Politics Desk

WASHINGTON — About half of rural voters identify with Make America Healthy Again, a sprawling political movement championed by the Trump administration, but most said President Trump’s healthcare policies have not benefited their communities, according to a new poll from The Associated Press in partnership with KFF.

About 8 in 10 rural voters — an important voting bloc for Trump and fellow Republicans — said the Trump administration’s policies have had a negative effect or no impact on the health of people where they live. Most MAHA supporters, 68%, also feel this way, according to the national survey of more than 2,000 rural registered voters.

The findings signal an apparent disconnect between the Trump administration’s MAHA-branded policy priorities and rural America’s perception of their reach and effectiveness.

Iowa pastor Mike Jager, 58, is a registered Republican and considers himself part of the MAHA movement. The Trump administration’s health policies have had “minimal” impact on the health of his community, Jager said, but he added that Trump’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is moving the needle “in the right direction.”

“It’s a beginning,” Jager said. “It’s a big ship to try and turn around and course-correct.”

Kennedy has used the MAHA label to support various agendas, including abandoning long-standing vaccine guidance, researching ultraprocessed foods and investing in regenerative agriculture.

Jager lives in Sumner, Iowa, “less than a quarter mile from where the corn ends and the city begins.” He’s seen family members and neighbors develop diseases that he believes resulted in part from exposure to agricultural chemicals and consumption of unhealthy, processed foods.

In the June Republican primary for governor, Jager voted for Zach Lahn, a businessman and farmer who ran on a MAHA platform and beat out Trump-backed U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra. He plans to vote for him again in November.

Many rural voters are prioritizing health issues

About two-thirds of rural voters who support MAHA said it’s “extremely” or “very” important to them to vote for a candidate who does, too, while only 4 in 10 rural voters overall said the same.

Trump sought to seize on MAHA support during his campaign for another term two years ago. Now, amid tight midterm races, Kennedy has campaigned to galvanize the movement’s support. In May, he attended a MAHA bill signing with Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, and in August, he went fishing with Lahn, posting about it on social media.

Yet the survey indicates voters are noticing “this weird split in the Trump administration” between what Kennedy messages and what Trump says and does, said David Peterson, a political science professor at Iowa State University.

In Iowa, concerns about what’s causing rising cancer rates are “a big deal,” he said. For many people who identify with MAHA, being healthy includes taking on corporate agriculture and pharmaceutical companies that they think cause cancer, he added.

In the poll, views on healthcare access and costs largely diverged along party lines. Most Democratic and independent voters said the Trump administration’s healthcare policies have had a negative impact on their healthcare costs and the health and well-being of people in their communities. Republicans were likelier to say there hasn’t been an impact.

Talking on the phone from her 200-acre farm in Carroll County, Iowa, 71-year-old Donna Klocke said that her husband had died from cancer and that she has neighbors who also have cancer.

“It’s just very prevalent,” Klocke said. “We’re in a farming community. We use chemicals and pesticides and all kinds of things that aren’t necessarily good for us.”

Klocke, a Democrat, said the MAHA movement is a good idea because she cares about being healthy, but she does not consider herself part of it and will not be voting for a candidate who represents the movement.

Kennedy, who was an anti-vaccine activist before entering politics and has sent mixed messages to Americans about getting the measles vaccine, scares her.

“Measles are coming back and polio,” Klocke said. “It’s the measles that really gets me. It’s like, do you not understand how dangerous it is?”

Survey reflects angst over healthcare

Nearly half of rural voters said their communities don’t have enough doctors or other healthcare providers, and even more said there aren’t enough mental health workers specifically. The share of rural voters who said their community does not have enough hospitals increased to 35% from 21% in a similar question asked in a KFF-Washington Post survey in 2017.

And as with the general population, healthcare, gas and grocery costs are top pain points. At least 6 in 10 rural voters said they were worried about healthcare costs.

The level of worry varied based on coverage, with rural voters enrolled in employer plans or Medicare less likely to be worried. The survey found that 80% of working-age rural voters on Medicaid were very or somewhat worried about healthcare costs. Last year, Republicans passed a tax and spending bill that cut over $900 billion in projected Medicaid spending over a decade and mandated new eligibility requirements.

In the tiny community of Lipan, Texas, west of Dallas, Kim Solis and her husband have a handyman-and-home-remodel business and get their insurance on the marketplace. Since Trump returned to office, their premium payment jumped from zero to $166 a month. Their copays went up, and their deductibles each increased by $2,000.

Solis, 62, said she worries what will happen if they get a big medical bill.

“Certainly, we’d be in a world of hurt trying to take money out of savings or getting it out of our 401(k) just to be able to do something about it,” she said.

Most MAHA voters are also MAGA — but not all

Like the general population, rural voters said they trust their own doctors and healthcare providers for health information over government agencies or officials, according to the poll.

Trust in Kennedy and Trump fell largely along partisan lines. About 10% of rural Democratic voters reported having a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in Kennedy, compared with 74% of rural Republican voters. About 5% of rural Democrats and 69% of rural Republicans said they trust Trump a “great deal” or “fair amount” for reliable health information.

While Make America Great Again and MAHA identities are “linked in a lot of ways,” the rising costs of healthcare and groceries pose a challenge for those committed to the MAHA principles that Kennedy promotes, said Peterson, the Iowa State professor.

Buying healthy food “becomes, ‘I can’t afford to do that because of Trump’s policies,’” he said.

In Stamping Ground, Kentucky, Alma Johnson, 65, works night security at a horse farm.

Johnson voted for Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024 and said she “pretty much” likes how Trump is running the country. But she said she is not a MAGA devotee, preferring to “think for myself.”

MAHA, however, is an easy sell for Johnson because, she said, she doesn’t think people should be able to buy junk food in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

Still, she said she hasn’t seen much impact from the Trump administration’s healthcare policies, including the new food pyramid.

“It takes a long time to change people, their habits, their thoughts or the things they do,” Johnson said.

Swenson, Tribble and Sanders write for the Associated Press.

The poll of 2,241 U.S. adults registered to vote in rural areas of the country was conducted Aug. 12-24, 2026, using a sample drawn from the probability-based SSRS Opinion Panel. The margin of sampling error for the full sample is plus or minus 3 percentage points. In collaboration with AP, KFF researchers worked to design the survey sample and questionnaire, analyze and report findings. This report is a collaboration between the Associated Press and KFF Health News. 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.

Sept. 30, 2026 9:17 AM PT

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is removing Syria from a list of countries that are not allowed to purchase or import U.S. weaponry, a step that is part of a monthslong process of easing sanctions on the new government in Damascus and its leaders.

In a notice published Wednesday in the Federal Register, the State Department said it was amending its International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR, so that Syria no longer was among the nations subject to a policy of denial for licenses and other approvals needed for the sale of U.S. weapons and munitions.

The change effective Thursday means that arms sales requests from Syria will now be considered on a case-by-case basis.

President Donald Trump acted last year to ease economic sanctions on Syria that had been in place for decades during now-ousted President Bashar Assad’s rule. In August, Secretary of State Marco Rubio rescinded Syria’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, helping paving the way for the latest step in drawing closer to the current government.

The State Department has also announced plans to reopen the U.S. Embassy in Damascus. It has been closed for 14 years.

With Syria’s removal from the ITAR blacklist, only seven countries remain subject to the policy of denial for licenses for U.S. arms exports: Belarus, China, Cuba, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea and Venezuela.

