Politics

WASHINGTON – The austere House budget drafted by Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) that has come to define the Republican Party was approved Thursday on a strict party-line vote, as the GOP argues that a balanced budget should now be Washington’s top goal.

The blueprint is merely a proposal, without the force of law, but its overhaul of the Medicare program and steep reductions to other social safety net spending serves as the GOP’s opening salvo in renewed budget negotiations with President Obama. It was approved, 221 to 207, with no Democrats and 10 GOP defectors, largely conservatives or congressman in swing districts.

Republicans are anxious to reopen the debate over government spending with the White House even though some attribute the party’s setbacks in the November election to the plan from Ryan, the party’s former vice presidential nominee.

Ryan achieved the party’s goal of balancing the budget in 10 years, a promise House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) made to restive conservatives to win their votes on other matters.

To bring revenues and spending into balance by 2024, Ryan relied on deeply reducing federal spending as well as new revenue coming from the New Year’s tax deal that raised income tax rates on the wealthy.

The centerpiece of the GOP plan would turn Medicare into a voucher-like program for the next generation of seniors, those younger than 55. When they become eligible, at age 65, those seniors will be offered a voucher that can be applied either to the purchase of private health insurance or toward the cost of Medicare, though the voucher may not cover all the costs of the policy chosen.

The Ryan budget also cuts Medicaid, the health program for the poor and seniors in nursing homes, as well as food stamps, welfare programs and student loans, while largely preserving money for defense accounts.

While Ryan temporarily counts the tax hikes from the New Year, his plan would ultimately lower top tax income rates from 39.6% to no more than 25%, while closing loopholes and deductions. The top corporate rate would also be dropped to 25%. Ryan believes that lower taxes will spur economic growth and essentially pay for themselves; but critics say the lower rates cannot be achieved without asking middle-income families to give up popular income-tax deductions or else adding to the deficit.

Before approving the Ryan budget, the House dismissed alternative proposals, including one from the Democratic minority that sought to raise taxes on corporations and wealthier Americans, while putting that new revenue toward infrastructure and state jobs, as well as decreasing the deficit. Also rejected was a more conservative budget that would have balanced in four years, as well as proposals from the progressive caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus.

The Senate, which has not approved a budget in four years, is set to do so later this week. The blueprint from the Democrats is a similarly partisan document, and passage will put the House, Senate and White House on another collision course as they begin budget talks toward the next deadline, in summer, when Congress will be asked to raise the nation’s debt limit.

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Twitter: @LisaMascaroinDC

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s Noah Goldberg giving you the latest on city and county government.

For a long time, Spencer Pratt refused to be put into a political box.

The reality-television-personality-turned-national-figure-turned-mayoral-candidate told the New York Times in October that he hated politics and didn’t identify with either major party. He “demurred” when asked by the Hollywood Reporter about his personal politics.

But the supporters who are beginning to line up behind Pratt have made one thing clear: MAGA has entered the Los Angeles mayoral race, just one day after “The Hills” alumnus announced he’s running.

Despite his nonpartisan statements, Pratt has become a darling of the right wing, meeting with influential Republicans across the country who have latched onto his sharp criticism of Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom over their handling of the Palisades fire.

On Thursday, Pratt, who lost his home in the fire, finally commented on his political affiliation, saying he has been a registered Republican since 2020.

“I wasn’t going to change it now just to check a different box,” he wrote on X. “This is a non-partisan race — there will be no D or R next to my name. As Mayor, I will not serve either party. I will work with anyone who wants to help the city. No labels necessary.”

The confirmation of Pratt’s political affiliation came as endorsements flowed in from across the country — and not from Democrats, for the most part.

Republican U.S. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who has launched a congressional investigation into the response to the Palisades fire, posted on X that he was “glad” Pratt decided to run for mayor. Scott has toured the Palisades with Pratt, and the two met in Washington, D.C., after Scott announced the investigation.

Pratt was also endorsed by Richard Grenell, who is President Trump’s Special Presidential Envoy for Special Missions.

“I endorse Spencer Pratt for Mayor of Los Angeles and will help raise money for him. Transparency is what we need. Spencer has the passion and the drive to make positive change for Los Angeles,” Grenell wrote on X.

Closer to home, Pratt picked up an endorsement from Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Trump supporter and a Republican candidate for governor.

“LA needs him, California needs him. He’s got integrity and the backbone we need,” Bianco posted on X.

Roxanne Hoge, chairman of the Republican Party of Los Angeles County, said the group welcomes into the mayoral race “every common sense voice who stands for good governance and stands for representing the people over public sector unions and developers and NGOs.”

Hoge said she has a “great affinity” for Pratt, whom she called a personal friend.

“I support his willingness to speak up and be a voice for the voiceless,” she said.

Hoge said the county organization has not endorsed in the race.

Former City Councilmember Mike Bonin, who represented Pacific Palisades until 2024, said Pratt and Trump have many similarities.

“If you look at the model of who he is as candidate, it’s similar to Trump: the reality television background; his most visible communication presence is on Twitter, just as Trump’s was. And he’s sort of developing a candidacy around frustration and blowing the system up, just like Trump did,” Bonin said.

Bonin said Pratt’s entry into the race could be “perilous” for Bass.

The mayor has also tried to tie Pratt to Trump, seeking to position herself as the anti-MAGA candidate in a deep blue city.

“Donald Trump and Spencer Pratt are cut from the same cloth — two Republican, reality star villains running with MAGA backing, spewing disinformation and misinformation to create profit and division. Good luck with that in Los Angeles,” said Doug Herman, a spokesperson for Bass’ campaign.

Candidates will be judged by the people they associate with, Bonin added.

“Show me who you walk with and I’ll tell you who you are,” said Bonin, who is executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles.

Rick Caruso, a former Republican who registered as a Democrat when he ran against Bass in 2022, has tried to distance himself from Trump. Caruso said during his mayoral campaign that he never supported Trump for president or donated to his campaigns.

Caruso, a billionaire developer who is considering a run for either mayor or governor, said he hadn’t spoken with Pratt in months but that he was glad the social media influencer was joining the race.

“I think it’s great [that Pratt is running],” Caruso said. “I think the more people that actively get in government service the better.”

Pratt did not respond to multiple texts requesting comment. A member of his team said he is “currently embargoed from doing interviews because of other projects that were previously in play before he announced.”

A campaign staffer did not specify what the other projects were and said Pratt would be able to speak in early February.

State of play

— A YEAR OF FIRES: A year after two of the most destructive wildfires in California history erupted just hours apart, survivors marked the day in Altadena and Pacific Palisades with a mixture of anger and somber remembrance.

— ENTER PRATT: Spencer Pratt announced his candidacy for mayor of Los Angeles on the anniversary of the Palisades fire. Pratt and his wife, Heidi Montag, lost their home in the fire. Since then, the reality TV personality has become a vocal critic of Bass and Newsom.

— WATERED DOWN: LAFD Chief Jaime Moore admitted Tuesday that his department’s after-action report on the Palisades fire was watered down to shield top brass from scrutiny.

— REPORT AND REFINE: The head of the Los Angeles Fire Commission said Tuesday that a “working draft” of the after-action report was sent to the mayor’s office for “refinements” before it was published last October. She added that in her long career in civic roles, she had learned that words like “refinements” could mean troubling changes to a government report, made for the purpose of hiding facts.

— FINAL ADDRESS: In his final State of the State address, Newsom shifted from the problem-solving posture that defined his early years in office to a more declarative accounting of California’s achievements, casting the state as a counterweight to dysfunction in Washington.

— KILLINGS PLUMMET: There were 230 homicides in Los Angeles in 2025, according to the LAPD. That was a 19% drop from 2024 and the fewest the city has seen since 1966, when the population was 30% smaller.

— MAYORAL MOVES: Bass spokesperson Clara Karger is leaving the mayor’s office and heading to public affairs firm Fiona Hutton & Associates. Karger was with Bass’ team for nearly three years. Her departure comes months after Bass’ deputy mayor for communications Zach Seidl left. Seidl was replaced by Amanda Crumley.

— LA|DC|NYC: Anna Bahr, who worked as a deputy press secretary for former Mayor Eric Garcetti and then ran communications for Sen. Bernie Sanders, is headed to the Big Apple to run communications for newly elected Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program brought Angelenos inside in Skid Row and South Los Angeles this week. The program also partnered with Project Street Vet to provide veterinary care — including vaccines, medications and check ups — to nearly 30 pets belonging to Inside Safe participants, the mayor’s office said.
• On the docket next week: The City Council’s Committee on Public Works will get updates on the city’s graffiti abatement program as well as the city’s efforts to address illegal dumping and to repair pot holes.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@latimes.com. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

A federal judge in New York has temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s move to freeze $10 billion in child-care funds in five Democrat-led states including California.

The ruling Friday afternoon capped a tumultuous stretch that began earlier this week when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services told California officials and those in Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York that it would freeze federal funding over fraud concerns.

On Thursday the states sued the administration in federal court in Manhattan. The states sought a temporary restraining order, asking the court to block the funding freeze and the administration’s demands for large volumes of administrative data.

An attorney for the states argued Friday morning that there was an immediate need for funding — and that withholding it would cause chaos by depriving families of their ability to pay for child care, and would harm child-care providers who would lose income.

In a brief ruling, Judge Arun Subramanian said that “good cause has been shown for the issuance of a temporary restraining order.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The federal government’s effort has been viewed as a broad attack on social services in California, and jolted tens of thousands of working families and the state’s child-care industry. Providers told The Times that the funding freeze could imperil child-care centers, many of which operate on slim margins.

“The underscoring issue is that child care and these other federally funded social services programs are major family supports,” said Nina Buthee, executive director of EveryChild California. “They are essential infrastructure that our communities need and depend on, and should not be political tools. So the fact that this judge went in and blocked this very dramatic freeze, I think is only a good thing.”

In a trio of Jan. 6 letters addressed to Gov. Gavin Newsom, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it was concerned there had been “potential for extensive and systemic fraud” in child care and other social services programs that rely on federal funding, and had “reason to believe” that the state was “illicitly providing illegal aliens” with benefits.

