funding for such social services, staffers at Jamboree and similar affordable-housing providers in California have feared losing federal money. The experimental waivers that provide the primary funding for the program expire at the end of 2026. But as it turns out, the state had the foresight several years ago to designate certain nonhousing social services — such as mental health care, drug counseling and job training — as a form of Medicaid spending that will continue to be reimbursed.

Catherine Howden, a spokesperson for the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, confirmed that California’s use of the “in lieu of services” classification for these wraparound programs is allowed under federal regulations.

“It is starting to sound positive that we will, at the very least, be able to continue billing for these services after the waiver period,” said Natalie Reider, a senior vice president at Jamboree Housing.

During President Trump’s first term, states were permitted to use Medicaid money for social support services not typically covered by health insurance. But the second Trump administration is reeling that policy back in, saying that the intervening Biden administration took the supportive services process too far. Howden said in a statement that the policy “distracted the Medicaid program from its core mission: providing excellent health outcomes for vulnerable Americans.”

Through CalAIM, a five-year experimental build-out of the Medicaid system, programs such as Jamboree were able to leverage federal funding to offer the kinds of nonhousing social services that experts contend are essential to keeping people permanently housed.

However, these wraparound services are only one component of the CalAIM initiative, which is attempting to take Medicaid, known as Medi-Cal in California, in a more holistic direction across all areas of care. And when CalAIM launched, California officials gave the programs the Medicaid “in lieu of services” designation, known as ILOS, in effect putting them outside the waiver process and ensuring that even when CalAIM sunsets, money for those social initiatives will continue to flow.

“California has tried to future-proof many of the policy changes it has made in Medi-Cal by including them in mechanisms like ILOS that do not require federal waiver approval,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News. “That allows these policy changes to continue, even with a politically hostile federal administration.”

The designation allows these social services to be funded through Medicaid managed-care plans under existing federal laws because they are cost-effective substitutes for a Medicaid service or reduce the likelihood of patients needing other Medicaid-covered healthcare services, said Glenn Tsang, policy advisor for homelessness and housing at the state’s Department of Health Care Services. The state could not provide an estimate of the annual funding for these wraparound services because they are not distinguished from other payments made to Medicaid managed-care plans.

“We are full steam ahead with these services,” Tsang said, “and they are authorized.”

Although California was the first state to incorporate the designation for such housing and other health-related social support, Tsang said, several other states — including Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, New York and North Carolina — are now using the mechanism in a similar fashion.

Paul San Felipe, senior program manager for Jamboree, speaks during a meeting at Clara Vista in Stanton on Dec. 29, 2025.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

Early results suggest such support saves on healthcare spending. When Jamboree, MidPen Housing Corp. in Northern California, RH Community Builders in the Central Valley and other permanent supportive housing providers employ a holistic approach that includes social services, they reported higher rates of formerly homeless people remaining in housing, less frequent use of costly emergency health services, and more residents landing jobs that help them pay rent and stay housed.

At the nonprofit MidPen Housing, which serves 12 counties in and around the San Francisco Bay Area, roughly 40% of the units in the program’s pipeline are earmarked for “extremely low-income” people, a group that includes those who are homeless, said Danielle McCluskey, senior director of resident services.

CalAIM reimbursements help fund the part of MidPen that focuses on supportive services across a wide range of experiences, such as chronic homelessness, mental health issues and those leaving the foster care system. McCluskey described it as one leg of a three-legged stool, the others being real estate development and property management.

“If any of those legs are not getting what they need, if they’re not funded or not staffed or resourced, then that stool is kind of wobbly — off-kilter,” the director said.

A recent state evaluation found that people who used at least one of the housing support services — including navigation into new housing, healthcare assistance and a deposit to secure an apartment — saw a 13% reduction in emergency department visits and a 24% reduction in inpatient admissions in the six months that followed.

Documenting those outcomes is crucial because the department needs to show federal officials that the services lessen the need for other, often costlier Medicaid-covered care — the essence of the classification.

Advocates for the inclusion of supportive services argue that the American system ultimately saves money on those investments. As California’s homeless population has soared in recent years to more than 187,000 on a given night — nearly a quarter of the U.S. total — Jamboree has been allocating more of its resources to permanent supportive housing.

Founded in 1990 in Orange County, Jamboree builds various types of affordable housing using federal, state and private funding. Reider said about a fifth of the organization’s portfolio is dedicated to permanent supportive housing.

“They’re not going back out to the streets. They’re not going to jail. They’re not going to the hospitals,” Reider said. “Keeping people housed is the No. 1 outcome, and it is the cost-saver, right? We’re using Medicaid dollars, but we’re saving the system money in the long run.”

Guevara spent years living out of her truck before a shelter worker connected her with Jamboree. Now she also has found work as a caregiver.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

Guevara, who wound up on the streets after a falling-out with family in 2015, spent years living out of her truck before a shelter worker connected her with Jamboree. There, she was paired with a specialist to help her figure out how to get and see a doctor, and to keep up with scheduling the battery of medical tests she needed after years spent living in temporary shelters.

“I also got a job developer, who helped me get this job with the county so I can pay my rent,” Guevara said of her position as a part-time in-home caregiver. “Now I take care of people kind of the same way people have been taking care of me.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.

Bangladesh bade farewell to former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia in a state funeral that drew vast crowds mourning a towering political figure whose leadership shaped the nation for decades.

Zia, the first woman to serve as prime minister in the South Asian nation of 170 million people, died on Tuesday aged 80. Flags flew at half-mast across the country on Wednesday as thousands of security personnel lined Dhaka’s streets while her flag-draped coffin travelled through the capital.

Massive crowds gathered outside Bangladesh’s parliament building for the funeral prayers. People from Dhaka and beyond streamed towards Manik Mia Avenue, where the parliament building is located, since early morning to pay their last respects.

Retired government official Minhaz Uddin, 70, came despite never having voted for her. “I came here with my grandson, just to say goodbye to a veteran politician whose contributions will always be remembered,” he said, watching from behind a barbed wire barricade.