Syria’s interim president, former rebel leader Ahmad al-Sharaa, overthrew the Assad government nearly two years ago and has embarked on a policy of change that has impressed the Trump administration. His moves have led to hopes of eventual stability in a country that was wracked by civil war and the Islamic State insurgency that engulfed northeast and western Iraq for years.

Wednesday’s withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq may mean that the Syrian government plays a greater role in preventing an IS resurgence.

Lee writes for the Associated Press.

With gas prices topping $6 a gallon and an unpopular war continuing in Iran, President Trump’s approval has slipped with California Republicans — a falloff that could diminish the party’s chances in the state’s few competitive congressional races.

A new poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by The Times, found that 76% of Republican voters in the state approve of the president’s performance, down from 83% last year.

The president’s approval has softened even among those who still support his performance. Only 44% of Republicans in California said they strongly support Trump’s performance, down from 57% who said the same in August 2025.

That could translate into lower Republican turnout in the state’s few competitive races, said the poll’s director, Mark DiCamillo.

“Republicans are losing some of their enthusiasm in terms of being motivated to vote,” he said.

In addition, the more Trump tries to make the midterm elections about himself — such as the pro-Trump ads recently sponsored and paid for by the government — the more Democrats might be inclined to show up, said G. Cristina Mora, the UC Berkeley institute’s co-director.

“That might actually have a galvanizing effect on voters,” she said.

Trump’s sinking support in California mirrors a national decline in the president’s approval, even among Republicans.

The congressional map in the state was already challenging for Republicans after voters last year approved a referendum championed by Gov. Gavin Newsom to redraw districts to be more favorable for Democrats — a response to similar efforts by Republicans in Texas and other states.

In the new map, only four of the state’s 52 districts are currently considered safe Republican districts, while three additional districts are seen as competitive, according to the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan political handicapper.

The remaining 45 districts are seen as either likely or solidly Democratic in a state where Democrats hold a roughly 20% advantage in party registration.

Only one race is considered by Cook to be a true toss-up — California’s 22nd Congressional District in the Central Valley, which is held by Republican Rep. David Valadao.

“We’re looking at the best case scenario for Democrats at this point,” said Erin Covey, Cook’s U.S. House editor.

Valadao, one of only 10 Republicans to vote for Trump’s impeachment in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, faces progressive Democrat Randy Villegas, a political science professor who has the backing of Bernie Sanders. The Vermont senator is joining Villegas this weekend for a rally in Bakersfield.

Valadao first won a seat in Congress in 2012, but was ousted from office during the Democrats’ “blue wave” election in 2018, in which the party gained 40 seats in the House in the first election after Trump took office in 2016. Valadao was able to win back his seat in 2020 and has held it since.

There has been scant public polling in the race, but a poll conducted in June by a political committee backing Villegas showed the Democrat holding a 4-point lead over Valadao.

Two other congressional districts in the state are listed by Cook as leaning Democratic:

• California’s 48th Congressional District in Riverside and San Diego counties, now held by Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, who opted to retire rather than seek reelection in the redrawn district.
• California’s 13th Congressional District in the San Joaquin Valley, where Democratic Rep. Adam Gray is trying to fend off a challenge from Republican Kevin Lincoln, the former mayor of Stockton.

Trump’s approval also dipped among Black and Latino voters in the poll. Both groups were part of Trump’s winning coalition in the 2024 presidential election.

The poll also found broad disapproval of two signature Trump administration policies.

It found that 70% of California voters disapprove of Trump’s decision to go to war in Iran, including 1 in 5 Republicans.

Also, 70% of California voters believe that the president’s immigration policies are hurting California’s economy and local businesses, including 1 in 5 Republicans.

The poll was conducted online in English and Spanish between Sept. 15 and Sept. 20 and included the opinions of 6,989 registered California voters. The margin of error is plus or minus 1.5 percentage points.

California is set to bring back a program aimed at reducing conflict between wild animals and people, as the state’s rebounding wolf population continues to cause concern among ranchers.

Newsom signed a bill restoring the program Tuesday ahead of a “fireside chat” focused on biodiversity and natural resources, during which he described growing up with a father who was dedicated to protecting mountain lions, condors and other wildlife.

Protecting nature is “a moral issue,” Newsom said, describing a “relationship we have to what’s above us, and … how that connects us to our Creator.”

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife once employed 13 specialists dedicated to resolving human-wildlife conflicts, but it let all but one of them go after funding ran dry in 2024. The loss came as such clashes are increasing, with climate change and urban sprawl bringing people closer to bears, mountain lions and other animals.

State Sen. Catherine Blakespear, author of Senate Bill 1135, said she’s seen it play out with sea lions around La Jolla Cove. This year, someone kicked one of the marine mammals, she said, and in general there have been no government staffers “to provide the guardrails.”

When the program ended, “we weren’t doing the education, and we didn’t have staff at the state that could help intervene or provide guidance,” Blakespear (D-Encinitas) told The Times. “It was a clear lack.”

The legislation also codifies a program to compensate ranchers when they lose livestock to wolves or suffer indirect harm. The program also provides money for nonlethal equipment to deter wolves, such as electric fences with bright flags.

Part of the law is rebranding, adding “coexistence” to both programs’ names.

The California Cattlemen’s Assn. and the California Farm Bureau shifted from opposing the bill to an “enthusiastic neutral,” said Kirk Wilbur, vice president of government affairs for the former trade group, noting his colleague coined the term.

Wilbur’s group was initially concerned about parts of the bill focused on livestock compensation, but he said they were amended in a way to avoid impeding how the program operates. However, the changes “didn’t quite get us to a support position because we didn’t necessarily view it as a significant improvement over the status quo.”

His group is in favor of the bill’s requirement to relaunch the Wildlife Coexistence Program, as it’s now called, saying it “does provide resources, for instance, for my members that are contending with mountain lion depredations of their livestock.”

The bill signing comes as California’s gray wolves had at least 42 pups this year — a record. The apex predators were extirpated in the state in the 1920s, beginning to naturally recolonize their native digs only 15 years ago.

“It’s a great sign for the conservation of the species that the population continues to reproduce, and that the number of individuals continues to reproduce,” said Axel Hunnicutt, gray wolf coordinator for the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The animals’ success has delighted conservationists but frustrated some cattle ranchers, whose livelihood can become dinner for the endangered canids.

Hunnicutt spoke to The Times from Siskiyou County, where he was trying to get more GPS collars on wolves in the Whaleback pack, linked to 41 confirmed or probable livestock attacks this year, according to a recent report. That’s by far the most of any pack in the state.

Hunnicutt’s team consists of him and two other employees, along with temporary staffers. Collaring wolves in a pack that doesn’t already have the devices is challenging, he said. It involves setting up cameras, howling throughout the night to try to get the animals to respond and sometimes driving hundreds of miles looking for tracks.

Some members of the Whaleback pack are collared, providing a good starting point. While on the phone, he said he could see the tracks of two wolves on the road where he was walking.

Proponents of SB 1135 say it could lead to the expansion of Hunnicutt’s team or more resources for efforts such as collaring, which wildlife officials say helps reduce conflicts by enabling ranchers to know where wolves are.

However, the legislation does not guarantee funding for the programs it establishes.

Pamela Flick, California program director for Defenders of Wildlife, a co-sponsor of the bill, said advocates asked state leaders for $18 million in one-time funding for the human-wildlife coexistence program, followed by $15 million annually. They also asked for around $30 million for wolf compensation and management.