The letters did not provide evidence to support the claims. State officials have said the suggestions of fraud are unsubstantiated.

Newsom has said he welcomes any fraud investigations the federal government might conduct, but said cutting off funding hurts families who rely on the aid. According to the state Legislative Analyst’s Office, about $1.4 billion in federal child-care funding was frozen per the letters from Health and Human Services.

“You want to support families? You believe in families? Then you believe in supporting child care and child-care workers in the workforce,” Newsom told MS NOW.

After Subramanian issued the ruling, Newsom’s press office said on X that “the feds went ghost-hunting for widespread ‘fraud’ (with no evidence) — and ended up trying to rip child care and food from kids.”

“It took a federal judge less than 24 hours to shut down Trump’s politically motivated child care cuts in California,” the account posted.

In instituting the freeze, Health and Human Services had said it would review how the federal money had been used by the state, and was restricting access to additional money amid its inquiries. The federal government asked for various data, including attendance documentation for child care. It also demanded beefed-up fiscal accountability requirements.

“Again and again, President Trump has shown a willingness to throw vulnerable children, seniors, and families under the bus if he thinks it will advance his vendetta against Democratic-led states,” Bonta said in a statement following the ruling. “Cutting funding for childcare and other family assistance is cruel, reckless, and most importantly, illegal.”

For Laura Pryor, research director at the California Budget & Policy Center, it is “a sigh of relief.”

Jan. 9 (UPI) — Venezuela said Friday it has begun an “exploratory diplomatic process” with the United States aimed at restoring diplomatic missions in both countries, according to a statement from the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry.

Foreign Minister Yván Gil said the talks are intended to address the consequences of what the government described as the “abduction” of Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, who were arrested Saturday during a U.S. military operation in Venezuelan territory.

Gil reiterated comments previously made by interim President Delcy Rodríguez, saying Venezuela will respond to what it calls an act of aggression through diplomatic channels.

“Venezuela will face this aggression through diplomacy, convinced that this is the legitimate path to defend sovereignty, restore international law and preserve peace,” he said.

The government confirmed that a delegation of U.S. State Department officials has arrived in Venezuela to conduct “technical and logistical evaluations related to diplomatic functions,” as previously announced by Washington.

Gil also said a Venezuelan diplomatic delegation will travel to the United States to carry out corresponding duties, though he did not provide further details or a departure date.

Venezuela and the United States ended diplomatic relations in 2019, when Maduro’s government announced a formal rupture after Washington recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó as interim president.

At the time, the Venezuelan government ordered U.S. diplomatic personnel to leave the country, deepening a bilateral breakdown that had been building for years.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who is taking a tour of U.S. defense contractors, on Friday visited a Long Beach rocket maker, where he told workers they are key to President Trump’s vision of military supremacy.

Hegseth stopped by a manufacturing plant operated by Rocket Lab, an emerging company that builds satellites and provides small-satellite launch services for commercial and government customers.

Last month, the company was awarded an $805-million military contract, its largest to date, to build satellites for a network being developed for communications and detection of new threats, such as hypersonic missles.

“This company, you right here, are front and center, as part of ensuring that we build an arsenal of freedom that America needs,” Hegseth told several hundred cheering workers. “The future of the battlefield starts right here with dominance of space.”

Founded in 2006 in New Zealand, the company makes a small rocket called Electron — which lay on its side near Hegseth — and is developing a larger one called Neutron. It moved to the U.S. a decade ago and opened its Long Beach headquaters in 2020.

Rocket Lab is among a new wave of companies that have revitalized Southern California’s aerospace and defense industry, which shed hundreds of thousands of jobs in the 1990s after the end of the Cold War. Large defense contractors such as Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin moved their headquarters to the East Coast.

Many of the new companies were founded by former employees of SpaceX, which was started by Elon Musk in 2002 and was based in the South Bay before moving to Texas in 2024. However, it retains major operations in Hawthorne.

Hegseth kicked off his tour Monday with a visit to a Newport News, Va., shipyard. The tour is described as “a call to action to revitalize America’s manufacturing might and re-energize the nation’s workforce.”

Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson, a Democrat who said he was not told of the event, said Hegseth’s visit shows how the city has flourished despite such setbacks as the closure of Boeing’s C-17 Globemaster III transport plant.

“Rocket Lab has really been a superstar in terms of our fast, growing and emerging space economy in Long Beach,” Richardson said. “This emergence of space is really the next stage of almost a century of innovation that’s really taking place here.”

Prior stops in the region included visits to Divergent, an advanced manufacturing company in aerospace and other industries, and Castelion, a hypersonic missile startup founded by former SpaceX employees. Both are based in Torrance.

The tour follows an overhaul of the Department of Defense’s procurement policy Hegseth announced in November. The policy seeks to speed up weapons development and acquisition by first finding capabilities in the commercial market before the government attempts to develop new systems.

Trump also issued an executive order Wednesday that aims to limit shareholder profits of defense contractors that do not meet production and budget goals by restricting stock buybacks and dividends.

Hegseth told the workers that the administration is trying to prod old-line defense contractors to be more innovative and spend more on development — touting Rocket Lab as the kind of company that will succeed, adding it had one of the “coolest factory floors” he had ever seen.

“I just want the best, and I want to ensure that the competition that exists is fair,” he said.

Hegseth’s visit comes as Trump has flexed the nation’s military muscles with the Jan. 3 abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who is now facing drug trafficking charges to which he has pleaded not guilty.

Hegseth in his speech cited Maduro’s capture as an example of the country’s newfound “deterrence in action.” Though Trump’s allies supported the action, legal experts and other critics have argued that the operation violated international and U.S. law.

Trump this week said he wants to radically boost U.S. military spending to $1.5 trillion in 2027 from $900 billion this year so he can build the “Dream Military.”

Hegseth told the workers it would be a “historic investment” that would ensure the U.S. is never challenged militarily.

Trump also posted on social media this week that executive salaries of defense companies should be capped at $5 million unless they speed up development and production of advanced weapons — in a dig at existing prime contractors.

However, the text of his Wednesday order caps salaries at current levels and ties future executive incentive compensation to delivery and production metrics.

Anduril Industries in Costa Mesa is one of the leading new defense companies in Southern California. The privately held maker of autonomous weapons systems closed a $2.5-billion funding round last year.

Founder Palmer Luckey told Bloomberg News he supported Trump’s moves to limit executive compensation in the defense sector, saying, “I pay myself $100,000 a year.” However, Luckey has a stake in Anduril, last valued by investors at $30.5 billion.

Peter Beck, the founder and chief executive of Rocket Lab, took a base salary of $575,000 in 2024 but with bonus and stock awards his total compensation reached $20.1 million, according to a securities filing. He also has a stake in the company, which has a market capitalization of about $45 billion.

Beck introduced Hegseth saying he was seeking to “reinvigorate the national industrial base and create a leaner, more effective Department of War, one that goes faster and leans on commercial companies just like ours.”

Rocket Lab boasts that its Electron rocket, which first launched in 2017, is the world’s leading small rocket and the second most frequently launched U.S. rocket behind SpaceX.

It has carried payloads for NASA, the U.S. Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office, aside from commercial customers.

The company employs 2,500 people across facilities in New Zealand, Canada and the U.S., including in Virginia, Colorado and Mississippi.

Rocket Lab shares closed at $84.84 on Friday, up 2%.

Jan. 9 (UPI) — The United States on Friday seized another oil tanker in the Caribbean Sea as it works to control Venezuela’s oil, military officials said.

The U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Marines captured the Olina overnight, officials said.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted on X that the ship was “suspected of carrying embargoed oil” and had tried “to evade U.S. forces” as it left Venezuela.

The U.S. Southern Command posted on X that it’s “unwavering in its mission to defend our homeland by ending illicit activity and restoring security in the Western Hemisphere.”

“In a pre-dawn action, Marines and Sailors from Joint Task Force Southern Spear, in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security, launched from the USS Gerald R. Ford and apprehended Motor/Tanker Olina in the Caribbean Sea without incident,” the post said.

The operation was part of Joint Task Force Southern Spear.

The Coast Guard is planning to boost its ability to inspect and repair seized foreign tankers, The Washington Post reported, signaling that it will continue to seize the tankers. Many of the tankers are in too poor condition to be accepted by U.S. ports.

The Coast Guard sent out an internal call for personnel to increase its teams of inspectors to visit seized tankers, assess them and fix safety concerns before they come to U.S. ports, The Post reported. The message does not say how many people it needs, but it does say that those eligible must be “capable of offshore boardings and long hours aboard the vessel.”

“These vessels are stateless and beyond substandard,” the Coast Guard said in its internal message.

Since President Donald Trump declared a “complete blockade” of Venezuelan oil exports in December, the Coast Guard has taken at least four ships.

In mid-December, the U.S. seized an oil tanker called The Skipper. It is held offshore near the Port of Galveston, Texas. On Wednesday, the U.S. seized the Bella-1 in the North Atlantic after pursuing the ship for weeks. It also seized the Sophia in the Caribbean.

On Friday, the Kremlin thanked Washington for agreeing to release two of the Bella-1’s Russian crew members.

“In response to our appeal, U.S. President Donald Trump has decided to release two Russian citizens from among the crew of the tanker Marinera, who had previously been detained by the American side during an operation in the North Atlantic,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement on Telegram. “We welcome this decision and express our gratitude to the U.S. leadership.”

“Ghost fleets” like the Bella-1 operate with false paperwork or flags. They ship sanctioned oil to China and other destinations. The U.S. government has said the oil sales fund narco-terrorism.

Mark Cancian, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told The Post there are hundreds of these ships and are often in bad shape. If they don’t meet safety standards or risk a spill, they are denied entry to a U.S. port.

“They tend to be at the end of their service life — old, in poor condition,” Cancian said.

The city of Los Angeles violated the state’s open meeting law when council members took up a plan to clear 9,800 homeless encampments behind closed doors, a judge ruled this week.

