Politics Desk

CARTHAGE, Tenn. — Albert Gore Jr. was 21 that summer of 1969 when he confronted Vietnam, the draft and an early test of his manhood.

He had just graduated from Harvard, where he joined in anti-war protests that had split college campuses across the country. He had spent his summers on the family farm outside of this small town, and he knew that many of the local boys were heading off to the Army.

Over the next two months Gore would struggle with a decision:

Should he follow his ideals and defy the draft, or join the tens of thousands of other young men gone to war?

On a more personal level, should he refuse to go and risk hurting his father’s next reelection bid to the U.S. Senate, where Albert Gore Sr. was one of the nation’s leading critics of the war? Evading the draft might make his father look unpatriotic.

His search for an answer would take him from the family farm in Tennessee to the doorstep of a Harvard instructor on Cape Cod, Mass. It would plunge him into a series of long, wrenching debates that failed to ease his dilemma.

Finally, it delivered him, about to be drafted, to the federal building in Newark, N.J., where surprised Army recruiters listened as he told them who he was and what he intended to do–sign up.

Those crucial months in 1969 offer insights into the man who would become vice president of the United States–and who now aspires to the presidency.

What emerges is a portrait of a young man discovering the cruel contradictions between his beliefs and sense of duty, between loyalty to family and commitment to a cause. His deliberations show the slow and painstaking approach that has become a trademark of his decision-making style as a political leader.

Gore’s anguish over the decision also provides a glimpse into his unsettled place in the world of privilege; he would not exploit his special advantages but would not fully reject them either.

Unsettled Place Amid Privilege

Many young men with famous names or elite educations–and many without them–were able to avoid the war in Vietnam if not always active duty. In 1969, 21.8 million men from the ages of 18 to 26 were eligible for the draft. About 283,000 were inducted into the armed services that year.

Rather than seek an out, Gore went voluntarily. He became Spc. 5 Gore in Vietnam, where he was stationed with the 20th Engineers Brigade headquarters near Saigon. In some ways, he was one of the guys, playing poker and drinking, smoking cigarettes and sometimes marijuana with his buddies.

But in other ways, he was apart from the fray. He served as a news reporter and not a combat soldier. His reporting duties took him to potentially dangerous spots. But like some other servicemen in support specialties, he was never in actual combat, his fellow soldiers say.

Several of his colleagues remember they were assigned to make sure this son of a prominent politician was never injured in the war. After five months, he returned home at his own request when his job was being phased out.

Nevertheless, Gore the politician over the years sometimes has been inclined to describe his Vietnam days as though he was in the thick of the war.

On the campaign trail today, while he suggests no combat heroics, he nonetheless mentions his service in Vietnam proudly. Addressing 4,000 veterans last month at the national American Legion convention in Anaheim, he spoke of the curse of that war and how “few respected our service, much less welcomed us home.”

But Gore also said, “Some of the greatest times of my whole life were times spent with my buddies in the Army.”

Gore declined to be interviewed for this article.

In the 2000 presidential campaign, the Vietnam draft experience continues to be a benchmark for Gore’s generation of national leaders. The old themes of the war surface so often that it is clear they never left.

John McCain, the son and grandson of Navy admirals, is a Republican senator from Arizona. But he is better known as a war hero; his book about his 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, issued in conjunction with his campaign, is a bestseller.

McCain’s main rival for the Republican nomination, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, missed Vietnam by serving in the Texas Air National Guard–a slot critics say he received through connections from his father, then a U.S. congressman.

Gore’s opponent in the Democratic contest, former Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey, served in the Air Force Reserve from 1967 to 1978 and saw no active duty.

Harvard Brimming With Anti-War Fervor

Gore, the youngest of these candidates, was still in college when public support for the war began to sour. Harvard, like many campuses, was a caldron of anti-war fervor.

John Tyson, one of Gore’s Harvard friends, said he and Gore both signed anti-war petitions in the dining hall, attended rallies and talked for hours about what they saw as the misguided pursuit of an unwinnable conflict.

“He was against the war,” Tyson recalled, “but he wasn’t one of those guys who considered himself a revolutionary, who was against America.” He became “enraged,” Tyson recalled, when some protesters talked about securing some dynamite.

Gore, viewing Vietnam as more than a local conflict, worried about whether it would become a flash point for nuclear war. “He had scope,” Tyson said. He added that Gore “listened to his father. He emulated him.”

In the summer before his senior year, Gore helped his father write his landmark speech against the war at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

The senator noted that 25,000 U.S. soldiers–less than half the final death count–had died in Southeast Asia. “What harvest do we reap from their gallant sacrifice?” he asked.

Outside, anti-war protesters clashed with police in what became a major turning point for the peace movement at home.

Martin Peretz, who taught Gore in a seminar on the political culture of post-World War II America, said “very, very few” of Gore’s classmates went into the service. Many sought other ways to stay out of the service.

So few made the journey from Harvard to Vietnam that when one of Gore’s friends, freshman Denmark Groover III, interrupted his studies to join the military, many of his classmates ridiculed him.

Gore wrote his girlfriend, Tipper Aitcheson, that, while he admired his friend’s “courage and rashness,” he did not know whether his own views would allow him to follow Groover’s example.

“It’s wrong, we’re wrong,” he wrote, according to letters published last week in Talk magazine. “A lot of people won’t admit it and never will, but we’re wrong.”

By the time Gore graduated in June 1969, anti-war sentiment drove a hundred angry students to walk out of the commencement ceremony. Others tore up their diplomas; half of the senior class raised clenched fists.

When Gore left school, his student deferment expired. He was staring straight into the draft. Like others opposed to the war, his options were stark. He could apply for conscientious-objector status. He could try to land a spot in a reserve or National Guard unit, although the waiting lists were long. He could flee to Canada or end up in jail.

Many of the sons of Carthage were already in Vietnam. One of them, James H. Wilson, had been killed earlier that year, on Gore’s 21st birthday.

“I don’t want to spend any more time over here than I have to,” Wilson had written in his last letter home. In all, eight young men from Carthage and surrounding Smith County–whose population then was 15,000–died over there.

“This is a small rural county, and there always seemed to be a load of them going, five or six or seven at a time,” said Edward S. Blair, a boyhood chum of Gore’s.

“A lady ran the local draft board, she was the supervisor, and she would send notices out. Then a group of boys would catch the bus at the Trailways station near the old river bridge and go to Nashville for their exams.

“It would have gone down badly had he [Gore] not gone,” said Blair, now the U.S. marshal in Nashville.

But Gore was a product of two worlds: rural Tennessee and political Washington. If the norm for boys from the Volunteer State of Tennessee was to enlist, the standard was much different for the sons of lawmakers.

A report from that time by Congressional Quarterly showed that 234 sons of senators and congressmen had reached draft age during the Vietnam era. Half of them received deferments. Of the rest, only 28 went to Vietnam, 19 into combat.

The subject of privilege was all the more apparent in a hit song in 1969 by Creedence Clearwater Revival. Gore loved rock ‘n’ roll and memorized the lyrics of many songs, including “Fortunate Son.” He told friends the refrain haunted him:

It ain’t me, it ain’t me,

I ain’t no senator’s son, son.

It ain’t me, it ain’t me,

I ain’t no fortunate one, no.

But now was decision time, and Gore began to turn to those closest to him. Sometimes he seemed on the brink of a decision but then would suddenly reach out for more guidance.

A first stop was at the family farm.

Sen. Al Gore Sr., interviewed in a video for use in his son’s current presidential campaign, recalled the visit.

“He and I took a walk back on the farm. Then we came back in here and had lunch.” Suddenly, the father remembered, his son stood up and announced, “I believe I’ll take a walk. Alone.”

“So,” the senator recalled, “he walked to the bluff back of the farm and came in and his mother and I were seated in here, continuing to discuss the matter.

“We asked him and recommended to him to use his own judgment. His mother and I assured him we would support his decision whatever it was. But it was his decision. And I particularly asked him to not take into consideration any political matter as his decision might affect me. Whether he did take that into consideration, I don’t know. I hope not.”

After his solitary stroll, his son walked back into the house and blurted out, “I’ve made up my mind. I’m going. I’ll volunteer tomorrow.”

But he hesitated, and, joined by Tipper, next sought out his former instructor Peretz at his home on Cape Cod.

It was the weekend of the first moonwalk. When Gore wasn’t watching television, he asked Peretz how he could be true to himself without endangering his father’s anti-war position–or the life of someone he knew from Tennessee.

“ ‘My draft board is small,’ ” Peretz quoted Gore as saying. “ ‘If I don’t go, someone I played baseball with or went to church with or shoveled horseshit with will go in my place.’ ”

Peretz, now chairman of New Republic magazine, said he never advised students on how to handle the draft, and Gore left, still uncertain.

Soon after, he took a train to Newark, N.J., where he joined Harvard pal Tyson at a downtown diner. They ate lunch, then talked long enough to get hungry again.

Gore was eating one French fry at a time. Should he go or shouldn’t he?

Abruptly, Gore sprung to his feet, Tyson said. “He was ready.”

They hurried the few blocks to the nearby federal building and up to the Army recruiting station on the fourth floor.

Astonishment at Recruiting Office

Sgt. Dess Stokes ran the office, and he and his recruiters were astonished to see who walked in, he recalled. They all knew of Sen. Gore, especially Stokes, who had already done one tour in Vietnam and, like many soldiers, shared the senator’s opposition to the war.

In the recruiting station, Stokes handed Gore some paperwork and explained how volunteering for the draft, rather than waiting to be inducted, could keep him out of the infantry. Noting that Gore was a Harvard man, Stokes told him he could get into communications, maybe become an Army reporter.

Having reached the moment, Gore stepped away and telephoned his father. When he returned, he signed the papers. He was in the Army.

His two-year hitch was to run until August 1971, and his first assignment after basic training was in the Army media pool at Ft. Rucker, Ala. There he learned to write press releases and short newspaper stories.

Richard Abalos, who bunked with Gore at Ft. Rucker, had a tan 1962 Chevy four-door, and many in the unit would pile in and drive to Panama City, Fla., renting a dilapidated beach house for the weekend. They would play bridge and poker, barbecue steaks and drink cheap beer and wine, including one inexpensive label called Tickle Me Pink.

Gore has admitted that he smoked marijuana in the Army; there was plenty of pot to pass around. “It usually was on the beach in Florida,” said Guenter “Gus” Stanisic. “But hell, the MPs [military police] smoked. Just about everybody in the Army smoked.”

In April 1970, Gore was named Post Soldier of the Month, a citation awarded to soldiers who demonstrated leadership qualities. The honor came with a $50 savings bond.

A month later, in a ceremony at the National Cathedral in Washington, he married Tipper.

By summer, his father–who died last year–was being challenged for his Senate seat by Rep. William Brock, a Chattanooga Republican and supporter of the war.

Brock said that young Gore’s decision to enlist did not appear to help or hurt his father. “I didn’t see any change with what young Albert did,” Brock said.

But the Gore campaign tried its best to show that Sen. Gore, while against the war, was still a patriot. The team produced a television commercial in which the senator rode up on a white horse and told Al, dressed in Army fatigues, “Son, always love your country.”

When Gore received his orders for Vietnam, just five weeks before the November 1970 election, his father announced it publicly: “Like thousands of other Tennessee boys, he volunteered. . . . Like other fathers, I am proud.”

But the orders to Vietnam were delayed, and Gore would not ship out until Christmas. The family believed President Nixon postponed the orders to deny Sen. Gore any political boost from having a son in Vietnam on election day.

After three decades in Congress, Gore lost to Brock by 4% of the vote. And by the end of 1970, his son was in Vietnam.

Gore arrived in Vietnam nearly three years after the Tet Offensive, the so-called turning point in the war. By that time, the U.S. troop withdrawals ordered by Nixon had begun, and South Vietnamese forces were taking over a larger share of the fighting.

But U.S. forces were continuing their bombing campaign against North Vietnam and also conducting raids into Laos and Cambodia. Although both sides had reached a stalemate, the war would drag on several more years.

Though far from the action, young Gore was shaken by what he saw. “When and if I get home from Vietnam,” he wrote his friend Abalos, “I’m going to divinity school to atone for my sins.”

Other soldiers with long experience in Vietnam said that Gore was treated differently from his fellow enlistees. Two of them recalled that before Gore arrived Brig. Gen. Kenneth B. Cooper advised them that a senator’s son would be joining the outfit.

H. Alan Leo said soldiers were ordered to serve as Gore’s bodyguards, to keep him out of harm’s way. “It blew me away,” Leo said. “I was to make sure he didn’t get into a situation he could not get out of. They didn’t want him to get into trouble. So we went into the field after the fact [after combat actions], and that limited his exposure to any hazards.”

Cooper, however, said Gore “didn’t get anything he shouldn’t have.”

Gore covered the 20th Engineers Brigade, based 30 miles northeast of Saigon, as it cleared jungle and built and repaired roads and bridges in the war zone.

In his most ambitious piece, he re-created a battle at a fire support base code-named Blue near the Cambodian border, which a group of Viet Cong had tried to overrun.