Zia entered politics following her husband’s death and rose to prominence opposing a military ruler who was ultimately ousted in a 1990 mass uprising. She first became prime minister in 1991 after a landslide victory when parliamentary democracy was introduced, and remained leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party until her death.

Known for her calm demeanour, Zia maintained a strong political rivalry with her archrival Sheikh Hasina, who led the Bangladesh Awami League party and ruled for 15 years before being ousted in a 2024 mass uprising.

Security was extensive, with authorities deploying approximately 10,000 personnel, including soldiers, to maintain order. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus’s interim government announced three days of mourning and declared Wednesday a public holiday to honour the three-time prime minister’s legacy.

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Dick Cheney predicted Thursday that the Soviet Union will withdraw all of its troops from Europe by 1995, a forecast that prompted key Senate Democrats to question whether President Bush’s new proposal for cutting U.S. forces should be faster and deeper.

As the Senate Armed Services Committee opened congressional debate on reshaping the nation’s military structure, Cheney and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Colin L. Powell, were repeatedly challenged on the Administration’s troop-reduction plans.

195,000 Force Level

Cheney, disclosing the Pentagon’s rough timetable for cuts in Europe, testified that it may take a year or two to carry out any U.S.-Soviet agreement on the issue.

Bush announced Wednesday night that he was recommending that each side cut its combat forces in Central Europe to 195,000, with the United States allowed to have an additional 30,000 elsewhere in Europe. Currently, the United States has 305,000 troops on the continent.

Sen. Alan J. Dixon (D-Ill.), sharply criticizing the pace of negotiations, declared that he would push the subcommittee he heads to legislate an immediate reduction of 50,000 American troops in Europe and 10,000 in Korea.

Dixon said events are overtaking negotiations, with NATO allies West Germany and Belgium already planning their own deep cuts and Soviet forces certain to be kicked out by new governments in Eastern Europe.

“I’m not saying we should strip until we’re naked,” Dixon said. “There are reasonable, moderate, fair reductions we can make.”

Later, Committee Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) applauded Bush for going beyond his proposal of last May and advocating the withdrawal of 80,000 U.S. troops, not just the 30,000 he called for then. He called it “much more relevant to the changes in Europe and to the budget realities here at home.”

But Nunn voiced strong concern when Cheney seemed to advocate keeping 225,000 U.S. troops in Europe indefinitely, despite his prediction that the Soviets would pull all of its forces out of Eastern Europe and the two Germanys would be reunited.

Nunn warned that unless the United States had plans to make substantial withdrawals in such a case, it could wind up supplying most of the ground forces for NATO as other allies disbanded their units.

The influential senator got Cheney to concede that the Administration would “take another look” at U.S. troop levels in the event of a sweeping Soviet pullback and German reunification.

Despite Cheney’s expression of flexibility, the defense secretary firmly defended Bush’s new plan. He asserted that any effort by Congress to make unilateral troop cuts before the conclusion of U.S.-Soviet arms control talks would undermine the NATO alliance and encourage greater instability in Europe.

“We are on the verge of winning one of the greatest victories in the history of the world without a shot being fired,” Cheney said. “We should not unilaterally bring them (U.S. troops) home before we get an agreement.”

Republicans Cautious

Several Republicans on the committee strongly backed that position.

“We cannot let the euphoria sweeping this nation drive us to unilateral and hasty reductions in these forces,” Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S. C.) said.

Although members of both parties warmly pledged to work cooperatively with Cheney and Powell in the battles ahead, several Democrats served notice that they would press for deep cuts in the Administration’s proposals for increased spending on strategic weapons programs.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) proposed a “Democratic alternative” that he said would carve a $169-billion “peace dividend” out of the defense budget over the next five years, more than quadrupling the savings proposed by Bush for the same period.

Kennedy singled out the B-2 Stealth bomber, the “Star Wars” anti-missile program and other major programs for deep slashes. He argued that Bush’s budget fails to reflect a dramatically diminished Soviet military threat and a massive upgrading of U.S. strategic weapons in the last decade.

“We have to have a modernization program,” he said, “but does it have to be at the madcap pace of the 1980s?”

Cheney, while acknowledging major changes in the world, said that the Soviets continue to modernize their own strategic arsenal. “The Soviet Union remains the only nation on earth capable of destroying the United States,” he said.

Powell likewise contended that this was no time for the nation to let down its guard.

“I never want to return to that leisurely, comfortable ‘From Here to Eternity’ attitude of the 1930s that helped invite global conflict to an unsuspecting world,” he said.

NEW YORK — So much for East Coast gloating.

As New Yorkers watched California grapple with recall politics in recent months, many chortled over what they called democracy run amok. But now a controversy over ballot measures and voting procedures is giving the Big Apple its own electoral black eye — a case, some say, of democracy under wraps.

It started during the summer when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a Republican in a heavily Democratic town, placed an initiative on the city’s Nov. 4 ballot that would ban partisan local elections. The mayor has contributed $2 million of his own money to pass the measure, which would reduce the traditional clout of the Democratic Party in New York City politics.

He also took steps to block voters from considering an initiative signed by 115,000 residents that would compel the city to form a commission on chronic overcrowding in public schools. Bloomberg, like other mayors before him, invoked a little-known state law that bars other initiatives from appearing on a municipal ballot once a charter-reform measure is placed on it.

New York’s powerful teachers union challenged the decision, saying the law was unconstitutional. But the state’s highest court upheld the exclusion last week, effectively killing the issue for next week’s election. In their arguments, city attorneys contended that voters might be confused by too many measures on a ballot at once.

“It’s as if we have no right to direct democracy here, and some people think we’re probably too stupid to focus on more than one issue at once,” said Wayne Barrett, a New York historian and journalist. “Those of us who believe in real democracy would have to say Californians are now way ahead of us. At least they’re alive out there.”

Unlike California, where disparate ballot measures seem to blossom each election season, the process of putting initiatives before voters is rarely seen in New York. But it’s not due to a lack of grass-roots energy. Activists have been complaining for years about the crucial “home rule” law, passed decades ago, which gives New York City mayors power to decide what will appear on a ballot.