What they got this year is $6 million, with $2.5 million earmarked for compensation, according to Flick.

“It’s really a drop in the bucket when we’re talking about statewide human-wildlife conflicts,” she said. “So we will be advocating for additional funds in out years for sure.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson plans to visit California on Wednesday to stump and fundraise for Republican candidates in a state that could determine control of the U.S. House of Representatives during President Trump’s final two years in office.

Johnson (R-La.) plans to visit the Central Valley and the Inland Empire, a sign of the importance of California congressional contests in the November midterm election.

David Wasserman, a congressional forecaster for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said that Johnson is attempting to mitigate the aftermath of Proposition 50, the redrawing of California’s congressional districts that voters approved in November in response to Trump’s efforts to tilt districts in his favor elsewhere in the nation, notably Texas.

“If it weren’t for Republican efforts to redraw Texas, Proposition 50 wouldn’t have seen the light of day,” said Wasserman, who predicts Democrats will win control of the House, and said that Republicans would have a better chance at holding more seats if they hadn’t prompted the redistricting fight.

Redrawing congressional districts typically happens once a decade after the U.S. Census, and in California, voters in 2010 decided to hand the power of crafting the state’s districts to an independent commission. After Trump pushed Texas to redraw its congressional boundaries to increase GOP representation in Congress last year, California Democrats responded by persuading voters to reshape its districts to favor Democrats, who already dominate the state’s 52-member congressional delegation.

“California Republicans are on the verge of extinction because of the White House action,” Wasserman said.

In Chowchilla, Johnson is scheduled to hold a fundraiser and a rally in support of former Stockton Mayor Kevin Lincoln, who is trying to topple Rep. Adam Gray (D-Merced) in one of the most competitive congressional races in the nation. He is expected to be joined by Republican National Committee chairman Joe Gruters, California Republican Party Chair Corrin Rankin and Congress members from Texas and Michigan.

He is also holding a get-out-the-vote event in support of Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford), a longtime Democratic target given the voter makeup of his Central Valley district. Johnson is also holding an evening fundraiser in Riverside for Jim Desmond, a member of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors who is running in the district being vacated by longtime Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista).

Issa decided to retire after his congressional district was redrawn because of Proposition 50. He has endorsed Desmond to represent the new district, which spans San Diego and Riverside counties.

The California trip is part of Johnson’s plans to campaign in 22 states in an effort to help Republicans retain control of the House before the Nov. 3 election.

Despite California’s sapphire tilt — registered Democratic voters outnumber Republicans nearly two-to-one — the state’s residents are often the largest donors to politicians on both sides of the aisle. Democrats headed here in coming days include gubernatorial candidates Amy Acton of Ohio, Deb Haaland of New Mexico and Gina Hinojosa of Texas.

Trump sent followers a fundraising appeal Tuesday focused on Democrats’ ability to win control of Congress, which would upend his agenda during his final two years in office.

“I’ve never asked for sympathy. I’ve never asked this country to feel sorry for me. I’ve never asked for anything,” he said in the email. “That changes today. With less than 45 days until midterm elections, the left is ready to put the final nail in my coffin.”

Christian Martinez, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, pointed to the pivotal role California will play in determining control of Congress.

“California’s House races will decide whether working families keep fighters like David Valadao, James Gallagher, Kevin Lincoln, and Jim Desmond or get more of the same from Democrats who raised costs, left the border wide open, and made communities less safe,” Martinez said. “Californians are done paying more, waiting longer, and living with less safety so corrupt Sacramento and Washington Democrats can protect their socialist agenda.”

Anna Elsasser, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, shot back that the policies and beliefs of Desmond, Lincoln and Valadao have deeply harmed California families, including high gas prices and the cost of living.

“That’s why Mike Johnson is swooping in to try and save their fledgling campaigns. Voters won’t forget who sold them out to hand massive tax breaks to billionaires and wealthy corporations by gutting health care and food assistance, championing chaotic tariffs, and refusing to rein in a costly war that has sent gas prices soaring,” she said. “Californians are ready for change, not another two years of Mike Johnson and DC Republicans’ status quo.”

Just a few months ago, amidst the avalanche of uncertainties surrounding the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro by the US military in collusion with Venezuelan forces, we identified six indicators pointing to a clear political reality: the remaining chavista leadership was successfully adapting to the new board under conditions of vassalage to the invading power.

Since then, the core underlying conditions have not changed—the government continues to prevail over the conflict—but new windows of opportunity have opened for the opposition, and new situations have arisen that put this new, Rodríguez-led neochavismo in a tight spot.

Alex Saab has a substitute

The first sign of chavismo’s remarkable capacity for subservience was the sacrifice of some of its own key figures in exchange for US validation. Handing over Alex Saab was a well-calibrated move by the interim government. The primary financial operator of late chavismo had transformed into the manager of an opaque economy, eventually elevating himself into a political actor and a banner of anti-imperialism. Yet his fall came with a successor, a new financial lobbyist bearing the same signature of corruption, but who does not answer solely to chavismo: Alejandro Betancourt is a hinge operator, a pragmatic and elastic figure whose nature allows him to serve multiple partners with conflicting interests at the same time. Thus, the ideological flexibility of chavismo’s newest protagonists aligns perfectly with its broader mutation from a political project into a commercial consortium.

Rising social demands

In our previous analysis, we identified supervised economic liberalization as the government’s biggest gamble to buy time. Accelerating economic recovery was seen as a critical opportunity to relieve political and social pressure. However, the expected results have failed to materialize on schedule. No matter how many headlines trumpet investments in the oil, energy, and mining sectors, and regardless of the photos documenting memorandums of understanding with international capital, the revival of the economy remains a fantasy—just as it has been for the past twenty years. If Venezuelans are accustomed to anything, it is chavismo’s delusions. Today, the government faces a scenario in which the domestic economy and access to basic public services deteriorate at the exact same rate that rejection of foreign tutelage grows. Simply put: the strategy of accelerating economic recovery to defuse political pressure has been a complete failure.

In the electricity sector alone—one of the main triggers of protests and street pressure in recent weeks—there is a stark divide between grand announcements and actual binding agreements. Throughout 2026, investment announcements in Venezuela’s electrical grid were measured in megawatts, nearly all framed as recovery agreements with state-owned Corpoelec. In April, talks with Siemens and General Electric were announced to address the crisis in Zulia, but to date, no public contract exists with either company, and the situation remains critical: blackouts lasting between 5 and 12 hours (or more) persist.

On one hand, we see the return of exiled politicians who were persecuted for years. On the other, isolated attempts at arrests.

To date, no agreement has disclosed financial amounts or funding sources. Furthermore, megawatt figures vary depending on the source, and it remains unclear how INSA and Impsa are dividing the work at the Tocoma hydroelectric plant. All of this is unfolding against a backdrop of undeniable social demands that cannot be pacified by press headlines and investment promises. The timeline for economic relief is slipping away, while the timeline for public demand is accelerating.

