Politics

Dec. 19 (UPI) — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday that U.S. negotiators have made “progress” attempting to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, but ultimately “it’s not our war.”

The Russian invasion of Ukraine was one of several global issues Rubio addressed during his 2-hour year-end news conference with reporters. He said despite the progress in negotiations, “we have a ways to go” to end the nearly four-year war in eastern Europe.

“And obviously, the hardest issues are always the last issues,” he said during the briefing.

“Maybe that happens this week, maybe that happens next month, maybe that’s not ready for a few months,” Rubio said of a deal.

His comments came ahead of a weekend meeting in Miami between U.S. and Russian negotiators. He said that while the United States is trying to work on a deal that would make both parties happy, he’s not willing to force a plan.

“It’s not our war. It’s a war on another continent.

“We can’t force Ukraine to make a deal. We can’t force Russia to make a deal. They have to want to make a deal.”

White House officials said they were optimistic this weekend’s meeting would result in an agreement. Previous talks resulted in about “90%” consensus on terms, the officials told The Hill.

Those terms included a multi-national force deployed to Ukraine to respond to acts of aggression against the country in the future. Earlier this week, European leaders pledged to provide military support to Ukraine in protection against Russia, however Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky conceded over the weekend his country may have to give up its dream of joining NATO to end the war.

As peace talks have gone on, U.S. negotiators have put pressure on Ukraine to make more concessions to Russia, which has remained staunch in its demands, which including giving up land. Politico reported that the Trump administration believes Russia will accept EU membership for Ukraine as well as offers of mutual defense from the United States and European countries.

PHOENIX — Camdyn Glover used to be a quiet conservative. She worried what her teachers would think or if she would lose friends over her convictions. But she said something changed when Charlie Kirk was assassinated in September, and she started crying in her classroom at Indiana University while other students cheered and clapped.

“We can’t be silenced,” Glover decided.

Now she’s visiting Phoenix with her parents and brothers for this year’s Turning Point USA conference, the first to take place since Kirk’s death. Although the organization became a political phenomenon with its masculine appeals to college men, it’s also been expanding outreach to young women like Glover. The shift is poised to accelerate now that Turning Point is led by Erika Kirk, Charlie’s widow, who has embraced her new role at the helm of a conservative juggernaut with chapters across the country.

If successful, the organization that helped return President Trump to the White House could narrow a gender divide that has been a persistent challenge for Republicans. Turning Point offers a blend of traditional values, such as encouraging women to prioritize marriage over careers, and health trends pushed by online influencers.

Glover, 18, said discovering Turning Point in high school gave her an appreciation for dialogue when she felt like an outcast for her beliefs, such as being anti-abortion. At her first conference, she feels like she’s found a political and cultural home for herself.

“They want to promote a strong independent woman who does hold these values and can go stand up for herself,” she said. “But it’s also OK to do it in heels, put some makeup on, wear a dress.”

‘If Erika can do it, I can do it’

One of Glover’s classmates, Stella Ross, said she stumbled upon Charlie Kirk on TikTok in the months before the last presidential election.

She already felt like her perspectives were being treated differently on campus and thought she was receiving unfairly low grades in her political science classes. A devout Catholic, Ross said she was inspired by how Charlie Kirk wasn’t afraid to weave his evangelical faith into his political arguments.

She also noticed how many women posted comments of appreciation on Erika Kirk’s videos, and she joined Indiana University’s Turning Point chapter in the same month that Trump won his comeback campaign.

“I was like, wow, if Erika can do it, I can do it,” Ross said.

Ross has career aspirations of her own — she interns with Indiana’s Republican Party and aspires to be a press secretary for a governor or president. But she hopes to have flexibility in her job to be fully present with her children and believes that a traditional nuclear structure — man, woman and their children — is “God’s plan.”

When she thinks of Erika Kirk, “it’s really cool to see that she can live out that balance and it makes me feel like that could be a more realistic future for me because I’m seeing it firsthand.”

A new messenger

Erika Kirk often appeared alongside with her husband at Turning Point events. A former beauty pageant winner who has worked as a model, actress and casting director, she also founded a Christian clothing line and a ministry that teaches about the Bible.

In a recent interview with The New York Times, she said she had fully bought into “boss babe” culture before Charlie showed her a “healthier” perspective on life. Now she leads the multimillion-dollar organization, which she said at a memorial for her husband would be made “10 times greater through the power of his memory.”

The political gap between young men and women has been growing for years, according to a recent Gallup analysis. Not only have women under 30 become more likely to identify as ideologically liberal, they’ve also embraced liberal views on issues such as abortion, the environment and gun laws.

The schism was clearly apparent in the last presidential election, where 57% of male voters under 30 supported Trump, compared to only 41% of women under 30, according to AP VoteCast.

Turning Point has been working to change that, hosting events like the Young Women’s Leadership Summit and urging attendees to embrace traditional family values and gender roles.

Charlie Kirk said earlier this year that if a young woman’s priority is to find a husband, she should go to college for a “MRS degree.” Matthew Boedy, a professor of rhetoric at University of North Georgia, said Erika Kirk could be a more effective messenger because she was focused on her career before meeting her husband.

“I do think her story resonates more because she tried it out and can tell them it is not for them,” he said.

Some conservative women are turned off by this approach. Raquel Debono, an influencer who lives in New York City, described the event as a “Stepford wives conference,” featuring women in pink floral dresses.

She said Turning Point’s emphasis on being traditional wives “leaves out a lot of women who work,” she said, “and I think they’re going to lose all those voters, honestly, in the next election cycle if they keep it up.”

Debono founded her own organization, Make America Hot Again, where she throws parties intended to make voters feel welcomed into the conservative movement and allow them to get to know people who share their politics.

‘Big time’ growth for some chapters

Aubree Hudson had been president of Turning Point’s chapter at Brigham Young University for only two weeks when she visited nearby Utah Valley University for an event with Charlie Kirk.

She said she was standing only about six feet away when he was fatally shot. She ran to find her husband, who was at the back of the crowd, and they fled to her car.

Hudson, 22, is from a rural farm town in southwestern Colorado. Her conservative convictions are rooted in her family’s faith and patriotism. A copy of the U.S. Constitution hangs in her parents’ home, and her father taught her to value God, family and country, in that order. Her mother stayed at home, telling her children that “you guys are my career.”

Since Kirk’s assassination, Hudson said the number of people — particularly women — getting involved with the organization jumped “big time.”

Emma Paskett, 18, is one of them. She was planning to attend the Utah Valley University event after one of her classes, but Kirk was shot before she made it there.

Although she wasn’t very familiar with Turning Point before that point, Paskett said she started watching videos of Kirk later that night.

Paskett considers Erika Kirk to be a “one in a million” role model, and her role as a leader was a driving factor in signing up.

“That’s exactly what I want to be like,” she said.

Govindarao writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux contributed to this report from Washington.

United States President Donald Trump announced new agreements aimed at lowering prescription drug prices.

On Friday, alongside leaders from Bristol Myers Squibb, Gilead Sciences, and Merck, among other leading pharma giants, the president announced deals that would cut prices on their medications to match that of the developed nation with the lowest price.

“Starting next year, American drug prices will come down fast and furious and will soon be some of the lowest in the developed world,” Trump said.

“This is the biggest thing having to do with drugs in the history of the purchase of drugs.”

Under the deals, each drugmaker will cut prices on some of the drugs sold to the Medicaid programme for low-income people, senior administration officials said, promising “massive savings” on widely used medicines without giving specific figures.

“We were subsidising the entire world. We’re not doing it anymore,” Trump said at a White House news conference, flanked by nine pharma executives.

Mehmet Oz, the director of the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Service, said Regeneron, Johnson & Johnson, and AbbVie would visit the White House after the holidays for the launch of the government’s TrumpRx website.

US patients currently pay by far the most for prescription medicines, often nearly three times more than in other developed nations, and Trump has been pressuring drugmakers to lower their prices to what patients pay elsewhere.

The details of each deal were not immediately available, but officials said they included agreements to cut cash-pay direct-to-consumer prices of select drugs sold potentially through the TrumpRx.gov website, to launch drugs in the US at prices equal to – not lower than – those in other wealthy nations and to increase manufacturing. In return, companies can receive a three-year exemption from any tariffs.

Drug prices fall

Merck said it will sell its diabetes drugs Januvia, Janumet and Janumet XR – set to face generic competition next year – directly to US consumers at about 70 percent off list prices. If approved, its experimental cholesterol drug enlicitide will also be offered through direct-to-consumer channels.

Enlicitide is one of two Merck drugs expected to receive a speedy review under the FDA’s new, fast-track pathway, the Reuters news agency has previously reported.

Amgen said it will expand its direct-to-patient programme to include migraine drug Aimovig and rheumatoid arthritis medicine Amjevita, offering both at $299 a month – nearly 60 percent and 80 percent below current US list prices.

In July, Trump sent letters to leaders of 17 major pharmaceutical companies, outlining how they should provide so-called most-favoured -nation prices to the US government’s Medicaid health programme for low-income people, and guarantee that new drugs will not be launched at prices above those in other high-income countries.

So far, five companies have struck deals with the administration to rein in prices. They are Pfizer, Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk and EMD Serono, the US division of Germany’s Merck.

A portion of revenues from each company’s foreign sales will also be remitted to the US to offset costs, officials said.

The companies pledged together to invest more than $150bn in the US for R&D and manufacturing, according to officials, although it was unclear whether that included earlier commitments. Several also agreed to donate drug ingredients to the US strategic reserve.

Trump has long focused on the disparity between drug prices in the US and other wealthy countries, which have government-run health systems that negotiate price discounts.

The spectre of tighter price controls by the US government initially spooked investors, but the terms of the deals announced so far have calmed many of those fears.

Analysts have noted that Medicaid, which accounts for only approximately 10 percent of US drug spending, already benefits from substantial price discounts, exceeding 80 percent in some cases.

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Marco Rubio weighed in on Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas peace efforts and defended the Trump administration’s increasing military pressure on Venezuela during a rare, end-of-year news conference Friday.

In a freewheeling meeting with reporters running more than two hours, Rubio also defended President Trump’s radical overhaul in foreign assistance and detailed the administration’s work to reach a humanitarian ceasefire in Sudan in time for the new year.

Rubio’s appearance in the State Department briefing room comes as key meetings on Gaza and Russia-Ukraine are set to be held in Miami on Friday and Saturday after a tumultuous year in U.S. foreign policy. Rubio has assumed the additional role of national security advisor and emerged as a staunch defender of Trump’s “America First” priorities on issues ranging from visa restrictions to a shakeup of the State Department bureaucracy.

The news conference is taking place just hours before Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff meets with senior officials from Egypt, Turkey and Qatar to discuss the next phase of the Republican president’s Gaza ceasefire plan, progress on which has moved slowly since it was announced in October.

Witkoff and other U.S. officials, including Trump son-in-law and informal advisor Jared Kushner, have been pushing to get the Gaza plan implemented by setting up a “Board of Peace” that will oversee the territory after two years of war and create an international stabilization force that would police the area.