In a 10-page decision, L.A. County Superior Court Judge Curtis Kin said the City Council ran afoul of the Ralph M. Brown Act by approving the encampment strategy during a Jan. 31, 2024, closed session.

The encampment plan was part of a larger effort by the city to comply with a legal settlement with the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, which had sued over the city’s handling of the homelessness crisis.

Kin, in his ruling, said the city is allowed under the Brown Act to confer with its attorneys in closed-door meetings to discuss legal strategy.

“However, what the City cannot do under the Brown Act is formulate and approve policy decisions in a closed session outside the public eye merely because such decisions are in furtherance of a settlement agreement,” Kin wrote.

Karen Richardson, a spokesperson for City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto, said her office had no comment on the decision, which was issued earlier this week.

The ruling delivered a victory to the Los Angeles Community Action Network, which advocates for homeless residents and had sued the city over the closed-door deliberations.

Lawyers for LA CAN have warned that the city’s goal of removing 9,800 encampments over four years has created a quota system that could make sanitation workers more likely to violate the property rights of unhoused residents. Under the agreement, the city must reach its encampment removal target this summer.

“The City Council approved an extremely controversial plan to clear almost 10,000 encampments entirely in secret,” said Shayla Myers, the group’s attorney. “They never disclosed the plan before they voted on it, or even after, and the only one they disclosed the plan to was the business community.”

Lawyers for the city have offered contradictory explanations for what transpired during the Jan. 31, 2024, meeting. Now, LA CAN is seeking a court order requiring that the city produce all records — including audio of the closed-door deliberations — to show what transpired.

The city’s strategy for clearing 9,800 encampments has become a major sticking point in its long-running legal battle with the LA Alliance. U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter ruled that a tent discarded by sanitation workers can only count toward the city’s numerical goal if its owner has been offered housing or shelter first.

Feldstein Soto’s legal team, in a memo to the council, said later that the judge had “reinterpreted” some of the city’s settlement obligations.

In this week’s ruling, Kin found that the city violated the Brown Act a second time in May 2024, when the council went behind closed doors to take up another agreement — this one between the city and L.A. County on the delivery of homeless services.

The LA Alliance first sued the city and county in 2020, alleging that too little was being done to address the homelessness crisis, particularly in Skid Row. The city settled the case two years later, agreeing to create 12,915 new shelter beds or other housing opportunities by June 2027.

After that deal was struck, the city began negotiating an accompanying agreement with the LA Alliance to reduce the number of street encampments. Those talks dragged on for more than a year.

The LA Alliance ran out of patience, telling Judge Carter in February 2024 that the city was 447 days late in finalizing its plan and should be sanctioned. The group submitted to the court a copy of the encampment removal plan, saying it had been approved by the City Council on Jan. 31, 2024.

Video from that day’s meeting shows that council members went behind closed doors to discuss the LA Alliance case. When they returned, Deputy City Atty. Jonathan Groat said there was nothing to report from the closed session.

LA CAN demanded that the city produce any vote tally on the encampment plan. The city declined to do so, saying there was no vote.

“To this day, [we] still don’t know who voted for it, or even if a vote was taken at all,” Myers said.

Lawyers for the city have argued that they were not required to issue any report from that closed session meeting. They also have said that the Brown Act allowed the two agreements — the one on encampment removals and the other with the county — to be discussed behind closed doors.

Carter ruled last year that the city had failed to comply with the terms of its settlement agreement with the L.A. Alliance. On Tuesday, he ordered the city to pay $1.6 million to cover the group’s legal fees.

The judge also instructed the city to pay about $201,000 for fees incurred by LA CAN and the LA Catholic Worker, which have intervened in the LA Alliance case.

On Thursday, lawyers for the city notified the court that they intend to appeal the order to pay the various groups.

One of the most important political stories in American history — one that is particularly germane to our current, tumultuous time — unfolded in Los Angeles some 65 years ago.

Sen. John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, had just received his party’s nomination for president and in turn he shunned the desires of his most liberal supporters by choosing a conservative out of Texas as his running mate. He did so in large part to address concerns that his faith would somehow usurp his oath to uphold the Constitution. The last time the Democrats nominated a Catholic — New York Gov. Al Smith in 1928 — he lost in a landslide, so folks were more than a little jittery about Kennedy’s chances.

“I am fully aware of the fact that the Democratic Party, by nominating someone of my faith, has taken on what many regard as a new and hazardous risk,” Kennedy told the crowd at the Memorial Coliseum. “But I look at it this way: The Democratic Party has once again placed its confidence in the American people, and in their ability to render a free, fair judgment.”

The most important part of the story is what happened before Kennedy gave that acceptance speech.

While his faith made party leaders nervous, they were downright afraid of the impact a civil rights protest during the Democratic National Convention could have on November’s election. This was 1960. The year began with Black college students challenging segregation with lunch counter sit-ins across the Deep South, and by spring the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee had formed. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was not the organizer of the protest at the convention, but he planned to be there, guaranteeing media attention. To try to prevent this whole scene, the most powerful Black man in Congress was sent to stop him.

The Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. was also a warrior for civil rights, but the House representative preferred the legislative approach, where backroom deals were quietly made and his power most concentrated. He and King wanted the same things for Black people. But Powell — who was first elected to Congress in 1944, the same year King enrolled at Morehouse College at the age of 15 — was threatened by the younger man’s growing influence. He was also concerned that his inability to stop the protest at the convention would harm his chance to become chairman of a House committee.

And so Powell — the son of a preacher, and himself a Baptist preacher in Harlem — told King that if he didn’t cancel, Powell would tell journalists a lie that King was having a homosexual affair with his mentor, Bayard Rustin. King stuck to his plan and led a protest — even though such a rumor would not only have harmed King, but also would have undermined the credibility of the entire civil rights movement. Remember, this was 1960. Before the March on Washington, before passage of the Voting Rights Act, before the dismantling of the very Jim Crow laws Powell had vowed to dismantle when first running for office.

That threat, my friends, is the most important part of the story.

It’s not that Powell didn’t want the best for the country. It’s just that he wanted to be seen as the one doing it and was willing to derail the good stemming from the civil rights movement to secure his own place in power. There have always been people willing to make such trade-offs. Sometimes they dress up their intentions with scriptures to make it more palatable; other times they play on our darkest fears. They do not care how many people get hurt in the process, even if it’s the same people they profess to care for.

That was true in Los Angeles in 1960.

That was true in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021.

That is true in the streets of America today.

Whether we are talking about an older pastor who is threatened by the growing influence of a younger voice or a president clinging to office after losing an election: To remain king, some men are willing to burn the entire kingdom down.

YouTube: @LZGrandersonShow

New Delhi, India – On January 3, 2026, a single directive from the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) quietly ended the Indian Premier League (IPL) season of Bangladesh’s only cricketer in the tournament, Mustafizur Rahman, before it could even begin.

The Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), a professional Twenty20 franchise based in Kolkata that competes in the IPL and is owned by Red Chillies Entertainment, associated with Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan, were instructed by India’s cricket board to release the Bangladesh fast bowler.

Not because of injury, form, or contract disputes, but due to “developments all around” – an apparent reference to soaring tensions between India and Bangladesh that have been high since ousted former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina received exile in New Delhi in August 2024.

Within days, Mustafizur signed up for the Pakistan Super League (PSL), the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) protested sharply, the IPL broadcast was banned in Bangladesh, and the International Cricket Council (ICC) – the body that governs the sport globally – was pulled into a diplomatic standoff.

What should have been a routine player transaction instead became a symbol of how cricket in South Asia has shifted from a tool of diplomacy to an instrument of political pressure.

Cricket has long been the subcontinent’s soft-power language, a shared obsession that survived wars, border closures, and diplomatic freezes. Today, that language is being rewritten, say observers and analysts.

India, the financial and political centre of world cricket, is increasingly using its dominance of the sport to signal, punish, and coerce its neighbours, particularly Pakistan and Bangladesh, they say.

The Mustafizur affair: When politics entered the dressing room

Rahman was signed by KKR for 9.2 million Indian rupees ($1m) before the IPL 2026 season.

Yet the BCCI instructed the franchise to release him, citing vague external developments widely understood to be linked to political tensions between India and Bangladesh.

The consequences were immediate.

Mustafizur, unlikely to receive compensation because the termination was not injury-related, accepted an offer from the PSL – picking the Pakistani league after an Indian snub – returning to the tournament after eight years.

The PSL confirmed his participation before its January 21 draft. The BCB, meanwhile, called the BCCI’s intervention “discriminatory and insulting”.

Dhaka escalated the matter beyond cricket, asking the ICC to move Bangladesh’s matches from the upcoming T20 World Cup, which India is primarily hosting, to Sri Lanka over security concerns.

The Bangladeshi government went further, banning the broadcast of the IPL nationwide, a rare step that underlined how deeply cricket intersects with politics and public sentiment in South Asia.

The BCB on January 7 said the International Cricket Council (ICC) has assured it of Bangladesh’s full and uninterrupted participation in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2026, dismissing media reports of any ultimatum.

The BCB said the ICC responded to its concerns over the safety and security of the national team in India, including a request to relocate matches, and reaffirmed its commitment to safeguarding Bangladesh’s participation while expressing willingness to work closely with the Board during detailed security planning.

Yet for now, Bangladesh’s matches remain scheduled for the Indian megacities of Kolkata and Mumbai from February 7, 2026, even as tensions simmer.

Navneet Rana, a BJP leader said that no Bangladeshi cricketer or celebrity should be “entertained in India” while Hindus and minorities are being targeted in Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, Indian Congress leader Shashi Tharoor questioned the decision to release Mustafizur Rahman, warning against politicising sport and punishing individual players for developments in another country.

A pattern, not an exception

The Mustafizur controversy fits into a broader trajectory.

While all cricket boards operate within political realities, the BCCI’s unique financial power gives it leverage unmatched by any other body in the sport, say analysts.

The ICC, the sport’s global body, is headed by Jay Shah, the son of India’s powerful home minister Amit Shah – widely seen as the second-most influential man in India after Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The IPL, meanwhile, is by far the richest franchise league in the world.