The repressive apparatus doesn’t wane, it just loosens its grip

Ten months later, we can affirm that the relaxation of the repressive system and the amnesty law were purely symbolic gestures directed at Trump, carrying no real dismantling of the persecution apparatus. That tactic of erecting façade after façade regarding human rights has been maintained. Repression cooled down and political prisoners were released—some only partially—during these months under foreign tutelage. However, based on several statements from Washington detached from reality, the interim government confirmed that human rights are simply not on the US agenda. In that sense, there have even been small trial balloons replicating the repression of past months, testing American indifference. The Trump administration is not dismantling the repressive apparatus in Venezuela because its own government is also repressive—one that, in many cases, shares victims with chavismo: Venezuelans on US soil.

Nevertheless, a novel phenomenon is taking place that sends contradictory signals. On one hand, we see the return of exiled politicians who were persecuted for years. On the other, isolated attempts at arrests. This tension within the security apparatus has yet to show a clear trend and will ultimately be defined by the political force deployed by the actors involved.

Ambiguity toward China

In the initial months of US tutelage, the most dramatic shift in the interim government’s foreign policy—and the clearest sign of its ability to mutate to survive—was severing its alliance with Cuba. That move brought an alarming deterioration to the island’s economic situation, which had depended on Venezuelan oil for more than two decades. Remaining Chavismo did not hesitate to drop its oldest ideological partner when the cost of sustaining it became Washington’s disapproval. In that sense, it was primarily an existential rupture: one that demonstrated their capacity to sacrifice even their own founding narrative to guarantee the continuity of power.

In Venezuela, China is not competing in the short term. Instead, it is waiting for its window of opportunity to open.

With the discursive framing of the divorce from Cuba settled, this new period in international affairs—beyond the relationship with the US—is marked by the positioning and balancing act required regarding China, particularly concerning its oil assets amidst U.S. penetration into the sector. Unlike Cuba, China is not an ally that can be abruptly discarded without consequences. It is the country’s primary creditor following years of loans repaid with crude oil, and it holds stakes in joint ventures across the Orinoco Petroleum Belt.

For now, the interim government operates in the realm of pure pragmatism: avoiding any signal of alignment with China that might irritate the US, while simultaneously leaving existing Chinese investments untouched. That balance can hold only as long as Washington refrains from directly targeting Chinese assets in the country. Should that happen, Rodriguez-led Neochavismo would find itself trapped between its tutor and its creditor, with no room left to manage ambiguity. China, for its part, is in no rush. Its strategy in the region has long been defined by patience and long-term calculation: it is not competing in the short term; instead, it is waiting for its window of opportunity to open. And under a government that has proven its loyalties are entirely negotiable, that window will open sooner or later.

The alliance with Trump consolidates

The other major successful mutation for chavismo coming into view this year has been the dissolution of its anti-imperialist rhetoric. For over two decades, confrontation with the United States served as the narrative anchor of the movement’s project, the story that justified shortages, explained sanctions and failures, unified the militant base, and gave chavismo a distinct place on the international map. Today, that story is entirely untenable for a government cooperating directly with those who kidnapped its president and bombed its country: chavismo can no longer posture as a fortress against empire.

This shift carries heavy political costs. Internally, it opens deep fractures: segments of the rank-and-file and mid-level cadres trained on that narrative watch as their leadership cuts deals with the very enemy they were taught to fight for years, eroding the loyalty that the narrative once guaranteed. Externally, it means losing international alliances that relied precisely on that shared identity. Chavismo can no longer offer its former partners the epic tale of resistance.

The opposition’s challenge lies in constructing a vision of its own—one capable of appealing to an exhausted society that has watched both the revolutionary narrative and promises of a swift transition collapse.

Yet the dissolution of anti-imperialism also poses a serious dilemma for the opposition. For years, the opposition built its moral standing in direct opposition to a regime that simultaneously claimed the anti-imperialist mantle, violated human rights, and destroyed the economy. Now, with chavismo falling in line with Washington, that contrast becomes blurred. The opposition can no longer define itself solely by its antagonism to chavismo, nor can it present alignment with the U.S. as its own unique banner, because the interim government occupies that exact same space.

This forces the opposition to transform, which brings its historical weakness to the surface: its limited capacity for transformation. The Venezuelan opposition has proven effective at resisting, denouncing, and mobilizing during high-tension moments, but it has struggled immensely to renew its discourse, leadership, and strategies when the political terrain shifts. On this new board, its challenge is no longer to prove that chavismo is illegitimate, but to construct a vision of its own. A vision capable of appealing to an exhausted society that has watched both the revolutionary narrative and the promises of a swift transition collapse. If it fails to do so, it risks remaining trapped in a political language aimed at a chavismo that no longer exists.

After being securely held for nearly four decades by one of the most preeminent politicians in California history, the House seat to represent bright blue San Francisco in Congress is up for grabs in November — and dividing the Democratic Party.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), 86, the powerful former House Speaker who’s held the seat since 1987, announced last year that she would not run again. In May, she passed over state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) — a prolific California legislator long considered a potential successor — to endorse San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan, a local progressive with less legislative experience but strong support from labor.

Pelosi’s endorsement sent Chan, who had been languishing in polls, surging past Democratic tech millionaire Saikat Chakrabarti in the June primary. Chan finished with nearly 30% of the vote and Chakrabarti took 18%. Wiener won, with nearly 41% of the vote.

Both Wiener, a gay man and staunch advocate for the city’s large LGBTQ+ community, and Chan, who immigrated to the city from Hong Kong at age 13 and has deep ties to its large Chinese and immigrant communities, would make history by winning. Wiener would be the first out LGBTQ+ person to represent the city in Congress, and Chan the first Asian American immigrant woman.

The race has sharply divided the state’s Democratic establishment as a rare intraparty showdown between a deft legislator who has driven liberal California policy for years and a rising progressive with the powerful imprimatur of the icon they seek to replace.

Both acknowledge they would take the same or similar positions on many issues, and fiercely oppose President Trump’s agenda. But they also say San Franciscans face a real choice between them that will help define the city for years.

“There is a clear cut between the two of us,” Chan said. “He has long enjoyed establishment support and industry support, and we’ve been grassroots, on the ground, [Asian American and Pacific Islander] community, working people and labor unions — in collaboration and coalition building.”

“We need Democrats who are willing to fight — to fight in a smart way, and to fight in an aggressive way, to defeat Donald Trump and to lower the cost of living,” Wiener said. “We are past the time where we need Democrats in office who were just going along to get along, or who, like Connie Chan, are just part of the status quo.”

Wiener is a MAGA target

Wiener, 56, has lived in the Castro neighborhood since 1997 and was a deputy city attorney and local Democratic Party chair before being elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2010. He was elected in 2016 to the state Senate, where he’s had a massive influence, authoring more than 100 bills that have been signed into law. Allies and critics say he is a workhorse, and at times both effective and divisive.

Wiener has been endorsed by the state and local Democratic parties; a slew of state leaders including California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, state Senate President Pro Tempore Monique Limón (D-Santa Barbara) and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister); various queer and labor groups including AFSCME; more than half the city’s supervisors; and various members of Congress.

Wiener has passed some of the state’s most progressive laws on LGBTQ+ rights, including protections for gender-affirming care, and challenged federal immigration agents in California. He has also pushed progressive laws — backing safe injection sites, extending bar hours until 4 a.m., decriminalizing psychedelic drugs — that have put some of his fellow Democrats in uncomfortable spots when forced to vote on the controversial issues.