On Saturday, Witkoff, Kushner and Rubio, who will be at his home in Florida for the holidays, are to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s adviser Kirill Dmitriev in Miami to go over the latest iteration of a U.S.-proposed plan to end the Russia-Ukraine war.

Rubio said there would be no peace deal unless both Ukraine and Russia can agree to the terms, making it impossible for the U.S. to force a deal on anyone. Instead, the U.S. is trying to “figure out if we can nudge both sides to a common place.”

“We understand that you’re not going to have a deal unless both sides have to give, and both sides have to get,” Rubio said. “Both sides will have to make concessions if you’re going to have a deal. You may not have a deal. We may not have a deal. It’s unfortunate.”

The U.S. proposal has been through numerous versions with Trump seesawing back and forth between offering support and encouragement for Ukraine and then seemingly sympathizing with Putin’s hard-line stances by pushing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to agree to territorial concessions. Kyiv has rejected that concession in return for security guarantees intended to protect Ukraine from future Russian incursions.

On Venezuela, Rubio has been a leading proponent of military operations against suspected drug-running vessels that have been targeted by the Pentagon in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean since early September. The Trump administration’s actions have ramped up pressure on leftist Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who has been charged with narco-terrorism in the U.S.

In an interview with NBC News on Friday, Trump would not rule out a war with Venezuela. But Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have publicly maintained that the current operations are directed at “narco-terrorists” trying to smuggle deadly drugs into the United States. Maduro has insisted the real purpose of the U.S. military operations is to force him from office.

Rubio sidestepped a direct question about whether the U.S. wants “regime change in 2026” in the South American country.

“We have a regime that’s illegitimate, that cooperates with Iran, that cooperates with Hezbollah, that cooperates with narco-trafficking and narco-terrorist organizations,” Rubio said, “including not just protecting their shipments and allowing them to operate with impunity, but also allows some of them to control territory.”

Rubio defended Trump’s prerogatives on Venezuela and said the administration believes “nothing has happened that requires us to notify Congress or get congressional approval or cross the threshold into war.” He added, “We have very strong legal opinions.”

Trump has spoken of wanting to be remembered as a “peacemaker,” but ceasefires his administration helped craft are already in trouble due to renewed military action between Cambodia and Thailand in Asia and Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Africa. Rubio, however, said those deals helped create a list of commitments that can now be used to bring both sides back to peace.

“Those commitments today are not being kept,” Rubio said of the Thailand-Cambodia conflict, which now threatens to reignite following Thai airstrikes. ”The work now is to bring them back to the table.”

Rubio’s news conference comes just two days after the Trump administration announced a massive $11-billion package of arms sales to Taiwan, a move that infuriated Beijing, which has vowed to retake the island by force if necessary.

Trump has veered between conciliatory and aggressive messages to China since returning to the Oval Office in January, hitting Chinese imports with major tariffs but at the same time offering to ease commercial pressure on Beijing in conversations with China’s President Xi Jinping. The Trump administration, though, has consistently decried China’s increasingly aggressive posture toward Taiwan and its smaller neighbors in disputes over the South China Sea.

Since taking over the State Department, Rubio has moved swiftly to implement Trump’s “America First” agenda, helping dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development and reducing the size of the diplomatic corps through a significant reorganization. Previous administrations have distributed billions of dollars in foreign assistance over the last five decades through USAID.

Critics have said the decision to eliminate USAID and slash foreign aid spending has cost lives overseas, although Rubio and others have denied this, pointing to ongoing disaster relief operations in the Philippines, the Caribbean and elsewhere, along with new global health compacts being signed with countries that previously had programs run by USAID.

“We have a limited amount of money that can be dedicated to foreign aid and humanitarian assistance,” Rubio said. “And that has to be applied in a way that furthers our national interest.”

Lee and Klepper write for the Associated Press. AP writer Bill Barrow contributed to this report.

PHOENIX — Erika Kirk, widow of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and the organization’s new leader, endorsed a potential presidential bid by Vice President JD Vance on the opening night of the conservative youth group’s annual conference.

After telling the cheering crowd that Turning Point would help keep Congress in Republican hands next year, she said, “We are going to get my husband’s friend JD Vance elected for 48 in the most resounding way possible.”

Vance would be the 48th president if he takes office after President Trump.

Kirk’s statement on Thursday is the most explicit backing of Vance’s possible candidacy by a woman who has been positioned as a steward to her late husband’s legacy. Charlie Kirk had become a powerbroker and bridge builder within the conservative movement before he was assassinated in September.

Vance was close with Charlie Kirk, whose backing helped enable his rapid political rise. After the assassination, Vance and his wife joined Erika Kirk in Utah to fly her husband’s remains home to Arizona aboard Air Force Two.

Vance is set to speak to Turning Point on Sunday, the conference’s last day. The convention has featured the usual spectacle and energy that have characterized the organization’s events, but the proceedings have also been marred by intense infighting among conservative commentators and estranged allies who have turned on each other in the wake of Kirk’s death.

As Trump’s vice president, Vance is well-positioned to inherit the movement that remade the Republican Party and twice sent Trump to the White House. But it would be no small task for him to hold together the Trump coalition, which is built around personal loyalty to him more than shared political goals.

Various wings of the conservative movement already are positioning to steer the party after Trump’s presidency, a skirmish that’s becoming increasingly public and pointed.

Turning Point, with its thousands of young volunteers, would provide a major boost for Vance in a fractious primary. Now 41, Vance would be the first Millennial president if elected, a natural fit for the organization built around mobilizing youth.

Trump has repeatedly mused about running for a third term despite a constitutional prohibition. However, he’s also speculated about a 2028 ticket featuring Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Although Rubio previously ran for president in 2016, he has said he would support Vance as Trump’s successor.

Brown and Cooper write for the Associated Press. Brown reported from Washington.

DETROIT — In the frantic final firefight of the 1992 presidential campaign, this battered industrial city may have been ground zero.

In the last days before today’s vote, President Bush and Bill Clinton crossed paths over and over again through a narrow band of critical Rust Belt and Great Lakes states–from New Jersey and Pennsylvania to Ohio and Wisconsin. But no state occupied more of their attention than Michigan.

Into this battlefield, the two major contenders have fired television and radio ads, mailings, surrogate speakers and repeated visits of their own–to the point where even veteran local observers have been overwhelmed. Their efforts–reinforced by Ross Perot’s national television barrage–have put the campaign on everyone’s lips.

“There’s a lot of strong feelings on it this year,” said LeAnn Kirrmann, a Republican activist from Grand Ledge, as she waited for Bush to arrive at a rally near here Sunday.

That appears to be the case across the nation, as voters render their verdict on this stormy, vituperative and often path-breaking campaign. Polls show the percentage of voters paying close attention to the campaign has soared this fall, and most experts expect a large turnout–a dramatic conclusion to a campaign that has regularly produced moments of high drama.

“It’s a mortal lock that turnout is going up,” said GOP pollster Bill McInturff.

After tightening significantly last week, national polls show Clinton again holding a comfortable lead over Bush, with Perot lagging behind. Few observers are entirely certain that a campaign that has been consistently unpredictable doesn’t hold one or two more surprises. But a Bush comeback at this stage would rank as the most dramatic reversal of fortune in the final hours of a presidential race.

In their final maneuvering, both Bush and Clinton targeted this state for contrasting reasons that underscore the length of the odds facing the President.

The widespread economic uneasiness in Michigan–symbolized by the continuing turmoil of General Motors Corp., which led to a management shake-up Monday–has always made the state an uphill climb for Bush despite its Republican leanings in recent presidential campaigns.

It remains a daunting challenge for the President now: The latest statewide tracking poll for a Detroit TV station, released Monday night, showed Clinton leading with 46%, Bush with 30% and Ross Perot at 16%.

Facing such numbers, Bush might have written off Michigan in a different year to spend his last campaign hours elsewhere. But the President has been forced to pound relentlessly at the state because there appears to be no way he can win the necessary 270 electoral votes without Michigan’s 18.

That reality defines Clinton’s stake in the state. Although Clinton–with his strong base on both coasts–can probably win today without carrying Michigan, he has invested so heavily here precisely because he knows Bush cannot.

“That’s Clinton’s great advantage,” said Democratic strategist Tad Devine. “He can focus on trying to take just one link out of Bush’s chain.”

Clinton’s intense focus on Michigan represents the reversal of a traditional Republican tactic. Because the GOP base in the South and West left Democrats so little room to maneuver in past presidential campaigns, Republicans have typically been able to dictate the battlefield in the election’s final hours.

In past years, the Republicans devoted enormous resources to a single conservative-leaning state–usually Ohio–confident that if they won there, the Democrats could not reach an Electoral College majority.

This year, though, it is Clinton who has the lead and the flexibility to choose where to fight. He has selected Michigan as his version of Ohio.

“That is a pretty fair analogy,” said David Wilhelm, Clinton’s campaign manager. “Michigan is a linchpin to our Electoral College strategy; it is a state that if we win, it destroys almost any chance that Bush will be reelected.”

With the state playing such a central role in the strategies of both candidates, their efforts here have been enormous. “Some of us,” said Don Tucker, the Democratic chairman in populous Oakland County, “have started to think Clinton and Bush are running for President of Michigan.”

When Clinton arrived in Detroit on Monday for a lunchtime airport rally, it marked his third visit to the area in five days and his sixth trip to the state in two weeks.

On Sunday, Bush roused the faithful with a scathing attack on Clinton at a rally in Auburn Hills, just north of here–his third run at the state in eight days.

Last Thursday, voters from around the state were able to ask Bush questions in a televised town meeting from Grand Rapids. The next night Clinton flew to the Detroit suburbs to hold his own televised town meeting.

When Clinton forces made their final buy of television time last week, they estimated they were placing enough commercials on the air so that each Michigan resident would see them 14 times through Election Day.

Bush, both sides figure, is on the air even more heavily–especially with a foreboding spot about Clinton’s record as governor that might be titled “Apocalypse Arkansas.” From both sides, acerbic radio advertisements blare incessantly.

As for Perot, local observers say his ad assault has been less visible than in some other states. But his promises to shake up Washington have won him a strong following.

At one point early last week, Republican polls showed Perot surging over 20% in this state. With most of Perot’s gains coming from Clinton, that tightened the Michigan race considerably.

But, as has happened throughout the country, Perot’s support has slipped here since he accused the White House last week of engineering dirty tricks that forced his withdrawal from the race in July. Initially, the voters deserting Perot disproportionately moved to Bush, but now Clinton is winning his share of those voters and consolidating his lead.

“The President is unlikely to close the gap in Michigan on Election Day,” said GOP pollster Steve Lombardo.

Even with Clinton’s lead in the polls, Democrats here remain edgy. Almost without exception, they are haunted by the memory of 1990, when then-Gov. James J. Blanchard led Republican John Engler by 10 percentage points in the final polls–and then was swept from office by a strong Republican effort to get out their vote, coupled with a poor turnout in Detroit.

Democrats are insistent that won’t happen again. Registration is up in Detroit, and Mayor Coleman A. Young has put his shoulder into the Clinton effort. One local official estimated this weekend that 65% of registered Detroit voters could come to the polls today, compared to just 54% four years ago.