India, with 1.5 billion people, is cricket’s biggest market and generates an estimated 80 percent of the sport’s revenue.

All of that, say analysts, gives India the ability to shape scheduling of events and matches, venues, and revenue-sharing arrangements. This, in turn, has made cricket a strategic asset for the Indian government.

When political relations sour, cricket is no longer insulated.

Nowhere is this clearer than in India’s relationship with Bangladesh at the moment. India has historically been viewed as close to Hasina, whose ouster in 2024 followed weeks of popular protests that her security forces attempted to crush using brutal force. An estimated 1,400 people were killed in that crackdown, according to the United Nations.

India has so far refused to send Hasina back to Bangladesh from exile, even though a tribunal in Dhaka sentenced her to death in late 2025 over the killings of protesters during the uprising that led to her removal. That has spurred sentiments against India on the streets of Bangladesh, which escalated after the assassination of an anti-India protest leader in December.

Meanwhile, attacks on Hindus and other religious minorities in Bangladesh since August 2024 – a Hindu Bangladeshi man was lynched last month – have caused anger in India.

Against that backdrop, the BCCI’s move to kick Rahman out of the IPL has drawn criticism from Indian commentators. Senior journalist Vir Sanghvi wrote in a column that the cricket board “panicked” and surrendered to communal pressure instead of standing by its own player-selection process, turning a sporting issue into a diplomatic embarrassment.

He argued Bangladesh did not warrant a sport boycott and warned that mixing communal politics with cricket risks damaging India’s credibility and regional ties.

Echoing the concern, Suhasini Haidar, diplomatic editor of The Hindu, one of India’s largest dailies, said on X that the government was allowing social media campaigns to overpower diplomacy. She referred to how Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar had travelled recently to Dhaka to attend the funeral of former Bangladesh PM Khaleda Zia, and wondered why Bangladeshi cricketers couldn’t then play in India.

Cricket analyst Darminder Joshi said the episode reflected how cricket, once a bridge between India and its neighbours, was increasingly widening divisions.

That was particularly visible late last year, when India and Pakistan faced off in cricket matches months after an intense four-day aerial war.

The Asia Cup standoff

The 2025 Asia Cup, hosted by Pakistan in September, was meant to be a celebration of regional cricket.

But citing government advice, the BCCI informed the ICC and the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) – the sport’s continental governing body – that India would not travel to Pakistan.

After months of wrangling, the tournament was held under a hybrid model, with India playing its matches in the United Arab Emirates while the rest were hosted in Pakistan.

But in three matches that the South Asian rivals played against each other during the competition – India won all three – the Indian team refused to publicly shake hands with their Pakistani counterparts.

“There is no rule in cricket that mandates a handshake. Yet players often tie each other’s shoelaces or help opponents on the field, that is the spirit of the game,” Joshi, the cricket analyst, told Al Jazeera. “If countries are in conflict, will players now refuse even these gestures? Such incidents only spread hate and strip the game of what makes it special.

“Sporting exchanges once softened bilateral tensions; this decision does exactly the opposite, making the game more hostile instead of more interesting.”

The controversy did not end with the final. India won the tournament, defeating Pakistan, but refused to accept the trophy from ACC President Mohsin Naqvi, who is also the Pakistan Cricket Board chairman and Pakistan’s interior minister.

The trophy remains at the ACC headquarters in Dubai, creating an unprecedented limbo that has defied resolution despite multiple ICC and ACC meetings. The BCCI requested that the trophy be sent to India. Naqvi has refused.

From bridge to divider

Unlike Pakistan, Bangladesh has historically enjoyed smoother cricketing ties with India. Bilateral series continued even during political disagreements, and Bangladeshi players became familiar faces in the IPL.

The Mustafizur episode marks a turning point. The current moment stands in stark contrast to earlier eras when cricket was deliberately used to soften political hostilities.

The most celebrated example remains India’s 2004 tour of Pakistan, the so-called “Friendship Series”.

That tour took place after years of frozen ties following the Kargil War, an armed conflict between India and Pakistan that took place from May to July 1999.

The then-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee personally met the Indian team before departure, handing captain Sourav Ganguly a bat inscribed with the Hindi words: “Khel hi nahi, dil bhi jeetiye” which translates to “don’t just win matches, win hearts too”.

Special cricket visas allowed thousands of Indian fans to travel across the border. Pakistani then-President Pervez Musharraf followed the games and publicly lauded Indian cricketers who developed followings of their own in Pakistan.

The 2008 Mumbai attacks, carried out by fighters that Pakistan acknowledged had come from its territory, froze cricketing ties.

But in 2011, when India and Pakistan faced off in the World Cup semifinal in Mohali, Indian then-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh invited his Pakistani counterpart, Yousuf Raza Gilani, over – the two premiers watched the match together in what was widely seen as an act of “cricket diplomacy”.

By intervening in a franchise-level contract and linking it, however obliquely, to geopolitical tensions as has happened with the Mustafizur case, the BCCI sent a clear message, say analysts: Access to Indian cricket is conditional.

Sport journalist Nishant Kapoor told Al Jazeera that releasing a contracted player purely on political grounds was “absolutely wrong” and warned it would widen mistrust in the cricketing ecosystem.

“He is a cricketer. What wrong has he done?” Kapoor said.

EXCLUSIVE

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Gustavo Petro calls for ‘shared government through dialogue’ in Venezuela, leading to elections.

Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro has stressed the importance of having open lines of communication with the United States despite President Donald Trump’s recent threats of military action against the South American country.

In an interview with Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo in Colombia’s capital, Bogota – which aired on Friday – Petro said his government is seeking to maintain cooperation on combating narcotics with Washington, striking a softer tone following days of escalating rhetoric.

His comments came after holding a phone call with Trump on Wednesday, a direct contact that Petro called a “means of communication that did not exist before”.

Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing president, said that previously, information between the two governments had been transmitted through unofficial channels “mediated by political ideology and my opposition”.

“I have been careful – despite the insults, the threats and so on – to maintain cooperation on drug trafficking between Colombia and the United States,” Petro said.

US threats

Just hours after the US military abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Saturday, Trump turned his threats of military action towards Colombia.

Trump accused Petro – without evidence – of running cocaine mills, calling him a “sick man”.

Asked on Sunday whether he would authorise a military operation against Petro, Trump said, “Sounds good to me.”

In response, Petro promised to defend his country, saying that he would “take up arms” for his homeland.

While temperatures have cooled in the wake of the call between the two leaders on Wednesday, observers have largely seen Trump’s threats as the potential next step in the White House’s stated goal of establishing US “pre-eminence” in the Western Hemisphere.

But the feud between the Trump administration and Petro pre-dated the attack on Venezuela.

The Colombian president has been a vocal critic of Israel’s US-backed genocidal war on Gaza.

In September, Washington revoked Petro’s US visa after he spoke at a pro-Palestine march outside the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Weeks later, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on the Colombian president, who is term-limited and set to leave office after a presidential election in May.

‘Shared government through dialogue’

Petro was among the first world leaders to condemn the abduction of Maduro, calling the US raid an “attack on the sovereignty of Venezuela and Latin America”.

In his interview with Al Jazeera, Petro warned that Venezuela, which borders his country, could fall into violence in the post-Maduro era. He said that “would be a disaster”.

“To that extent, what I have proposed is a shared government through dialogue among all the political forces in Venezuela and a series of steps towards elections,” he said.

Petro added that he has spoken to Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodriguez, and he sensed she is worried about the future of the country.

“She’s also facing attacks,” the Colombian president said. “Some accuse her of betrayal, and that is constructed as a narrative that divides the forces that were part of the Maduro government.”

Today Trump brought the heads of Exxon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and many other oil giants into the White House. He talked about something like a $100 billion investment, promised U.S. protection, and warned Russia and China to keep their hands off. 

But there is a fundamental difference between systems imposed by the state (like China), versus the U.S. In China, if the top leader says “go build,” a company might grumble in private but it will die trying. In the U.S., you can’t order private companies to sink tens of billions into a country and just hope they salute. There are shareholders, lawyers, insurers, boards, and risk people involved. The oil tycoons will happily try to join forces, but the market is their true boss. Trump has to convince the private sector that the money will be safe and that’s exactly where up to this point, the new regime in Venezuela is still failing the test.

An oil project doesn’t get approved because someone “likes the idea” or gets mandated. First, the company tries to prove the oil is really there and worth extracting (surveys, test wells, production forecasts). Then they price the whole mess: what it’ll cost to fix old equipment or build new stuff, how long it’ll take, and what could go wrong. Finance teams run scenarios like a nervous pilot checking every gauge: oil prices, delays, tax changes, accidents, expropriation. Lawyers obsess over the contract details (who owns what, who can change the rules, where disputes get decided). And here’s the institutional reality check: if courts can’t be trusted, contracts are just paper, and if nobody can say who truly controls the police, the military, and the streets, then there’s no safeguard (especially if there’s reluctance to enact more force by the US). Only if the numbers still work after all that, and the risks can be insured or controlled, does the board sign off on the “final investment decision,” which is the moment the company stops talking and starts spending real billions of dollars. So from first study to first meaningful barrels, you’re usually talking 18–36 months for a brownfield restart (in existing/old facilities), and 3–7 years for a bigger rebuild or new development (which seems to be Trump’s appetite).

These things will be discussed behind closed doors, not in the media show presented today, and we’ll learn more soon enough.

Here’s a prospective roadmap, on what could happen, depending on the type of work:

6 months

The companies already present in Venezuela will probably invest quickly in debottlenecking (“low-hanging fruits”) that requires low investment and gradually increases production.

Most companies will commit to starting an exploratory technical and commercial feasibility process to assemble a development business plan for the country. This only requires bringing in a limited technical team, so upfront costs will be very low, and any of these companies can take the risk without long-term guarantees (if they lose that money and time, who cares). Trump will guarantee security for the personnel sent to Venezuela.

Based on private agreements around buying Venezuelan assets (privatization), new exploration, asset expansion, etc., Trump will instruct the interim leadership so that PDVSA and Congress enable those actions.