“On the night of February 22nd, there was no moon,” Gore wrote. “The men sacked out early as usual, soon after the movie was over–’Bloody Mama’ with Shelley Winters as the maniac murderess–the guards were posted as usual–the password was ‘four.’ ”

‘He Took Risks’ During Tour

Fire Support Base Blue was as close as Gore came to combat. Mike Roche, editor of the engineers’ Castle Courier newspaper, said it took courage to go to the fire base, even if the battle was over.

“He was tanned and he had the bleached-out fatigues and . . . he was doing war-related stories,” Roche said. “He took risks.”

Veterans said a standard tour in Vietnam was 12 months; Gore was out in five. Early releases were not uncommon at the time, though. The 20th Engineers was departing Vietnam, which meant the Army no longer needed a reporter assigned to the brigade.

Gore also was approaching the last months of his two-year commitment. In March, with less than three months in Vietnam, he requested an early release and was told the next day he could leave in May to return to school.

When he left Vietnam, Gore flew to Oakland, along with Army pal Bob Delabar. At the airport bar, they hoisted drinks and parted ways. “We both got smashed,” Delabar remembered. “And it wasn’t on beer.”

Gore enrolled in Vanderbilt University’s divinity school but stayed only a year and left to take a job in Nashville as a reporter for the Tennessean, where he worked for four years.

When the House seat from his dad’s old district opened up in 1976, Gore ran and won. He later was elected to his father’s old Senate seat. The Army and Vietnam came up in his campaigns; he often portrayed his experience as more dangerous than it truly was.

In 1988, running for president, he told Vanity Fair magazine, “I took my turn regularly on the perimeter in these little firebases out in the boonies. Something would move, we’d fire first and ask questions later.”

He told the Washington Post: “I was shot at. I spent most of my time in the field.”

“I carried an M-16 . . . ,” he told the Baltimore Sun. “I pulled my turn on the perimeter at night and walked through the elephant grass and I was fired upon.”

For the Weekly Standard, he described flights aboard combat helicopters. “I used to fly these things with the doors open, sitting on the ledge with our feet hanging down. If you flew low and fast, they wouldn’t have as much time to shoot you.”

Any location in Vietnam was potentially dangerous during the war. But eight men who served there with Gore said in separate interviews that he was never in the middle of a battle. Gore himself has toned down descriptions of his wartime activity during the current campaign; he now emphasizes that he was in Vietnam as a news reporter and not as a combat soldier.

As he runs for the presidency this time, old Army pals sometimes show up at political events. Abalos appeared at a Gore rally in San Antonio; Delabar sat in the front row at the American Legion convention in Anaheim.

His enduring ties to his Army buddies appear to reflect an inner connection between Gore the reluctant soldier and Gore the national politician and presidential candidate.

At the American Legion convention, he told the veterans, “There will always be the bond between who we were and who we are.”

Times researchers John Beckham and Edith Stanley and staff writer Elizabeth Shogren contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

How They Served All presidential contenders except for Elizabeth Hanford Dole were eligible for the draft during the Vietnam War. The following are their records, or lack of them, and the reasons:

Republicans

Gary Bauer: No military service; student deferment

Patrick J. Buchanan: None; student, medical deferments

Texas Gov. George W. Bush: Texas Air National Guard; no overseas duty

Dole: None; not subject to draft

Steve Forbes: New Jersey National Guard, 1970-76; no combat duty

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch of Utah: None; sole remaining heir deferment

Alan Keyes: None; student deferment, then high draft number

Sen. John McCain of Arizona: Navy pilot; prisoner of war in North Vietnam for 5 1/2 years

*

Democrats:

Former Sen. Bill Bradley: U.S. Air Force Reserve, 1967-78; no active duty

Vice President Al Gore: Army journalist, 1969-71; six months in Vietnam; no combat duty

*

Independent

Sen. Bob Smith of New Hampshire: Navy, 1965-67, including one year in Vietnam; Naval Reserve, 1962-65 and 1967-69; no combat duty

*

Sources: Time/CNN and Houston Chronicle

The author of the Los Angeles Fire Department’s after-action report on the Palisades fire declined to endorse it because of substantial deletions that altered his findings, calling the edited version “highly unprofessional and inconsistent with our established standards.”

Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook emailed then-interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva and other LAFD officials with the subject line “Palisades AARR Non-Endorsement,” about an hour after the highly anticipated report was made public Oct. 8.

“Having reviewed the revised version submitted by your office, I must respectfully decline to endorse it in its current form,” Cook wrote in the email obtained by The Times. “The document has undergone substantial modifications and contains significant deletions of information that, in some instances, alter the conclusions originally presented.”

Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook complained to former interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva about deletions and revisions in the Palisades fire after-action report.

(L.A. City Mayor’s Office)

He continued, “While I fully understand the need to address potential liability concerns and to modify certain sections in consultation with the City Attorney to mitigate litigation risks, the current version appears highly unprofessional and inconsistent with our established standards. I strongly urge you to reconsider publishing the report as it stands.”

In the email, Cook also raised concerns that the LAFD’s final report would be at odds with a report on the January wildfires commissioned by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office, which has yet to be released.

“I am concerned that substantial disparities may exist between the two reports,” Cook wrote.

Izzy Gardon, a spokesperson for Newsom, said in a statement Tuesday, “The Governor commissioned an independent review by the world’s leading fire safety experts to ensure the public receives a complete, accurate, and unvarnished accounting of the events leading up to the Palisades fire and how responding agencies carried out their response.”

Cook — who emails show provided a final draft of the after-action report to Villanueva in August — has declined to comment. Attempts to reach Villanueva were unsuccessful.

The LAFD has refused to answer questions from The Times about the deletions and revisions. Mayor Karen Bass’ office said the LAFD wrote and edited the report, and that the mayor did not demand changes.

On Sunday, The Times reported that Cook was upset about the changes to the report. The previous day, The Times had disclosed the watering down of the after-action report after analyzing seven drafts obtained through a public records request. The most significant changes involved the LAFD’s failure to order firefighters to stay on duty for an additional shift and to fully pre-deploy engines in high-risk areas before the Jan. 7 fire, as the wind warnings became increasingly dire. It’s unclear who exactly directed the revisions.

Cook’s Oct. 8 email laying out his concerns in stark language adds to the growing evidence that city and LAFD officials attempted to burnish the LAFD’s image in a report that should have been an honest assessment of the department’s failings in preparing for and fighting the fire, which killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes. The goal of such a report is to prevent similar mistakes.

Cook’s email reached Bass’ office in mid-November, according to Bass spokesperson Clara Karger.

Karger said last week that “the Mayor has inquired with Chief Moore about the concerns,” referring to Jaime Moore, who became LAFD chief last month.

The Times submitted a public records request last month for all of the mayor’s emails about the after-action report, a request that the city has not yet fulfilled. Bass’ office provided Cook’s email to The Times on Tuesday.

The city had withheld Cook’s email from its response to a separate records request filed by an unknown party in October. Almost 180 of Cook’s emails were posted on the city’s records portal on Dec. 9, but the one that expressed his concerns about the report was missing. That email was only posted on the portal Tuesday, after The Times asked about it.

The LAFD did not respond to a Times query about why the email was not released with Cook’s other emails. Bass’s office also did not respond to a query about Cook’s concerns and the fact that they were withheld from the public.

Gene Cameron, who lived in the Palisades for 50 years before his home burned down in the Jan. 7 fire, was disturbed by the LAFD’s revisions, which he said amounted to a cover up.

“I appreciate his bravery to stand up against these unprofessional immoral edits,” he said of Cook, adding that the point of the report is not to assign blame, but to prevent future mistakes. “It’s just to establish a set of rules, procedures and guidelines so that this doesn’t happen again.”

City Councilmember Traci Park, whose district includes the Palisades, said in a statement Tuesday that the city can’t fix systemic failures or rebuild public trust without full transparency.

“I’ve said from the beginning that LAFD should not be investigating itself. After a disaster of this magnitude, the public deserves a full, unfiltered accounting of what went wrong and why — and my independent after-action report will provide exactly that,” she said, referring to a report she requested that the City Council approved and funded earlier this year, though it hasn’t been completed.

Genethia Hudley Hayes, president of the Board of Fire Commissioners, did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request for comment. She previously told The Times that she heard rumors that the author of the report was unhappy, but that she did not look into the matter.

A July email thread reviewed by The Times shows concern over how the after-action report would be received, with the LAFD forming a “crisis management workgroup.”

“The primary goal of this workgroup is to collaboratively manage communications for any critical public relations issue that may arise. The immediate and most pressing crisis is the Palisades After Action Report,” LAFD Asst. Chief Kairi Brown wrote in an email to eight other people.

“With significant interest from media, politicians, and the community, it is crucial that we present a unified response to anticipated questions and concerns,” Brown wrote. “By doing so, we can ensure our messaging is clear and consistent, allowing us to create our own narrative rather than reactive responses.”

Cook was not included on that email thread. It’s unclear how much of a role, if any, that group had on the revisions.

The after-action report has been widely criticized for failing to examine a New Year’s Day fire that later reignited into the Palisades fire. Bass has ordered the LAFD to commission an independent investigation into its missteps in putting out the earlier fire.

One edit to the after-action report involved language stating that the decision to not fully staff up and pre-deploy all available crews and engines ahead of the extreme wind forecast “did not align” with the department’s policy and procedures during red flag days.

The final report did not include that language, saying instead that the number of engine companies rolled out ahead of the fire “went above and beyond the standard LAFD pre-deployment matrix.”

A section on “failures” was renamed “primary challenges,” and an item saying that crews and leaders had violated national guidelines on how to avoid firefighter deaths and injuries was scratched.

Another passage that was deleted said that some crews waited more than an hour for an assignment the day of the fire.

Two drafts contain notes typed in the margins with suggestions that seemed intended to soften the report’s effect and make the Fire Department look good. One note proposed replacing the image on the cover page — which showed palm trees on fire against an orange sky — with a “positive” one, such as “firefighters on the frontline.” The final report’s cover displays the LAFD seal.

The final version listed only 42 items in the section on recommendations and lessons learned, while the first version reviewed by The Times listed 74.

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy — Pope Leo XIV said Tuesday he was “very disappointed” that his home state of Illinois had approved a law allowing for medically assisted suicide, and he called for greater respect for life.

Leo said he had spoken “explicitly” with Gov. JB Pritzker and urged him to not sign the bill into law. Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich did the same, Leo told reporters as he left his country house in Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome.

“We were very clear about the necessity to respect the sacredness of life from the very beginning to the very end, and unfortunately, for different reasons, he decided to sign that bill,” Leo said. “I am very disappointed about that.”

Pritzker signed the legislation Dec. 12. The measure is also known as “Deb’s Law,” honoring Deb Robertson, a resident of the state living with a rare terminal illness. She had pushed for the measure’s approval and testified to the suffering of people and their families wanting the chance to decide for themselves how and when their lives should end.

Pritzker, a Democrat, had said he had been moved by stories of patients suffering from terminal illnesses.

Leo, who grew up in Chicago, cited Catholic teaching, which calls for the defense and protection of life from conception until natural death, forbidding abortion and euthanasia.

“I would invite all people, especially in these Christmas days, to reflect upon the nature of human life, the goodness of human life,” Leo said. “God became human like us to show us what it means really to live human life, and I hope and pray that the respect for life will once again grow in all moments of human existence, from conception to natural death.”

The state’s six Catholic dioceses had criticized Pritzker’s signing, saying the law puts Illinois “on a dangerous and heartbreaking path.”

Eleven other states and the District of Columbia allow medically assisted suicide, according to the advocacy group, Death With Dignity. Delaware was the latest, and its provision takes effect Jan. 1, 2026. Seven other states are considering allowing it.

Santalucia writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Nicole Winfield contributed to this report from Rome.

The University of Oklahoma has fired an instructor who was accused by a student of religious discrimination over a failing grade on a psychology paper in which she cited the Bible and argued that promoting a “belief in multiple genders” was “demonic.”

The university said in a statement posted Monday on X that its investigation found the graduate teaching assistant had been “arbitrary” in giving 20-year-old junior Samantha Fulnecky zero points on the assignment. The university declined to comment beyond its statement, which said the instructor had been removed from teaching.

Through her attorney, the instructor, Mel Curth, denied Tuesday that she had “engaged in any arbitrary behavior regarding the student’s work.” The attorney, Brittany Stewart, said in a statement emailed to the Associated Press that Curth is “considering all of her legal remedies.”

Conservative groups, commentators and others quickly made Fulnecky’s failing grade an online cause, highlighting her argument that she’d been punished for expressing conservative Christian views. Her case became a flashpoint in the ongoing debate over academic freedom on college campuses as President Trump pushes to end diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and restrict how campuses discuss race, gender and sexuality.

Fulnecky appealed her grade on the assignment, which was worth 3% of the final grade in the class, and the university said the assignment would not count. It also placed Curth on leave, and Oklahoma’s conservative Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, declared the situation “deeply concerning.”