Unions are pushing hard too: The UAW has been distributing to members copies of a Flint newspaper article reporting that Ross Perot owns a Mercedes-Benz and other foreign cars. In Michigan, that’s not much different than burning a flag.

Republican efforts to turn out the vote are just as intense. In Oakland County alone, GOP volunteers made more than 150,000 calls last weekend, said Jim Alexander, the county GOP chairman.

Local observers say religious conservatives and anti-abortion activists are mounting powerful drives; thousands of copies of the Christian Coalition’s voter guide on the presidential candidates were distributed at Bush’s rally in Auburn Hills on Sunday.

Beyond its impact on the Electoral College, voting in Michigan should help answer some of the key questions on which the results will pivot around the nation. Among them:

* Can Clinton reclaim the so-called Reagan Democrats–the blue-collar ethnics who deserted the party during the 1970s and 1980s over taxes, the economy and the perception that Democrats favored minorities?

Stressing such issues as welfare reform and his support for the death penalty, Clinton has aggressively courted voters in Macomb County, a Detroit suburb renowned as the breeding ground of Reagan Democrats.

Republicans have fired back with targeted mailers hitting Clinton on trust and taxes. And Perot could be a formidable competitor in Macomb County and similar neighborhoods for the votes of working-class residents disgusted with Bush and the gridlock in Washington.

* Can Bush hold suburban Republicans and independents who favor abortion rights? Four years ago, he carried the generally affluent Detroit suburb of Oakland County by 109,000 votes. But the hard-right line on social issues at the Republican Convention did not play well there, and Democrats are optimistic that Clinton’s centrist message will allow him to make significant inroads, not only in Oakland County but in similar places in New Jersey, Illinois and Pennsylvania.

* Can Clinton get the high turnout he needs from blacks after a campaign so heavily focused on wooing white swing voters in the suburbs? The answer will affect the result not only here but in other industrial states, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, as well as Southern battlegrounds like Georgia and Louisiana.

* Will young voters show up today? One reason Clinton’s margin diminished in some national surveys last week is those polls included very few young people among their likely voters–and Clinton, the first baby boomer to top a national ticket, has been running very well with the young.

In 1988, just 36% of eligible voters age 18 to 24 actually turned out. Mike Dolan, field director for Rock the Vote, a nonpartisan national effort to register and turn out young voters, predicts as many as half of them may vote this year.

Such a spike in turnout would be a huge boost for Clinton; in this state, for example, he has courted students at rallies at both the University of Michigan and Michigan State University.

One cloud on the Democratic horizon is the possibility of rain today in Michigan and much of the Midwest. Conventional wisdom holds that rain could dampen turnout in Detroit and other urban centers and pinch Clinton’s vote.

But many on both sides believe that interest in this campaign is so high that even rain won’t cool it off. “With all of the attention to the race this year,” Alexander said, “I don’t know if even rain is going to matter.”

Dec. 19 (UPI) — Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was determined to continue the war in Ukraine until his conditions are met, which include taking Ukrainian territory.

Putin spoke at his annual press conference and touted Russia’s recent gains in the region.

“The strategic initiative is completely in the hands of the Russian forces,” Putin said. He added that Russia is “ready to end the conflict peacefully” if Ukraine cedes large areas of its eastern territories.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Ukraine won’t give up its land, which is set by the country’s constitution.

Russia has also demanded that Ukraine give up its bid to join NATO and said that if NATO members sent troops, Russia would view them as “legitimate targets.”

“The ball is entirely in the court of our Western opponents,” he said, adding that Russia had agreed to compromises proposed by the United States in its peace plan negotiated by the President Donald Trump administration.

Earlier this week, Zelensky was asked if Kyiv would give up its attempts to join NATO. He said Ukraine’s “position remains unchanged.”

“The United States don’t see us in NATO, for now,” he said. “Politicians change.”

European leaders have agreed to continue funding Ukraine in its fight against Russia with a two-year, $105 billion loan for munitions in the ongoing war.

European leaders couldn’t agree on their first choice to arm Ukraine using frozen Russian state assets to back the loan.

The plan to use frozen Russian assets fell apart in the final moments after Belgium pushed back, fearful that it would be at legal and financial risk. The bank holding the assets is in Belgium, and Russia has sued to block the plan.

European leaders announced Thursday that they will instead use money from the EU budget. The new plan could be more costly and difficult to mobilize.

WASHINGTON — President Trump suspended the green card lottery program on Thursday that allowed the suspect in the Brown University and MIT shootings to come to the United States.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on the social platform X that, at Trump’s direction, she is ordering the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the program.

“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” she said of the suspect, Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente.

Neves Valente, 48, is suspected in the shootings at Brown University that killed two students and wounded nine others, and the killing of an MIT professor. He was found dead Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said.

Neves Valente had studied at Brown on a student visa beginning in 2000, according to an affidavit from a Providence police detective. In 2017, he was issued a diversity immigrant visa and months later obtained legal permanent residence status, according to the affidavit. It was not immediately clear where he was between taking a leave of absence from the school in 2001 and getting the visa in 2017.

The diversity visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the U.S., many of them in Africa. The lottery was created by Congress, and the move is almost certain to invite legal challenges.

Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 visa lottery, with more than 131,000 selected when including spouses with the winners. After winning, they must undergo vetting to win admission to the United States. Portuguese citizens won only 38 slots.

Lottery winners are invited to apply for a green card. They are interviewed at consulates and subject to the same requirements and vetting as other green-card applicants.

Trump has long opposed the diversity visa lottery. Noem’s announcement is the latest example of using tragedy to advance immigration policy goals. After an Afghan man was identified as the gunman in a fatal attack on National Guard members in November, Trump’s administration imposed sweeping rules against immigration from Afghanistan and other counties.

While pursuing mass deportation, Trump has sought to limit or eliminate avenues to legal immigration. He has not been deterred if they are enshrined in law, like the diversity visa lottery, or the Constitution, as with a right to citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil. The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear his challenge to birthright citizenship.

Spagat and Golden write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump made dozens of promises when he campaigned to retake the White House last year, from boosting economic growth to banning transgender athletes from girls’ sports.

But one pledge stood out as the most important in many voters’ eyes: Trump said he would not only bring inflation under control, but push grocery and energy prices back down.

“Starting the day I take the oath of office, I will rapidly drive prices down, and we will make America affordable again,” he said in 2024. “Your prices are going to come tumbling down, your gasoline is going to come tumbling down, and your heating bills and cooling bills are going to be coming down.”

He hasn’t delivered. Gasoline and eggs are cheaper than they were a year ago, but most other prices are still rising, including groceries and electricity. The Labor Department estimated Thursday that inflation is running at 2.7%, only a little better than the 3% Trump inherited from Joe Biden; electricity was up 6.9%.

And that has given the president a major political problem: Many of the voters who backed him last year are losing faith.

“I voted for Trump in 2024 because he was promising America first … and he was promising a better economy,” Ebyad, a nurse in Texas, said on a Focus Group podcast hosted by Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell. “It feels like all those promises have been broken.”

Since Inauguration Day, the president’s job approval has declined from 52% to 43% in the polling average calculated by statistician Nate Silver. Approval for Trump’s performance on the economy, once one of his strongest points, has sunk even lower to 39%.

That’s dangerous territory for a president who hopes to help his party keep its narrow majority in elections for the House of Representatives next year.

To Republican pollsters and strategists, the reasons for Trump’s slump are clear: He overpromised last year and he’s under-performing now.

“The most important reasons he won in 2024 were his promises to bring inflation down and juice the economy,” Republican pollster Whit Ayres said. “That’s the reason he won so many voters who traditionally had supported Democrats, including Hispanics. … But he hasn’t been able to deliver. Inflation has moderated, but it hasn’t gone backward.”

Last week, after deriding complaints about affordability as “a Democrat hoax,” Trump belatedly launched a campaign to convince voters that he’s at work fixing the problem.

But at his first stop, a rally in Pennsylvania, he continued arguing that the economy is already in great shape.

“Our prices are coming down tremendously,” he insisted.

“You’re doing better than you’ve ever done,” he said, implicitly dismissing voters’ concerns.

He urged families to cope with high tariffs by cutting back: “You know, you can give up certain products,” he said. “You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter. Two or three is nice, but you don’t need 37 dolls.”

Earlier, in an interview with Politico, Trump was asked what grade he would give the economy. “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus,” he said.

On Wednesday, the president took another swing at the issue in a nationally televised speech, but his message was basically the same.

“One year ago, our country was dead. We were absolutely dead,” he said. “Now we’re the hottest country anywhere in the world. … Inflation is stopped, wages are up, prices are down.”

Republican pollster David Winston, who has advised GOP members of Congress, said the president has more work to do to win back voters who supported him in 2024 but are now disenchanted.

“When families are paying the price for hamburger that they used to pay for steak, there’s a problem, and there’s no sugarcoating it,” he said. “The president’s statements that ‘we have no inflation’ and ‘our groceries are down’ have flown in the face of voters’ reality.”

Another problem for Trump, pollsters said, is that many voters believe his tariffs are pushing prices higher — making the president part of the problem, not part of the solution. A YouGov poll in November found that 77% of voters believe tariffs contribute to inflationary pressures.

Trump’s popularity hasn’t dropped through the floor; he still has the allegiance of his fiercely loyal base. “He is at his lowest point of his second term so far, but he is well within the range of his job approval in the first term,” Ayres noted.

Still, he has lost significant chunks of his support among independent voters, young people and Latinos, three of the “swing voter” groups who put him over the top in 2024.

Inflation isn’t the only issue that has dented his standing.

He promised to lead the economy into “a golden age,” but growth has been uneven. Unemployment rose in November to 4.6%, the highest level in more than four years.

He promised massive tax cuts for the middle class, but most voters say they don’t believe his tax cut bill brought them any benefit. “It’s hard to convince people that they got a tax break when nobody’s tax rates were actually cut,” Ayres noted.

He kept his promise to launch the largest deportation campaign in U.S. history — but many voters complain that he has broken his promise to focus on violent criminals. In Silver’s average, approval of his immigration policies dropped from 52% in January to 45% now.

A Pew Research Center survey in October found that 53% of adults, including 71% of Latinos, think the administration has ordered too many deportations. However, most voters approve of Trump’s measures on border security.

Republican pollsters and strategists say they believe Trump can reverse his downward momentum before November’s congressional election, but it may not be easy.

“You look at what voters care about most, and you offer policies to address those issues,” GOP strategist Alex Conant suggested. “That starts with prices. So you talk about permitting reform, energy prices, AI [artificial intelligence] … and legislation to address healthcare, housing and tax cuts. You could call it the Affordability Act.”

“A laser focus on the economy and the cost of living is job one,” GOP pollster Winston said. “His policies on regulation, energy and taxes should have a positive impact, but the White House needs to emphasize them on a more consistent basis.”

“People voted for change in 2024,” he warned. “If they don’t get it — if inflation doesn’t begin to recede — they may vote for change again in 2026.”