Some in San Francisco label him a moderate, though that designation would draw laughs elsewhere in the country and even in Sacramento. Wiener is one of the most reviled state politicians on the conservative right nationally, and has received scores of death threats for his work, particularly on transgender issues. His website touts a laundry list of profane and homophobic attacks from MAGA loyalists — Elon Musk called him a “scumbag,” former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called him a “communist groomer” — that he wears as a badge of honor.

On housing, Wiener has pushed for deregulation and development near transit hubs statewide to solve the housing and affordability crises, riling some homeowners averse to increased density and some progressives who say his plan favors developers and threatens existing rent-controlled housing. On tech, Wiener has pushed for artificial intelligence regulation but also been criticized for taking a technocratic approach with buy-in from wealthy tech leaders.

Wiener has passed laws protecting net neutrality, capping prescription costs and mandating mental health parity, ending mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, and requiring corporations disclose their greenhouse gas emissions. He has received substantial financial support from tech leaders and opposes Proposition 40, the ballot measure that seeks to impose a one-time tax on the state’s billionaires.

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), also gay and a former Long Beach mayor, said he considers Wiener a friend but also a generational legislator who has “led the country” on LGBTQ+ rights and housing policy. “I don’t think there’s a better legislator in the United States on housing,” Garcia said.

Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), who worked with Wiener for years in the state Legislature, said he has been a champion for many issues important to Californians — including the environment — while holding big industry accountable and backing labor. She said while many politicians decide to either rack up easy wins with legislation that barely moves the needle or focus on “progressive value signaling” without accomplishing much of anything, Wiener “takes on some of the most difficult and controversial progressive issues and really gets them done.”

Nancy Tung, the local Democratic Party chair, said many San Francisco politicians “recede” from the city’s raucous local policy debate once they reach higher office, but Wiener is “still is in the knife fight,” especially on housing and affordability issues — showing he cares about the city and making him “such a good fit” for Congress.

Tung said she understands the appeal of sending a fellow Asian American woman to Congress in this political moment, but that Chan “just does not have the legislative record that Scott has.”

Chan for ‘working people’

Chan, 47, who lived in a rent-controlled Chinatown apartment after immigrating with her mother and younger brother, now lives with her firefighter husband and son in the Richmond neighborhood. She was a community and legislative aide for years — including for then-Dist. Atty. Kamala Harris — before being elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2020. She has served as budget chair since 2023 and has centered her campaign, largely funded by Pelosi’s network, around what she calls her “career fighting for working people.”

Chan has been endorsed by a host of Congress members, including Pelosi and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.); major labor groups including the California Federation of Labor Unions and the California Teachers Assn.; various progressive organizations and fellow and former supervisors; former mayor and S.F. power broker Willie Brown; and Chakrabarti, who since the primary has shared his campaign staff and funding with her.

Chan, who supports Proposition 40, has helped create a $400-million reserve fund in San Francisco to make up for federal cuts to Medicaid and housing subsidies. She also passed a supplemental budget to fund immigration defense services for people targeted by the Trump administration and passed various labor-friendly measures, including a minimum wage increase for in-home workers and cost-of-living adjustments for city service workers.

Pelosi said Chan “understands that budgets are statements of our values,” has “championed justice and progress for working families” and “brings an important lived experience to this moment” as an immigrant woman. Schiff said Chan has impressed him as “a very powerful voice for those who are disenfranchised” and someone with “the potential of growing into” a leader like Pelosi.

Kim Tavaglione, executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council, said she encouraged Pelosi to endorse Chan because Chan “supports San Francisco values,” listens to labor and is a great strategist.

Cleve Jones, the San Francisco activist who has fought for gay political representation since Harvey Milk’s historic 1977 election to the Board of Supervisors, said Wiener “has done some very good things, particularly around LGBTQ issues and HIV/AIDS,” but also angered some in the LGBTQ+ community by repeatedly showing up to an annual Trans March that organizers ask politicians not to attend.

Wiener, who is Jewish, was aggressively heckled at this year’s march, namely for his stance on the Israeli war in Gaza, which he was slower than other progressives to label a genocide. Conservatives mocked him for being targeted by his base, and Wiener ended up fundraising off the incident — which Jones said was “so cynical.”

He said Wiener’s “loyalty is to big developers, big tech and big real estate,” and that he “doesn’t really see the urgency of yet another white man elected to Congress” when San Francisco can send a stronger message by electing Chan, an immigrant woman of color.

Affordability and Trump

Chan said she is a “pragmatic” progressive who has balanced the city’s budget while protecting “healthcare, education, immigration resources” and other working-class priorities. She said Wiener is focused on deregulation for market-rate housing development, whereas she has prioritized tenants’ rights and protecting existing rent-controlled housing in her push for affordable units.

Chan said she will “walk and chew gum at the same time” in Washington by working for affordability while battling Trump, including by reversing his healthcare cuts, expanding Medicaid, providing affordable childcare, abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and finally figuring out meaningful immigration reform.

“I’m not sugarcoating it as if it’s easy. But we gotta be able to find ways to work together to push those things forward,” she said.

Wiener said he and Chan share the goal “of getting Trump and MAGA out of office, and then making sure that people never feel tempted to flirt with authoritarianism again.”

But he said the way to do that is to advance policies that will “lower people’s cost of living and make people’s lives more sustainable” — including by passing universal healthcare, building millions of new homes, creating low-cost child care and leading a clean energy transition — and that he is the only candidate in the race with a proven ability to do that.

“This is a race to succeed the most effective and operational member of Congress in modern American history,” Wiener said. “San Francisco should send someone who actually has a track record, a proven track record, of being able to deliver.”

The fraught relationship between Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris is the stuff of reality TV.

With their Hollywood looks and unbridled ambition, the two San Francisco-spawned Democrats have spent decades in tacit competition, ascending to the heights of California politics while still managing to avoid direct confrontation.

That could change in 2028, should Newsom and Harris jump their parallel tracks and face each other — and possibly dozens of other candidates — in a bid for their party’s presidential nomination.

California’s departing governor, who has spent the better part of his second and final term auditioning for the White House, recently said he wouldn’t run if Harris chooses to do so. “Mutual assured destruction,” Newsom called a he-she contest between the two Left Coast rivals, and a “waste of everyone’s time.”

Some took that disavowal not as deference but jujitsu, or a form of political psy-ops directed at the governor’s longtime frenemy.

On the one hand …

In the same interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Newsom allowed as how the case against Harris — she’s a two-time loser at the presidential level and has had her shot — is “a pretty good one, actually.”

“That’s objectively true,” Newsom added, driving the knife a little deeper.

But rather than forcing Harris’ hand, Newsom’s professed willingness to stand aside may have simply invited the former vice president to take her sweet time deciding whether or not to run, waiting until the Democratic contest is well underway.

And leaving Newsom in an odd sort of limbo.

The former vice president, lips largely sealed, has done and said just enough to keep the door open to a 2028 run, without firmly committing to the contest. There’s a good chance that Harris — always careful, ever deliberate — doesn’t know what she’ll do. Or, at least, isn’t 100% certain.

She can afford to wait.

Time is on her side

After four years in the White House and her abbreviated 2024 White House bid, Harris has universal name recognition, a nationwide fundraising base and continued support among a significant number of Black women, who just happen to form the backbone of the Democratic Party.

Harris won’t freeze the presidential campaign the way she did the race for California governor. That contest was stalled and the field incomplete until Harris announced, after months of consideration, she’d take a pass. That’s not to say, by any stretch, Harris is the favorite to win the presidential nomination. The criticism Newsom expressed — just a fella jawing away, as he and Tapper cast their fly rods — is a view that is widely held among Democrats.