Like other mayors, Bloomberg used the vehicle of a Charter Reform Commission to exercise these powers. He formed a panel this year to study the idea of banning partisan local elections — a move that would prevent candidates from running as the nominee of a particular party — and to no one’s surprise the panel voted to put the measure on the Nov. 4 ballot, along with two other city reform proposals.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who preceded Bloomberg, used a similar strategy in 1998. He formed a charter commission at a time when City Council leaders had backed a ballot initiative opposing Giuliani’s unpopular plan to build a new stadium in Manhattan for the New York Yankees. The panel placed several measures before voters, thus knocking the baseball measure off the municipal ballot.

“We should know by now that mayors will always use this charter commission strategy to control the ballot,” said Doug Israel, political director of the Citizens Union Foundation, an activist group that opposes Bloomberg’s nonpartisan proposal. “And what’s really undemocratic is that a mayor could spend unlimited amounts on a proposal, while keeping other initiative proposals away from New York City voters.”

Stung by criticism of his campaign for nonpartisan elections, Bloomberg told a news conference last week that he was determined to eliminate decades of party-based corruption at City Hall. He said nonpartisan elections would pave the way for more minority candidates, freeing them from the need to win party nominations.

“This has nothing to do about me,” he said, rejecting criticism of his willingness to devote huge amounts of personal funds to the campaign, as he did in spending $75 million to be elected mayor two years ago. “Nonpartisan elections is something I have believed in for a long time. We’ve seen scandal after scandal in the newspapers of party bosses taking away the public’s choice. And that’s not democracy.”

A Quinnipiac Poll released last week suggested that New Yorkers are evenly divided over the proposal. But 55% said the voting should be delayed because people have not had enough time to consider the measure; a majority of voters also told pollsters they were critical of Bloomberg spending his own money on the campaign.

To be sure, Democratic activists have also raised funds to fight the measure, and top party officials say Bloomberg’s proposal would hurt minority candidates, who have been heavily backed by New York’s Democratic organizations in past elections.

The mayor has also drawn fire from Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, who backed the initiative on classroom size. She was incensed when Bloomberg argued that the teachers union — locked in bitter wage talks with the city — had mounted the grass-roots campaign as a “publicity stunt.”

Longtime city observers differ over the merits of nonpartisan elections and a move to regulate classroom size via the ballot. Some note, for example, that most of the nation’s largest cities — including Los Angeles and Chicago — have nonpartisan elections, and that these communities have elected African American mayors.

But many experts are troubled by New York’s long-standing barriers to getting initiatives on a ballot and say sweeping legislative changes are overdue.

“When activists tell me they want to put something on the local ballot, I tell them I hope they have a lot of money to spend on lawyers,” said Gene Russianoff, senior attorney for the New York Public Interest Group. “It’s a huge uphill battle here.”

One of the few success stories, he noted, came in 1993, when millionaire businessman Ron Lauter spent an estimated $150,000 on legal fees to overcome City Hall objections to a measure imposing term limits. The initiative eventually passed.

The main roadblocks seem to come from state legislators, who would have to pass any laws making it easier to put initiatives on city or state ballots. They have voiced long-standing opposition to California-style ballot measures, Russianoff said, because such proposals would so often create an end run around their power.

As the city’s ballot wrangling continues, many New Yorkers might agree on this much: For now at least, those California jokes don’t seem quite as funny.

“It doesn’t speak well for us here in New York City when 115,000 people can sign a petition to raise an issue and they can be so completely denied,” said veteran political consultant Hank Sheinkopf. “In California, they’d never stand for this.”

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan federal commission, in an unprecedented effort to save money and consolidate the nation’s sprawling complex of military bases, recommended Thursday that Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci shut 86 bases and partly close another five, yielding a savings of $700 million a year.

The commission called for six California bases to be closed, including the historic Presidio in San Francisco and two Air Force bases in San Bernardino County. It recommended also that the Navy halt construction of a new station at Hunters Point in San Francisco and that ships slated to have been based there be transferred instead to ports at San Diego, Long Beach and Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

Cleanup Problems Seen

If approved by Carlucci and not overruled by Congress, the panel’s recommendations could move more than 17,000 Defense Department employees out of California and lead to the sale of thousands of acres of military warehouses and airfields–as well as environmental cleanup problems–to new owners in the private sector across the country.

Moreover, approval of the commission’s recommendations would mark the first time in a decade that the Defense Department has overcome political obstacles to base closures and shut any major military facility in the United States.

In presenting the report, former Rep. Jack Edwards (R-Ala.)–co-chairman of the 12-man President’s Commission on Base Realignment and Closure with former Sen. Abraham Ribicoff (D-Conn.)–called the report “a totally nonpartisan effort” and added that in reaching its conclusions, “we didn’t accept any list from anybody.”

The panel’s findings met mixed reaction on Capitol Hill, where several members of the California delegation complained that the state would be unfairly affected by the closures. But congressional leaders predicted that the recommendations would be implemented despite the objections.

Congress, which established the panel last May to hold down the rising cost of maintaining the nation’s military bases, will have 45 days from March 1 to reject the entire list by voting a measure of disapproval in both houses. A two-thirds’ vote is required. Unless it does so, the Defense Department is expected to move quickly to implement the commission’s recommendations, with official base closures beginning in January, 1990.

Won’t Give Up Fight

Representatives from hard-hit states, however, were not yet ready to give up their home-state military facilities without a fight. Illinois Democratic Sens. Alan J. Dixon and Paul Simon criticized the commission for not recommending closures of U.S. bases overseas.

“How can we justify closing military bases in our own back yard when we don’t even consider a single one of the 1,500 overseas U.S. military facilities?” Dixon asked.

Still, the vast majority of House members will support the base-closing recommendation, in large part because their districts are not affected, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Les Aspin (D-Wis.) said. Most of the 86 bases slated for closing have fewer than 30 employees, Aspin noted.

“We’re really talking about a universe of only 27 communities that will be hit markedly,” Aspin said. “I would say the chances of overturning this process are not high.”