The Visalia Unified School District’s public board meeting in March was a festive and upbeat affair with a performance by a student chamber music group and a commendation for a high school cheer squad.

When the seven-member board went into closed session, the agenda was decidedly grimmer: Six former students were suing the district over sexual abuse they said they suffered decades earlier at the hands of a kindergarten teacher.

Out of public view, the board unanimously approved a $3-million settlement with provisions intended to keep the community in the dark forever.

Under the terms of the agreement, the women, their lawyers and families were prohibited from disclosing any aspect of the deal, including the amount they were paid.

“The Parties agree that they will respond to any inquiries they may receive from any third parties regarding the lawsuit by stating only that ‘the matter has been resolved’ without any further elaboration, discussion or disclosure,” the settlement instructed.

It was Visalia’s fifth secret settlement in the last three years, one of a flurry that districts are quietly approving statewide.

A Times investigation found that California’s public schools, faced with a historic surge of sex abuse lawsuits, are increasingly using nondisclosure agreements and other tactics that celebrities and big corporations rely upon to protect their reputation.

At least 25 districts have resolved suits or other claims in ways that hinder taxpayers from learning about the allegations, the cost of settling them or both, The Times found. These hidden settlements total more than $53 million. Legal experts say that these settlements may be in violation of state law, and that some should be investigated by the state attorney general.

While shielding the names and identifying details of sex abuse victims is widely accepted, courts have repeatedly said the public has a right to know allegations leveled against government employees and the money spent to compensate accusers.

Lawmakers in California have also largely banned the use of confidentiality provisions for settlements involving sexual assault and harassment, on the belief that transparency helps victims heal and leads to public accountability.

“There’s very significant problems with government agencies acting like private companies and requesting or insisting on these kinds of nondisclosure or non-disparagement clauses in settlement agreements,” said David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, based in San Rafael. “Because at the end of the day, the government works for the people and the people have a very compelling interest in knowing about claims and allegations of misconduct.”

California’s school districts are now grappling with a deluge of sex abuse cases resulting from a 2019 law that changed the statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse and created a new window — from 2020 to 2022 — in which anyone could file a lawsuit for past alleged abuse.

The Times identified more than 1,000 lawsuits against school districts filed since 2020, with more than 750 filed due to the new law. Some lawsuits allege abuse as far back as the 1950s. Most cases are still making their way through the courts, but more than 330 have settled for roughly $700 million, with $435 million paid out for claims related to the new law. The state projects that local education agencies will ultimately pay out between $2 billion and $3 billion once cases work through the court system. Much of this is taking place outside the public eye.

In Visalia, confidentiality clauses negotiated by district lawyers acknowledged the public’s right to obtain the information — and then attempted to make sure they never would. Four agreements specifically barred former students receiving secret payouts from “directly or indirectly” encouraging others to file a request under the state Public Records Act — the method The Times used to review copies of agreements referenced in this story.

A spokesperson for Visalia Unified declined an interview request, and the school district did not answer written questions.

Anaheim Union High School District paid three men, who said they had been abused by a junior high teacher, $3.3 million in 2023.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Several districts attempted to prevent allegations from becoming public by paying off accusers before they filed lawsuits that would have detailed the claims of sex abuse for anyone to see.

Anaheim Union High School District paid a trio of men who said they had been abused by a junior high teacher $3.3 million in 2023 after their attorney sent the district a draft of a lawsuit he said he was prepared to file in Superior Court.

The terms of the payout two years ago required that the men and their lawyers “not seek publicity relating to the facts and circumstances giving rise” to their claims, and indeed, the settlements have not been previously reported.

John Bautista, a spokesperson for Anaheim Union, said in a statement that the district and its insurer settled the draft lawsuits after going through discovery in a related case and “did not want to incur additional expenses of filing a lawsuit.”

“Nothing in the agreement would prevent the claimant/plaintiff from speaking with the press concerning the facts of the case if the press contacted [them],” Bautista said.

At least one district paid an accuser before anything was put in writing, records show. Victor Elementary School District in the High Desert negotiated a $350,000 settlement with one former student after his lawyer relayed abuse allegations in a phone call. Asked by The Times for a document describing the claimed misconduct, a district official said no such records existed.

Some districts suggest the confidentiality restrictions are needed to avoid a “snowball effect” of further litigation.

San Diego Unified, hit by more than a dozen lawsuits over alleged sex abuse since 2020, has settled four for a total of $2.44 million, each with a confidentiality clause that, at a minimum, prevents the accuser or her lawyer from disclosing the settlement amount. One of the settlements blocks the accuser from discussing the matter with anyone except her lawyer or financial advisor or in response to a subpoena.

San Diego officials acknowledged that confidentiality is ultimately limited — the documents can be disclosed via public records requests — but the district proceeded with pursuing restrictions on the accusers and their representatives.

“The purpose is to keep plaintiffs’ lawyers from using these settlements as marketing tools,” said James Canning, a spokesman for San Diego Unified.

Former state Sen. Connie Leyva, seen here while in the Legislature in 2019, said she was taken aback by school districts using confidentiality provisions. “That sounds illegal,” Leyva said.

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

Efforts to curb the use of secret settlements gained momentum in the 1980s, with growing public awareness of how confidentiality agreements had kept the public in the dark about environmental or health hazards, such as asbestos.

In 2016, California prohibited settlement agreements that block the disclosure of factual information about sexual abuse or any sex offense that could be prosecuted as a felony.

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, lawmakers in 2018 passed the STAND Act, which prohibits nondisclosure agreements in sexual harassment, discrimination and other sexual assault cases that don’t rise to felony prosecution. Three years later, the Silenced No More Act widened the prohibition on nondisclosure agreements to include any harassment case. The law still gives victims the option to protect their identity.

The lead sponsor of both bills, former state Sen. Connie Leyva, said she was taken aback by school districts using confidentiality provisions.

“That sounds illegal,” said Leyva, now the executive director of public radio and TV station KVCR. “We did not speak specifically about children or about schools, but it shouldn’t be happening.” She added, “Our bill was meant to apply to everyone everywhere.”

Several settlement agreements obtained by The Times included caveats by stating they were “confidential to the extent allowed by law,” or contained similar carve-outs. Experts said such provisos still have the effect of muzzling a victim’s speech and hindering public accountability.

“While it’s possible that these work-arounds don’t violate the letter of the STAND Act, they certainly violate its spirit,” said Nora Freeman Engstrom, a professor at Stanford Law School, who co-authored a study on the effect of the STAND Act in L.A. courts.

Southern Kern Unified School District agreed to pay $600,000 to a former student who alleged sex abuse and included an acknowledgment of the STAND Act in the agreement. Still, the settlement bars the former student, Corey Neufer, from “actively” publicizing the deal.

Reached by phone, Neufer said that although he deliberately chose to sue under his own name, rather than as John Doe, he was told that the confidentiality provision was standard and necessary for the final settlement.

“That was one of the stipulations — that I don’t speak about it or give any details,” said Neufer, who indicated the confidentiality was far broader than the text of his settlement suggests. “My lawyer instructed me to not talk about the case.”

The STAND Act allows for plaintiffs or claimants to put language in a settlement agreement that shields their identity and disclosure of any facts that could lead to their identity. However, if a public official or government agency — such as a school district — is part of the settlement, that language cannot be included.

Of the dozens of settlements reviewed by The Times, two specifically noted that the accuser wanted confidentiality to shield their identity.

Several had restrictions that appeared to exceed the STAND Act, such as a 2024 settlement for $787,500 paid by Ceres Unified to a custodian who said she was sexually harassed by a colleague. The signed agreement states that the settlement, its terms and any belief that the district or its employees engaged in unlawful behavior were all confidential. If asked, the custodian could only say, “The matter has been resolved.”

David Viss, an assistant superintendent at Ceres Unified, said in an email that the agreement complied with the law: “We believe the settlement agreement is consistent with the STAND Act.”

The overwhelming majority of sex abuse cases filed against school districts reach a settlement. For districts, a settlement can be more cost-effective than mounting a legal defense through a jury trial, and unlike a panel of jurors, a settlement provides a level of fiscal certainty. At times, the decision to settle is driven less by school board members than an insurance company or liability coverage provider.

John Manly, whose law firm specializes in childhood sex abuse, said school districts and their insurance providers frequently ask for confidentiality and non-disparagement clauses when negotiating a payout.

Lawyer John Manly, seen at his law offices in Irvine in 2023, has represented sex abuse survivors for more than 20 years. He says that confidentiality agreements “benefit one person, which is the perpetrator, and those who enable them.”

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“We get these requests all the time, and we decline,” Manly said. “Confidentiality agreements benefit one person, which is the perpetrator, and those who enable them.”

At Los Angeles Unified School District, scores of people accused former San Fernando High School wrestling coach Terry Gillard of abuse. In 2022, LAUSD agreed to pay 23 accusers a total of $52 million to settle molestation and abuse claims — a settlement negotiated by Manly’s law firm.

A year later, LAUSD agreed to pay three other women who alleged abuse by Gillard a total of $7.5 million.

Although those represented by Manly’s team did not have a confidentiality or non-disparagement agreement in their settlement, LAUSD sought an extensive confidentiality agreement for the payout to the three other women, curtailing discussion of the settlement and underlying abuse claims.

That settlement barred their lawyer from making any sort of statement — or encouraging others to make a statement — about the compensation deal, and barred comments that could “defame, disparage or in any way criticize” LAUSD, its employees and leaders.

Only the women, their lawyer, “immediate family” and “tax professional” could know about the settlement, according to the agreement.

“If asked about the status of this dispute, plaintiffs counsel may only state, ‘they have voluntarily and fully resolved their claims against the Los Angeles Unified School District,’ or words to that effect,” declares the settlement agreement.

The lawyer for the women, Anthony DeMarco, did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Manly said the State Bar of California should investigate lawyers on both sides who agree to language that they know conflicts with state law. And he called on Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to investigate school districts that continue to lock victims into such restrictive agreements.

“It’s wrong. It’s bad for the community and it’s bad for the victim. The lawyers that do it — defense and plaintiff — should be ashamed of themselves.”

L.A. Unified, which has added confidentiality provisions in at least seven settlements since 2020, defended its practices as a way to amicably resolve litigation, according to a statement from a spokesperson.

“These settlement agreements keep the settlement details, such as the amount, confidential. They do not prohibit the disclosure of the facts behind the claims,” the LAUSD spokesperson said.

Some legal experts want Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to investigate school districts that continue to lock victims into restrictive nondisclosure agreements.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

While several districts use secrecy provisions in settlement agreements to hide the details of sex abuse cases, others, like Visalia Unified, also are able to keep payouts quiet by approving them in closed session at regular school board meetings.

In 2021, the president of the board of Wasco Union High School District received a letter from a lawyer based in Iowa who represented a former Wasco student. The lawyer said his client had been sexually abused nearly a decade earlier by her former coach and teacher, and accused her then-principal, Kevin Tallon, among others, of not taking appropriate steps when confronted with evidence of abuse.

Tallon, now Wasco’s superintendent, was named as a defendant in the draft lawsuit, and the lawyer included a copy. He gave the district 14 business days to respond.