“The University of Oklahoma believes strongly in both its faculty’s rights to teach with academic freedom and integrity and its students’ right to receive an education that is free from a lecturer’s impermissible evaluative standards,” the university’s statement said. “We are committed to teaching students how to think, not what to think.”

A law approved this year by Oklahoma’s Republican-dominated Legislature and signed by Stitt prohibits state universities from using public funds to finance DEI programs or positions or mandating DEI training. However, the law says it does not apply to scholarly research or “the academic freedom of any individual faculty member.”

Home telephone listings for Fulnecky in the Springfield, Mo., area had been disconnected, and her mother — an attorney, podcaster and radio host — did not immediately respond Tuesday to a Facebook message seeking comment about the university’s action.

Fulnecky’s failing grade came in an assignment for a psychology class on lifespan development. Curth directed students to write a 650-word response to an academic study that examined whether conformity with gender norms was associated with popularity or bullying among middle school students.

Fulnecky wrote that she was frustrated by the premise of the assignment because she does not believe that there are more than two genders based on her understanding of the Bible, according to a copy of her essay provided to The Oklahoman.

“Society pushing the lie that there are multiple genders and everyone should be whatever they want to be is demonic and severely harms American youth,” she wrote, adding that it would lead society “farther from God’s original plan for humans.”

In feedback obtained by the newspaper, Curth said the paper did “not answer the questions for the assignment,” contradicted itself, relied on “personal ideology” over evidence and “is at times offensive.”

“Please note that I am not deducting points because you have certain beliefs,” Curth wrote.

Hanna writes for the Associated Press.

The oldest baby boomers — once the vanguard of an American youth that revolutionized U.S. culture and politics — turn 80 in 2026.

The generation that twirled the first plastic hula hoops and dressed up the first Barbie dolls, embraced the TV age, blissed out at Woodstock and protested and fought in the Vietnam War — the cohort that didn’t trust anyone over age 30 — now is contributing to the overall aging of America.

Boomers becoming octogenarians in 2026 include actor Henry Winkler and baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson, singers Cher and Dolly Parton and presidents Donald Trump, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

The aging and shrinking youth of America

America’s population swelled with around 76 million births from 1946 to 1964, a spike magnified by couples reuniting after World War II and enjoying postwar prosperity.

Boomers were better educated and richer than previous generations, and they helped grow a consumer-driven economy. In their youth, they pushed for social change through the Civil Rights Movement, the women’s rights movement and efforts to end the Vietnam War.

“We had rock ‘n’ roll. We were the first generation to get out and demonstrate in the streets. We were the first generation, that was, you know, a socially conscious generation,” said Diane West, a metro Atlanta resident who turns 80 in January. “Our parents played by the rules. We didn’t necessarily play by the rules, and there were lots of us.”

As they got older they became known as the “me” generation, a pejorative term coined by writer Tom Wolfe to reflect what some regarded as their self-absorption and consumerism.

“The thing about baby boomers is they’ve always had a spotlight on them, no matter what age they were,” Brookings demographer William Frey said. “They were a big generation, but they also did important things.”

By the end of this decade, all baby boomers will be 65 and older, and the number of people 80 and over will double in 20 years, Frey said.

The share of senior citizens in the U.S. population is projected to grow from 18.7% in 2025 to nearly 23% by 2050, while children under 18 decline from almost 21% to a projected 18.4%.

Without any immigration, the U.S. population will start shrinking in five years. That’s when deaths will surpass births, according to projections from the Congressional Budget Office that were revised in September to account for the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Population growth comes from immigration as well as births outpacing deaths.

The aging of America is being compounded by longer lives due to better healthcare and lower birth rates.

The projected average U.S. life expectancy at birth rises from 78.9 years in 2025 to 82.2 years in 2055, according to the CBO. And since the Great Recession in 2008, when the fertility rate was 2.08, around the 2.1 rate needed for children to numerically replace their parents, it has been on a steady decline, hitting 1.6 in 2025.

Younger generations miss boomer milestones

Women are having fewer children because they are better educated, they’re delaying marriage to focus on careers and they’re having their first child at a later age. Unaffordable housing, poor access to child care and the growing expenses of child-rearing also add up to fewer kids.

University of New Hampshire senior demographer Kenneth Johnson estimates that the result has been 11.8 million fewer births, compared to what might have been had the fertility rate stayed at Great Recession levels.

“I was young when I had kids. I mean that’s what we did — we got out of college, we got married and we had babies,” said West, who has two daughters, a stepdaughter and six grandchildren. “My kids got married in their 30s, so it’s very different.”

A recent Census Bureau study showed that 21st-century young adults in the U.S. haven’t been adulting like baby boomers did. In 1975, almost half of 25-to-34-year-olds had moved out of their parents’ home, landed jobs, gotten married and had kids. By the early 2020s, less than a quarter of U.S. adults had hit these milestones.

West, whose 21-year-old grandson lives with her, understands why: They lack the prospects her generation enjoyed. Her grandson, Paul Quirk, said it comes down to financial instability.

“They were able to buy a lot of things, a lot cheaper,” Quirk said.

All of her grandchildren are frustrated by the economy, West added.

“You have to get three roommates in order to afford a place,” she said. “When we got out of college, we had a job waiting for us. And now, people who have master’s degrees are going to work fast food while they look for a real job.”

Implications for the economy

The aging of America could constrain economic growth. With fewer workers paying taxes, Social Security and Medicare will be under more pressure. About 34 seniors have been supported by every 100 workers in 2025, but that ratio grows to 50 seniors per 100 working-age people in about 30 years, according to estimates released last year by the White House.

When West launched her career in employee benefits and retirement planning in 1973, each 100 workers supported 20 or fewer retirees, by some calculations.

Vice President JD Vance and Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk are among those pushing for an increase in fertility. Vance has suggested giving parents more voting power, according to their numbers of children, or following the example of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán in giving low-interest loans to married parents and tax exemptions to women who have four children or more.

Frey said programs that incentivize fertility among U.S. women hardly ever work, so funding should support pre-kindergarten and paid family leave.

“I think the best you can do for people who do want to have kids is to make it easier and less expensive to have them and raise them,” he said. “Those things may not bring up the fertility rate as much as people would like, but at least the kids who are being born will have a better chance of succeeding.”

Schneider writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Emilie Megnien in Atlanta contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Tips provided to federal investigators about Donald Trump’s alleged involvement in Jeffrey Epstein’s schemes with young women and girls are “sensationalist” and “untrue,” the Justice Department said on Tuesday, after a new tranche of files released from the probe featured multiple references to the president.

The documents include a limousine driver reportedly overhearing Trump discussing a man named Jeffrey “abusing” a girl, and an alleged victim accusing Trump and Epstein of rape. It is unclear whether the FBI followed up on the tips. The alleged rape victim died from a gunshot wound to the head after reporting the incident.

Nowhere in the newly released files do federal law enforcement agents or prosecutors indicate that Trump was suspected of wrongdoing, or that Trump — whose friendship with Epstein lasted through the mid-2000s — was investigated himself.

But one unidentified federal prosecutor noted in a 2020 email that Trump had flown on Epstein’s private jet “many more times than previously has been reported,” including over a time period when Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s top confidante who would ultimately be convicted on five federal counts of sex trafficking and abuse, was being investigated for criminal activity.

The Justice Department released an unusual statement unequivocally defending the president.

“Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election,” the Justice Department statement read. “To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already.”

“Nevertheless, out of our commitment to the law and transparency, the DOJ is releasing these documents with the legally required protections for Epstein’s victims,” the department added.

The Justice Department files were released with heavy redactions after bipartisan lawmakers in Congress passed a new law compelling it to do so, despite Trump lobbying Republicans aggressively over the summer and fall to oppose the bill. The president ultimately signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act into law after the legislation passed with veto-proof majorities in both chambers.

One newly released file containing a letter purportedly from Epstein — a notorious child sex offender who died in jail while awaiting federal trial on sex-trafficking charges — drew widespread attention online, but was held up by the Justice Department as an example of faulty or misleading information contained in the files.

The letter appeared to be sent by Epstein to Larry Nassar, another convicted sex offender, shortly before Epstein’s death. The letter’s author suggested that Nassar would learn after receiving the note that Epstein had “taken the ‘short route’ home,” possibly referring to his suicide. It was postmarked from Virginia on Aug. 13, 2019, despite Epstein’s death in a Manhattan jail three days prior.

“Our president shares our love of young, nubile girls,” the letter reads. “When a young beauty walked by he loved to ‘grab snatch,’ whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system. Life is unfair.”

The Justice Department said that the FBI had confirmed that the letter is “FAKE” after it made the rounds on Tuesday.

“This fake letter serves as a reminder that just because a document is released by the Department of Justice does not make the allegations or claims within the document factual,” the department posted on social media. “Nevertheless, the DOJ will continue to release all material required by law.”

The department has faced bipartisan scrutiny since failing to release all of the Epstein files in its possession by Dec. 19, the legal deadline for it to do so, and for redacting material on the vast majority of the documents.

Justice Department officials said they were following the law by protecting victims with the redactions. The Epstein Files Transparency Act also directs the department not to redact images or references to prominent or political figures, and to provide an explanation for each and every redaction in writing.

The latest release, just days before the Christmas holiday, includes roughly 30,000 documents, the department said. Hundreds of thousands more are expected to be released in the coming weeks.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released a statement in response to the Tuesday release accusing the Justice Department of a “cover-up,” writing on social media, “the new DOJ documents raise serious questions about the relationship between Epstein and Donald Trump.”

Documents from Epstein’s private estate released by the oversight committee earlier this fall had already cast a spotlight on that relationship, revealing Epstein had written in emails to associates that Trump “knew about the girls.”

The latest documents release also includes an email from an individual identified as “A,” claiming to stay at Balmoral Castle, a royal residence in Scotland, asking Maxwell if she had found him “some new inappropriate friends.” Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew, has come under intense scrutiny over his ties to Epstein in recent years.

Speaking at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Monday, Trump said the continuing Epstein scandal amounts to a “distraction” from Republican successes, and expressed disapproval over the release of images in the files that reveal associates of Epstein.

“I believe they gave over 100,000 pages of documents, and there’s tremendous backlash,” Trump told reporters. “It’s an interesting question, because a lot of people are very angry that pictures are being released of other people that really had nothing to do with Epstein. But they’re in a picture with him because he was at a party, and you ruin a reputation of somebody. So a lot of people are very angry that this continues.”

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court ruled against President Trump on Tuesday and said he did not have legal authority to deploy the National Guard in Chicago to protect federal immigration agents.

Acting on a 6-3 vote, the justices denied Trump’s appeal and upheld orders from a federal district judge and the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals that said the president had exaggerated the threat and overstepped his authority.

The decision is a major defeat for Trump and his broad claim that he had the power to deploy military forces in U.S. cities.

In an unsigned order, the court said the Militia Act allows the president to deploy the National Guard only if U.S. military forces were unable to quell violence.

“At this preliminary stage, the Government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois. The President has not invoked a statute that provides an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act,” the court said.

Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch dissented.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had allowed the deployments in Los Angeles and Portland, Ore., after ruling that judges must defer to the president.

But U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled Dec. 10 that the federalized National Guard troops in Los Angeles must be returned to the control of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Trump’s lawyers had not claimed in their appeal that the president had the authority to deploy the military for ordinary law enforcement in the city. Instead, they said the Guard troops would be deployed “to protect federal officers and federal property.”

The two sides in the Chicago case, like in Portland, told dramatically different stories about the circumstances leading to Trump’s order.

Democratic officials in Illinois said small groups of protesters objected to the aggressive enforcement tactics used by federal immigration agents. They said police were able to contain the protests, clear the entrances and prevent violence.

By contrast, administration officials described repeated instances of disruption, confrontation and violence in Chicago. They said immigration agents were harassed and blocked from doing their jobs, and they needed the protection the National Guard could supply.

Trump Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer said the president had the authority to deploy the Guard if agents could not enforce the immigration laws.

“Confronted with intolerable risks of harm to federal agents and coordinated, violent opposition to the enforcement of federal law,” Trump called up the National Guard “to defend federal personnel, property, and functions in the face of ongoing violence,” he told the court in an emergency appeal filed in mid-October.

Illinois state lawyers disputed the administration’s account.

“The evidence shows that federal facilities in Illinois remain open, the individuals who have violated the law by attacking federal authorities have been arrested, and enforcement of immigration law in Illinois has only increased in recent weeks,” state Solicitor Gen. Jane Elinor Notz said in response to the administration’s appeal.

The Constitution gives Congress the power “to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions.”

The Militia Act of 1903 says the president may call up and deploy the National Guard if he faces an invasion, a rebellion or is “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.”

Trump’s lawyers said that referred to police and federal agents. But after taking a closer look, the court concluded it referred to the regular military forces. By that standard, the president’s authority to deploy the National Guard comes only after the military has failed to quell violence.

But on Oct. 29, the justices asked both sides to explain what the law meant when it referred to the “regular forces.”

Until then, both sides had assumed it referred to federal agents and police, not the military.

Trump’s lawyers stuck to their position. They said the law referred to the “civilian forces that regularly execute the laws,” not the military.