In the Senate, Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) praised the commission for its “workman-like approach” to the task of closing unneeded bases and predicted that the recommendations will not be overturned by Congress.

Neither Aspin’s Wisconsin district nor Nunn’s home state of Georgia is affected by the base-closing plan, which would provide an estimated savings of $5.6 billion over 20 years.

Edwards defended the heavy hits against California bases–which represented a little more than 7% of the total closures–saying that the state’s high economic growth and its large military presence made it a likely site for some shutdowns.

“We found over 300,000 military and civilian people in California,” Edwards said. “When you’ve got that kind of activity in a state, it’s not unlikely that you’re going to have some activity on this committee on that state.”

New Hampshire, New Jersey and Illinois, states with a much smaller military presence than California, were hit hardest by the initiatives. With the closure of Pease Air Force Base, New Hampshire would lose almost half of its military population. With the proposed closure of Chanute Air Force Base and Ft. Sheridan in Illinois and Ft. Dix in New Jersey, those states’ military populations would be cut by 9.7%. By contrast, California would lose 5% of its military population.

Citing air traffic congestion and encroachment by the surrounding civilian communities, the commission recommended the closure of George Air Force Base and Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino County.

March Would Grow

The move would draw 6,653 military and civilian workers from Norton and 5,358 from George. But March Air Force, 9 miles southeast of Riverside, would pick up an additional 3,420 military and civilian employees from proposed consolidations, many of them from Norton.

In both cases, the panel contended that the actions would have a “minimal impact on local employment,” though its members conceded that those affected by the recommendations might differ with that assessment. The commission noted that Norton and George have had trouble recruiting civilian workers from the local population because of competition from the high-technology private firms operating in and around the Apple Valley.

The closure of Norton could cost $132 million, according to commission estimates. But the panel believes that the move would save the Air Force $68 million annually in operating costs, yielding savings within three years. The closure of George, estimated to cost $37 million early in the process, would result in quicker returns because the Defense Department will save $70 million in operating costs once it is shut.

The panel urged also the closure of Mather Air Force Base, 12 miles southeast of Sacramento, a move that would take away about 3,000 military and civilian employees and a payroll of $242.3 million.

The Pentagon tried unsuccessfully to shut Mather in January, 1987, but was prevented by Reps. Robert T. Matsui and Vic Fazio, both Democrats from Sacramento, who won backing for an amendment forbidding the use of appropriated funds for the closure.

The closure of the Presidio–1,416 acres of land at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco–may be one of the commission’s most lucrative recommendations. All but 32.5 acres of the land by law must be turned over to the National Park Service. The rest of the land, which houses a hospital, under current law is to be offered for lease to the city of San Francisco for use in treating victims of acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

“The full value of the 36.5 acres could be realized if the legislation on lease of Presidio lands were repealed,” the commission report notes, adding that closure will save $314 million initially and $74 million in yearly operating costs.

In recommending that the Navy discontinue construction of a new home port at Hunters Point in San Francisco, the commission anticipates that the Defense Department will save $8 million annually “forever,” Edwards said. The panel proposed that the Navy shift to Pearl Harbor a battleship and two cruisers to have been based at Hunters Point, send one cruiser to Long Beach and one cruiser, two destroyers and two frigates to San Diego.

Although Congress’ acquiescence to the recommendations is expected, the Defense Department must count on more than that if it is to carry out the panel’s proposals, lawmakers said. Edwards said that Congress will have to approve $300 million next year “to prime the pump” with funds until the proceeds from early land sales, which will help pay the initial costs of closures, become available.

It is during the annual appropriations fight that dissident members of the Senate and House may try to win back funding for bases in their states.

“Watch out for appropriations,” Aspin warned. “I’m going to be watching for any such shenanigans. And I hope the press and public will keep an eye out, too.”

Terrorism and the Middle East are continuing to roil the Republican Senate contest after a letter written by former congressman Tom Campbell emerged that appeared to contradict statements Campbell and his aides had made about his dealings with a radical Muslim professor.

The professor, Sami Al-Arian, contributed to Campbell’s unsuccessful campaign in 2000 for the U.S. Senate. On Sept. 26, 2001, when he was teaching at the University of South Florida, Al-Arian gave an interview to Fox TV host Bill O’Reilly in which he conceded that he had said, “Jihad is our path. Victory to Islam. Death to Israel. Revolution. Revolution until victory. Rolling to Jerusalem.”

Those statements quickly generated a furor and the university moved to discipline Al-Arian. Campbell, by then a law professor at Stanford University, wrote a letter to Judy Genshaft, the president of the University of South Florida, protesting any punishment.

Campbell had previously conceded that he wrote a letter on Al-Arian’s behalf, but had said during a candidates’ debate Friday that he did so before Al-Arian’s interview with O’Reilly. His campaign’s website also said the letter was written before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

The text of the letter showed otherwise. Dated Jan. 21, 2002, it said, “ . . . I respectfully wish to convey my sincere alarm that Professor Al-Arian may be treated harshly because of the substance of his views.”

Campbell went on to write that “I have formed this fear because of the paucity of evidence supporting the purported reasons for this discipline against him. I read a transcript of the ‘O’Reilly Factor’ interview last autumn, and I did not see anything whereby Professor Al-Arian attempted to claim he was representing the views of the University of South Florida.”

Carly Fiorina, one of Campbell’s opponents in the primary race, called on him to release the letter last week. The text of the letter was first disclosed by the website of the Investigative Project on Terrorism. Campbell’s aides, who had said the candidate no longer had a copy of the original letter, then posted a link to it on the campaign website.

On Monday, Campbell said in an interview that despite the language of his letter, he had never read the full transcript of the O’Reilly interview, specifically the “Death to Israel” language. If he had seen it, he said, he never would have written the letter.

“That’s too zealous,” he said. “Unacceptable. Calling for death to a country or individual is unacceptable.”

Campbell has previously said that Al-Arian never contributed to his 2000 Senate campaign; Campbell later admitted that he had.

In 2006, Al-Arian pleaded guilty to providing aid to a terrorist group.