But the 2028 contest, which unofficially starts the instant the final polls close Nov. 3 — won’t be firmly fixed until it’s clear whether Harris is in or out.

Newsom doesn’t have that luxury of biding time, especially when so many other Democrats are poised to enter the race.

The governor has his own formidable national fundraising base — thanks in good part to his online trolling and anti-Trump hijinks — and a not-small degree of name recognition across the country. But Newsom has yet to fully engage in the see me, feel me aspect of presidential campaigning, which typically requires a candidate’s persistent physical presence and is particularly important in the earliest-voting states.

So his only option is to campaign full bore once he leaves the governor’s office in January, as though he’s running without hesitation or qualification. Then, if Harris jumps into the contest, Newsom can sulk his way back to California, or break his pledge and run against her after saying he wouldn’t.

That, as Newsom suggested to Tapper, would be a gift to the rest of the Democratic field.

Not too long ago, Newsom and Harris were carping over whether he was sufficiently supportive of her hurried-up 2024 presidential bid.

In her account of the campaign, Harris said she reached out to the governor shortly after President Biden announced he was standing aside in favor of his vice president. When she called, Harris wrote, Newsom texted that he was out hiking and would call her back. But, she said, he never did.

Much backing and forthing ensued — Newsom pointing out he didn’t hesitate to endorse Harris once he returned to civilization — with both insisting all the while things are fine between them, really.

Now the two are once more entwined, their fates tied up in mutual ambition and a shared hunger for the White House.

Was Newsom’s CNN interview a feint? Was he just faking respect for Harris as a way to keep in the good graces of Black women voters, all the while hoping against hope she won’t run — and planning to reverse himself if she does?

Will Harris put off her decision, knowing that every day and month that passes deepens the suspense and leaves Newsom twisting?

Will the two finally collide head-on, settling once and for all their intense, if unspoken, competition?

So much drama!

Stay tuned. There’s a reality TV show in there somewhere.

What else you should be reading

Get smart: With bans and taunts, Trump escalates his assault on the media
The deep dive: No electric shock gloves, face coverings: Newsom pushes back on Trump’s ‘Orwellian’ immigration agenda
The L.A. Times Special: War games and draft lawsuits: Democrats work to Trump-proof November election
Question for you: What would you want to ask of California’s two gubernatorial candidates? Fill out our survey!

Until next time,
mzb
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Paramount Skydance’s streaming chief Cindy Holland is exiting the studio, clearing the way for HBO Chairman Casey Bloys to claim a key role in the company once Paramount acquires Warner Bros. Discovery.

Holland announced her departure Tuesday in a memo to her staff. Her resignation is effective immediately.

She joined Paramount nearly 14 months ago as chairman of direct-to-consumer operations, in charge of Paramount+ and Pluto TV, after David Ellison’s Skydance Media took control of the media company long held by the Sumner Redstone family.

Holland, a respected former Netflix executive, was one of the few Paramount executives who lacked long ties to Ellison, who brought much of his Skydance team with him to Paramount.

Her resignation comes as Paramount is waiting for a federal judge to approve a settlement agreement that would allow Paramount to finalize its $111-billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, which also includes CNN, TBS and the Warner Bros. film and television studios.

The agreement, unveiled last week, was designed to end a lawsuit brought by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and 11 other Democratic attorneys general, who had argued Hollywood’s biggest merger in decades violated U.S. antitrust laws.

“As David readies for the next phase of his vision, we’ve discussed my role and the future of the combined businesses,” Holland wrote in the memo shared with her staff viewed by the Times. “David is optimizing for HBO stability as we move into this next chapter, and I fully support that.”

Ellison, in recent months, has signaled his intention to install Bloys in a pivotal role at the combined company.

Ellison months ago made a public commitment to protect HBO, which has long been a leader in prestige TV programming. The network has already undergone two ownership changes, and considerable management turmoil, during the last decade. Bloys has led HBO as its chairman since late 2022. He was one of the first Warner executives that Ellison met with this year after Paramount prevailed over Netflix in the bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery.

The New York Times first reported Holland’s departure.

“Cindy has been a trusted partner to me and so many others, and I couldn’t be more grateful for her leadership, her relentless drive and everything she’s done for our company,” Ellison said in a statement.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — After a splashy White House send-off usually reserved for presidential trips abroad, President Reagan today began a 13-state political blitz, telling voters they can cast their ballots for him “one more time” by electing Republican senators Nov. 4.

Trying to transfer his personal popularity to GOP candidates, Reagan coupled the personal note with a patriotic appeal, saying retention of a Republican Senate would be important not just to him but also to the country.

At GOP rallies here and in Waukesha, Wis., the President noted that his own name will not appear on a ballot again.

‘My Last Campaign’

“This is my last campaign, and if you’d like to vote for me one more time, you can do so by voting for Kit,” Reagan said here at a rally for former Missouri Gov. Christopher Bond, who holds a slim lead over Democratic Lt. Gov. Harriett Woods in their race for the Senate.

At the Wisconsin rally for GOP Sen. Bob Kasten, Reagan said:

“You know, my name will never be on the ballot again, but don’t think you can’t vote for me. If you want to vote for me, vote for Bob Kasten, so that we can have a Republican Senate that will work with me instead of against me and be around after I’m gone.

“Don’t just do it for me–do it for yourself,” he added. “Do it for Wisconsin. Do it for America.”

Reagan said that after he asked for a no-tax-raise pledge, “Bob Kasten signed up right away–but so far his opponent (Democrat Ed Garvey) has refused to sign. I think that tells the whole story right there.”

Not Aware of Any Pledge

However, Garvey spokeswoman Susan Rensberger, said today, “To my knowledge we’ve never heard of or seen such a pledge.”

Pete Roussel, deputy White House spokesman, later said Reagan’s remarks were intended “in the spirit of a rhetorical question.” He said of Garvey, “So far we are not aware of his making that pledge but we are giving him the opportunity.”

Before setting off on the two-day, four-state swing this morning, Reagan made maximum use of the White House as a political platform, addressing a crowd of several hundred invited GOP campaign workers and executive branch employees.

It was the latest kickoff of a campaign he has been waging for months.

Republican National Committee Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf Jr. introduced the President as the GOP’s “greatest asset,” and a U.S. Marine jazz combo played “Grand Old Flag” as Reagan paused for brief remarks on the South Lawn before boarding his helicopter.

‘Progress … or … Paralysis

Such departure ceremonies usually are reserved for presidential trips abroad. Reagan will be back in the White House on Friday before setting out on the campaign trail again next week.

On the campaign trail, Reagan said the election of Republicans like Bond and Kasten “could very well decide whether we keep control of the Senate–or lose it to the liberal leadership of the Democratic Party.”

“And that’s the difference between two more years of progress or two years of paralysis,” he said.

Reagan also plans to speak on behalf of Republican Sens. Don Nickles in Oklahoma and Paula Hawkins in Florida before returning to Washington.

Next week, the President has campaign appearances scheduled in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Colorado, Nevada, South Dakota, Washington, Idaho and California.

Sept. 29, 2026 2:56 PM PT

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s administration was set to issue a last-minute reprieve Tuesday over the planned closure of a camp in Qatar that houses more than 1,000 Afghans who assisted America’s war effort or are the relatives of U.S. service members.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to sign off on a diplomatic note to Qatar extending for nine months the life of Camp As Sayliyah, which had been due to close Wednesday at the end of the U.S. budget year, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter. The officials spoke to the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to offer details before the public announcement.