If those civilians cannot enforce the law, “there is a strong tradition in this country of favoring the use of the military rather than the standing military to quell domestic disturbances,” they said.

State attorneys for Illinois said the “regular forces” are the “full-time, professional military.” And they said the president could not “even plausibly argue” that the U.S. soldiers were required to enforce the law in Chicago.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and Newsom filed a brief in the Chicago case that warned of the danger of the president using the military in American cities.

“On June 7, for the first time in our Nation’s history, the President invoked [U.S. law] to federalize a State’s National Guard over the objections of the State’s Governor,” they said.

“President Trump and Defense Secretary Hegseth transferred 4,000 members of California’s National Guard — one in three of the Guard’s total active members — to federal control to serve in a civilian law enforcement role on the streets of Los Angeles and other communities in Southern California.”

That has proved to be “the opening salvo in an effort to transform the role of the military in American society,” they said. “At no prior point in our history has the President used the military this way: as his own personal police force, to be deployed for whatever law enforcement missions he deems appropriate.

“What the federal government seeks is a standing army, drawn from state militias, deployed at the direction of the President on a nationwide basis, for civilian law enforcement purposes, for an indefinite period of time,” they said.

California milk cartons may lose their coveted recycling symbol, the one with the chasing arrows, potentially threatening the existence of the ubiquitous beverage containers.

In a letter Dec. 15, Waste Management, one of the nation’s largest waste companies, told the state the company would no longer sort cartons out of the waste stream for recycling at its Sacramento facility. Instead, it will send the milk- and food-encrusted packaging to the landfill.

Marcus Nettz, Waste Management’s director of recycling for Northern California and Nevada, cited concerns from buyers and overseas regulators that cartons — even in small amounts — could contaminate valuable material, such as paper, leading them to reject the imports.

The company decision means the number of Californians with access to beverage carton recycling falls below the threshold in the state’s “Truth in Recycling” law, or Senate Bill 343.

And according to the law, that means the label has to come off.

The recycling label is critical for product and packaging companies to keep selling cartons in California as the state’s single-use packaging law goes fully into effect. That law, Senate Bill 54, calls for all single-use packaging to be recyclable or compostable by 2032. If it isn’t, it can’t be sold or distributed in the state.

The labels also provide a feel-good marketing symbol suggesting to consumers the cartons won’t end up in a landfill when they’re discarded, or find their way into the ocean where plastic debris is a large and growing problem.

On Tuesday, the state agency in charge of waste, CalRecycle, acknowledged Waste Management’s change.

In updated guidelines for the Truth in Recycling law, recycling rates for carton material have fallen below the state threshold.

It’s a setback for carton manufacturers and their customers, including soup- and juice-makers. Their trade group, the National Carton Council, has been lobbying the state, providing evidence that Waste Management’s Sacramento Recycling and Transfer Station successfully combines cartons with mixed paper and ships it to Malaysia and other Asian countries including Vietnam, proving that there is a market. The Carton Council persuaded CalRecycle to reverse a decision it made earlier this year that beverage cartons did not meet the recycling requirements of the Truth in Recycling law.

Brendon Holland, a spokesman for the trade group, said in an email that his organization is aware of Waste Management’s decision, but its understanding is that the company will now sort the cartons into their own dedicated waste stream “once a local end market is available.”

He added that even with “this temporary local adjustment,” food and beverage cartons are collected and sorted in most of California, and said this is just a “temporary end market adjustment — not a long-term shift away from historical momentum.”

In 2022, Malaysia and Vietnam banned imports of mixed paper bales — which include colored paper, newspapers, magazines and other paper products — from the U.S. because they were so often contaminated with non-paper products and plastic, such as beverage cartons. Waste Management told The Times on Dec. 5 that it has a “Certificate of Approval” by Malaysia’s customs agency to export “sorted paper material.” CalRecycle said it has no regulatory authority on “what materials may or may not be exported.”

Adding the Sacramento facility to the list of waste companies that were recycling cartons meant that the threshold required by the state had been met: More than 60% of the state’s counties had access to carton recycling.

At the time, CalRecycle’s decision to give the recycling stamp to beverage cartons was controversial. Many in the environmental, anti-plastic and no-waste sectors saw it as a sign that CalRecycle was doing the bidding of the plastic and packaging industry, as opposed to trying to rid the state of non-recyclable, polluting waste — which is not only required by law, but is something state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta is investigating.

Others said it was a sign that the Truth in Recycling law was working: Markets were being discovered and in some cases, created, to provide recycling.

“Recyclability isn’t static, it depends on a complicated system of sorting, transportation, processing, and, ultimately, manufacturers buying the recycled material to make a new product,” said Nick Lapis, director of advocacy for Californians Against Waste.

He said this new information, which will likely remove the recycling label from the cartons, also underscores the effectiveness of the law.

“By prohibiting recyclability claims on products that don’t get recycled, SB 343 doesn’t just protect consumers. It forces manufacturers to either use recyclable materials or come to the table to work with recyclers, local governments and policymakers to develop widespread sustainable and resilient markets,” he said.

Beverage and food cartons — despite their papery appearance — are composed of layers of paper, plastic and sometimes aluminum. The sandwiched blend extends product shelf life, making it attractive to food and beverage companies.

But the companies and municipalities that receive cartons as waste say the packaging is problematic. They say recycling markets for the material are few and far between.

California, with its roughly 40 million residents, has some of the strictest waste laws in the nation. In 1989, the state passed legislation requiring cities, towns and municipalities to divert at least 50% of their residential waste away from landfills. The idea was to incentivize recycling and reuse. However an increasing number of products have since entered the commercial market and waste stream — such as single use plastics, polystyrene and beverage cartons — that have limited (if any) recycling potential, can’t be reused, and are growing in number every year.

Fines for municipalities that fail to achieve the required diversion rates can run $10,000 a day.

As a result, garbage haulers often look for creative ways to deal with the waste, including shipping trash products overseas or across the border. For years, China was the primary destination for California’s plastic, contaminated paper and other waste. But in 2018, China closed its doors to foreign garbage, so U.S. exporters began dumping their waste in smaller southeast Asian countries, including Malaysia and Vietnam.

They too have now tried to close the doors to foreign trash as reports of polluted waterways, chokingly toxic air, and illness grows — and as they struggle with inadequate infrastructure to deal with their own domestic waste.

Jan Dell, the founder and CEO of Last Beach Cleanup, released a report with the Basel Action Network, an anti-plastic organization, earlier this month showing that the Sacramento facility and other California waste companies were sending bales of carton-contaminated paper to Malaysia, Vietnam and other Asian nations.

According to export data, public records searches and photographic evidence collected by Dell and her co-authors at the Basel Action Network, more than 117,000 tons or 4,126 shipping containers worth of mixed paper bales were sent by California waste companies to Malaysia between January and July of this year.

Dell said these exports violate international law. A spokesman for Waste Management said the material they were sending was not illegal — and that they had received approval from Malaysia.

However, the Dec. 15 letter suggests they were receiving more pushback from their export markets than they’d previously disclosed.

“While certain end users maintain … that paper mills are able to process and recycle cartons,” some of them “have also shared concerns … that the inclusion of cartons … may result in rejection,” wrote Nettz.

Dell said she was “pleased” that Waste Management “stopped the illegal sortation of cartons into mixed paper bales. Now we ask them and other waste companies to stop illegally exporting mixed paper waste to countries that have banned it.”

Former Nebraska U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse, a conservative who rebuked political tribalism and stood out as a longtime critic of President Trump, announced Tuesday he was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer.

Sasse, 53, made the announcement on social media, saying he learned of the disease last week and is “now marching to the beat of a faster drummer.”

“This is a tough note to write, but since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I’ll cut to the chase,” Sasse wrote. “Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.”

Sasse was first elected to the Senate in 2014. He comfortably won reelection in 2020 after fending off a pro-Trump primary challenger. Sasse drew the ire of GOP activists for his vocal criticism of Trump’s character and policies, including questioning his moral values and saying he cozied up to adversarial foreign leaders.

Sasse was one of seven Republican senators to vote to convict the former president of “ incitement of insurrection ” after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. After threats of a public censure back home, he extended his critique to party loyalists who blindly worship one man and rejected him for his refusal to bend the knee.

He resigned from the Senate in 2023 to serve as the 13th president of the University of Florida after a contentious approval process. He left that post the following year after his wife was diagnosed with epilepsy.

Sasse, who has degrees from Harvard, St. John’s College and Yale, worked as an assistant secretary of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush. He served as president of Midland University, a small Christian university in eastern Nebraska, before he ran for the Senate.

Sasse and his wife have three children.

“I’m not going down without a fight. One sub-part of God’s grace is found in the jawdropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more,” Sasse wrote. “Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived.”

SAN FRANCISCO — He’s considered a darling of Democratic Party politics, a smooth-talking young millionaire with Kennedy good looks who has basked in the media limelight while being courted as a possible national political figure.

But beneath the surface, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Camelot has been crumbling.

After admitting in the last five days to adultery and alcohol abuse, Newsom has suffered a public political meltdown that has rocked City Hall and led one San Francisco supervisor to call for his resignation.

The 39-year-old mayor, who is running for reelection in November, acknowledged last week that he had an affair with the wife of a longtime aide. On Monday, he announced he would seek counseling because he had “come to the conclusion that I will be a better person without alcohol in my life.”

But the mayor’s problems appear to run deeper than behind-the-scenes indiscretions, raising questions about his ability to lead one of America’s largest cities.

Critics and backers alike now acknowledge that Newsom has become disengaged, reluctant to grapple with such critical issues as the city’s soaring homicide rate among black residents. In recent months, he has even refused to meet with supervisors — longtime supporters included.

In this famously forgiving place, some at City Hall say the mayor should be granted the leeway to deal with his problems while in office. Others express pent-up frustration and question whether he should continue to run for a second term.

Supervisor Jake McGoldrick on Tuesday called for Newsom’s resignation.

“If he lived by any code of honorable behavior, he would have a personal epiphany and do the right thing,” McGoldrick said. “The only epiphany he’s had is ‘How do we spin this?’ ”

Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier, a longtime Newsom ally, said it was too early to call for any political heads.

“Most people grapple with things in their lives, but most don’t have to do it publicly — and the mayor has taken that courageous step,” she said. “If anyone should call for his resignation, it should be city residents, and they haven’t done that.”

Meanwhile, public reaction to the mayor’s admissions appears to be mixed. Local newspaper websites have run the gamut — with comments supporting Newsom running about equal to those expressing anger and even vitriol.

As she lunched at a Financial District salad bar Tuesday, Adriana Pietras, 25, a paralegal, said Newsom’s actions have changed the way she views the mayor. “I don’t think he should resign,” she said, “But I’m not sure he should run again.”

Nearby, another voter said the mayor should leave office today.

“His transgression was a serious integrity issue,” said the man, who asked not to be named. “But he won’t ever resign. He’s a politician. Bill Clinton’s precedent gives him hope he can survive this.”

Elected to the mayor’s office in 2003, Newsom, a former supervisor, quickly won the adulation of San Franciscans with his forceful stance in support of same-sex marriages. Images of thousands of gay and lesbian couples receiving marriage licenses at San Francisco’s gilded City Hall were seen around the world.

Although some believed Newsom’s stand was too radical for the mainstream and contributed to the Democrats’ 2004 national election losses, his cachet continued to grow. Newsom’s image, with his slicked-back hair and aquiline nose, appeared on the covers of national news magazines.

He was, said Simon Rosenberg, founder of the New Democrat Network, which cultivates progressive political leadership, “arguably the single most promising Democrat under 40 in the country.”

“Whatever ‘it’ is,” Rosenberg said in 2004, “I think Gavin’s got it.”

Newsom took on celebrity status with an eager staff of aides and an aggressive spokesman with experience on national campaigns. News releases gushed about the mayor’s accomplishments.

He crafted a plan to offer healthcare to every resident. He touted San Francisco as among the world’s greenest cities and promised to provide free wireless access citywide.

But some community and business leaders have complained that the mayor’s inaccessibility may have cost the city dearly: the San Francisco 49ers suddenly announced in the midst of negotiations for a new stadium that the team was looking to move to nearby Santa Clara — in part because the team owner couldn’t get Newsom on the phone.

City government, meanwhile, is deadlocked as the mayor faces off against critics on the Board of Supervisors who characterize Newsom’s style as distant and arrogant. In November, supervisors brought a nonbinding ballot measure to voters suggesting that the mayor attend meetings to submit to “question time.”

Voters approved it. But Newsom dismissed it as a political gesture. Instead, he promised to hold community town hall meetings.

In response, angry residents showed up at one Newsom appearance dressed in chicken costumes.

Relations had so soured by January that in his inaugural speech as president of the Board of Supervisors, Aaron Peskin pointedly denounced an arrogant style-over-substance administration, saying, “We will lead by deeds and actions, not by hollow pronouncements and press releases.”

Newsom’s personal life first became controversial last fall after he briefly dated a woman who wasn’t old enough to drink legally.

Through it all, Newsom seemed to tire of the spotlight. Perhaps, he told the local media, he wouldn’t run for reelection after all. Perhaps he would just return to private life.