Campbell spokesman James Fisfis said the candidate’s memory of his dealings with Al-Arian is foggy because he did not have an original copy of the letter and because the events occurred nearly a decade ago.

“It was a long time ago,” Fisfis said. “We’re trying to piece together everything about that time period.”

A spokesman for one of Campbell’s rivals, Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine), said the letter is the latest in a troubling pattern.

“Whether it’s absent-mindedness or deception — the only person who knows that for sure is Tom Campbell — there’s a pattern of inaccuracy whenever Tom Campbell ventures into these subjects,” Joshua Trevino said.

“We have to double-check everything he says about his past associations with these radicals because we can’t trust him to give us the whole truth.”

The disclosures came as Campbell and Fiorina filed the paperwork Monday to make their candidacies official. DeVore planned to file his paperwork Wednesday. The winner of the primary will face three-term Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

seema.mehta@latimes.com

DES MOINES, Iowa — Democrat Renee Hardman was elected to the Iowa state Senate on Tuesday in a year-end special election, denying Republicans from reclaiming two-thirds control of the chamber.

Hardman bested Republican Lucas Loftin by an overwhelming margin to win a seat representing parts of the Des Moines suburbs. The seat became vacant after the Oct. 6 death of state Sen. Claire Celsi, a Democrat.

Hardman, the CEO of nonprofit Lutheran Services of Iowa and a member of the West Des Moines City Council, becomes the first Black woman elected to the 50-member Senate.

“I want to recognize that while my name was the one on the ballot, this race was never just about me,” Hardman told a room of supporters in West Des Moines after declaring victory.

With 99% of votes counted, Hardman led by about 43 percentage points.

Her win is latest in a string of special election victories for Iowa Democrats, who flipped two Senate seats this year to break up a supermajority that had allowed Republicans to easily confirm GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds’ appointments to state agencies and commissions.

Democrat Mike Zimmer first flipped a seat in January, winning a district that had strongly favored Republican President Trump in the 2024 election. In August, Democrat Catelin Drey handily defeated her GOP opponent in the Republican stronghold of northwestern Iowa, giving Democrats 17 seats to Republicans’ 33. Celsi’s death brought that down to 16.

Republicans would have regained two-thirds control with a Loftin victory Tuesday. Without a supermajority, the party will need to get support from at least one Democrat to approve Reynolds’ nominees. The GOP still has significant majorities in both legislative chambers.

Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, called Hardman’s victory “a major check on Republican power.”

“With the last special election of the year now decided, one thing is clear: 2025 was the year of Democratic victories and overperformance, and Democrats are on track for big midterm elections,” Martin said.

In November the party dominated the first major Election Day since Trump returned to the White House, notably winning governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey. Democrats held onto a Kentucky state Senate seat this month in a special election. And while Republican Matt Van Epps won a Tennessee special election for a U.S. House seat, the relatively slim margin of victory gave Democrats hope for next year’s midterms. The party must net three House seats in 2026 to reclaim the majority and impede Trump’s agenda.

Loftin, a tree trimmer turned data manager, congratulated Hardman and told the Associated Press he’s praying for her as she embarks on this important chapter.

Iowa GOP Chairman Jeff Kaufmann applauded Loftin and his supporters for putting up a fight in what he described as “a very tough district.” Democrats outnumber Republicans by about 3,300 voters, or 37% to 30%.

“Although we fell short this time, the Republican Party of Iowa remains laser-focused on expanding our majorities in the Iowa Legislature and keeping Iowa ruby-red,” Kaufmann said.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee pledged Tuesday to help defend the party’s gains in Iowa and prevent the return of a GOP supermajority next year.

Schoenbaum and Fingerhut write for the Associated Press. Schoenbaum reported from Salt Lake City.

Re “Lockyer Urges Steps to Cut Gas Prices,” Nov. 23: There you go again. The state attorney general, a typical Democratic politician, demagogues this issue without presenting all the facts. Your article and Bill Lockyer leave out the federal tax (14.1 plus 15 cents per gallon) which amounts to 29.1 cents for every gallon of gas. Add the five cents per gallon state tax and the four cents per gallon clean air cost and we have a total cost to the consumer of 38.1 cents per gallon.

If Lockyer really wants to lower gas prices, he should lobby the federal government to lower gas taxes.

HARRY BORLAND

Laguna Woods

*

One step Lockyer might consider is the state sales tax, assessed not only on the base price of gasoline but also on the federal taxes and on the state taxes. A state tax on a federal tax and on other state taxes. If that isn’t criminal, it ought to be. The state sales tax on gasoline is a dirty little secret. Every other item we buy as a daily need is clearly priced, and the sales tax clearly spelled out and added. At the service station, it’s carefully buried. So much at the pump, the placard says.

Take away the state sales tax, or even apply it just to the product, and you’ve removed much of the price differential. But don’t hold your breath until our Legislature recognizes this or does something about it.

AL V. CLINE

Rolling Hills Estates

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A newly unsealed order in the criminal case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia reveals that high-level Justice Department officials pushed for his indictment, calling it a “top priority,” only after he was mistakenly deported and then ordered returned to the U.S.

Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty in federal court in Tennessee to charges of human smuggling. He is seeking to have the case dismissed on the grounds that the prosecution is vindictive — a way for President Trump’s administration to punish him for the embarrassment of his mistaken deportation.

To support that argument, he has asked the government to turn over documents that reveal how the decision was made to prosecute him in 2025 for an incident that occurred in 2022. On Dec. 3, U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw filed an order under seal that compelled the government to provide some documents to Abrego Garcia and his attorneys. That order was unsealed on Tuesday and sheds new light on the case.

Earlier, Crenshaw found that there was “some evidence” that the prosecution of Abrego Garcia could be vindictive. He specifically cited a statement by Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche on a Fox News program that seemed to suggest that the Department of Justice charged Abrego Garcia because he had won his wrongful deportation case.

Rob McGuire, who was the acting U.S. Atty. for the Middle District of Tennessee until late December, argued that those statements were irrelevant because he alone made the decision to prosecute, and he has no animus against Abrego Garcia.