The decision comes months after Rubio told Congress that the U.S. was still in discussions with several third-party countries to take the 1,039 Afghans who worked as interpreters or in other roles helping the American war effort as well as relatives of U.S. service members who have been stranded in Qatar for more than a year.

Rubio’s testimony in June came after the AP and other outlets reported that war-torn Congo was among the countries where the Trump administration was considering resettlement.

The State Department would not immediately comment on Rubio’s extension for the camp but said it “continues to work toward a positive resolution that provides safety for these remaining people to start a new life outside of Afghanistan while upholding the safety and security of the American people.”

The department also repeated its claim that the camp is a legacy of an attempt by President Biden’s administration “to move as many Afghans to America as possible without properly vetting them” — an assertion that has been denied by former officials and refugee advocates.

The group of Afghans in Camp As Sayliyah includes those who fought or worked alongside the U.S. military between 2001 and 2021, with more than 70% of the camp’s residents being women and children, according to statistics from #AfghanEvac. The group has spent the last five years advocating for Washington to make good on its promise to resettle those whose service has put them at risk since the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s reassertion of control.

“This is a victory for those people, and they’re going to have some semblance of knowing that they’re safe there because they’ve been worried that at any moment somebody’s going to come and rip them out of there,” Shawn VanDiver, a Navy veteran who heads #AfghanEvac, told the AP.

But he added that there needs to be a permanent solution to this years-long crisis.

Despite the camp’s reprieve, which protects those housed there from possible forcible removal to Afghanistan, residents have little hope of being allowed to enter the United States.

Upon entering his second term, Trump, a Republican, paused his Democratic predecessor’s Afghan resettlement program as part of a series of executive orders cracking down on immigration, including dramatically altering refugee admissions to focus on white South Africans. Only five Afghans have been admitted to the U.S. since October 2025, #AfghanEvac says.

The refugee changes left thousands of people who fled war and persecution — and had gone through a sometimes years-long vetting process to start new lives in America — stranded at places worldwide, including the base in Qatar.

Advocates have warned that if there is no alternative, the only other option for the group of residents would be to go back to Afghanistan, where they face likely reprisal from the Taliban.

In the coming nine months, the State Department said it would “continue to work to identify options for voluntary resettlement of all Camp As-Sayliyah residents.” It gave no additional details.

Lee and Amiri write for the Associated Press. Amiri reported from New York.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday let President Trump’s administration continue swiftly deporting people to countries other than their own for now, while the justices consider whether the policy is legal.

The apparent 6-3 order halts a lower-court decision. It requires the government to give migrants a chance to object before they are sent to countries to which they have no ties.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in December.

The Trump administration said the lower-court order forced the cancellation of a deportation flight carrying about 70 people bound for three countries last week.

The justices have sided with the administration once before on the core Trump administration policy, allowing deportation flights to temporarily continue last year.

The court said it will consider several questions: whether the policy is lawful, whether lower courts had the authority to issue a sweeping block and other questions the government deems appropriate.

Under a series of often-secret agreements, the Trump administration has deported some 25,000 people to more than two dozen countries, including Liberia and Guyana. The vast majority have been sent to Mexico.

Trump’s Republican administration has said that it sends people with final deportation orders to third countries when they can’t be returned to their homelands or their native countries won’t accept them, including those who have criminal convictions. Those governments provide assurances that people won’t be persecuted or tortured, federal attorneys said.

But some migrants have nevertheless found themselves imprisoned in countries they’d never heard of before their arrivals. Others also face serious safety risks and are left with little choice except to return to the home countries they were fleeing. Many have no criminal convictions and have been found to be at risk of torture or persecution, attorneys for the immigrants said.

The case comes amid a sweeping immigration crackdown by the Trump administration, which has pledged to deport millions of people who are living in the United States illegally.

Whitehurst writes for the Associated Press.

The White House has spent days fiercely defending three taxpayer-funded advertisements that glorify President Trump — approaching at least $1.5 million in public spending — calling them public service announcements.

“Don’t let the Fake News get away with their lies about our epic Public Service Announcements that have been running on tv,” White House communications director Steven Cheung posted on X on Sunday.

But the Republican administration’s ads attracted mounting criticism on Monday, including from members of Trump’s own party.

“It shouldn’t be paid for with taxpayer dollars,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters.

“It would not have been something that I would have done. And I know that the White House is not covered by the same guidance that we are, but it’s not something that I would have done,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, another South Dakota Republican.

Multiple legal experts consulted by the Associated Press said the ads appear to run afoul of federal statutes, including a law against congressionally appropriated funds being used for “publicity or propaganda” and a law that limits the partisan political activities of government employees.

They said the new ads, which are airing on network and cable TV and streaming, differ from other administrations’ PSAs because they aren’t designed to help Americans access any specific program.

“You watch all three ads, they’re sheer propaganda,” said Richard Painter, a former White House ethics czar under Republican President George W. Bush. “This is increasingly looking like what authoritarian governments do to promote their leaders.”

The heightened scrutiny comes as the Trump administration has increased spending on the ads and bought time on popular TV shows, including college football and National Football League programming. It remains unclear which part of the government is supplying the funds.

With both chambers of Congress led by Republicans, any oversight would likely have to come from Trump’s allies, decreasing the likelihood of hearings or other accountability efforts before November’s midterm elections.

Three ads have aired in less than a week, totaling well over $1M

The first ad in the campaign, which began airing last Wednesday, features clips of Trump talking about defeating communism interspersed with onscreen text promoting the “largest tax cuts in history,” “reigniting American manufacturing” and a call to “defend law and order and police.”

Later in the week, a second ad began running, showing scenic videos of Mount Rushmore at night with quotes and clips from Trump’s Fourth of July weekend speech there honoring the country’s 250th anniversary.

The latest of the ads, a spot first aired over the weekend, is virtually identical to an ad for Trump’s Republican reelection campaign in 2024. It shows him walking down a hallway as his voice can be heard warning of a “final battle” against “globalists” and “warmongers.”

All three ads end with a message that says: “Paid for by the U.S. Government.” The White House hasn’t responded to inquiries about which part of the government is paying.

According to AdImpact, which tracks media spending, the spots have so far cost more than $1.4 million and run across a wide range of TV networks around the country. The actual amount spent could be significantly more, depending on whether networks classified the ad as a political ad.

The ads are different from past PSAs, experts say

In defending the campaign, the White House published a list of PSAs from recent Democratic and Republican administrations.

Among the examples it cited were Bush’s Republican administration touting a Medicare law, Barack Obama’s Democratic administration promoting Affordable Care Act subsidies and Joe Biden’s Democratic administration running ads promoting COVID-19 vaccinations.

“The announcements are very clearly not campaign ads; President Trump is not on the ballot and there is no call to action,” the White House wrote. “Instead, the announcements are a reminder for Americans to love their country and know why it’s worth defending — at home, at the border, and abroad.”

Kathleen Clark, a legal ethics professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said in her view the new ads differ from the examples the White House provided because they aren’t aimed at helping members of the public benefit from specific government programs.

“These ads are nothing more than government propaganda, aimed at helping Trump,” she said.