Then it all came crashing down.

Last Thursday, Newsom admitted having an affair with his former appointments secretary, the wife of one of his most trusted aides. The affair reportedly took place while the mayor was splitting from his then-wife, attorney and television analyst Kimberly Guilfoyle.

His plans for rehab followed on Monday — creating a stir in the national news media that Newsom has so often courted.

Tuesday’s headline in the New York Post: “S.F. ‘Sex’ Mayor in Booze RX.”

McGoldrick, the supervisor, called the headline a fitting comedown for a mayor “who lives by PR.”

“When that gets tarnished, there’s not much left,” he said.

Supervisor Bevan Dufty, a longtime Newsom friend, has called on McGoldrick to be patient, saying that Newsom needs time to heal.

But even Dufty said that the mayor’s personal crisis has taken a toll on city government.

“He has been profoundly unhappy in personal life and in aspects of his job, and that has shown,” he said. “He has taken umbrage at every turn. He’s been disdainful of me and my colleagues. It’s hard, especially since I viewed myself as an ally.”

Joel Benenson, a Democratic pollster and strategist, said it would be hard for Newsom to win higher office.

“American voters do have the capacity to forgive. They believe in redemption,” he said. “But while you can come back from an affair, it’s apparent he has crossed the line. He would have to spend too much time explaining alcohol abuse and what he did to his friend’s family. It would come to define him.”

As for Newsom’s future in City Hall, the debate continues.

“I’ve lived through three mayors — I know what it takes to get the job done,” said Supervisor Tom Ammiano. “I’m not calling for him to resign, but I don’t think he should run again. That would be traumatic” for the city.

But Dufty insisted that Newsom is up to the job.

“There’s no question he’s enormously talented,” he said. “The ultimate question is, ‘Is this what he wants to do?’ When it comes to a second term, the commentary is, ‘The only person running against Gavin Newsom is Gavin Newsom himself.’ ”

john.glionna@latimes.com

lee.romney@latimes.com

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Trump said he will be extending invitations to next year’s U.S.-hosted Group of 20 summit to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as the Republican administration looks to deepen its relationship with the Central Asian nations.

Trump announced the plan on Tuesday after holding separate phone calls with Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev.

Neither country is a member of the G20, but the host country of the annual leaders’ gathering of major economies often invites non-members to attend the summit. The 2026 gathering is planned for Trump’s golf club in Doral, Fla., near Miami.

“The relationship with both Countries is spectacular,” Trump said in a social media post about the calls. Trump is currently on vacation at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

The Kazakh and Uzbek leaders visited Washington last month along with the leaders of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan for talks with Trump.

The administration is giving greater attention to Central Asia, which holds deep reserves of minerals and produces roughly half the world’s uranium, as it intensifies the hunt for rare earth metals needed for high-tech devices, including smartphones, electric vehicles and fighter jets.

Central Asia’s critical mineral exports have long tilted toward China and Russia.

During last month’s visit, Tokayev announced that his Muslim-majority country will join the Abraham Accords, the Trump administration effort to strengthen ties between Israel and Arab and Muslim majority countries.

The largely symbolic move came as the administration is trying to revive an initiative that was the signature foreign policy achievement of Trump’s first term, when his administration forged diplomatic and commercial ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco.

Trump last month announced that he is barring South Africa from participating in next year’s summit at his Miami-area club and will stop all payments and subsidies to the country over its treatment of a U.S. government representative at this year’s meeting.

Trump chose not to have an American government delegation attend this year’s summit hosted by South Africa, saying he did so because its white Afrikaners were being violently persecuted. It is a claim that South Africa, which was mired for decades in racial apartheid, has rejected as baseless.

Madhani writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump has announced a bold plan for the Navy to build a new, large warship that he is calling a “battleship” as part of a larger vision to create a “Golden Fleet.”

“They’ll be the fastest, the biggest, and by far 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built,” Trump claimed during the announcement at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

According to Trump, the ship, the first of which will be named the USS Defiant, will be longer and larger than the World War II-era Iowa-class battleships and will be armed with hypersonic missiles, nuclear cruise missiles, rail guns, and high-powered lasers — all technologies that are in various stages of development by the Navy.

The announcement comes just a month after the Navy scrapped its plans to build a new, small warship, citing growing delays and cost overruns, deciding instead to go with a modified version of a Coast Guard cutter that was being produced until recently. The sea service has also failed to build its other newly designed ships, like the new Ford-class aircraft carrier and Columbia-class submarines, on time and on budget.

Meanwhile, the Navy has struggled to field some of the technologies Trump says will be aboard the new ship.

The Navy spent hundreds of millions of dollars and more than 15 years trying to field a railgun aboard a ship before finally abandoning the effort in 2021.

Laser technology has seen more success in making its way onto Navy ships in recent years, but its employment is still limited. One system that is designed to blind or disable drone sensors is now aboard eight destroyers after spending eight years in development.

Developing nuclear cruise missile capabilities or deploying them on ships may also violate non-proliferation treaties that the U.S. has signed with Russia.

A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing plans, told the Associated Press that design efforts are now underway for the new ship and construction is planned to begin in the early 2030s.

Both Trump and Navy Secretary John Phelan spoke about the new Trump-class warship as a spiritual successor to the battleships of the 20th century, but historically that term has referred to a very specific type of ship — a large, heavily armored vessel armed with massive guns designed to bombard other ships or targets ashore.

This type of ship was at the height of prominence during World War II, and the largest of the U.S. battleships, the Iowa-class, were roughly 60,000 tons. But after World War II, the battleship’s role in modern fleets diminished rapidly in favor of aircraft carriers and long-range missiles. The U.S. Navy did modernize four Iowa-class battleships in the 1980s by adding cruise missiles and anti-ship missiles, along with modern radars, but by the 1990s all four were decommissioned.

According to a newly created website for the “Golden Fleet,” this new “guided missile battleship” is set to be roughly the same size as Iowa-class battleships but only weigh about half as much, around 35,000 tons, and have far smaller crews — between 650 and 850 sailors.

Its primary weapons will also be missiles, not large naval guns.

Trump has long held strong opinions on specific aspects of the Navy’s fleet, sometimes with a view toward keeping older technology instead of modernizing.

During his first term, he unsuccessfully called for the return to steam-powered catapults to launch jets from the Navy’s newest aircraft carriers instead of the more modern electromagnetic system.

He has also complained to Phelan about the look of the Navy’s destroyers and decried Navy ships being covered in rust.

Phelan told senators at his confirmation hearing that Trump “has texted me numerous times very late at night, sometimes after one (o’clock) in the morning” about “rusty ships or ships in a yard, asking me what am I doing about it.”

On a visit to a shipyard that was working on the now-canceled Constellation-class frigate in 2020, Trump said he personally changed the design of the ship.

“I looked at it, I said, ‘That’s a terrible-looking ship, let’s make it beautiful,’” Trump said at the time.

He said Monday he will have a direct role in designing this new warship as well.

“The U.S. Navy will lead the design of these ships along with me, because I’m a very aesthetic person,” Trump said.

Phelan said the new USS Defiant “will inspire awe and reverence for the American flag whenever it pulls into a foreign port.”

Toropin and Madhani write for the Associated Press.

With his White House aspirations riding in no small part on the kind of Ohio voter who favors Budweiser over Pouilly-Fuissé, Mitt Romney -– like John F. Kerry before him -– has been struggling mightily to shed his image as a man of the Massachusetts elite.

This weekend, he gave it a break.

Romney took a jaunt to the most rarefied precincts of Martha’s Vineyard, Cape Cod and Nantucket on Saturday, after a Friday evening of mingling with millionaires in the Hamptons on Long Island.

It was all part of a chase, by private plane of course, for campaign money.

The former governor of Massachusetts left most of his traveling press behind. (“Bad optics,” campaign consultants call it.) Instead, he let just a small pool of reporters tag along to catch glimpses of Romney mostly from afar as he and his entourage made their way along such streets as Lily Pond Lane in East Hampton, N.Y.

“An 8-foot hedge blocked your pooler’s view of Romney exiting the house and getting into his SUV,” a journalist in the pool reported from outside the Southampton estate of hedge fund mogul Martin Gruss, where the Republican candidate stayed overnight on Friday.

Around the time of Romney’s “clambake luncheon” on Martha’s Vineyard, which included a $50,000-a-ticket VIP reception, President Obama was telling a less well-to-do crowd in New Hampshire that his rival was pushing tax cuts for the rich on the premise that “somehow prosperity’s going to rain down on all of you.”

Not that Obama, whose fundraising dinners with the likes of George Clooney have made headlines, hasn’t had optics problems of his own. Republicans trashed Obama when his campaign put out a video of Vogue editor Anna Wintour telling donors “don’t be late” to a soiree at Sarah Jessica Parker’s house on the same day that the unemployment rate notched up to 8.2%.

Romney’s weekend opened at Sebonack Golf Club in Southampton, where his motorcade rolled through the stately brick gates and up a long, winding driveway. Guests included NFL football team owners Steve Ross (Miami Dolphins) and Woody Johnson (New York Jets).

“I guess if all golf courses were like this, I can understand why the president plays so much golf,” Romney told donors at the club. “If I had a course like this near me, I think I’d probably play a lot of rounds as well. This is just gorgeous.”

On Martha’s Vineyard, Romney joined donors at a private home near the Farm Neck Golf Club, where Obama and former President Bill Clinton have played during family vacations.

Before taking off for Cape Cod, where billionaire businessman Bill Koch and his wife, Bridget, threw a reception for Romney, the candidate lamented his time spent hunting for money.

“You appreciate all the help you get,” he said. “But you wish you could spend more time on the campaign trail.”

From Cape Cod, Romney flew on to Nantucket, where Kerry’s windsurfing during his 2004 campaign for president was captured on videotape that was used in advertising by PresidentGeorge W. Bush’s reelection campaign to portray the Massachusetts senator as a flip-flopping elitist.

michael.finnegan@latimes.com

In 2013, before the Affordable Care Act helped millions get health insurance, California’s Placer County provided limited healthcare to some 3,400 uninsured residents who couldn’t afford to see a doctor.

For several years, that number has been zero in the predominantly white, largely rural county stretching from Sacramento’s eastern suburbs to the shores of Lake Tahoe.

The trend could be short-lived.

County health officials there and across the country are bracing for an estimated 10 million newly uninsured patients over the next decade in the wake of Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The act, which President Trump signed into law this summer, is expected to reduce Medicaid spending by more than $900 billion over that period.

“This is the moment where a lot of hard decisions have to be made about who gets care and who doesn’t,” said Nadereh Pourat, director of the Health Economics and Evaluation Research Program at UCLA. “The number of people who are going to lose coverage is large, and a lot of the systems that were in place to provide care to those individuals have either gone away or diminished.”

It’s an especially thorny challenge for states such as California and New Mexico where counties are legally required to help their poorest residents through what are known as indigent care programs. Under Obamacare, both states were able to expand Medicaid to include more low-income residents, alleviating counties of patient loads and redirecting much of their funding for the patchwork of local programs that provided bare-bones services.

Placer County, which estimates that 16,000 residents could lose healthcare coverage by 2028, quit operating its own clinics nearly a decade ago.

“Most of the infrastructure that we had to meet those needs is gone,” said Rob Oldham, Placer County’s director of health and human services. “This is a much bigger problem than it was a decade ago and much more costly.”

In December, county officials asked to join a statewide association that provides care to mostly small, rural counties, citing an expected rise in the number of uninsured residents.

New Mexico’s second-most populous county, Doña Ana, added dental care for seniors and behavioral health benefits after many of its poorest residents qualified for Medicaid. Now, federal cuts could force the county to reconsider, said Jamie Michael, Doña Ana’s health and human services director.

“At some point we’re going to have to look at either allocating more money or reducing the benefits,” Michael said.

Straining state budgets

Some states, such as Idaho and Colorado, abandoned laws that required counties to be providers of last resort for their residents. In other states, uninsured patients often delay care or receive it at hospital emergency rooms or community clinics. Those clinics are often supported by a mix of federal, state and local funds, according to the National Assn. of Community Health Centers.

Even in states like Texas, which opted not to expand its Medicaid program and continued to rely on counties to care for many of its uninsured, rising healthcare costs are straining local budgets.

“As we have more growth, more people coming in, it’s harder and harder to fund things that are required by the state Legislature, and this isn’t one we can decrease,” said Windy Johnson, program manager with the Texas Indigent Health Care Assn. “It is a fiscal issue.”

California lawmakers face a nearly $18-billion budget deficit in the 2026-27 fiscal year, according to the latest estimates by the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who recently acknowledged he’s mulling over a White House run, has rebuffed several efforts to significantly raise taxes on the ultrawealthy. Despite blasting the bill passed by Republicans in Congress as a “complete moral failure” that guts healthcare programs, the Democrat this year rolled back state Medi-Cal benefits for seniors and for immigrants without legal status after rising costs forced the program to borrow $4.4 billion from the state’s general fund.

H.D. Palmer, a spokesperson for the state’s Department of Finance, said that the Newsom administration is still refining its fiscal projections and that it would be premature to discuss potential budget solutions.