In the newly unsealed order, Crenshaw writes, “Some of the documents suggest not only that McGuire was not a solitary decision-maker, but he in fact reported to others in DOJ and the decision to prosecute Abrego may have been a joint decision.”

The U.S. attorney’s office for the Middle District of Tennessee released a statement saying, “The emails cited in Judge Crenshaw’s order, specifically Mr. McGuire’s email on May 15, 2025, confirm that the ultimate decision on whether to prosecute was made by career prosecutors based on the facts, evidence, and established DOJ practice. Communications with the Deputy Attorney General’s Office about a high-profile case are both required and routine.”

The email referenced was from McGuire to his staff stating that Blanche “would like Garcia charged sooner rather than later,” according to Crenshaw’s order.

The human smuggling charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee in which Abrego Garcia was pulled over for speeding. There were nine passengers in the car, and state troopers discussed the possibility of human smuggling among themselves. However, he was ultimately allowed to leave with only a warning. The case was turned over to Homeland Security Investigations, but there is no record of any effort to charge him until April 2025, according to court records.

The order does not give a lot of detail on what is in the documents that were turned over to Abrego Garcia, but it shows that Aakash Singh, who works under Blanche in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, contacted McGuire about Abrego Garcia’s case on April 27, the same day that McGuire received a file on the case from Homeland Security Investigations. That was several days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Abrego Garcia’s favor on April 10.

On April 30, Singh said in an email to McGuire that the prosecution was a “top priority” for the Deputy Attorney General’s Office, according to the order. Singh and McGuire continued to communicate about the prosecution. On May 18, Singh wrote to McGuire and others to hold the draft indictment until they got “clearance” to file it. “The implication is that ‘clearance’ would come from the Office of the Deputy Attorney General,” Crenshaw writes.

A hearing on the motion to dismiss the case on the basis of vindictive prosecution is scheduled for Jan. 28.

Loller writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Reagan signed the Farm Credit System rescue bill with misgivings Wednesday, saying that some provisions foster a tendency to put federal props under the agricultural economy.

Although finding fault with some aspects of the legislation to bail out as much as $4 billion in federally guaranteed bonds for the debt-ridden credit system, Reagan said the measure “ensures that the farm credit system will continue as a principal source of private credit to America’s farmers.”

During a bill-signing ceremony in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, the President said also that the legislation “implements many needed reforms to the system to ensure its long-term viability.”

Reagan painted a generally rosy picture of farming in his remarks but said that “many of America’s farmers are still suffering from the aftershocks of the runaway inflation of the ‘70s.”

$4.8 Billion in Losses

The Farm Credit System is a 70-year-old network of 37 banks and hundreds of local lending co-ops. It provides credit to one-third of the nation’s farm borrowers but has registered losses of $4.8 billion over the last two years.

The system’s problems are generally blamed on the crisis that swept rural America in the early 1980s, when land values plunged in the wake of falling crop prices and farmers were saddled with long-term loans at high interest rates.

Reagan used the bill-signing ceremony to criticize some provisions that he said encourage continued reliance by farmers on federal aid and are too expensive.

“Unfortunately, the Congress declined to require the system to provide as much self-help as we believe was appropriate and created new and potentially expensive federal support mechanisms for secondary markets for private sector agricultural loans,” he said.

The bill is expected to cost taxpayers up to $1.5 billion over five years. The Treasury eventually could have to pay the whole $4 billion plus interest if the system folds despite the rescue effort, but that is considered unlikely.

WASHINGTON — In the whirlwind first year of President Trump’s second term, some of the most polarizing changes have taken place within the Department of Health and Human Services, where Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has openly rebuffed the medical establishment as he converts the ideas of his Make America Healthy Again movement into public policy.

Since entering office in February, the Health secretary has overseen a dramatic reshaping of the agencies he oversees, including eliminating thousands of jobs and freezing or canceling billions of dollars for scientific research. As part of his campaign against chronic disease, he has redrawn the government’s position on topics such as seed oils, fluoride and Tylenol. He also has repeatedly used his authority to promote discredited ideas about vaccines.

The department’s rapid transformation has garnered praise from MAHA supporters who say they long viewed Health and Human Services as corrupt and untrustworthy and have been waiting for such a disruption. And both Democrats and Republicans have applauded some of the agency’s actions, including efforts to encourage healthy eating and exercise, and deals to lower the prices of costly drugs.

But many of the drastic changes Kennedy has led at the department are raising grave concerns among doctors and public health experts.

“At least in the immediate or intermediate future, the United States is going to be hobbled and hollowed out in its scientific leadership,” said Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown University public health law professor who was removed from a National Institutes of Health advisory board this year with a letter that said he was no longer needed. “I think it will be extraordinarily difficult to reverse all the damage.”

Department spokesperson Andrew Nixon denied any threat to scientific expertise at the agency and lauded its work.

“In 2025, the Department confronted long-standing public health challenges with transparency, courage, and gold-standard science,” Nixon said in a statement. “HHS will carry this momentum into 2026 to strengthen accountability, put patients first, and protect public health.”

The overhaul comes alongside broader uncertainties in the nation’s health system, including Medicaid cuts passed by Congress this year and expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies that are putting millions of Americans’ insurance coverage in jeopardy.

Here’s a closer look at Kennedy’s first year leading the nation’s health agency:

Kennedy’s vaccine views ripple across the department

After many years spent publicly assailing vaccines, Kennedy sought during his confirmation process to reassure senators he wouldn’t take a wrecking ball to vaccine science. But less than a year later, his Health Department has repeatedly pushed the limits of those commitments.

In May, Kennedy announced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women — a move immediately questioned by public health experts who saw no new data to justify the change.

In June, Kennedy fired an entire 17-member CDC vaccine advisory committee — later installing several of his own replacements, including multiple vaccine skeptics.

That group has made decisions that have shocked medical professionals, including declining to recommend COVID-19 shots for anyone, adding new restrictions on a combination shot against chickenpox, measles, mumps and rubella and reversing the long-standing recommendation that all babies receive a hepatitis B shot at birth.