The first privatizations begin to be announced (the least complex and most obvious ones), those requiring the least purchase investment and the least production-recovery investment. I think this could happen even before free elections, because as Trump said, most of these companies are used to operating in some of the most sinister places in the world.

Engineering phases move forward to restore basic services needed to operate facilities (especially electricity supply). Stabilizing the country’s electrical system is fundamental for the oil industry.

6 to 18 months

Engineering advances for larger-scale projects that can meaningfully increase production. Again, this is very low-cost for the companies, and they take relatively little risk moving these forward even if they may have to cancel later.

Gradual production increases materialize as the debottlenecking projects (“low-hanging fruit”) come online.

FID (Final Investment Decision) might happen for some small or medium-sized projects, with U.S. guarantees that the government cannot expropriate them.

18 months +

This is where it gets interesting, because a democratic transition becomes fundamental for these companies to make FIDs to buy major PDVSA assets or execute greenfield projects (new plants, new infrastructure, etc.).

Remember: most of these companies are publicly traded. They will invest in projects with the highest returns at an acceptable level of risk. If the Trump administration cannot guarantee long-term stability through a healthy democracy, it’s likely these companies won’t risk huge sums of money.

The pace will also be dictated by expectations for oil prices at the time. If prices are expected to be low, investment will move more slowly.

This entire analysis also somewhat ignores the complexity of human talent in the country. It will be uphill to find the talent needed to execute these projects and operate the plants, and that could stretch timelines even further. Venezuela once had it, but it’s now dispersed all over the world (including Venezuela).

That’s why the political transition has to move fast. If Trump wants serious capital to be involved, the reforms have to be visible and irreversible, starting with unmistakable signals that the old regime’s habits are gone. A clean first step that could be an important signal: free every political prisoner. Not a symbolic handful. All of them. 

Big projects don’t live on election cycles, they live on 10–20-year timelines for ROI. If investors think the whole arrangement can be shaken up after the 2028 election (due to the Democrats retaining the White House), they’ll hesitate, or they’ll demand terms so protective that Venezuela’s interim regime won’t like them.

Venezuela’s economic restart and Venezuela’s political liberation are the same project. You don’t get one without the other. If the transition wants oil money to actually land it has to build the boring stuff that makes capitalism work: credible courts, enforceable contracts, and proof that the control of violence is achieved.

VATICAN CITY — In his most substantial critique of U.S., Russian and other military incursions in sovereign countries, Pope Leo XIV on Friday denounced how nations were using force to assert their dominion worldwide, “completely undermining” peace and the post-World War II international legal order.

“War is back in vogue and a zeal for war is spreading,” Leo told ambassadors from around the world who represent their countries’ interests at the Holy See.

Leo didn’t name individual countries that have resorted to force in his lengthy speech, the bulk of which he delivered in English in a break from the Vatican’s traditional diplomatic protocol of Italian and French. But his speech came amid the backdrop of the recent U.S. military operation in Venezuela to remove Nicolás Maduro from power, Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine and other conflicts.

The occasion was the pope’s annual audience with the Vatican diplomatic corps, which traditionally amounts to his yearly foreign policy address.

In his first such encounter, history’s first U.S.-born pope delivered much more than the traditional roundup of global hotspots. In a speech that touched on threats to religious freedom and the Catholic Church’s opposition to abortion and surrogacy, Leo lamented how the United Nations and multilateralism as a whole were increasingly under threat.

“A diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force, by either individuals or groups of allies,” he said. “The principle established after the Second World War, which prohibited nations from using force to violate the borders of others, has been completely undermined.”

“Instead, peace is sought through weapons as a condition for asserting one’s own dominion. This gravely threatens the rule of law, which is the foundation of all peaceful civil coexistence,” he said.

A geopolitical roundup of conflicts and suffering

Leo did refer explicitly to tensions in Venezuela, calling for a peaceful political solution that keeps in mind the “common good of the peoples and not the defense of partisan interests.”

The U.S. military seized Maduro, the Venezuelan leader, in a surprise nighttime raid. The Trump administration is now seeking to control Venezuela’s oil resources and its government. The U.S. government has insisted Maduro’s capture was legal, saying drug cartels operating from Venezuela amounted to unlawful combatants and that the U.S. is now in an “armed conflict” with them.

Analysts and some world leaders have condemned the Venezuela mission, warning that Maduro’s ouster could pave the way for more military interventions and a further erosion of the global legal order.

On Ukraine, Leo repeated his appeal for an immediate ceasefire and urgently called for the international community “not to waver in its commitment to pursuing just and lasting solutions that will protect the most vulnerable and restore hope to the afflicted peoples.”

On Gaza, Leo repeated the Holy See’s call for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and insisted on the Palestinians’ right to live in Gaza and the West Bank “in their own land.”

In other comments, Leo said the persecution of Christians around the world was “one of the most widespread human rights crises today,” affecting one in seven Christians globally. He cited religiously motivated violence in Bangladesh, Nigeria, the Sahel, Mozambique and Syria but said religious discrimination was also present in Europe and the Americas.

There, Christians “are sometimes restricted in their ability to proclaim the truths of the Gospel for political or ideological reasons, especially when they defend the dignity of the weakest, the unborn, refugees and migrants, or promote the family.”

Leo repeated the church’s opposition to abortion and euthanasia and expressed “deep concern” about projects to provide cross-border access to mothers seeking abortion.

He also described surrogacy as a threat to life and dignity. “By transforming gestation into a negotiable service, this violates the dignity both of the child, who is reduced to a product, and of the mother, exploiting her body and the generative process, and distorting the original relational calling of the family,” he said.

Winfield writes for the Associated Press.

GUATIRE, Venezuela — The United States and Venezuelan governments said Friday that they were exploring the possibility of restoring diplomatic relations between the two countries, and that a delegation from the Trump administration arrived in the South American nation Friday.

The small team of U.S. diplomats and diplomatic security officials traveled to Venezuela to make a preliminary assessment about the potential reopening of the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, the State Department said in a statement.

Venezuela’s government on Friday acknowledged that U.S. diplomats had traveled to the country and announced that it will send a delegation to Washington, but it did not say when.

In a statement, Delcy Rodríguez’s government said it “has decided to initiate an exploratory process of a diplomatic nature with the Government of the United States of America, aimed at the re-establishment of diplomatic missions in both countries.”

President Trump has placed pressure on Rodriguez and other former Maduro loyalists now in power to advance his vision for the future of the nation — a major aspect of which would be reinvigorating the role of U.S. oil companies in a country with the worlds’ largest proven reserves of crude oil.

The U.S. and Venezuela cut off ties in 2019, after the first Trump administration said opposition leader Juan Guaidó was the rightful president of Venezuela, spiking tensions. Despite the assertions, Maduro maintained his firm grip on power.

The Trump administration shuttered the embassy in Caracas and moved diplomats to nearby Bogotá, Colombia. U.S. officials have traveled to Caracas a handful of times since then. The latest visit came last February when Trump’s envoy for special missions, Richard Grenell met with Maduro. The visit resulted in six detained Americans being freed by the government.

Garcia Cano and Lee write for the Associated Press. Lee reported from Washington. AP reporter Megan Janetsky contributed to this report from Mexico City.

A veteran producer at “CBS Evening News With Tony Dokoupil” was fired this week after raising concerns over the editorial direction of the program.

Javier Guzman, who has been with CBS News since 2017, was dismissed Wednesday from his position as senior producer, according to people familiar with the action who were not authorized to comment. A CBS News representative said the company does not discuss personnel matters.

Guzman is said to have expressed disagreement over the editorial direction of the evening newscast, which has undergone a revamp under CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss. Guzman did not respond to a request for comment.

The sudden exit on the third day of Dokoupil’s tenure added to a growing perception that the program is off to an inauspicious start. Media industry newsletters and the tabloids have become repositories for unattributed comments from CBS News insiders who are unhappy with the changes.

The latest iteration of the storied newscast has generated negative feedback on social media for its content. On Tuesday, that included a breezy salute to Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a series of memes. It was a questionable choice coming days after a deadly U.S. military attack on Venezuela, where special forces captured the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife.

The same episode was also blasted for a brief item noting the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters who sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The view of the historic event from five years ago was presented as a difference of opinion between President Trump and Democratic leaders in Congress.

The segments advanced the narrative among many media critics that Weiss is chasing after MAGA-friendly viewers and looking to please the White House as parent company Paramount pursues the takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. She joined the network in October after Paramount acquired her digital news site the Free Press, which often decries the excesses of the political left.

On Wednesday, the day after Renee Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis woman was shot in her vehicle by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, “CBS Evening News” went ahead with a planned trip to Dallas as part of a multicity tour to promote Dokoupil as the new anchor.

While Dokoupil has said he wants “CBS Evening News” to focus more on the viewpoints of regular citizens and less on “elites” based in New York and Washington, his Dallas visit included a helicopter ride with Jerry Jones, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Cowboys. There was also a brief segment on the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.

Dokoupil did score a newsworthy interview that day with ICE chief Tom Homan, who notably held back on commenting on the fatal shooting of Good while Trump and other administration officials rushed to call her a domestic terrorist. The program also quickly pivoted by flying to Minneapolis, where it focused heavily on the reaction of shaken Minneapolis residents and anti-ICE protesters to the incident.

Ratings for Dokoupil’s broadcast are slightly above the season-to-date average, according to Nielsen, but remain well behind “ABC World News Tonight With David Muir” and “NBC Nightly News With Tom Llamas.”

Dokoupil was co-host of “CBS Mornings” before joining “CBS Evening News,” where he replaced the anchor duo of John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois.

SACRAMENTO — California and its state-funded programs are heading into a period of volatile fiscal uncertainty, driven largely by events in Washington and on Wall Street.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget chief warned Friday that surging revenues tied to the artificial intelligence boom are being offset by rising costs and federal funding cuts. The result: a projected $3-billion state deficit for the next fiscal year despite no major new spending initiatives.

The Newsom administration on Friday released its proposed $348.9-billion budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1, formally launching negotiations with the Legislature over spending priorities and policy goals.