“If I do not hear back from you, I will proceed with the lawsuit,” wrote the lawyer, Thomas Burke.

The letter touched off a negotiation that culminated at the Wasco school board’s final meeting of 2021. The meeting’s agenda for the closed session was circumspect: “Conference with Legal Counsel — Settlement Agreement.” But behind closed doors, the board voted 5 to 0 to approve a settlement, according to meeting minutes, ensuring that there would probably never be a public airing of the allegations against the teacher or superintendent. The meeting minutes reflect only that a settlement was approved — not the amount or nature of the abuse accusations. The district paid $475,000 in the settlement, a sum that The Times obtained via records request.

Tallon, the superintendent who was named in the draft lawsuit, declined an interview but provided written responses to questions. He said the district and its staff “fulfilled its duties diligently and with integrity,” and said the settlement was approved in a way that adhered to the Brown Act, the state’s open meeting law.

“The settlement was not intended to conceal allegations; it was meant to responsibly limit risk and bring closure to a sensitive situation,” Tallon said in the statement.

Legal experts agreed that Wasco’s school board complied with the Brown Act — thereby exposing that law’s limits and potential loopholes. Since the threat of litigation did not result in a filed case or formal claim, the board could treat it as “anticipated litigation” and discuss it in closed session, away from the public. And since settlement offers — like any contract negotiation — are not final until agreed upon, they too can be approved in closed session, away from the public.

Loy, the legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, said the Brown Act could be amended to proactively require public agencies to ultimately disclose the details and amounts of settlements. School districts, he added, could also opt to be more open, without being compelled to by state lawmakers.

“Agencies owe a duty to the public to be more proactive and more transparent, even than the bare minimum letter of the law might allow them to get away with,” Loy said.

The lack of transparency also coincides with a crisis in local news, which has resulted in far less coverage of city halls, courthouses and school boards from the Imperial Valley to the shores of Eureka.

At one time, newspapers big and small had reporters at school board meetings who probably would have noticed settlements on the agenda and submitted records requests to reveal them.

With local media absent, agencies have quietly approved settlements in closed session, with no watchdog to suss out the underlying facts.

“Diligent people or reporters know to do that: Please give me copies of every settlement approved this week or this month,” said Loy, the First Amendment Coalition’s legal director. “But that requires an extra step.”

After steadily gaining power and influence for more than a decade, the watchdogs that provide civilian oversight of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department face an uncertain future.

A recent leadership exodus has left behind gaps in experience and knowledge, and a succession of legal challenges and funding cuts by the county have left some concerned that long-fought gains in transparency are slipping away.

“It is beginning to look like the idea of effective oversight of the Sheriff’s Department is a pipe dream,” said Robert Bonner, former chairman of the Civilian Oversight Commission, who announced in June that he was being pushed into “involuntarily leaving” before he completed pending work.

Current and former oversight officials have argued that the office of county counsel, the Board of Supervisors and the Sheriff’s Department have repeatedly undermined efforts to rein in law enforcement misconduct.

The cumulative effect, some advocates worry, is that the public will know less about law enforcement activity, and that there will be fewer independent investigations into deputies and department leaders alike.

“The Sheriff is committed to transparency in law enforcement,” the department said via email. “As we move forward it is essential to strengthen collaboration with the [Civilian Oversight Commission] while ensuring that the rights and safety of our personnel are protected.”

In recent years, oversight bodies have uncovered information about so-called deputy gangs, published reports on inhumane jail conditions and issued subpoenas for records related to on-duty use of force incidents.

Inspector General Max Huntsman’s sudden announcement last week that he was retiring from the position he’s held since its creation more than a decade ago completed a trifecta of departures of top law enforcement oversight officials this year.

In addition to Bonner’s departure, former Civilian Oversight Commission chairman Sean Kennedy stepped down from the body in February in response to what he described as improper county interference in the commission’s activities.

L.A. County Sheriff Robert Luna, right, talks with Sean Kennedy during an event on April 5 in Baker. Kennedy left his position on the Civilian Oversight Commission earlier this year.

(William Liang / For The Times)

Kennedy and others have said the Sheriff’s Department has refused to comply with multiple subpoenas by the commission for personnel files and records related to deputy misconduct.

“The attack on integrity and on oversight capacity is threatening all of us in Los Angeles County,” Hans Johnson, who took over as chairman of the Civilian Oversight Commission following Bonner’s departure, said at a recent public meeting. “We look forward to making sure that oversight is preserved and protected and not muzzled and not unplugged or sabotaged.”

The Executive Office of the Board of Supervisors said in a statement that it maintains a “long-standing commitment to strong oversight.”

The Sheriff’s Department said only one request it has received from oversight officials this year remains pending.

“The Department remains committed to working cooperatively to provide all requested information as required by law,” the statement said.

On the state level, reform advocates recently scored what they described as a victory for transparency.

In October, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill known as AB 847, which granted civilian oversight bodies across California the ability to view confidential law enforcement records in private sessions. L.A. County officials had previously balked at sharing certain sensitive files on sheriff’s deputies, and some reformers worry the new law may not go far enough.

Dara Williams, chief deputy of the Office of the Inspector General, said at a July public meeting that the Sheriff’s Department has a history of being “painfully slow” to respond to requests for records related to homicides by deputies. In one instance, she said, Huntsman’s office served the department with a subpoena in October 2024 “and we are still waiting for documents and answers.”

The Sheriff’s Department said it has hired an outside attorney who is “conducting an independent review” of its records to determine if “those materials actually exist and can be found.”

The department’s statement said it will abide by the law and that protecting confidential information “remains of the utmost importance.”

Some involved in oversight have also become the subject of probes themselves.

In June, the Office of the County Counsel said it was investigating Kennedy for alleged retaliation against a sergeant who had worked for a unit that had been accused of pursuing cases for political reasons during Sheriff Alex Villanueva’s tenure.

Kennedy has denied the allegations, telling The Times in June, “I was just doing my job as an oversight official.”

Budget cuts — some already instituted, others threatened — are also a concern.

Huntsman said earlier this year that the Executive Office of the Board of Supervisors was reassigning or eliminating a third of his staff.

Former L.A. County Inspector General Max Huntsman listens during a hearing at Loyola Law School’s Advocacy Center on Jan. 12, 2024.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

He too left amid acrimony with county officials.

“The County has made it very clear over the past couple of years that they are not going to enforce the state oversight laws,” Huntsman told The Times. “Instead the county supports the sheriff limiting the flow of information so as to restrict meaningful oversight.”

The Executive Office of the Board of Supervisors said the changes implemented this year have had a “minimal” impact that “neither limits OIG’s responsibility nor their capacity.”

The possibility of eliminating the Sybil Brand Commission, which monitors L.A. County jails, was discussed in an August report to the Board of Supervisors. County officials said it would save about $40,000 annually.

Sybil Brand commissioner Eric Miller told The Times in September that he believes “the county is attempting to limit oversight of the Sheriff’s Department … to avoid lawsuits.” The department, he said, “is a powerful constituency within the county.”

In September, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta launched a state lawsuit over what he described as a “humanitarian crisis” inside L.A. County jails.

There are even concerns that the Sheriff’s Department is seeking greater control over local groups that facilitate conversations between deputies and members of the public — often some of the only opportunities for community concerns to be heard.

In the Antelope Valley, the Palmdale Sheriff’s Station Community Advisory Committee has been roiled by allegations that a local Sheriff’s Department captain appointed a new member without other members’ approval.

The chair of the committee, Georgia Halliman, resigned in October and committee member Sylvia Williams has alleged that the Sheriff’s Department captain tried to force her out.

“I was going to leave, but they need someone who’s real in there,” Williams told The Times. “You have to have an overseer.”

The department said it is reviewing the situation.

Melissa Camacho, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Southern California, said the county is at a crossroads.

“The main question right now is what is the county going to do?” she said. “Is this going to be a moment when the Board of Supervisors decides to actually invest in oversight?”

Dec. 18 (UPI) — Congressional Democrats released 68 photos from the Jeffrey Epstein estate on Thursday, bringing the total number to more than 95,000 that have been turned over to the House Oversight Committee investigating names on a list of prominent people who were associated with the now deceased sex offender.

Epstein, the former financier and friend of the ultra-wealthy and politically powerful, was convicted of sexual behavior with minor girls. He later died by suicide in a Manhattan prison while awaiting trial.

To date, only a small fraction of the photos have been released to the public, but those that have been released featured President Donald Trump, top Republican strategist Steve Bannon, former President Bill Clinton, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and movie mogul Woody Allen, among other high-profile people, in candid shots with Epstein.

While not dyeing their association with the convicted sex offender, all have denied wrongdoing. None have been charged.

The latest trove of photographs was released prior to a Friday deadline, when the Justice Department will be required to release all of the government’s Epstein files with a few exceptions.

Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., said the committee is reviewing materials from the Epstein estate and working with victims shown in the photographs who are not identified or threatened.

“Certainly the most disturbing photos are certainly the ones that are more sexual in nature,” Garcia said during a Thursday briefing on the Capitol steps. “We’re having a conversation about the best way to deal with those and talking to the lawyers and the survivor groups, because we want to be very cautious of the trauma that the survivors are going through.”

The new law says the photos must be published online and in a publicly searchable database.

The White House has accused Garcia and other Democrats of releasing “cherry-picked photos with random reactions to try to create a false narrative” with the intention of putting Trump in a negative light.

In January 2018, conservative Fox News host Laura Ingraham was having dinner at Toscana, an Italian restaurant in Brentwood, when she spotted the renowned Hollywood director — and unabashed liberal — Rob Reiner.

She asked him to come on her show, “The Ingraham Angle.” He was on set the next day.

After introducing him as “a brilliant director,” who made her favorite movie, “This is Spinal Tap,” Ingraham said: “Last night, the first thing Reiner says is: ‘Are they gonna shut the government down?’’ I’m like, wow, I’m here in L.A.; I wanna talk about Hollywood stuff. But he wants to talk about politics.”

Al Gore and Rob Reiner attend the Tribeca Film Festival in New York in April 2007.

(Scott Gries / Getty Images)

Ingraham and Reiner vehemently disagreed — about alleged Russian influence on the 2016 presidential election, about whether President Trump is racist, about the treatment of conservatives in Hollywood.

But Reiner also called Ingraham “smart as hell.” And Ingraham said Reiner “should be lauded” for being willing to spar with her, unlike many politicians on both sides of the aisle.

It was the kind of blunt but ultimately respectful exchange that added to Reiner’s widespread appeal off-screen, both because of — and in spite of — his views.

Reiner and his wife, Michele, were killed at their Brentwood home last weekend, allegedly by their son, Nick, who has been charged with murder. The couple’s deaths have sent a thunderclap through Hollywood and beyond, partly because the Reiners had so many friends and connections in creative and political circles.

Rob Reiner — who, in the role of Michael “Meathead” Stivic in the groundbreaking sitcom “All in the Family,” played the liberal foil to his bigoted, conservative father-in-law, Archie Bunker — seemed to relish his real-life role as a progressive celebrity activist. That made him a hero to many in blue California but a villain to others, especially the reality-TV-show-star-turned-president, Donald Trump.