Kennedy in November also personally directed the CDC to abandon its position that vaccines do not cause autism, without supplying any new evidence to support the change. Although he left the old language on the agency website to keep a promise he made to Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, he added a disclaimer saying it remained because of the agreement.

Public health researchers and advocates strongly refute the updated website and note that scientists have thoroughly explored the issue in rigorous research spanning decades, all pointing to the same conclusion that vaccines don’t cause autism.

Kennedy has promised a wide-ranging effort to study environmental factors that potentially contribute to autism and in an Oval Office event with Trump in September promoted unproven — and in some cases discredited — ties among Tylenol, vaccines and the complex brain disorder.

Kennedy reconfigures department with massive staffing and research cuts

Within two months of taking office, Kennedy announced a sweeping restructuring of Health and Human Services that would shut down entire agencies, consolidate others into a new one focused on chronic disease and lay off about 10,000 employees on top of 10,000 others who had already taken buyouts.

Although parts of the effort are still tied up in court, thousands of the mass layoffs were allowed to stand. Those and voluntary departures significantly thinned out the sprawling $1.7-trillion department, which oversees food and hospital inspections, health insurance for roughly half of the country and vaccine recommendations.

Kennedy also has fired or forced out several leaders at the department, among them four directors at the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration’s former vaccine chief and a director of the CDC whom he had hired less than a month earlier.

On top of staffing reductions, he has overseen significant cuts to scientific research. That includes the NIH slashing billions of dollars in research projects and the termination of $500 million in contracts to develop vaccines using mRNA technology.

Amid the cuts, Kennedy has proposed or funded some new research on topics related to his MAHA goals, including autism, Lyme disease and food additives.

MAHA gains momentum despite some stumbles

Kennedy started using the phrase “MAHA” on the campaign trail last year to describe his crusade against toxic exposures and childhood chronic disease, but 2025 was the year it became ingrained in the national lexicon.

In his tenure so far, the Health secretary has made it the centerpiece of his work, using the MAHA branding to wage war on ultra-processed foods, pressure companies to phase out artificial food dyes, criticize fluoride in drinking water and push to ban junk food from the program that subsidizes grocery store runs for low-income Americans.

The idea has even spread beyond Kennedy’s agency across the federal government.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has appeared with Kennedy to promote fitness with pull-up displays. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy teamed up with Kennedy in early December to announce $1 billion in funding for airports to install resources including playgrounds and nursing pods for mothers and babies. And Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin recently announced he is working toward unveiling a MAHA agenda with health-related goals for his own department.

MAHA has earned widespread popularity among the American public — even as it has endured some administration foibles. In May, for example, Health and Human Services faced scrutiny for releasing a MAHA report that contained several citations to studies that didn’t exist.

But to the extent that the initiative has included calls to action that aren’t based on science — such as urging distrust in vaccines or promoting raw milk, which is far more likely than pasteurized milk to lead to illness — critics say it can be dangerous.

Swenson writes for the Associated Press.

Reporting from Washington — Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista) will not run for a 10th term in Congress, he announced Wednesday morning, becoming the second California Republican to retire this week as Democrats strive to retake control of the U.S. House.

On Monday, Republican Rep. Ed Royce of Fullerton also announced he would not seek reelection.

Beyond shaking up the California political landscape, the two retirements are a signal that the GOP fears a Democratic wave election that could sweep them from power this fall.

Royce and Issa represent districts that are changing, with more Latino and Asian voters, and where Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

Democrats have made clear their path to reclaiming the U.S. House majority must pass through Southern California, and open-seat races could make that task a bit easier. On the other hand, Republicans could recruit strong and experienced candidates who might fare better against a crowded field of Democratic hopefuls, many of whom are seeking office for the first time.

With Issa’s announcement, more than 30 House Republicans have announced plans to leave Washington, and Democrats need to secure just 24 more seats to retake control.

Without incumbents in those races, it also will be more difficult for the Democrats to deploy their national strategy of tying the Republican candidate to Trump, who is widely unpopular in California.

In contrast to most of his California GOP colleagues, Issa showed a willingness to moderate his stances to placate invigorated Democrats, but perhaps found it wasn’t enough to offset his reputation as a conservative bulldog in an increasingly liberal district.

Issa, former chairman of the House Oversight Committee, won reelection in 2016 by just over half a percent — about 1,600 votes — and was widely considered the most vulnerable Republican in the House going into this year’s election. In Issa’s northern San Diego and southern Orange County district, nearly 38% of registered voters are Republicans, with 31% registered as Democrats and 26% not registered with any political party, who often lean Democratic at the polls in California.

Still, the announcement was a surprise. A source close to Issa said he was talking about his reelection campaign with friends as recently as Tuesday night. Issa’s statement on Wednesday did not say why he decided to retire, just that he had the support of family in making the decision.

“I am forever grateful to the people of San Diego, Orange and Riverside counties for their support and affording me the honor of serving them all these years,” Issa said. “Representing you has been the privilege of a lifetime.”

The richest man in Congress, Issa, 64, already had drawn a handful of well-funded Democratic opponents, including his 2016 challenger, Doug Applegate, Orange County environmental lawyer Mike Levin, San Diego real estate investor Paul Kerr and Sara Jacobs, who has drawn the endorsement of Emily’s List. Issa had $852,028 in cash on hand as of September. Levin has led in fundraising with $530,326 in the bank. Applegate and Kerr each had a bit more than $200,000.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said Issa’s retirement “means we are in a strong position to elect a Democrat to the 49th District this fall.”

But the National Republican Congressional Committee said Democrats are setting themselves up for an internal fight in Issa’s 49th District, adding, “We look forward to facing whoever limps out of the Democrats’ battle royale: black and blue, and broke.”

Hours after Issa’s announcement, GOP Assemblyman Rocky Chavez of Oceanside announced he would run for the seat. Other Republicans who could run in Issa’s place include Diane Harkey, chair of the state Board of Equalization and a former assemblywoman, and GOP Senate leader Pat Bates. All three represent significant portions of Issa’s district.