“This budget reflects both confidence and caution,” Newsom said in a statement. “California’s economy is strong, revenues are outperforming expectations, and our fiscal position is stable because of years of prudent fiscal management — but we remain disciplined and focused on sustaining progress, not overextending it.”

Newsom’s proposed budget did not include funding to backfill the massive cuts to Medicaid and other public assistance programs by President Trump and the Republican-led Congress, changes expected to lead to millions of low-income Californians losing healthcare coverage and other benefits.

“If the state doesn’t step up, communities across California will crumble,” California State Assn. of Counties CEO Graham Knaus said in a statement.

The governor is expected to revise the plan in May using updated revenue projections after the income tax filing deadline, with lawmakers required to approve a final budget by June 15.

Newsom did not attend the budget presentation Friday, which was out of the ordinary, instead opting to have California Director of Finance Joe Stephenshaw field questions about the governor’s spending plan.

“Without having significant increases of spending, there also are no significant reductions or cuts to programs in the budget,” Stephenshaw said, noting that the proposal is a work in progress.

California has an unusually volatile revenue system — one that relies heavily on personal income taxes from high-earning residents whose capital gains rise and fall sharply with the stock market.

Entering state budget negotiations, many expected to see significant belt tightening after the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office warned in November that California faces a nearly $18-billion budget shortfall. The governor’s office and Department of Finance does not always agree, or use, the LAO’s estimates.

On Friday, the Newsom administration said it is projecting a much smaller deficit — about $3 billion — after assuming higher revenues over the next three fiscal years than were forecast last year. The gap between the governor’s estimate and the LAO’s projection largely reflects differing assumptions about risk: The LAO factored in the possibility of a major stock-market downturn.

“We do not do that,” Stephenshaw said.

Jan. 9 (UPI) — Some leaders of the Southern Transitional Council in Yemen announced the dissolution of the group that controlled southern Yemen territory, but others in the separatist group say it is still active amid peace talks Friday.

STC Secretary-General Abdulrahman Jalal al-Sebaihi announced the STC’s pending dissolution on Yemeni TV while attending peace talks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. His counterparts in Yemen said his declaration was made under duress and was not true.

“The decisions relating to the Southern Transitional Council cannot be taken except by the Council in its entirety, with all its institutions, and under the chairmanship of the president,” STC spokesman Anwar al-Tamimi said in a social media post.

“This will happen as soon as the STC delegation present in Riyadh is released,” he said.

“The STC will continue positive and constructive engagement with all political initiatives, which give the southern people the opportunity to determine their future.”

A coalition backed by Saudi Arabia has taken control of the territory in southern Yemen that formerly was held by the STC, which is supported by the United Arab Emirates.

The conflicting statements regarding the STC were made after STC leader Aidarous al-Zubaidi secretly left Yemen on Tuesday night with the help of the UAE instead of traveling to Riyadh to negotiate matters in Yemen.

Instead, he was taken to Abu Dhabi on Wednesday, which raised tensions between Saudi and UAE officials.

In addition to leading the STC, al-Zubaidi was a member of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council, which expelled him on Wednesday when he did not show up in Riyadh to discuss matters in Yemen.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia recently worked together to oppose Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, and the STC wants to have an independent state recognized in South Yemen.

The STC’s dissolution could imperil efforts to re-establish a former north-south divide in Yemen, which existed prior to the nation’s unification in 1990.

Saudi Arabia supports the PLC, which is the internationally recognized government in Yemen, while the UAE backs the STC.

In some ways, it was just another campaign coffee: Los Angeles mayoral candidate Austin Beutner in a roomful of voters talking about his career and life accomplishments.

But this was no ordinary meet-and-greet. Beutner was standing inside a partially rebuilt house — with no doors, no windows and no drywall — in an area leveled by the Palisades fire. In the living room, about a dozen people spoke about what they had been through, from the frantic evacuation to the sight of smoldering ruins to the battle to get rebuilding permits.

Allison Holdorff Polhill, who owns the home, introduced Beutner — a former L.A. school superintendent — as the civic leader she would turn to first in a crisis.

“We were in the worst disaster that L.A. has ever experienced,” she told the group. “And we needed a leader that has experience with disasters and emergencies.”

The catastrophic Palisades fire, which destroyed thousands of homes and left 12 people dead, has redefined the L.A. mayor’s race, expanding the field of candidates and creating a political minefield for Karen Bass as she seeks a second four-year term.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass speaks at a City Hall ceremony where flags are lowered to half-staff to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Palisades and Eaton fires.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

When the fire broke out on Jan. 7, 2025, Bass drew criticism for being in Ghana on a diplomatic mission. Once she returned, she was at odds with her fire chief and unsteady in her public appearances.

More recently, she has faced scrutiny over her handling of the recovery, as well as fire officials’ watering down of an after-action report that was supposed to identify mistakes in the firefighting effort.

The Times found that LAFD officials failed to fully pre-deploy engines to the Palisades amid forecasts of dangerously high winds and that a battalion chief ordered firefighters to leave the scene of a Jan. 1 blaze, even though it wasn’t fully extinguished. That fire rekindled a week later to become the Palisades fire.

Fernando Guerra, a political science professor at Loyola Marymount University, said he expects the disaster will be the No. 1 issue in the June 2 mayoral primary, resonating with voters well beyond Pacific Palisades.

To wage a competitive campaign, each of Bass’ challengers will need to make the fire and its aftermath “a reflection of what’s wrong with city government,” he said.

“It really does reflect on the readiness of the city, the responsiveness of the city, how is government working at the most basic level,” said Guerra, who also runs the Center for the Study of Los Angeles.

So far, Bass’ major challengers are embracing that strategy.

Beutner, who ran the L.A. Unified School District early in the pandemic, has accused Bass of failing to take responsibility for the city’s failures before and after the fire. On Monday, appearing with fire victims in Pacific Palisades, he called on the mayor to form a citizens commission to examine what went wrong.

Rae Huang, a community organizer who is challenging the mayor from the left, has expressed disappointment in what she called Bass’ “finger-pointing” — a reference to the mayor’s criticism, and ouster, of Fire Chief Kristin Crowley last year.

Then there’s reality TV star Spencer Pratt, an outspoken Bass critic, who launched a campaign rooted in his fury over the city’s handling of the fire — and the loss of his family’s home in the flames.

“I’ve waited a whole year for someone to step up and challenge Karen Bass, but I saw no fighters,” Pratt said in a social media post Wednesday. “Guess I’m gonna have to do this myself.”

Reality TV star Spencer Pratt, second from right, announced on Wedneday that he is running for mayor. He is suing the city over its handling of the Palisades fire, which destroyed his home in Pacific Palisades.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Still unclear is whether two formidable public figures will jump in — L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath and real estate developer Rick Caruso, who lost to Bass in 2022. On Wednesday, Caruso said he will decide in the next couple of weeks whether he will run for mayor or governor.

Asked whether he might stay out of both races, Caruso responded: “I think that option is pretty much off the table now.”

As the city marked the one-year anniversary of the fires this week, Bass mostly kept a low profile, addressing the Pacific Palisades Democratic Club over the weekend and joining a private vigil at the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine.

While Pratt and hundreds of demonstrators were staging a “They Let Us Burn” rally in the Palisades, Bass stood solemnly outside City Hall as police officers lowered flags to half-staff. Bass spoke about grief and loss, but also the fact that more than 400 homes are being rebuilt.

“You see signs of hope everywhere,” she told the crowd.

Bass’ political team has taken a tougher approach, accusing her most outspoken critics — including Pratt, who is releasing a book later this month — of exploiting the disaster for political or even financial gain.

“For the first time ever we saw a major wildfire politicized by MAGA leaders and monetized by social influencers making tens of thousands of dollars per month and hawking books on the backs of a devastated community,” Bass campaign strategist Doug Herman said in a statement.

For much of the past year, Bass has faced criticism over the Fire Department’s deployment decisions and its failure to put out the Jan. 1 fire. She also has taken hits over the recovery, with residents saying she has not delivered on promises to waive permit fees for rebuilding homes lost in the fire.

Now, the focus has turned to a new and unsettling question: Did the city undermine its own effort to assess the Fire Department’s mistakes?

The Times reported last month that LAFD officials made changes to the after-action report that were so significant that its author, Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook, declined to endorse it.

“The fact that [Cook] is not willing to sponsor, or support, or endorse the report says a hell of a lot about the fact that there is no trust and clear leadership,” Huang said.

Bass told The Times on Wednesday that she did not work with the Fire Department on changes to the report, nor did the agency consult her about any changes.

L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath speaks at a rally in support of the county’s emergency rent relief program to help households who have lost income because of federal immigration enforcement.

(Al Seib / For The Times)

Horvath, who is running for a second four-year term as county supervisor, has also ripped the city over the report, saying wildfire victims feel “gaslit” — and deserve answers.

The supervisor, whose sprawling district includes the Palisades burn area, said she has been hearing from people asking her to run for mayor. She said she would prefer to continue in county office. But she voiced concern about the city’s future — not just its handling of the wildfire, but also the budget, the homelessness crisis and the delivery of basic services.

“I think people are hungry for a different kind of leadership,” she told The Times.

Pacific Palisades has not been a political stronghold for Bass. Although she won her 2022 race against Caruso by a 10-point margin, she trailed him by double digits in the Palisades.

Like many people across the region, the major mayoral candidates were directly impacted by the January fires or have family who lost homes — or both.

Beutner’s home was severely damaged in the Palisades fire, forcing him to live elsewhere for the past year. His mother-in-law’s home, also in the Palisades, was completely destroyed.

Bass has spoken repeatedly about her brother, whose Malibu home was destroyed in the Palisades fire. Huang’s 53-year-old cousin lost her Altadena home in the Eaton fire. Pratt, who is suing the city over the Palisades fire, said on social media that the flames consumed not just his home but also one owned by his parents.

Caruso, still a candidate-in-waiting, managed to save Palisades Village, the shopping center he opened in 2018, in part by securing his own private firefighting crew. But the inferno nevertheless destroyed the homes of his son and daughter, who are 26 and 29.