Newsom will unveil his initial budget proposal in January. State officials have said California could lose $30 billion a year in federal funding for Medi-Cal under the new law, as much as 15% of the state program’s entire budget.

“Local governments don’t really have much capacity to raise revenue,” said Scott Graves, a director at the independent California Budget & Policy Center with a focus on state budgets. “State leaders, if they choose to prioritize it, need to decide where they’re going to find the funding that would be needed to help those who are going to lose healthcare as a result of these federal funding and policy cuts.”

Reviving county-based programs in the near term would require “considerable fiscal restructuring” through the state budget, the Legislative Analyst’s Office said in an October report.

No easy fixes

It’s unclear how many people are enrolled in California’s county indigent programs, because the state doesn’t track enrollment and utilization. But enrollment in county health safety net programs dropped dramatically in the first full year of Affordable Care Act implementation, going from about 858,000 people statewide in 2013 to roughly 176,000 by the end of 2014, according to a survey at the time by Health Access California.

“We’re going to need state investment,” said Michelle Gibbons, executive director of the County Health Executives Assn. of California. “After the Affordable Care Act and as folks got coverage, we didn’t imagine a moment like this where potentially that progress would be unwound and folks would be falling back into indigent care.”

In November, voters in affluent Santa Clara County approved a sales tax increase, in part to backfill the loss of federal funds. But even in the home of Silicon Valley, where the median household income is about 1.7 times the statewide average, that is expected to cover only a third of the $1 billion a year the county stands to lose.

Health advocates fear that, absent major state investments, Californians could see a return to the previous patchwork of county-run programs, with local governments choosing whom and what they cover and for how long.

In many cases, indigent programs didn’t include specialty care, behavioral health or regular access to primary care. Counties can also exclude people based on immigration status or income. Before the ACA, many uninsured people who needed care didn’t get it, which could lead to them winding up in emergency rooms with untreated health conditions or even dying, said Kiran Savage-Sangwan, executive director of the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network.

Rachel Linn Gish, interim deputy director of Health Access California, a consumer advocacy group, said that “it created a very unequal, maldistributed program throughout the state.”

“Many of us,” she said. “including counties, are reeling trying to figure out: What are those downstream impacts?”

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

For decades, American families have gathered to watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” on Christmas Eve.

The 1946 Frank Capra movie, about a man who on one of the worst days of his life discovers how he has positively impacted his hometown of Bedford Falls, is beloved for extolling selflessness, community and the little guy taking on rapacious capitalists. Take those values, add in powerful acting and the promise of light in the darkest of hours, and it’s the only movie that makes me cry.

No less a figure of goodwill than Pope Leo XIV revealed last month that it’s one of his favorite movies. But as with anything holy in this nation, President Trump and his followers are trying to hijack the holiday classic.

Last weekend, the Department of Homeland Security posted two videos celebrating its mass deportation campaign. One, titled “It’s a Wonderful Flight,” re-creates the scene where George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart in one of his best performances) contemplates taking his own life by jumping off a snowy bridge. But the protagonist is a Latino man crying over the film’s despairing score that he’ll “do anything” to return to his wife and kids and “live again.”

Cut to the same man now mugging for the camera on a plane ride out of the United States. The scene ends with a plug for an app that allows undocumented immigrants to take up Homeland Security’s offer of a free self-deportation flight and a $1,000 bonus — $3,000 if they take the one-way trip during the holidays.

The other DHS clip is a montage of Yuletide cheer — Santa, elves, stockings, dancing — over a sped-up electro-trash remake of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You.” In one split-second image, Bedford Falls residents sing “Auld Lang Syne,” just after they’ve saved George Bailey from financial ruin and an arrest warrant.

“This Christmas,” the caption reads, “our hearts grow as our illegal population shrinks.”

“It’s a Wonderful Life” has long served as a political Rorschach test. Conservatives once thought Capra’s masterpiece was so anti-American for its vilification of big-time bankers that they accused him of sneaking in pro-Communist propaganda. In fact, the director was a Republican who paused his career during World War II to make short documentaries for the Department of War. Progressives tend to loathe the film’s patriotism, its sappiness, its relegation of Black people to the background and its depiction of urban life as downright demonic.

Then came Trump’s rise to power. His similarity to the film’s villain, Mr. Potter — a wealthy, nasty slumlord who names everything he takes control of after himself — was easier to point out than spots on a cheetah. Left-leaning essayists quickly made the facile comparison, and a 2018 “Saturday Night Live” parody imagining a country without Trump as president so infuriated him that he threatened to sue.

But in recent years, Trumpworld has claimed that the film is actually a parable about their dear leader.

Trump is a modern day George Bailey, the argument goes, a secular saint walking away from sure riches to try to save the “rabble” that Mr. Potter — who in their minds somehow represents the liberal elite — sneers at. A speaker at the 2020 Republican National Convention explicitly made the comparison, and the recent Homeland Security videos warping “It’s a Wonderful Life” imply it too — except now, it’s unchecked immigration that threatens Bedford Falls.

The Trump administration’s take on “It’s a Wonderful Life” is that it reflects a simpler, better, whiter time. But that’s a conscious misinterpretation of this most American of movies, whose foundation is strengthened by immigrant dreams.

Director Frank Capra

(Handout)

In his 1971 autobiography “The Name Above the Title,” Capra revealed that his “dirty, hollowed-out immigrant family” left Sicily for Los Angeles in the 1900s to reunite with an older brother who “jumped the ship” to enter the U.S. years before. Young Frank grew up in the “sleazy Sicilian ghetto” of Lincoln Heights, finding kinship at Manual Arts High with the “riff-raff” of immigrant and working-class white kids “other schools discarded” and earning U.S. citizenship only after serving in the first World War. Hard times wouldn’t stop Capra and his peers from achieving success.

The director captured that sentiment in “It’s a Wonderful Life” through the character of Giuseppe Martini, an Italian immigrant who runs a bar. His heavily accented English is heard early in the film as one of many Bedford Falls residents praying for Bailey. In a flashback, Martini is seen leaving his shabby Potter-owned apartment with a goat and a troop of kids for a suburban tract home that Bailey developed and sold to him.

Today, Trumpworld would cast the Martinis as swarthy invaders destroying the American way of life. In “It’s a Wonderful Life,” they’re America itself.

When an angry husband punches Bailey at Martini’s bar for insulting his wife, the immigrant kicks out the man for assaulting his “best friend.” And when Bedford Falls gathers at the end of the film to raise funds and save Bailey, it’s Martini who arrives with the night’s profits from his business, as well as wine for everyone to celebrate.

Immigrants are so key to the good life in this country, the film argues, that in the alternate reality if George Bailey had never lived, Martini is nowhere to be heard.

Capra long stated that “It’s a Wonderful Life” was his favorite of his own movies, adding in his memoir that it was a love letter “for the Magdalenes stoned by hypocrites and the afflicted Lazaruses with only dogs to lick their sores.”

I’ve tried to catch at least the ending every Christmas Eve to warm my spirits, no matter how bad things may be. But after Homeland Security’s hijacking of Capra’s message, I made time to watch the entire film, which I’ve seen at least 10 times, before its customary airing on NBC.

I shook my head, feeling the deja vu, as Bailey’s father sighed, “In this town, there’s no place for any man unless they crawl to Potter.”

I cheered as Bailey told Potter years later, “You think the whole world revolves around you and your money. Well, it doesn’t.” I wondered why more people haven’t said that to Trump.

When Potter ridiculed Bailey as someone “trapped into frittering his life away playing nursemaid to a lot of garlic eaters,” I was reminded of the right-wingers who portray those of us who stand up to Trump’s cruelty as stupid and even treasonous.

And as the famous conclusion came, all I thought about was immigrants.

People giving Bailey whatever money they could spare reminded me of how regular folks have done a far better job standing up to Trump’s deportation Leviathan than the rich and mighty have.

As the film ends, with Bailey and his family looking on in awe at how many people came to help out, I remembered my own immigrant elders, who also forsook dreams and careers so their children could achieve their own — the only reward to a lifetime of silent sacrifice.

The tears flowed as always, this time prompted by a new takeaway that was always there — “Solo el pueblo salva el pueblo,” or “Only we can save ourselves,” a phrase adopted by pro-immigrant activists in Southern California this year as a mantra of comfort and resistance.

It’s the heart of “It’s a Wonderful Life” and the opposite of Trump’s push to make us all dependent on his mercy. He and his fellow Potters can’t do anything to change that truth.

SACRAMENTO — Bolstering Republican calls for deeper spending cuts, state Controller Kathleen Connell warned Wednesday that disappointing revenues are paving the way for the state’s budget gap to swell to nearly $27 billion.

Connell’s warning came as talks over a new spending blueprint, already more than eight weeks overdue, appeared stalled in the Assembly. Democrats want $4.2 billion in new revenue to help close a budget gap that has been projected at $23.6 billion, but Republicans seek deeper spending cuts to eliminate the need for tax hikes and to diminish future shortfalls.

Connell said June and July revenues are running $434 million below projections by Gov. Gray Davis’ administration, and the state would take in $2.9 billion less than anticipated during the current fiscal year if the trend continues.

Even after a budget is adopted for 2002-03, the imbalance between revenue and expenditures is expected to continue. Connell projects a $12-billion shortfall next year, and she said the situation warrants a midyear review of the spending plan lawmakers approve this year.

Anita Gore, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Finance, had no comment on Connell’s revised revenue forecast. Gore said her department would not revise its revenue estimates until January.

Connell said her office is preparing a plan for the state to borrow as much as $12 billion to avert a cash crunch that will materialize in November if the current standoff drags into the fall. She warned, however, that securing the short-term borrowing would not free her to make certain payments without a budget in place.

State payments for abortion services provided after Sunday as well as payments owed to 21 regional centers that help connect the developmentally disabled to services–ranging from transportation to residential care–will cease without legislative intervention until a budget is approved and signed by Davis.

Abortion rights advocates disagreed Wednesday with Connell’s interpretation of the law.

Connell has already stopped paying elected officials, legislative staff and hundreds of vendors who provide goods and services to the state. Assembly Republicans urged Democrats Wednesday to hear a bill that would allow emergency appropriations to be made for the developmentally disabled, vendors and others.

WASHINGTON — There is an unmistakable aura of sadness when William P. Rogers talks about the man who was once his close friend and how that friend deceived him.

“I never before had a friend who turned out to be not quite a friend,” says the former attorney general and secretary of State.

The friend was Richard Nixon.

Oblivious to the clatter of dishes and the hum of lunch conversation in a crowded restaurant, Rogers sat at a corner table recently and looked back on years at the center of history.

He was President Eisenhower’s attorney general and Nixon’s secretary of State. In private law practice, he represented Martin Luther King Jr. before the Supreme Court.

But he is quick to point out that he had no role in one landmark event of the Nixon years–Watergate.

Nixon “never asked me about any of that nonsense until much too late,” Rogers said.

Rogers left the Nixon administration in August 1973 and resumed private law practice, a low-profile life he clearly enjoyed. He rarely gave interviews and never talked in detail about his relationship with Nixon.

Now 84, he put aside that reluctance and recalled his years as a valued advisor and close friend to Nixon as well as the discomforting knowledge of how much Nixon never told him.

“He didn’t lie; he just didn’t tell me the truth,” Rogers said.

It wasn’t only the truth about Watergate.

When Nixon sent Henry Kissinger, his White House national security advisor, on a secret trip to China, his secretary of State was left out in the cold.

Neither did Rogers know about Kissinger’s secret negotiations with North Vietnam.

Their bureaucratic struggle was no contest. After the 1972 election, Nixon decided it was time to replace Rogers with Kissinger.

White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman wrote in his diary: “Had a meeting with Rogers this afternoon and got into the separation. It didn’t work out very well in that Rogers obviously was shocked to be told that he was to leave.”

Kissinger wrote that he believed Nixon “wished to establish, for once, a relationship of primacy over his old friend and mentor Bill Rogers to whom he had so often turned during the periods of his own weakness.”

Rogers was a young lawyer on the staff of a Senate committee and Nixon was a freshman congressman from California when they met in 1948. Nixon was agonizing over whether to believe Whittaker Chambers’ allegation that Alger Hiss, a high State Department official, was a member of an underground communist group.

Nixon asked Rogers to review their sworn testimony. He wanted to know if he could prove one of them was lying. “I said, ‘I’m sure you can.’ I based it on the fact that Chambers had given a lot of particulars that you can’t make up,” Rogers said.

Hiss was convicted of lying and Nixon’s political career was on the rise.

Two years later, Nixon was elected to the Senate and in 1952 Eisenhower offered him the vice presidential nomination.

Rogers was on a campaign trip with his friend when the news broke that a group of California supporters of Nixon had established an $18,000 fund to help cover expenses. His position on the Republican ticket in jeopardy, Nixon made his case to the voters in a televised appearance that came to be known as the Checkers speech.

In his book “Six Crises,” Nixon wrote that the night before the speech, “I took a long walk with Rogers up and down the side streets near the hotel to get some fresh air and exercise and to test out the first outline of my speech on him. He encouraged me to go forward with the plan I had adopted.”