In a highly criticized social media post, Trump attributed the deaths to “the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”

But while Reiner, a blistering critic of the president, disagreed with many conservatives on policy, he also worked to build relationships with them — in media and entertainment circles, the California State Capitol, and beyond.

Ingraham this week called him “a legend.”

Actors Alec Baldwin and James Woods listen to director Rob Reiner in between scenes for the 1996 film “Ghosts Of Mississippi.”

(Columbia Pictures via Getty Images)

Actor James Woods, a longtime Trump supporter, said in a Fox News interview this week that Reiner saved his career by casting him in the 1996 film “Ghosts of Mississippi” over studio objections. He called Reiner “a great patriot” with whom he shared a mutual respect despite myriad political disagreements.

Andrew Kolvet, a spokesman for conservative powerhouse Turning Point USA, wrote on X that he “shared approximately zero in common with Rob Reiner politically, but I am so saddened by this news” and praying that “justice would be swift and without conspiracies [sic] theories.”

Kolvet said Reiner “responded with grace and compassion” to the September killing of TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk — a violent end that Reiner said nobody deserved, regardless of their views.

Hard-right Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia, called the deaths “a family tragedy, not about politics or political enemies.” And GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, of Texas, wrote on X that “The Princess Bride” was his favorite film and called Reiner “a comedic and story-telling master.”

Off screen, Reiner had a unique ability to connect with people of all persuasions, in various mediums, at the top of their careers or just starting. He was very much influenced by Norman Lear, the creator of “All in the Family,” who blended his Hollywood career with progressive activism.

Similar to Lear, Reiner didn’t just dabble in social causes and campaigns. He launched them, led them and brought people aboard. “He wasn’t building an operation the way Hollywood typically does, making donations, hosting fundraisers,” said Ben Austin, a former aide to Reiner who worked in the White House during the Clinton administration.

And all the time, he did it while making movies, some of them deeply personal, intertwined with his life as a parent.

Reiner was the driving force behind the successful 1998 California ballot measure, Proposition 10, a landmark policy that put a tax on tobacco products and pumped billions of dollars into preschools, teacher training, and support for struggling families. He enlisted help in that effort from such beloved figures as Steven Spielberg, Robin Williams and his own father, comedy legend Carl Reiner.

After the initiative passed, Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat, appointed the younger Reiner chairman of the First 5 commission overseeing disbursement of the funds.

Rob Reiner co-founded the group that would help overturn Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage in California.

(Los Angeles Times)

And in 2009, Reiner co-founded the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which led the successful legal fight to overturn Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage in California. The group hired legal luminaries from opposite sides of the political spectrum to overturn the ballot measure: the conservative former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson and litigator David Boies, a liberal who squared off against Olson in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that gave George W. Bush the presidency in 2000.

Former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, a Democrat, said in an interview Wednesday that Reiner successfully rallied people to the cause because he was so adept at humanizing the stories of the plaintiffs and other same-sex couples — and emphasizing love.

“I don’t think you can overstate how influential he was at the national, state and local level and how well-liked he was,” Garcetti said. “Politics and movies share this in common: They both need good stories … and he was such a gifted storyteller.”

Garcetti said that while many celebrities lend money and faces to political causes, prettying up political mailers and email blasts, “Rob built those causes. He wasn’t like the frosting on the cake. He actually was the baker.”

Garcetti, then a Los Angeles City Council member, joined Reiner in stumping for 2004 Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean, for whom the director was an early backer. Garcetti crossed paths with him often, including during the push to overturn Proposition 8 — and at the Los Angeles City Hall wedding of Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo, two of the plaintiffs in the federal case that struck it down.

Katami wrote in an Instagram post this week that Reiner and his wife “stood with us in court for 4.5 years” and that he and his husband sat at the couple’s table in their home many times.

Rob Reiner chats in 2012 with Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo, plaintiffs in the case that struck down Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

“Because of them, they were able to sit at our table, at our wedding, on a day and in a moment that would not exist without their belief in who we are and how we love,” Katamami wrote.

He added: “They are brave. They are funny. They are generous. They are deeply human. And they make everyone around them feel seen, protected, and encouraged to be more fully themselves.”

Former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democrat now running for California governor, officiated Katami and Zarrillo’s wedding. He said in an interview that Reiner personally bankrolled much of the legal fight because he genuinely believed it was the right thing to do.

In 2008, Villaraigosa kicked off his successful reelection campaign with a private reception at the Reiners’ home.

“You know, the one thing about Rob Reiner: There was no pretense,” Villaraigosa said. “If you go to his house … he’s a very wealthy man — he has been a director, an actor, co-founder of Castle Rock Entertainment — and yet his house was like a home. It wasn’t a mansion. It was like a ranch-style house, very homey.”

Rob Reiner hugs then-Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in January 2015. The director had just introduced Villaraigosa at a school as the mayor kicked off his Leadership Tour highlighting his support for universal preschool.

(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

Villaraigosa and others said Reiner had a granular knowledge of the policies he supported, garnering the respect — if not always the affection — of those with whom he disagreed.

Gale Kaufman, a veteran Democratic strategist who was a longtime advisor to the influential California Teachers Assn., clashed with Reiner over education policy but admired his commitment to — and knowledge about — the issue.

Kaufman told The Times this week that she was amazed by “his attention to detail and his dogged determination that he was right.”

“This was not just someone giving you a pot of money and saying, ‘Go do this.’ This was a guy who was … in every piece of it.”

Cinematographer Reed Morano was one of several in Hollywood whose career soared because of Reiner.

In the late 2000s, Morano was known for filming low-budget projects — often in a gritty, hand-held style. Many of them premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, including the Oscar-nominated “Frozen River.”

In the early 2010s, Morano got a chance to pitch her talents to Reiner and producer Alan Greisman, who were assembling a team to shoot 2012’s “The Magic of Belle Isle,” starring Morgan Freeman and Virginia Madsen and directed by Reiner.

Barely 15 minutes after leaving the meeting, Morano got a call telling her she had the job.

“The thing that strikes me is he could have had anybody he wanted,” said Morano on a call Tuesday from New York City, noting that “Belle Isle” was the biggest budget project she had worked on up to that point. “It’s just he was so open-minded and so forward-thinking, and I think he could see potential that other people couldn’t see.”

Morano then handled cinematography for Reiner’s “And So It Goes,” starring Michael Douglas and Diane Keaton, released to 2014. Reiner, she said, also wanted her to work on “Being Charlie,” the 2015 addiction drama co-written by his son Nick, but she was unable to because of scheduling conflicts. Separately from Reiner, she would go on to win an Emmy in 2017 for directing on the series “The Handmaid’s Tale” and a prize at Sundance for her second film as director, 2018’s “I Think We’re Alone Now.”

A decade before Morano connected with Reiner, Michael Trujillo, now a veteran campaign consultant, went to work for him as a young communications and policy aide for First 5. He was in his early 20s and was stunned to learn he would be working steps from Reiner’s office in the Beverly Hills headquarters of his legendary Castle Rock Entertainment.

Rob Reiner speaks in 1998 to a child development policy group about Proposition 10, which added sales tax to tobacco products to fund early childhood education.

(Robert Durell / Los Angeles Times)

“I show up to Castle Rock Entertainment as a 22-year-old, in Beverly Hills, off Maple Drive. I’m just a Mexican kid from the northeast San Fernando Valley. My dad was a construction worker. My mom was a secretary … and I’m like, ‘What the f— am I doing here?” Trujillo said with a laugh.

Castle Rock, he said, was simultaneously a Hollywood hot spot and “a classroom in politics.” Trujillo said he once played office golf — blue cardboard for water hazards; brown paper for sand traps — with actors Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy while the movie “A Mighty Wind” was being edited. Politicians were always there, too.

Trujillo regularly joined Reiner on his once-a-month flights from Santa Monica to Sacramento for First Five commission meetings and tagged along to news conferences and school classrooms. He usually carried a Sharpie, knowing fans would show up with DVDs or VHS tapes of their favorite Reiner flicks to be signed.

“Rob was able to have conversations with anyone and everyone,” Trujillo said. “If you’re a Republican or Democratic legislator nationally, or even local or in the state, you were still a fanboy. You still wanted to meet his character from ‘All in the Family.’ You still wanted to shake the hand of the guy that made ‘Princess Bride.’ You still wanted to talk to the guy that made ‘A Few Good Men.’”

The holidays have arrived once again. You know, that annual festival of goodwill, compulsory spending and the dawning realization that Santa and Satan are anagrams.

Even in the best of years, Americans stagger through this season feeling financially woozy. This year, however, the picture is bleaker. And a growing number of Americans are feeling Grinchy.

Unemployment is at a four-year high, with Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, declaring, “The U.S. economy is in a hiring recession.” And a new PBS News/NPR/Marist poll finds that 70% of Americans say “the cost of living in the area where they live is not very affordable or not affordable at all.”

Is help on the way? Not likely. Affordable Care Act subsidies are expiring, and — despite efforts to force a vote in the House — it’s highly likely that nothing will be done about this before the end of the year. This translates to ballooning health insurance bills for millions of Americans. I will be among those hit with a higher monthly premium, which gives me standing to complain.

President Trump, meanwhile, remains firmly committed to policies that will exacerbate the rising cost of getting by. Trump’s tariffs — unless blocked by the Supreme Court — will continue to raise prices. And when it comes to his immigration crackdown, Trump is apparently unmoved by the tiresome fact that when you “disappear” workers, prices tend to go up.

Taken together, the Trump agenda amounts to an ambitious effort to raise the cost of living without the benefit of improved living standards. But if your money comes from crypto or Wall Street investments, you’re doing better than ever!

For the rest of us, the only good news is this: Unlike every other Trump scandal, most voters actually seem to care about what’s happening to their pocketbooks.

Politico recently found that erstwhile Trump voters backed Democrats in the 2025 governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia for the simple reason that things cost too much.

And Axios reports on a North Carolina focus group in which “11 of the 14 participants, all of whom backed Trump last November, said they now disapprove of his job performance. And 12 of the 14 say they’re more worried about the economy now than they were in January.”

Apparently, inflation is the ultimate reality check — which is horrible news for Republicans.

Trump’s great talent has always been the audacity to employ a “fake it ‘till you make it” con act to project just enough certainty to persuade the rest of us.

His latest (attempted) Jedi mind trick involves claiming prices are “coming down tremendously,” which is not supported by data or the lived experience of anyone who shops.

He also says inflation is “essentially gone,” which is true only if you define “gone” as “slowed its increase.”

Trump may dismiss the affordability crisis as a “hoax” and a “con job,” but voters persist in believing the grocery scanner.

In response, Trump has taken to warning us that falling prices could cause “deflation,” which he now says is even worse than inflation. He’s not wrong about the economic theory, but it hardly seems worth worrying about given that prices are not falling.

Apparently, economic subtlety is something you acquire only after winning the White House.

Naturally, Trump wants to blame Joe Biden, the guy who staggered out of office 11 months ago. And yes, pandemic disruptions and massive stimulus spending helped fuel inflation. But voters elected Trump to fix the problem, which he promised to do “on Day One.”