Real estate developer Rick Caruso on Wednesday unveils an installation in Pacific Palisades with three beams of light to mark the one-year anniversary of the fires.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

On the night the fire broke out, Caruso voiced his fury on live television about empty fire hydrants and the overall lack of water to douse the flames. Since then, he has offered a steady stream of criticism about the rebuilding process, including the mayor’s decision not to select a replacement for Steve Soboroff, who served 90 days as her recovery czar.

Caruso has spoken favorably in recent weeks about a few aspects of the recovery, including the reopening of classrooms and the quick removal of fire debris. He credited L.A. Unified and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, respectively, for those accomplishments — not the city.

“Frankly, the bright spots are under the leadership of other people,” he told The Times.

Beutner has been equally blunt. At last month’s campaign coffee, he said the city needs to convene a citizen panel similar to the Christopher Commission, which was formed weeks after the 1991 police beating of Rodney King. The panel assessed the LAPD’s handling of discipline, misconduct complaints, excessive force by officers and other issues.

“If you have a tragedy, you have public hearings, you have leaders who are empaneled with the money they need to ask tough questions of everybody — the mayor, her staff, the acting mayor, police, fire” and the Department of Water and Power, Beutner told the group. “What did you do, and what would you have done differently?”

Clara Karger, a spokesperson for Bass, said the city is already participating in a state investigation, which is being overseen by the Fire Safety Research Institute, into the Palisades and Eaton fires.

On top of that, she said, the fire department is commissioning an independent investigation into its response to the Jan. 1 fire that reignited into the Palisades fire. That blaze, known as the Lachman fire, was mentioned only briefly in the department’s after-action report.

“Mayor Bass wants all the information to ensure accountability and to continue implementing needed reforms, many of which are already underway from LAFD,” Karger said.

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is running for a second term in the pivotal battleground state after a first term that put him on the Democratic Party’s radar as a potential presidential contender in 2028.

He made the formal announcement Thursday at an event at a carpenters’ union hall in Pittsburgh and, later, at a similar event in Philadelphia. Shapiro’s announcement demonstrated a unified party behind him — including introductions by the state party chair, labor leaders and top local Democratic officials — as he ticked off his accomplishments during a nearly 30-minute speech.

Shapiro warned that his opponents promise “darkness and division and extremism,” and — without mentioning President Trump by name — he slammed the “chaos and toxicity” emanating from Washington, D.C., that he said threatened livelihoods, rights and freedoms.

“Every step of the way, I’ve stood up for my fellow Pennsylvanians, sometimes in a court of law and other times simply refusing to back down, refusing to cast certain Pennsylvanians aside and always by speaking truth to power,” Shapiro said.

He added, “I will not let anyone mess with Pennsylvania and I will always have your backs.”

Although Shapiro hasn’t disclosed any ambitions for higher office, his reelection effort will be closely watched as another test of whether he’s White House material.

Ever since he won the governor’s office in a near-landslide victory in 2022, Shapiro has been mentioned alongside Democratic contemporaries like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and others as someone who could lead a national ticket.

Shapiro, 52, has already made rounds outside Pennsylvania. Last year, he campaigned for Democrats running for governor in New Jersey and Virginia, and he’s a frequent guest on Sunday talk shows that can shape the country’s political conversation.

He was also considered as a potential running mate for Kamala Harris in 2024. She chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz instead.

A pivotal first term as governor

Shapiro’s first term repeatedly put him in the spotlight.

He was governor when Pennsylvania was the site of the first attempted assassination of Trump; the capture of Luigi Mangione in the killing of United Healthcare Chief Executive Brian Thompson; and the murder of three police officers in the state’s deadliest day for law enforcement since 2009.

Last year, an arsonist tried to kill Shapiro by setting the governor’s official residence on fire in the middle of the night. Shapiro had to flee with his wife, children and members of his extended family, and the attack made him a sought-out voice on the nation’s recent spate of political violence.

As Shapiro settled into the governor’s office, he shed his buttoned-down public demeanor and became more plain-spoken.

He pushed to quickly reopen a collapsed section of Interstate 95 in Philadelphia, debuting his new and profane governing slogan — “get s— done” — at a ceremony for the completed project.

He crossed the partisan divide over school choice to support a Republican-backed voucher program, causing friction with Democratic lawmakers and allies in the state.

Shapiro regularly plays up the need for bipartisanship in a state with a politically divided Legislature, and positions himself as a moderate on energy issues in a state that produces the most natural gas after Texas.

He’s rubbed elbows with corporate executives who are interested in Pennsylvania as a data center destination and thrust Pennsylvania into competition for billions of dollars being spent on energy, manufacturing and artificial intelligence.

A repeat winner in competitive territory

Shapiro has enjoyed robust public approval ratings and carries a reputation as a disciplined messenger and powerhouse fundraiser. For 2026, Pennsylvania’s Republican Party endorsed Stacy Garrity, the twice-elected state treasurer, to challenge Shapiro.

Garrity has campaigned around Pennsylvania and spoken at numerous Trump rallies in the battleground state, but she is untested as a fundraiser and will have to contend with her relatively low profile as compared with Shapiro.

Shapiro, meanwhile, keeps a busy public schedule and has gone out of his way to appear at high-profile, nonpolitical events like football games, a NASCAR race and onstage at a Roots concert in Philadelphia.

He is a regular on TV political shows, podcasts and local sports radio shows, and became a leading pro-Israel voice among Democrats and Jewish politicians amid the Israel-Hamas war, confronting divisions within the Democratic Party over the war.

He has tempered it with calls for more aid for Gaza’s residents and criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the war, but some activists argued against him being the party’s nominee for vice president in 2024.

Harris, in her recent book, wrote that she passed on Shapiro after determining that he wouldn’t be a good fit for the role.

Shapiro, she wrote, “mused that he would want to be in the room for every decision,” and she “had a nagging concern that he would be unable to settle for a role as number two and that it would wear on our partnership.” Shapiro disputed the characterization.

An audition on the 2026 campaign trail

In a September appearance on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” the host, Kristen Welker, asked him whether he’d commit to serving a full second term as governor and whether he’d rule out running for president in 2028.

“I’m focused on doing my work here,” he said, sidestepping the questions.

His supposed White House aspirations — which he’s never actually admitted to in public — are also mentioned frequently by Garrity.

“We need somebody that is more interested in Pennsylvania and not on Pennsylvania Avenue,” Garrity said recently on a radio show in Philadelphia. On Thursday, the Republican Governors Assocn. accused Shapiro of being “more focused on his political ambitions” than leading Pennsylvania.

For his part, Shapiro criticizes Garrity as too eager to get Trump’s endorsement to be an effective advocate for Pennsylvania.

In any case, the campaign trail could afford Shapiro an opportunity to audition for a White House run.

For one thing, Shapiro has been unafraid to criticize Trump, even in a swing state won by Trump in 2024. As governor, Shapiro has joined or filed more than a dozen lawsuits against Trump’s administration, primarily for holding up funding to states.

He has lambasted Trump’s tariffs as “reckless” and “dangerous,” Trump’s threats to revoke TV broadcast licenses as an “attempt to stifle dissent” and Trump’s equivocation on political violence as failing the “leadership test” and “making everyone less safe.”

Many of Shapiro’s would-be competitors in a Democratic primary won’t have to run for office before then.

Newsom is term-limited, for instance. Others — like ex-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg — aren’t in public office. A couple of other governors in the 2028 conversation — Moore and Pritzker — are running for reelection this year.

Levy writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump is meeting with oil executives at the White House Friday in hopes of securing $100 billion in investments to revive Venezuela’s ability to fully tap into its expansive reserves of petroleum — a plan that rides on their comfort in making commitments in a country plagued by instability, inflation and uncertainty.

Since the U.S. military raid to capture former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro on Saturday, Trump has quickly pivoted to portraying the move as a newfound economic opportunity for the U.S., seizing tankers carrying Venezuelan oil, saying the U.S. is taking over the sales of 30 million to 50 million barrels of previously sanctioned Venezuelan oil and will be controlling sales worldwide indefinitely.

On Friday, U.S. forces seized their fifth tanker over the past month that has been linked to Venezuelan oil. The action reflected the determination of the U.S. to fully control the exporting, refining and production of Venezuelan petroleum, a sign of the Trump administration’s plans for ongoing involvement in the sector as it seeks commitments from private companies.

It’s all part of a broader push by Trump to keep gasoline prices low. At a time when many Americans are concerned about affordability, the incursion in Venezuela melds Trump’s assertive use of presidential powers with an optical spectacle meant to convince Americans that he can bring down energy prices.

The meeting, set for 2:30 p.m. EST, is currently set to occur behind closed doors, according to the president’s daily schedule. “At least 100 Billion Dollars will be invested by BIG OIL, all of whom I will be meeting with today at The White House,” Trump said Friday in a pre-dawn social media post.

Trump is set to meet with executives from 17 oil companies, according to the White House. Among the companies attending are Chevron, which still operates in Venezuela, and ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips, which both had oil projects in the country that were lost as part of a 2007 nationalization of private businesses under Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez.

The president is meeting with a wide swath of domestic and international companies with interests ranging from construction to the commodity markets. Other companies slated to be at the meeting include Halliburton, Valero, Marathon, Shell, Singapore-based Trafigura, Italy-based Eni and Spain-based Repsol.

Large U.S. oil companies have so far largely refrained from affirming investments in Venezuela as contracts and guarantees need to be in place. Trump has suggested on social media that America would help to backstop any investments.

Venezuela’s oil production has slumped below one million barrels a day. Part of Trump’s challenge to turn that around will be to convince oil companies that his administration has a stable relationship with Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodríguez, as well as protections for companies entering the market.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum are slated to attend the oil executives meeting, according to the White House.

Boak writes for the Associated Press.

CARACAS, Venezuela — At the White House, President Trump vows American intervention in Venezuela will pour billions of dollars into the country’s infrastructure, revive its once-thriving oil industry and eventually deliver a new age of prosperity to the Latin American nation.