Nixon saved his career with a brilliant speech that referred to his wife’s “respectable Republican cloth coat” and the Texan who gave the Nixons their cocker spaniel, Checkers.

Rogers and Nixon remained fast friends through the Eisenhower administration. But losses in the 1960 presidential race and the 1962 race for governor of California left Nixon embittered, said his former friend.

“He was a changed man,” Rogers said.

From there, the two men took different paths. Rogers spent the Kennedy-Johnson years in private law practice, arguing Martin Luther King Jr.’s case in 1964 before the Supreme Court, which said for the first time that the news media had special protection against libel suits by public officials.

When Nixon finally became president in January 1969, Rogers returned to government as secretary of State, despite having little experience in diplomacy.

“I recognized when I took the job that President Nixon wanted to run things himself and that’s what he did,” Rogers said. “He always sort of resented the State Department.”

At the start of the second term, Watergate began to dominate Nixon’s presidency.

What was it like, watching the scandal unfold?

“What do you do?” said Rogers, his expression betraying the uncountable hours he has spent looking back on that period.

When Nixon realized he would have to fire Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, he asked Rogers to do it for him. Rogers refused.

“He said, ‘Will you be with me when I do it?’ I said, ‘No, Mr. President. . . . They’re your people.’ ”

In August of that year, Nixon became the first president to resign the office.

After that, Rogers and his wife saw the former president and his wife, Pat, a couple of times.

“We saw them once for lunch,” Rogers recalled. “Remarkably, we had conversations just as if nothing had happened.

“I couldn’t understand that.”

George Gorton, who is managing Gov. Pete Wilson’s reelection campaign, doesn’t worry about the future.

The 47-year-old political consultant’s state of calm is partly a result of recent poll numbers that show Wilson ahead of his challenger, state Treasurer Kathleen Brown. But truth be known, Gorton says, he hasn’t really worried since 1985, when he hooked up with an Asian monk called Buddhadassa, learned to meditate and succeeded, for the first time, in silencing his mind.

Yes, that’s right. Wilson’s most trusted campaign adviser–the man who has repeatedly sought to discredit Brown this year by linking her to the “Moonbeam” reputation of her brother Jerry Brown–has a mantra. And if not for advice he sought from a Tibetan guru known as the 47th Reincarnation of the Precious Destroyer of Illusions, Gorton says he might not be running Wilson’s reelection bid at all.

The revelation is surprising coming from a man who is described by those who know him as one of the most driven, go-for-the-jugular consultants in California politics. Many say that he is responsible for some of Wilson’s harshest campaign rhetoric and that he is willing to do virtually whatever it takes to win. After 24 years in politics, the bearded, twice-divorced Republican has a tough-guy image–not a mystical one.

But Gorton, whose early career was tarnished by Watergate, says he is misunderstood. To hear him tell it, he is on a search for truth–a search that in December, 1992, led him to the Che Waung monastery in Nepal to meet the Tibetan wise man.

“I was asking him about whether or not I should do this campaign. I said, ‘I’m very torn,’ ” Gorton said, recalling how the guru threw the moe –a fortune-telling ritual–three times before giving his answer. Then, through an interpreter, he told Gorton: “It doesn’t matter what you do because your life is going to change dramatically in two years anyway.”

Sitting in his office, where a large photo of his four-year-old son, A.J., and a framed batik of Siddhartha hang on the wall, Gorton said he is readying himself for the prophesy to come true this December. He has sold Direct Communication, the successful telemarketing firm that helped make him a millionaire. And win or lose, after the Nov. 8 election he is considering chucking politics altogether.

“I want to be open to anything,” he said. “It’s not that I don’t like what I do. I do. But it is sort of a warrior’s profession. And I’m heading into a period in my life where I may want to be . . . more of a healer than a warrior.”

Gorton’s thoughts of quitting come precisely as his talents are being widely recognized. This campaign has been grueling. In May, 1993, the incumbent was 23 points behind. A recent Times poll put Wilson nine points ahead, and even Democrats say Gorton deserves credit for deciding on a campaign message and sticking to it.

“One of the things that consultants for incumbents often forget is that you have the ability to integrate into your campaign what’s happening in government,” said Bill Cavala, a consultant to Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco). “George made sure (to do that). . . . Last month, every day (Wilson) signed a little package of legislation, that shows the governor is on top of something. . . . It’s a good campaign. It’s focused. I’ve seen few do it as well.”

Gorton’s relationship with Wilson is unusually close and, as a result, the role he plays in the campaign is unlike that of many political consultants. Part of that is a result of how long they’ve known each other. Gorton has played key roles in Wilson’s five statewide campaigns and was manager of three.

Brown hired her current campaign chairman, Clint Reilly, just seven months ago. The contrasts don’t end there. Reilly’s style is to be in control of everything: His firm not only presides over campaign strategy but also produces the television commercials and designs Brown’s campaign mailers.

Gorton has a more modest role and a gentler touch. The rhetoric of Wilson’s campaign may be harsh at times, but Gorton-the-manager resembles less a dictator than a chairman of the board. Some say his greatest talent is encouraging fruitful debate. And he does it for $20,000 a month (Reilly’s firm will make at least $1 million from the race).

Larry Thomas, a longtime Wilson adviser who is senior counsel to the 1994 campaign, calls Gorton “a person who prefers consensus to giving orders.” Sometimes, Gorton–who has been known to spend months trekking in the Himalayas and who once, years ago, experimented briefly with Scientology–will use his unconventional experiences to try to draw out his staff.

“He might say in a meeting, ‘This is something I learned in est training,’ ” Don Sipple, Wilson’s media consultant, said with a laugh. “This is not a guy who has incense burning in his house and has a Nehru jacket on and then slips into a Brooks Brothers suit and Hermes tie to come to work. This is not a dual life. It is one.”

To understand Gorton is to understand Wilson’s cohesive team of advisers–and the loss they suffered in 1991. In June of that year, Otto Bos, Wilson’s 47-year-old director of communications, died suddenly of a heart attack. A Wilson confidant for 14 years, Bos also was a perfect partner for Gorton–smooth when Gorton was blunt, deliberative when Gorton was decisive.

They had worked together since 1982, when Gorton managed Wilson’s bid for the U.S. Senate and Bos was press secretary. By Wilson’s 1990 campaign for governor–their third race together–”(George) and Otto were larger than the sum of their parts,” Thomas said.

The sudden death of Bos tore a ragged hole in Wilson’s inner circle, which also includes Chief of Staff Bob White and pollster Richard Dresner.

“But with Otto’s death, George emerged,” said Stuart K. Spencer, a veteran Republican political consultant. “In terms of the Wilson operation, George had maybe been Otto’s equal, but he had not been No. 1. No doubt in my mind that George is now No. 1.”

Not everyone thinks that is a good thing. One Republican consultant said that “without Otto Bos, there’s very few people to restrain George.” (Though this person added, “His handling of Kathleen Brown has been masterful.”)

Joe Scott, a corporate and political consultant who has worked in several nonpartisan campaigns, blamed Gorton for what he calls Wilson’s “shrill” discussion of Proposition 187, the ballot measure that seeks to deny state benefits such as public schooling and non-emergency health care to illegal immigrants.

“(Gorton) appeals to the attack dog part of Pete,” Scott said. Without Gorton, he added, “I don’t think (Wilson) would have been so shrill on Proposition 187, blowing past the reality and using it to scapegoat immigrants.”

But Gorton’s admirers say he is only doing what it takes to win.

“The conventional wisdom would be: ‘You’re the incumbent. You defend. We’ll throw the spears, you catch them,’ ” said Bill Lowery, a Washington lobbyist, former San Diego congressman and one of Gorton’s best friends. “Guess what? George Gorton doesn’t buy off on that simplistic paradigm. Neither does Pete. . . . Did (the campaign) get a little shrill at times? Yes. But it wasn’t their choice. They’re not going to lay back and let Pete be defined by an opponent or the media. That’s what winners are all about.”

Gorton’s political involvement began in the 1960s, when he was president of the Aztec College Republicans at San Diego State University. After a brief stint as a high school math teacher, he worked as youth director for New York conservative James Buckley’s winning U.S. Senate campaign.

Gorton came back to San Diego to do the same youth mobilization work for a state assemblyman who was about to run for mayor: Wilson. Then, President Richard M. Nixon came calling.

“It was the first year that 18-year-olds had the vote, and (Nixon) was very concerned about it,” said Gorton, recalling how Nixon’s deputy campaign manager, Jeb Magruder, flew to San Diego to recruit him to be national college director for the Committee to Reelect the President, commonly known as CREEP. “I said, ‘You’re kidding. I’m just a kid from San Diego.’ ”

Soon, the kid from San Diego was getting his picture taken in the Oval Office (today, the photo hangs in a frame on his office wall). But Watergate was about to break, and so was Gorton’s fledgling career.

Gorton had hired a college student named Ted Brill to spy on a group of Quakers conducting a peace vigil outside the White House. Gorton says he paid Brill with a personal check because Magruder told him Brill’s life would be threatened if he were named in campaign finance reports.

Bob Woodward, the reporter for the Washington Post, found out about Brill, who reportedly said he had been told to set up the Quakers for a drug arrest–a contention Gorton denies. According to Woodward, Brill also suggested that he was not the only paid spy–an allegation that led to a Post editorial that decried the Republicans’ “kiddie spy corps.”

Then, as now, Gorton said there was no band of spies. Gorton was never tried or convicted of any Watergate offense, and he says the only impropriety involved his payments to Brill.

“It was a campaign reporting violation, which wasn’t my fault. And it wasn’t a big deal–we didn’t get fined for it,” he said. Still, Gorton was fired. And things would only get worse.

As Gorton was looking for work, he gave out the phone number of a friend at Republican Party headquarters to ensure he didn’t miss prospective employers’ calls. That led to more news stories that said the Republican National Committee was helping find jobs for people implicated in Watergate. And that prompted then-Republican Party Chairman George Bush to call a news conference to banish Gorton from the party headquarters and bar him from working again in Republican campaigns.

“It was a miserable time. I certainly realized that (while) I was terribly loyal . . . no one was loyal to me,” Gorton says today. “But Watergate did a real interesting thing for me. It made me realize that I was responsible for my own life–how I live it, what I put into it, what I get out of it.”

At age 26, he returned to San Diego believing he would never work in politics again. He earned minimum wage at a bank. He gave tours of the city. He even promoted a friend’s record album, trying to convince radio stations to play “The Mike Curb Congregation Sings Winnie the Pooh.” (Curb would later become lieutenant governor).

But soon, Gorton was back, first as assistant finance director for the state Republican Party, then as finance director and then as an independent consultant. And he kept in close touch with Wilson, working on his unsuccessful bid for governor in 1978.

The first campaign Gorton actually managed was Lowery’s bid for Congress in 1980. “We were down 34 points in February and ended up winning by 10–that’s pretty Herculean,” recalls Lowery, who said that even then, Gorton had a tactic he still employs today: “Marshal the resources till the end and make them count. George is a stickler for that.”

He has certainly followed that strategy in the 1994 race. During the summer, when Brown was hammering Wilson with several ads about California’s failing economy, Gorton did not match her blow for blow. It would have been a waste, he said.

Many believe the 1994 election is a turning point for Gorton. Particularly if Wilson is reelected, they say, Gorton’s talents will probably be much in demand among Republicans who seek the presidency in 1996. The question is: After so many years in Wilson’s circle, does Gorton truly want to work for anyone else?

“He is going to have to make a decision after this campaign,” said Spencer, the political consultant. “If Pete Wilson decides to run for the presidency, George has got a horse there. But if Pete decides, ‘I’m gonna stay as governor,’ George is going to have to decide: ‘Am I going to make the next step and find another candidate?’ ”

“There are any number of presidential campaigns that would be tickled to have George on their team,” said Sipple, the media consultant. “But there would be a using dimension of that, and it would get away from the family dimension (of the Wilson operation). My hunch is that’s what George is all about. He is not a mercenary.”

After the election, Gorton plans to take a good long rest. For starters, he will travel to Asia and Africa. After that, he’s not so sure.

Lowery, the lobbyist, says Gorton “is at a fork in the road. One path could be the predictable: to be involved in ’96 (presidential politics) in a key way. The second path would be to find a new challenge. I don’t know which one he’s going to take. I don’t think he knows.”

SACRAMENTO — A day after a judge found that Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante’s fund-raising practices violated state law, a state senator wrote to Bustamante’s lawyers demanding that he cancel any remaining advertising paid for with disputed donations.

“To fail to do so is open defiance of the judge’s order” that the money in question be returned, said the letter sent Tuesday by state Sen. Ross Johnson (R-Irvine), whose lawsuit led to the ruling.

Superior Court Judge Loren McMaster of Sacramento on Monday said Bustamante should not have spent funds that he raised in excess of current state limits, although the money went into an account created before the limits took effect. Bustamante’s violation was in moving the money to a new account and then spending it on the ads, McMaster ruled.

The judge issued a preliminary injunction that forbids Bustamante to transfer any more of the disputed money to his current campaign.