Lacking tangible results, Trump is reverting to what has always worked for him: the assumption that — if he confidently repeats it enough times — his version of reality will triumph over math.

The difficulty now is that positive thinking doesn’t swipe at the register.

You can lie about the size of your inauguration crowd — no normal person can measure it and nobody cares. But you cannot tell people standing in line at the grocery store that prices are falling when they are actively handing over more money.

Pretending everything is fine goes over even worse when a billionaire president throws Gatsby-themed parties, renovates the Lincoln Bedroom and builds a huge new ballroom at the White House. The optics are horrible, and there’s no doubt they are helping fuel the political backlash.

But the main problem is the main problem.

At the end of the day, the one thing voters really care about is their pocketbooks. No amount of spin or “manifesting” an alternate reality will change that.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

Dec. 18 (UPI) — European leaders have agreed to continue funding Ukraine in its fight against Russia with a two-year, $105 billion loan to provide the embattled nation with munitions and other material in the ongoing war, the latest battle of which has dragged on since 2022.

European leaders failed to agree on the first choice to arm Ukraine, using frozen Russian state assets as backing for the loan.

The plan to use frozen Russian assets to back the loan fell apart in the final moments, a schism that risked making the EU appear indecisive at a critical moment in negotiations.

European leaders announced Thursday that they will instead use money from the EU budget to fund Ukraine’s defense effort. As a result, the backup plan could be more costly and difficult to mobilize than the original plan to leverage the stash of Russian money currently frozen in Europe.

European leaders said since the end result is the same, getting funds to Kyiv, they celebrated it as a victory.

“This will address the urgent financial needs of Ukraine,” Antonio Costa, the president of the European Council, said at a media briefing in Brussels.

Partly because of a cut in funding from the United States, Ukraine is facing a $160 billion shortfall over the next two years, according to forecasts by the International Monetary Fund. The EU sought to fill about $105 billion of that gap.

Costa added that the EU will reserve its right to use frozen Russian assets for continued funding in the future.

Dec. 18 (UPI) — The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced new regulations on Thursday that restrict the ability for transgender minors to access gender-affirming healthcare.

The regulations work to “carry out President Trump’s executive order directing HHS to end the practice of sex-rejecting procedures on children that expose young people to irreversible harm,” a press release said.

The new rules will ban hospitals from “performing sex-rejecting procedures on children under age 18 as a condition of participation in Medicare and Medicaid programs.”

“These actions will ensure that the federal government in no way funds directly gender transition procedures on minors and also does not fund facilities that perform these procedures,” a department official told reporters Thursday.

The department said what it calls “sex-rejecting procedures” on children, including puberty blockers, hormones and surgery, “expose them to irreversible damage, including infertility, impaired sexual function, diminished bone density, altered brain development, and other irreversible physiological effects.”

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other department officials will offer details about the moves later Thursday.

Gender-affirming care is a holistic approach to treating gender-dysphoria and is supported by every major medical association as treatment for both adults and children.

It includes a range of therapies, from psychological and behavioral to medical interventions, with surgeries for minors being exceedingly rare.

The medical practice, however, has been a target for conservatives for years amid a larger campaign that civil rights organizations see as a threat to the rights of LGBTQ Americans.

St. Louis pediatrician Dr. Kenneth Haller called HHS’ actions “anti-science” during a Human Rights Campaign press briefing. He pointed out that these efforts still allow the treatments for children with other conditions that affect hormone production.

Haller said that as long as the condition doesn’t change a child’s gender, “these people don’t have a problem with [prescribing hormones]. That same care for kids who are transgender is what they say is wrong. There’s no science behind it.”

HHS said the Food and Drug Administration would send warning letters to manufacturers and sellers of breast binders for minors alleging they are doing illegal marketing, the department official said.

“Illegal marketing of these products for children is alarming, and the FDA will take further enforcement action such as import alerts, seizures, and injunctions if it continues,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary said in a statement.

The Human Rights Campaign said these rules infringe on the rights of families.

“Families deserve the freedom to go to the doctor and get the care that they need and to have agency over the health and wellbeing of their children,” said Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, in a statement. “But these proposed actions would put [President] Donald Trump and RFK Jr. in those doctor’s offices, ripping healthcare decisions from the hands of families and putting it in the grips of the anti-LGBTQ+ fringe.”

And Advocates for Trans Equality told UPI in an emailed statement that are a “discriminatory attack” that lacks credible medical or financial basis.

“These sets of rules mark a serious escalation in this administration’s ongoing efforts to dismantle healthcare programs and services for trans youth,” Fiadh McKenna, A4TE senior staff attorney, said in the statement.

“Targeting healthcare for trans people is unlawful and discriminatory; no one should be denied healthcare because of who they are.”

The new CMS rules will be finalized after a 60-day comment period on the Federal Register, the department official said.

Trump has issued several executive orders against transgender people. In May, the Pentagon began removing transgender service members from the military. In March, the Department of Veterans Affairs began phasing out medical treatments for gender dysphoria. In February, Trump signed an executive order banning transgender women from participating in women’s sports. In January, Trump signed an executive order that restricts gender-affirming care for minors.

Despite complaints from customers about rising electric bills, the California Public Utilities Commission voted 4 to 1 on Thursday to keep profits at Southern California Edison and the state’s other big investor-owned utilities at a level that consumer groups say has long been inflated.

The commission vote will slightly decrease the profit margins of Edison and three other big utilities beginning next year. Edison’s rate will fall to 10.03% from 10.3%.

Customers will see little impact in their bills from the decision. Because the utilities are continuing to spend more on wires and other infrastructure — capital costs that they earn profit on — that portion of customer bills is expected to continue to rise.

The vote angered consumer groups that had detailed in filings and hearings at the commission how the utilities’ return on equity — which sets the profit rate that the companies’ shareholders receive — had long been too high.

Among those testifying on behalf of consumers was Mark Ellis, the former chief economist for Sempra, the parent company of San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Gas. Ellis estimated that the companies’ profit margin should be closer to 6%.

He argued in a filing that the California commission had for years authorized the utilities to earn an excessive return on equity, resulting in an “unnecessary and unearned wealth transfer” from customers to the companies.

Cutting the return on equity to a little more than 6% would give Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric, SDG&E and SoCalGas a fair return, Ellis said, while saving their customers $6.1 billion a year.

The four commissioners who voted to keep the return on equity at about 10% — the percentage varies slightly for each company — said they believed they had found a balance between the 11% or higher rate that the four utilities had requested and the affordability concerns of utility customers.

Alice Reynolds, the commission’s president, said before the vote that she believed the decision “accurately reflects the evidence.”

Commissioner Darcie Houck disagreed and voted against the proposal. In her remarks, she detailed how California ratepayers were struggling to pay their bills.

“We have a duty to consider the consumer interest in determining what is a just and reasonable rate,” she said.

Consumer groups criticized the commission’s vote.

“For too long, utility companies have been extracting unreasonable profits from Californians just trying to heat or cool their homes or keep the lights on,” said Jenn Engstrom at CALPIRG. “As long as CPUC allows such lofty rates of return, it incentivizes power companies to overspend, increasing energy bills for everyone.”

California now has the nation’s second-highest electric rates after Hawaii.

Edison’s electric rates have risen by more than 40% in the last three years, according to a November analysis by the commission’s Public Advocates Office. More than 830,000 Edison customers are behind in paying their electric bills, the office said, each owing a balance of $835 on average.

The commission’s vote Thursday was in response to a March request from Edison and the three other big for-profit utilities. The companies pointed to the January wildfires in Los Angeles County, saying they needed to provide their shareholders with more profit to get them to continue to invest in their stock because of the threat of utility-caused fires in California.

In its filing, Edison asked for a return on equity of 11.75%, saying that it faced “elevated business risks,” including “the risk of extreme wildfires.”

The company told the commission that its stock had declined after the Jan. 7 Eaton fire and it needed the higher return on equity to attract investors to provide it with money for “wildfire mitigation and supporting California’s clean energy transition.”

Edison is facing hundreds of lawsuits filed by victims of the fire, which killed 19 people and destroyed thousands of homes in Altadena. The company has said the fire may have been sparked by its 100-year-old transmission line in Eaton Canyon, which it kept in place even though it hadn’t served customers since 1971.

Return on equity is crucial for utilities because it determines how much they and their shareholders earn each year on the electric lines, substations, pipelines and the rest of the system they build to serve customers.

Under the state’s system for setting electric rates, investors provide part of the money needed to build the infrastructure and then earn an annual return on that investment over the assets’ life, which can be 30 or 40 years.

In a January report, state legislative analyst Gabriel Petek detailed how electric rates at Edison and the state’s two other biggest investor-owned electric utilities were more than 60% higher than those charged by public utilities such as the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The public utilities don’t have investors or charge customers extra for profit.

Before the vote, dozens of utility customers from across the state wrote to the commission’s five members, who were appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, asking them to lower the utilities’ return on equity.

“A profit margin of 10% on infrastructure improvements is far too high and will only continue to increase the cost of living in California,” wrote James Ward, a Rancho Santa Margarita resident. “I just wish I could get a guaranteed profit margin of 10% on my investments.”

Folks, who was supposed to be watching grandpa last night? Because he got out, got on TV and … It. Was. Not. Good.

For 18 long minutes Wednesday evening, we were subjected to a rant by President Trump that predictably careened from immigrants (bad) to jobs (good), rarely slowing down for reality. But jumbled between the vitriol and venom was a vision of American healthcare that would have horror villainess M3GAN shaking in her Mary Janes — a vision that we all should be afraid of because it would take us back to a dark era when insurance couldn’t be counted on.

Trump’s remarks offered only a sketchy outline, per usual, in which the costs of health insurance premiums may be lower — but it will be because the coverage is terrible. Yes, you’ll save money. But so what? A cheap car without wheels is not a deal.

“The money should go to the people,” Trump said of his sort-of plan.

The money he vaguely was alluding to is the government subsidies that make insurance under the Affordable Care Act affordable. After antics and a mini-rebellion by four Republicans also on Wednesday, Congress basically failed to do anything meaningful on healthcare — pretty much ensuring those subsidies will disappear with the New Year.

Starting in January, premiums for too many people are going to leap skyward without the subsidies, jumping by an average of $1,016 according to the health policy research group KFF.

That’s bad enough. But Trump would like to make it worse.

The Affordable Care Act is about much more than those subsidies. Before it took effect in 2014, insurance companies in many states could deny coverage for preexisting conditions. This didn’t have to be big-ticket stuff like cancer. A kid with asthma? A mom with colitis? Those were the kind of routine but chronic problems that prevented millions from obtaining insurance — and therefore care.

Obamacare required that policies sold on its exchange did not discriminate. In addition, the ACA required plans to limit out-of-pocket costs and end lifetime dollar caps, and provide a baseline of coverage that included essentials such as maternity care. Those standards put pressure on all plans to include more, even those offered through large employers.

Trump would like to undo much of that. He instead wants to fall back on the stunt he loves the most — send a check!