Here at a sprawling street market in the capital, though, utility worker Ana Calderón simply wishes she could afford the ingredients to make a pot of soup.

“Food is incredibly expensive,” says Calderón, noting rapidly rising prices that have celery selling for twice as much as just a few weeks ago and two pounds of meat going for more than $10, or 25 times the country’s monthly minimum wage. “Everything is so expensive.”

Venezuelans digesting news of the United States’ brazen capture of former President Nicolás Maduro are hearing grandiose promises of future economic prowess even as they live through the crippling economic realities of today.

“They know that the outlook has significantly changed but they don’t see it yet on the ground. What they’re seeing is repression. They’re seeing a lot of confusion,” says Luisa Palacios, a Venezuelan-born economist and former oil executive who is a research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. “People are hopeful and expecting that things are going to change but that doesn’t mean that things are going to change right now.”

Whatever hope exists over the possibility of U.S. involvement improving Venezuela’s economy is paired with the crushing daily truths most here live. People typically work two, three or more jobs just to survive, and still cupboards and refrigerators are nearly bare. Children go to bed early to avoid the pang of hunger; parents choose between filling a prescription and buying groceries. An estimated eight in 10 people live in poverty.

It has led millions to flee the country for elsewhere.

Those who remain are concentrated in Venezuela’s cities, including its capital, Caracas, where the street market in the Catia neighborhood once was so busy that shoppers bumped into one another and dodged oncoming traffic. But as prices have climbed in recent days, locals have increasingly stayed away from the market stalls, reducing the chaos to a relative hush.

Neila Roa, carrying her 5-month-old baby, sells packs of cigarettes to passersby, having to monitor daily fluctuations in currency to adjust the price.

“Inflation and more inflation and devaluation,” Roa says. “It’s out of control.”

Roa could not believe the news of Maduro’s capture. Now, she wonders what will come of it. She thinks it would take “a miracle” to fix Venezuela’s economy.

“What we don’t know is whether the change is for better or for worse,” she says. “We’re in a state of uncertainty. We have to see how good it can be, and how much it can contribute to our lives.”

Trump has said the U.S. will distribute some of the proceeds from the sale of Venezuelan oil back to its population. But that commitment so far largely appears to be focused on America’s interests in extracting more oil from Venezuela, selling more U.S.-made goods to the country and repairing the electricity grid.

The White House is hosting a meeting Friday with U.S. oil company executives to discuss Venezuela, which the Trump administration has been pressuring to open its vast-but-struggling oil industry more widely to American investment and know-how. In an interview with the New York Times, Trump acknowledged that reviving the country’s oil industry would take years.

“The oil will take a while,” he said.

Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves. The country’s economy depends on them.

Maduro’s predecessor, the fiery Hugo Chávez, elected in 1998, expanded social services, including housing and education, thanks to the country’s oil bonanza, which generated revenues estimated at some $981 billion between 1999 and 2011 as crude prices soared. But corruption, a decline in oil production and economic policies led to a crisis that became evident in 2012.

Chávez appointed Maduro as his successor before dying of cancer in 2013. The country’s political, social and economic crisis, entangled with plummeting oil production and prices, marked the entirety of Maduro’s presidency. Millions were pushed into poverty. The middle class virtually disappeared. And more than 7.7 million people left their homeland.

Albert Williams, an economist at Nova Southeastern University, says returning the energy sector to its heyday would have a dramatic spillover effect in a country in which oil is the dominant industry, sparking the opening of restaurants, stores and other businesses. What’s unknown, he says, is whether such a revitalization happens, how long it would take and how a government built by Maduro will adjust to the change in power.

“That’s the billion-dollar question,” Williams says. “But if you improve the oil industry, you improve the country.”

The International Monetary Fund estimates Venezuela’s inflation rate is a staggering 682%, the highest of any country for which it has data. That has sent the cost of food beyond what many can afford.

Many public sector workers survive on roughly $160 per month, while the average private sector employee earned about $237 last year. Venezuela’s monthly minimum wage of 130 bolivars, or $0.40, has not increased since 2022, putting it well below the United Nations’ measure of extreme poverty of $2.15 a day.

The currency crisis led Maduro to declare an “economic emergency” in April.

Usha Haley, a Wichita State University economist who studies emerging markets, says for those hurting the most, there is no immediate sign of change.

“Short-term, most Venezuelans will probably not feel any economic relief,” she says. “A single oil sale will not fix the country’s rampant inflation and currency collapse. Jobs, prices and exchange rates will probably not shift quickly.”

In a country that has seen as much strife as Venezuela has in recent years, locals are accustomed to doing what they have to in order to get through the day, so much so that many utter the same expression

“Resolver,” they say in Spanish, or “figure it out,” shorthand for the jury-rigged nature of life here, in which every transaction, from boarding a bus to buying a child’s medicine, involves a delicate calculation.

Here at the market, the smell of fish, fresh onions and car exhaust combine. Calderon, making her way through, faces freshly skyrocketing prices, saying “the difference is huge,” as the country’s official currency has rapidly declined against its unofficial one, the U.S. dollar.

Unable to afford all the ingredients for her soup, she left with a bunch of celery but no meat.

Cano and Sedensky write for the Associated Press. Sedensky reported from New York. AP writer Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.

MINNEAPOLIS — Another round of protests were planned for Friday in Minneapolis over the killing of a local woman by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer during the Trump administration’s latest immigration crackdown on a major city, a day after federal immigration officers shot and wounded two people in Portland, Ore.

Hundreds of people protesting the Wednesday shooting of Renee Good marched in freezing rain Thursday night down one of Minneapolis’ major thoroughfares, chanting “ICE out now!” and holding signs saying, “Killer ice off our streets.” The day began with a charged protest outside of a federal facility that is serving as a hub for the immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

On Friday, city workers removed makeshift barricades of old Christmas trees and other debris that had been blocking the streets around the scene where the ICE officer shot Good as she tried to drive away. City officials said they would allow a makeshift shrine to the 37-year-old mother of three to remain.

The shooting in Portland, Ore., took place outside a hospital Thursday afternoon. A man and woman were shot inside a vehicle, and their conditions were not immediately known. The FBI and the Oregon Department of Justice were investigating.

Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and the city council called on ICE to end all operations in the city until a full investigation is completed. Hundreds protested Thursday night at a local ICE building. Early Friday, Portland police reported that officers had arrested several protesters after asking the to move from the street to the sidewalk, to allow traffic to flow.

Just as it did following Good’s shooting, the Department of Homeland Security defended the actions of the officers in Portland, saying it occurred after a Venezuelan man with alleged gang ties and who was involved in a recent shooting tried to “weaponize” his vehicle to hit the officers. It wasn’t immediately clear if the shootings were captured on video, as Good’s was.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, President Donald Trump and others in his administration have repeatedly characterized the Minneapolis shooting as an act of self-defense and cast Good as a villain, suggesting she used her vehicle as a weapon to attack the officer who shot her.

Vice President JD Vance said the shooting was justified and Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was a “victim of left-wing ideology.”

“I can believe that her death is a tragedy while also recognizing that it is a tragedy of her own making,” Vance said, noting that the officer who killed her was injured while making an arrest last June.

But state and local officials and protesters rejected that characterization, with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey saying video recordings show the self-defense argument is “garbage.”

An immigration crackdown quickly turns deadly

The Minneapolis shooting happened on the second day of the Twin Cities immigration crackdown, which Homeland Security said is the biggest immigration enforcement operation ever. More than 2,000 officers are taking part and Noem said they have made more than 1,500 arrests.

It provoked an immediate response in the city where police killed George Floyd in 2020, with hundreds of people turning up to the scene to vent their outrage at the ICE officers and the school district canceling classes for the rest of the week as a precaution.

Good’s death — at least the fifth tied to immigration sweeps since Trump took office — has resonated far beyond Minneapolis, as protests took place or were expected this week in many large U.S. cities.

Who will investigate?

The Minnesota agency that investigates officer-involved shootings said Thursday that it was informed that the FBI and U.S. Justice Department would not work with the it, effectively ending any role for the state to determine if crimes were committed. Noem said the state has no jurisdiction.

“Without complete access to the evidence, witnesses and information collected, we cannot meet the investigative standards that Minnesota law and the public demands,” said Drew Evans, head of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz demanded that the state be allowed to take part, repeatedly emphasizing that it would be “very difficult for Minnesotans” to accept that an investigation excluding the state could be fair.

Deadly encounter seen from multiple angles

Several bystanders captured video of Good’s killing, which happened in a neighborhood south of downtown.

The recordings show an officer approaching an SUV stopped across the middle of the road, demanding the driver open the door and grabbing the handle. The Honda Pilot begins to pull forward and a different ICE officer standing in front of it pulls his weapon and immediately fires at least two shots at close range, jumping back as the vehicle moves toward him.

It is not clear from the videos if the vehicle makes contact with the officer, and there is no indication of whether the woman had interactions with agents earlier. After the shooting, the SUV speeds into two cars parked on a curb before crashing to a stop.

Officer identified in records

The federal agent who fatally shot Good is an Iraq War veteran who has served for nearly two decades in the Border Patrol and ICE, according to records obtained by AP.

Noem has not publicly named him, but a Homeland Security spokesperson said her description of his injuries last summer refers to an incident in Bloomington, Minnesota, in which court documents identify him as Jonathan Ross.

Ross got his arm stuck in the window of a vehicle whose driver was fleeing arrest on an immigration violation. Ross was dragged and fired his Taser. A jury found the driver guilty of assaulting a federal officer with a dangerous weapon.

Attempts to reach Ross, 43, at phone numbers and email addresses associated with him were not successful.

Santana, Sullivan and Dell’Orto write for the Associated Press. AP reporters Steve Karnowski and Mark Vancleave in Minneapolis; Ed White in Detroit; Valerie Gonzalez in Brownsville, Texas; Graham Lee Brewer in Norman, Okla.; Michael Biesecker in Washington; Jim Mustian in New York; Ryan Foley in Iowa City, Iowa; and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed to this report.