Bustamante campaign strategist Richie Ross said the money, as much as $4 million, had been spent. The ads it paid for were in opposition to Proposition 54, an initiative that will share the Oct. 7 ballot with the recall measure.

On Tuesday, Ross said the ads paid for by the disputed money will expire Thursday, and commercials airing as of Friday will be paid for by money that is not a focus of the lawsuit.

“We’re going to obey the court’s order,” Ross said. “We will do that to the letter.”

Bustamante accepted donations of $100,000 to $1.5 million in the old account from labor unions and Indian tribes. He then established the new fund to oppose Proposition 54, the initiative that would restrict government’s ability to collect some racial and ethnic data.

The anti-Proposition 54 ads he paid for were taped at a Bustamante-for-governor campaign rally and feature him denouncing the initiative. Johnson contended that the ads were an integral part of Bustamante’s campaign to replace Gov. Gray Davis if he is recalled.

Bustamante began airing the commercials last week. The cost of airing television ads statewide is about $2 million per week.

Johnson said that if Bustamante refuses to cancel the remaining ads and obtain refunds from television stations, he will ask McMaster to hold Bustamante in contempt of Monday’s order.

“They have an obligation to say when and where and how they’ve spent that money, and whether it is irretrievable,” Johnson said.

NEW YORK — The Senate’s top Democrat urged his colleagues Monday to take legal action over the Justice Department’s incremental and heavily redacted release of records pertaining to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced a resolution that, if passed, would direct the Senate to file or join lawsuits aimed at forcing the Justice Department to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law enacted last month that required disclosure of records by last Friday.

“Instead of transparency, the Trump administration released a tiny fraction of the files and blacked out massive portions of what little they provided,” Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement. “This is a blatant cover-up.”

In lieu of Republican support, Schumer’s resolution is largely symbolic. The Senate is off until Jan. 5, more than two weeks after the deadline. Even then, the resolution will likely face an uphill battle for passage. But it allows Democrats to continue a pressure campaign for disclosure that Republicans had hoped to put behind them.

The Justice Department said it plans to release records on a rolling basis by the end of the year. It blamed the delay on the time-consuming process of obscuring victims’ names and other identifying information. So far, the department hasn’t given any notice when new records arrive.

That approach angered some accusers and members of Congress who fought to pass the transparency act. Records that were released, including photographs, interview transcripts, call logs, court records and other documents, were either already public or heavily blacked out, and many lacked necessary context.

There were few revelations in the tens of thousands of pages of records that have been released so far. Some of the most eagerly awaited records, such as FBI victim interviews and internal memos shedding light on charging decisions, weren’t there.

Nor were there any mentions of some powerful figures who’ve been in Epstein’s orbit, like Britain’s former Prince Andrew.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche on Sunday defended the Justice Department’s decision to release just a fraction of the files by the deadline as necessary to protect survivors of sexual abuse by the disgraced financier.

Blanche pledged that the Trump administration would meet its obligation required by law. But he stressed that the department was obligated to act with caution as it goes about making public thousands of documents that can include sensitive information.

Blanche, the Justice Department’s second-in-command, also defended its decision to remove several files related to the case from its public webpage, including a photograph showing Donald Trump, less than a day after they were posted.

The missing files, which were available Friday but no longer accessible by Saturday, included images of paintings depicting nude women, and one of a series of photographs along a credenza and in drawers. In that image, inside a drawer among other photos, was a photograph of Trump, alongside Epstein, Melania Trump and Epstein’s longtime associate, Ghislaine Maxwell.

Blanche said the documents were removed because they also showed victims of Epstein. Blanche said the Trump photo and the other documents will be reposted once redactions are made to protect survivors.

“We are not redacting information around President Trump, around any other individual involved with Mr. Epstein, and that narrative, which is not based on fact at all, is completely false,” Blanche told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Blanche said Trump, a Republican, has labeled the Epstein matter “a hoax” because “there’s this narrative out there that the Department of Justice is hiding and protecting information about him, which is completely false.”

“The Epstein files existed for years and years and years and you did not hear a peep out of a single Democrat for the past four years and yet … lo and behold, all of a sudden, out of the blue, Senator Schumer suddenly cares about the Epstein files,” Blanche said. “That’s the hoax.”

Sisak and Neumeister write for the Associated Press. AP reporter Kevin Freking in Washington contributed to this report.

JOHANNESBURG — The U.S. government has signed health deals with at least nine African countries, part of its new approach to global health funding, with agreements that reflect the Trump administration’s interests and priorities and are geared toward providing less aid and more mutual benefits.

The agreements signed so far, with Kenya, Nigeria and Rwanda among others, are the first under the new global health framework, which makes aid dependent on negotiations between the recipient country and the U.S.

Some of the countries that have signed deals either have been hit by U.S. aid cuts or have separate agreements with the Trump administration to accept and host third-country deportees, although officials have denied any linkage.

The Trump administration says the new “America First” global health funding agreements are meant to increase self-sufficiency and eliminate what it says are ideology and waste from international assistance. The deals replace a patchwork of previous health agreements under the now-dismantled U.S. Agency for International Development.

U.S. aid cuts have crippled health systems across the developing world, including in Africa, where many countries relied on the funding for crucial programs, including those responding to outbreaks of disease.

The new approach to global health aligns with President Trump’s pattern of dealing with other nations transactionally, using direct talks with foreign governments to promote his agenda abroad. It builds on his sharp turn from traditional U.S. foreign assistance, which supporters say furthered American interests by stabilizing other countries and economies and building alliances.

A different strategy

The deals mark a sharp departure from how the U.S. has provided healthcare funding over the years and mirrors the Trump administration’s interests.

South Africa, which has lost most of its U.S. funding — including $400 million in annual support — due in part to its disputes with the U.S., has not signed a health deal, despite having one of the world’s highest HIV prevalence rates.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, reached a deal but with an emphasis on Christian-based health facilities, although it has a slight majority Muslim population. Rwanda and Uganda, which each have deportation deals with the U.S., have announced health pacts.

Cameroon, Eswatini, Lesotho, Liberia and Mozambique also are among those that have signed health deals with the U.S.

According to the Center for Global Development, a Washington think tank, the deals “combine U.S. funding reductions, ambitious co-financing expectations, and a shift toward direct government-to-government assistance.”

The deals represent a reduction in total U.S. health spending for each country, the center said, with annual U.S. financial support down 49% compared with 2024.

A faith-based deal in Nigeria, a lifeline for several others

Under its deal, Nigeria, a major beneficiary of USAID funds, would get support that has a “strong emphasis” on Christian faith-based healthcare providers.

The U.S. provided approximately $2.3 billion in health assistance to Nigeria between 2021 and 2025, mostly through USAID, official data shows. The new five-year agreement will see U.S. support at over $2 billion, while Nigeria is expected to raise $2.9 billion to boost its healthcare programs.

The agreement “was negotiated in connection with reforms the Nigerian government has made to prioritize protecting Christian populations from violence and includes significant dedicated funding to support Christian healthcare facilities,” the State Department said in a statement.

The department said “the president and secretary of State retain the right to pause or terminate any programs which do not align with the national interest,” urging Nigeria to ensure “that it combats extremist religious violence against vulnerable Christian populations.”

For several other countries, the new deals could be a lifeline after U.S. aid cuts crippled their healthcare systems and left them racing to fill the gaps.

Under its deal, Mozambique will get U.S. support of over $1.8 billion for HIV and malaria programs. Lesotho, one of the poorest countries in the world, clinched a deal worth over $232 million.

In the tiny kingdom of Eswatini, the U.S. committed to provide up to $205 million to support public health data systems, disease surveillance and outbreak response, while the country agreed to increase domestic health expenditures by $37 million.

No deal for South Africa after disputes

South Africa is noticeably absent from the list of signatories following tensions with the Trump administration.

Trump has said he will cut all financial assistance to South Africa over his widely rejected claims that it is violently persecuting its Afrikaner white minority.

The dismantling of USAID resulted in the loss of over $436 million in yearly financing for HIV treatment and prevention in South Africa, putting the program and thousands of jobs in the healthcare industry at risk.

Health compacts with countries that signed deportation deals

At least four of the countries that have reached deals previously agreed to receive third-country deportees from the U.S., a controversial immigration policy that has been a trademark of the Trump administration.

The State Department has denied any linkage between the healthcare compacts and agreements regarding accepting third-country asylum seekers or third-country deportees from the United States. However, officials have said that political considerations unrelated to health issues may be part of the negotiations.

Rwanda, one of the countries with a deportation deal with the U.S., signed a $228-million health pact requiring the U.S. to support it with $158 million.

Uganda, another such country, signed a health deal worth nearly $2.3 billion in which the U.S. will provide up to $1.7 billion. Eswatini also has started receiving flights with deported prisoners from the United States.

Magome and Gumede write for the Associated Press. AP writers Evelyne Musambi in Nairobi, Kenya; Dyepkazah Shibayan in Abuja, Nigeria; Mark Banchereau in Dakar, Senegal; and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

NEW YORK — A judge declared a mistrial Monday in the corruption case of a former aide to New York governors after jurors said they were hopelessly deadlocked and couldn’t reach a verdict on charges that she sold her influence to China and profited from a medical equipment scheme during the pandemic.

The federal jury in Brooklyn was unable to reach a unanimous verdict in the case against Linda Sun and her husband, Chris Hu. The foreperson said the panel was deadlocked on all 19 counts.

“Your honor, after extensive deliberations and re-deliberations the jury remains unable to reach a unanimous verdict. The jurors positions are firmly held,” the jury said in a note to U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan shortly after resuming deliberations Monday with an alternate juror taking the place of a juror who had to leave because of prior travel commitments.

Prosecutor Alexander Solomon told the judge that the government wants to retry the case “as soon as possible.”

Sun was accused of using her state government position to subtly advance Beijing’s agenda in exchange for financial benefits worth millions of dollars. They say Sun also took kickbacks from Chinese companies to steer lucrative state contracts for face masks and other crucial medical supplies during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The case and nearly monthlong trial were part of a broader Justice Department effort to root out agents working clandestinely in the U.S. for the Chinese government as it seeks to influence U.S. politics as well as harass and threaten dissidents overseas.

Sun was charged with acting as an unregistered agent for China, visa fraud, money laundering and other counts. Hu was charged with money laundering, bank fraud and tax evasion. They were charged jointly with wire fraud, bribery and conspiracy to defraud the United States.

Sun, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in China, held numerous posts over a roughly 15-year career in state government, including as deputy chief of staff to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and deputy diversity officer under former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, both Democrats.

She was fired in 2023 after the Hochul administration said it discovered the misconduct.

During the trial, prosecutors said Sun took steps to align the state’s messaging with Chinese government priorities. They said emails and phone messages showed how she worked to prevent representatives of Taiwan’s government, which China does not recognize as sovereign, from interacting with the governor’s office.

In one instance, Sun even scuttled an invitation for Cuomo to meet Taiwan’s president while on a visit to the U.S.

Prosecutors said she also pushed to remove references in official statements that referenced the Uyghurs, a persecuted Muslim minority group in China. They said Sun forged Hochul’s signature on official letters so that Chinese officials could obtain visas to enter the country.

Sun “bragged repeatedly to her handlers in the Chinese government about what a good asset she had been,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Alexander Solomon said in his closing arguments.

In return, she reaped millions of dollars in financial benefits, including helping turn her husband’s fledgling business of exporting American lobsters to China into a lucrative enterprise.

Prosecutors say the couple also took steps to hide the ill-gotten gains, using a system of cash pickups, shell companies and payments through third parties and relatives — all laid out in detailed spreadsheets maintained by Hu.

They say the sudden riches enabled the couple to live lavishly, purchasing a multimillion-dollar home on Long Island, a $1.9-million condominium in Hawaii, a new Ferrari and other luxury cars. Sun and Hu also enjoyed other perks, including Nanjing-style salted ducks that were prepared by a Chinese official’s personal chef, prosecutors said.

“Linda Sun betrayed the state of New York to enrich herself,” Solomon said. “You saw it time and again, a clear pattern of corruption.”

Sun’s lawyers, however, cast her as a “proud American” and a loyal public servant simply doing her job as the governor’s liaison to the Asian American community.

Kenneth Abell, in his closing remarks, acknowledged that Sun carefully cultivated official relationships with Chinese consulate officials. But he also pointed to other instances when Sun met with and was even honored by the local Taiwanese community.

He argued that Sun’s decision to block an the invitation to meet the president of Taiwan was in keeping with past practice: no New York governor has ever met with the president of Taiwan.

“She was just being careful,” Abell said. “It was not her place to push a policy on Taiwan.”

Prosecutors, he added, didn’t provide any evidence to their claim that Sun had forged Hochul’s signature on visa documents for Chinese officials.

He also questioned why Chinese companies would even need to make bribes to win state contracts during the pandemic. After all, Abell argued, New York and other states were spending freely and quickly as they stockpiled crucial medical supplies.

“The story has huge holes in it,” he said. “The government is trying hard to fit the facts into its narrative.”

Marcelo writes for the Associated Press.