What he is suggesting by sending subsidy money directly to consumers also most likely would open the market to plans without the regulation of the ACA. So yes, small businesses or even groups of individuals might be able to band together to buy insurance, but there likely would be fewer rules about what — or whom — it has to cover.

Most people aren’t savvy or careful enough to understand the limitations of their insurance before it matters. So it has a $2-million lifetime cap? That sounds like a lot until your kid needs a treatment that eats through that in a couple of months. Then what?

Trump suggested people pay for it themselves, out of health savings accounts funded by that subsidy check sent directly to taxpayers. Because that definitely will work, and people won’t spend the money on groceries or rent, and what they do save certainly will cover any medical expenses.

“You’ll get much better healthcare at a much lower price,” Trump claimed Wednesday. “The only losers will be insurance companies that have gotten rich, and the Democrat Party, which is totally controlled by those same insurance companies. They will not be happy, but that’s OK with me because you, the people, are finally going to be getting great healthcare at a lower cost.”

He then bizarrely tried to blame the expiring subsidies on Democrats.

Democrats “are demanding those increases and it’s their fault,” he said. “It is not the Republicans’ fault. It’s the Democrats’ fault. It’s the Unaffordable Care Act, and everybody knew it.”

It seems like Trump just wants to lower costs at the expense of quality. Here’s where I take issue with the Democrats. I am not here to defend insurance companies or our healthcare system. Both clearly need reform.

But why are the Democrats failing to explain what “The money should go to the people” will mean?

I get that affordability is the message, and as someone who bought both a steak and a carton of milk this week, I understand just how powerful that issue is.

Still, everyone, Democrat or Republican, wants decent healthcare they can afford, and the peace of mind of knowing if something terrible happens, they will have access to help. There is no American who gladly would pay for insurance each month, no matter how low the premium, that is going to leave them without care when they or their loved ones need it most.

Grandpa Trump doesn’t have this worry, since he has the best healthcare our tax dollars can buy.

But when he promises to send a check instead of providing governance and regulation of one of the most critical purchases in our lives, the message is sickening: My victory in exchange for your well-being.

New plaques have been installed in US President Donald Trump’s ‘Presidential Walk of Fame’ at the White House that attack many of his predecessors and make questionable claims about his own achievements.

Legislators have been publishing photos related to convicted sex offender as Justice Department faces Friday deadline to release more.

Democrats in the United States House of Representatives have released dozens more photos from the estate of financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The release on Thursday comes a day before the Department of Justice faces a deadline to release a more comprehensive set of files related to Epstein, who died in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting sex-trafficking charges.

In a statement, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee said they would “continue releasing photographs and documents to provide transparency for the American people”.

“It’s time for the Department of Justice to release the files,” they said.

The latest trove includes photos of Epstein with public intellectual Noam Chomsky, as well as images of billionaire Bill Gates, filmmaker Woody Allen and former Donald Trump strategist Steve Bannon at Epstein’s compound.

One release shows a screenshot of a text exchange in which an unknown sender appears to discuss recruiting young women.

“I have a friend scout she sent me some girls today. But she asks 1000$ per girl. I will send u girls now. Maybe someone will be good for J?” the post says.

Other images show women’s passports and the body of an unidentified woman with messages written on her skin, next to Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, a novel about a man’s sexual obsession with a child.

Like a trove of images released last week, the materials released on Thursday were not accompanied by any further context or details. Last week’s images also showed Bannon, Allen, and Gates, as well as former US President Bill Clinton and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

Another image showed US President Trump surrounded by three young women, his hand clutching the waist of the woman to his right.

Trump has acknowledged a prior relationship with Epstein, but has denied taking part in the sex abuse ring that Epstein ran. He said the two men had a falling out years before Epstein’s arrest.

In emails previously released by House Democrats, Epstein said that Trump “knew about the girls”. In another, Epstein described Trump as “the dog that hasn’t barked”.

The president had initially opposed a more complete release of files related to Epstein, but faced mounting pressure, including from within his own Make America Great Again (MAGA) base.

Speculation has focused on the influential figures in Epstein’s orbit, and any involvement they made have had in his crime. The intrigue has been fueled by the murky circumstances surrounding Epstein’s death in a New York jail cell, which was ruled a suicide.

Last month, Trump pivoted on the issue, signing into law a bill requiring the Justice Department to publish materials connected to the Epstein investigation.

However, the Justice Department has remained silent on whether it will meet Friday’s deadline outlined in the law, dubbed the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

ATLANTA — Democrats will not issue a postelection report on their 2024 shellacking after all.

The Democratic National Committee head has decided not to publish a formal assessment of the party’s defeat that returned Donald Trump to power and gave Republicans complete control in Washington.

Ken Martin, a Minnesota party leader who was elected national chair after Trump’s election, ordered a thorough review of what went wrong and what could be done differently, with the intent they would circulate a report as Republicans did after their 2012 election performance. Martin now says the inquiry, which included hundreds of interviews, was complete but that there is no value in a public release of findings that he believes could lead to continued infighting and recriminations before the 2026 midterms when control of Congress will be at stake.

“Does this help us win?” Martin said in a statement Thursday. “If the answer is no, it’s a distraction from the core mission.”

Martin’s decision, first reported by the New York Times, spares top Democrats from more scrutiny about their campaigns, including former President Biden, who withdrew from the race after announcing his second-term run, and his vice president, Kamala Harris, who became the nominee and lost to Trump.

Keeping the report under wraps also means Martin does not have to take sides in the tug-of-war between moderates and progressives or make assessments about how candidates should handle issues that Trump capitalized on, such as transgender rights.

“We are winning again,” Martin said.

Martin’s announcement follows a successful string of 2025 races, both in special elections and off-year statewide votes, that suggest strong enthusiasm for Democratic candidates.

In November, Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill won races for governor in Virginia and New Jersey, respectively. In New York’s mayoral election, Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, defeated establishment Democrat-turned-independent Andrew Cuomo.

In U.S. House special elections throughout 2025, Democratic nominees have consistently outperformed the party’s 2024 showing, often by double-digit percentages. Democrats have flipped state legislative districts and some statewide seats around the country, even in Republican-leaning places.

Although the DNC’s report will not be made public, a committee aide said some conclusions will be integrated into the party’s 2026 plans.

For example, the findings reflect a consensus that Democratic candidates did not adequately address voter concerns on public safety and immigration, two topics that Trump hammered in his comeback campaign. They also found that Democrats must overhaul their digital outreach, especially to younger voters, a group where Trump saw key gains over Harris compared with previous elections.

Barrow writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday unveiled a series of regulatory actions designed to effectively ban gender-affirming care for minors, building on broader Trump administration restrictions on transgender Americans.

The sweeping proposals — the most significant moves this administration has taken so far to restrict the use of puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgical interventions for transgender children — include cutting off federal Medicaid and Medicare funding from hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to children and prohibiting federal Medicaid dollars from being used to fund such procedures.

“This is not medicine, it is malpractice,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said of gender-affirming procedures on children in a news conference on Thursday. “Sex-rejecting procedures rob children of their futures.”

Kennedy also announced Thursday that the HHS Office of Civil Rights will propose a rule excluding gender dysphoria from the definition of a disability.

In a related move, the Food and Drug Administration issued warning letters to a dozen companies that market chest-binding vests and other equipment used by people with gender dysphoria. Manufacturers include GenderBender LLC of Carson, California and TomboyX of Seattle. The FDA letters state that chest binders can only be legally marketed for FDA-approved medical uses, such as recovery after mastectomy surgery.

Proposed rules would threaten youth gender-affirming care in states where it remains legal

Medicaid programs in slightly less than half of states currently cover gender-affirming care. At least 27 states have adopted laws restricting or banning the care. The Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding Tennessee’s ban means most other state laws are likely to remain in place.

Thursday’s announcements would imperil access in nearly two dozen states where drug treatments and surgical procedures remain legal and funded by Medicaid, which includes federal and state dollars.

The proposals announced by Kennedy and his deputies are not final or legally binding. The federal government must go through a lengthy rulemaking process, including periods of public comment and document rewrites, before the restrictions becoming permanent. They are also likely to face legal challenges.

But the proposed rules will likely further intimidate health care providers from offering gender-affirming care to children and many hospitals have already ceased such care in anticipation of federal action.

Nearly all U.S. hospitals participate in the Medicare and Medicaid programs, the federal government’s largest health plans that cover seniors, the disabled and low-income Americans. Losing access to those payments would imperil most U.S. hospitals and medical providers.

The same funding restrictions would apply to a smaller health program when it comes to care for people under the age of 19, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, according to a federal notice posted Thursday morning.

Moves contradict advice from medical organizations and transgender advocates

Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, on Thursday called transgender treatments “a Band-Aid on a much deeper pathology,” and suggested children with gender dysphoria are “confused, lost and need help.”

Polling shows many Americans agree with the administration’s view of the issue. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey conducted earlier this year found that about half of U.S. adults approved of how Trump was handling transgender issues.

Chloe Cole, a conservative activist known for speaking about her gender-transition reversal, spoke at the news conference to express appreciation. She said cries for help from her and others in her situation, “have finally been heard.”

But the approach contradicts the recommendations of most major U.S. medical organizations, including the American Medical Association, which has urged states not to restrict care for gender dysphoria.

Advocates for transgender children strongly refuted the administration’s claims about gender-affirming care and said Thursday’s moves would put lives at risk.

“In an effort to strongarm hospitals into participating in the administration’s anti-LGBTQ agenda, the Trump Administration is forcing health care systems to choose between providing lifesaving care for LGBTQ+ young people and accepting crucial federal funding,” Dr. Jamila Perritt, a Washington-based OB/GYN and president and CEO of Physicians for Reproductive Health, said in a statement. “This is a lose-lose situation where lives are inevitably on the line. “

Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, senior vice president at The Trevor Project, a nonprofit suicide prevention organization for LBGTQ+ youth, called the changes a “one-size-fits-all mandate from the federal government” on a decision that should be between a doctor and patient.

“The multitude of efforts we are seeing from federal legislators to strip transgender and nonbinary youth of the health care they need is deeply troubling,” he said.

Actions build on a larger effort to restrict transgender rights

The announcements build on a wave of actions President Trump, his administration and Republicans in Congress have taken to target the rights of transgender people nationwide.

On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order that declared the federal government would recognize only two immutable sexes: male and female. He also has signed orders aimed at cutting off federal support for gender transitions for people under age 19 and barring transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports.

On Wednesday, a bill that would open transgender health care providers to prison time if they treat people under the age of 18 passed the U.S. House and heads to the Senate. Another bill under consideration in the House on Thursday aims to ban Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming care for children.

Young people who persistently identify as a gender that differs from their sex assigned at birth are first evaluated by a team of professionals. Some may try a social transition, involving changing a hairstyle or pronouns. Some may later also receive hormone-blocking drugs that delay puberty, followed by testosterone or estrogen to bring about the desired physical changes in patients. Surgery is rare for minors.

Swenson, Perrone and Shastri write for the Associated Press. Shastri reported from Milwaukee. AP writer Geoff Mulvihill contributed to this report.