Analysts for Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics quickly changed their appraisal of the race from a toss-up to the “leans Democratic” category, saying Issa’s close 2016 win showed voters may be more willing to consider a Democrat. The 39th District remains a toss-up because Royce won by 15 percentage points in 2016, Crystal Ball managing editor Kyle Kondik said. At least one other prognosticator moved Royce’s district to “leans Democratic” as soon as he announced his retirement on Monday.

As chairman of the committee charged with overseeing the executive branch, Issa was known as President Obama’s toughest critic because of his aggressive pursuit of alleged fraud and abuse by the administration. It made him a hero in conservative circles, and before his narrow 2016 win, Issa had gotten at least 58% of the vote in his eight previous campaigns.

But Issa walked a shakier line with the new administration. He appeared to moderate some of his rhetoric last year. Though he insisted he had not changed, he was more willing to buck his party on important votes. He voted against the tax bill in December, saying it would harm his constituents.

For a year, hundreds of activists have appeared weekly outside Issa’s Vista office to protest. At first, Issa regularly engaged with them on the street and in town halls, but his frustrations with the ongoing protests grew and he stopped talking with them.

On Tuesday, activists with a local Indivisible group huddled under umbrellas outside Issa’s office for a premature “retirement party” for the congressman, complete with festive signs and a cake shaped like a Hawaiian shirt. The song they sang seem ominous in retrospect: “Issa, you’ll retire, your situation’s dire, we will soon replace you, never fear. Now we must report, now your time is short, Issa you’ll retire this year.”

Born in Cleveland as the second of six children in a Lebanese American family, Issa dropped out of high school at 17 to join the Army. While there, he got his GED and went on to earn degrees from Kent State University and Siena Heights College before returning to the Army as an officer.

Issa bought a struggling Cleveland electronics business in 1980 and within a decade transformed it to produce the popular Viper automobile anti-theft device, with Issa’s famous voice as the warning to would-be thieves to “stand back.” In 1986, he and his wife, Kathy, moved the business to Vista, where it continued to grow. His net worth was estimated at more than quarter of a billion in 2015, according to financial disclosures.

After years participating behind the scenes in local politics, Issa’s first foray as a candidate came in 1998 when he spent $9.8 million in the Republican primary for the chance to challenge Barbara Boxer for her Senate seat, but lost to Matt Fong. He was elected to the House in 2000 with 61% of the vote, and three years later, he spent $1.7 million to get signatures for the recall election of then-Democratic Gov. Gray Davis. He had hoped to replace Davis himself, but abruptly quit during a tearful news conference when Arnold Schwarzenegger entered the race, saying he had been assured a quality candidate was running.

Assistant managing editor Christina Bellantoni contributed to this report.

sarah.wire@latimes.com

Follow @sarahdwire on Twitter

Read more about the 55 members of California’s delegation at latimes.com/politics

ALSO:

California could flip the House, and these 13 races will make the difference

Updates on California politics

UPDATES:

2:50 p.m.: This article was updated with Assemblyman Rocky Chavez’s announcement that he will run for Issa’s seat.

1:30 p.m.: This article was updated with additional biographical details.

11:15 a.m.: This article was updated with more information about Issa’s district.

9:40 a.m.: This article was updated with additional information about Issa and the battle for control of the House.

This article was originally published at 8:20 a.m.

Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi, continuing his assault on spiraling workers’ compensation insurance costs, on Friday announced a three-pronged reform program designed to curb fraudulent and unwarranted claims.

As part of the plan. Garamendi endorsed legislation introduced by Assemblyman Burt Margolin (D-Los Angeles) that would eliminate a “guaranteed cap” on insurers’ expenses. The bill would give Garamendi greater discretion to reduce workers’ compensation rates for employers.

Garamendi also announced the creation of a new workers’ compensation fraud investigation team and an outreach program to employers to educate them on new insurance fraud laws.

“California businesses are being strangled by exorbitant workers’ compensation insurance premiums,” Garamendi said. “Workers’ compensation costs have gotten out of control, especially in the areas of insurer expenses and fraud.”

Margolin’s bill, introduced in the Legislature on Friday, aims to eliminate the “guaranteed expense cap,” an arbitrary measure of workers’ compensation carrier costs. This cap was one of the primary reasons that Garamendi late last year turned down an 11.9% rate increase request from the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau, which determines what minimum rates should be for the industry. Garamendi only allowed a 1.2% increase.

The cap allows workers’ compensation carriers to claim that their expenses amount to 32.8% of premiums, no matter what their true expenses are, when they request rate increases. Actual expenses are far lower–about 20% to 25% of premiums, Garamendi said.

“This bill is a way to guarantee that California employers are not charged excessive premiums by workers’ compensation carriers,” Margolin said. “This bill would allow Garamendi to address what an appropriate expense load would be.”

Insurance representatives Friday criticized the proposed expense cap limitations.

“A panel that Garamendi helped form has been studying workers’ compensation rating practices for over a year, and they are set to give their recommendations in March,” said Richard Wiebe, spokesman for the American Insurance Assn. in Sacramento. “Garamendi has apparently decided their recommendations are irrelevant.”

Insurers are more supportive of Garamendi’s efforts to combat fraud. Robert Gore, vice president of the Assn. of California Insurance Cos., noted that the new fraud unit is made possible by a law partially written and supported by the insurance industry.

Garamendi said he was creating a new workers’ compensation fraud investigation unit, funded by legislation that took effect Jan. 1. The law is designed to target doctors, attorneys and medical care workers who encourage the filing of fraudulent workers’ compensation claims.

Under the tough new law, making false statements to support fraudulent workers’ compensation claims is a felony. Convictions can be punished by up to five years in prison and fines equaling twice the fraud.

“The people who are committing workers’ compensation fraud now think they can do it with impunity, but that has changed,” Margolin said. “If you commit workers’ compensation fraud, you go to jail.”

Garamendi also said he plans to step up a public information campaign about the new workers’ compensation fraud law. The campaign will be conducted through partnerships with other state agencies, such as the Employment Development Department and local chambers of commerce.