Painter, who joined the Bush administration after the Medicare PSAs went out, said that ad campaign toed the line on appropriateness because it included misleading information about Medicare Part D. But he said Trump’s campaign is a far more egregious violation of the statute that blocks congressionally appropriated money from being spent on publicity or propaganda.

“There’s nothing in here about a particular policy that’s at all focused,” Painter said of Trump’s ads. “One of them is just about the evils of the deep state. Another one of them is about communists and Marxists.”

In its support for the ads, the White House also referenced the administrations of President Woodrow Wilson and President Franklin D. Roosevelt, both of whom used posters, radio and film to rally the country during World Wars I and II.

James Kimble, a communication professor at Seton Hall University who studies domestic propaganda, said it’s true that Wilson’s Democratic administration used propaganda to rally Americans. But he said most Americans no longer view its actions in a positive light.

“By almost any objective measure, looking back, we find what they did pretty repulsive,” he said.

Skepticism of the campaign grows on the Hill

Top Democrats on the Senate and House appropriations committees last week wrote to the White House demanding the ads be taken down and requesting more information on how much money was spent to create and air them.

In the days since, more than a dozen Democrats and a handful of Republicans have spoken up to further criticize the ads. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the latest ad “an absolute violation of what a democracy is supposed to look like.”

“Americans sat down to watch football, not to be force-fed Trump’s propaganda on their own dime,” he said in a Senate floor speech Monday.

Sen. John Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that no public official should spend public money on private ads for themselves.

And Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger, had his own harsh words for the administration on Monday.

“Don’t worry, using taxpayer dollars to run ominous campaign ads of the President has been done before and is completely legal… in banana republics,” he wrote in an X post.

The Republican chairs of the Senate and House appropriation committees didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Swenson writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Steven Sloan contributed to this report.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a raft of bills designed to push back on the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement in California, including bans on electric shock gloves and a revamped ban on law enforcement face coverings after a previous law was blocked by a federal judge.

The more than 20 bills approved by the governor Tuesday were crafted to thwart tactics used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, including the use of facial coverings and making arrests outside immigration hearings. Other bills are meant to boost state oversight of federal detention centers in the state.

“Trump has put his political interests above the health, safety and livelihood of American families. California is taking action to strengthen transparency, accountability, and oversight around immigration enforcement in our state,” Newsom said in a statement. “This is about stepping up where the federal government has failed our communities. We will continue protecting our people, upholding the rule of law, and making clear that if the federal government operates in California, we will hold them accountable.”

The governor signed legislation to ban the use of electric shock gloves by any law enforcement in the state, which was hastily written and passed after reports that the Department of Homeland Security planned to spend $20 million to outfit agents with the gloves.

One bill, dubbed the “No Kings Act,” makes it easier for residents to sue federal agents for alleged civil rights violations, such as racial profiling, unlawful searches or interfering with the right to free speech.

Its author, Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) said the law already applies to state and local officials and that his bill, SB 747, closes a loophole that exempts federal officials.

Newsom signed another bill by Wiener that bans ICE agents and other law enforcement from wearing face coverings or masks while on duty. After a federal judge blocked his prior bill, which applied to federal agents but not state police, Wiener passed legislation that applies to both.

Many of the bills Newsom signed Tuesday aim to improve state oversight at immigration detention centers within the state and slowroll the development of new facilities.

Among them is AB 1801, which requires municipalities to wait at least 180 days and hold public hearings before approving any plans to build or convert facilities into immigration detention centers.

Newsom signed a 25% tax on companies that operate immigration detention centers in the state. Most of the detention centers in California are run by the private prison companies GEO Group and CoreCivic, under contracts with the federal government. AB 1633 by Assemblymember Matt Haney (D-San Francisco) would raise an estimated $177 million, according to a fiscal analysis of the bill.

Another new law requires local agencies to disclose 911 calls made from immigration detention centers. It stems from a CalMatters investigation which found alleged sexual assaults at Otay Mesa, a detention center in San Diego, were being investigated by CoreCivic, the company that operates the facility, rather than local law enforcement.

“Our communities deserve safety, and no person in detention should have to resort to throwing notes over the walls of a detention facility to have their needs met and their voice heard,” Sen. Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach), chair of the Legislative Latino Caucus and the bill’s author, said in a statement after lawmakers passed her legislation.

Activists and Democratic lawmakers have raised alarms about the rising number of in-custody deaths and poor conditions inside ICE detention facilities. The federal government has reported 57 in-custody deaths during Trump’s second term, up from the 26 deaths reported during the previous four years.

During reviews of detention centers around the state last year, Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office found substandard conditions including overcrowding, delays in medical care and poor quality food and drinking water. At one center, detainees were not given clothing warm enough to protect against extremely low temperatures in the facility, Justice Department staff reported.

Newsom signed legislation indefinitely extending the attorney general’s duty to review private detention centers, which had been set to expire next year.

WASHINGTON — Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, who brought two federal indictments against President Trump, told lawmakers on Tuesday that he “will not be silenced by continued threats of prosecution” from the Trump administration and that he believes the rule of law is being threatened like never before.

Smith also told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he stands behind the criminal cases he brought against Trump, a Republican, and that he and his team acted without regard to politics.

“I made those decisions without regard to President Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs or candidacy in the 2024 presidential election,” Smith said. “Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation. If asked whether to prosecute a former president today based on the same facts, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Republican or a Democrat.”

Republicans sought to cast the prosecution as a political fishing expedition, accusing Smith of bending ordinary procedures in an overzealous pursuit of the president.

“The Smith election case ultimately wasn’t just about Trump,” said Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the chairman of the committee. “It was about partisan agents and prosecutors mapping out the Republican apparatus.”

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the committee, accused Republicans of spreading “baseless conspiracy theories” about Smith’s investigations as part of an effort to “whitewash” the history of Trump’s 2020 election loss and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by a mob of Trump’s supporters on the U.S. Capitol.

“President Trump demonstrated a wanton disdain for the laws of the United States, the will of the people and our national security,” Durbin said. “The aspersions cast on Mr. Smith, nonstop, are petty, personal and political. They are nothing but a smoke screen to distract from the president’s own clear, unlawful conduct.”

The hearing is expected to focus on subpoenas for phone records

Even as Smith defends his investigations, he is expected to be pressed anew by Republican senators about his team’s access to the phone records of GOP lawmakers as prosecutors investigated Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

In previous testimony, Smith has stood behind subpoenas that prosecutors issued for the phone records of Republican members of Congress who were in touch with Trump when violent supporters of the president rioted inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He has said that such subpoenas are a “common practice” in investigations and were necessary in this instance to understand the “scope of the conspiracy” between Trump and his Republican allies.

Nonetheless, the revelation that Smith’s team secretly obtained the phone records during his investigation has animated some Republican lawmakers, who point to it as proof of overreach by the Biden administration Justice Department and a hard-charging prosecutor.

In July, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, referred Smith to the Justice Department for potential prosecution on allegations that he lied at a previous hearing about his collection of the records — something Smith’s attorneys have vigorously disputed.

“I stand by my testimony before the House of Representatives,” Smith said. “I will not be silenced by the continued threats of prosecution from the president or others.”

Grassley, the Senate committee chairman, first disclosed last year that Smith’s prosecutors had obtained what’s known as “toll records” — data that reveals the date, length and time of phone calls between two parties but not the content of the communications.

Smith has repeatedly justified the move as necessary to document any contact that Trump or surrogates may have had with lawmakers on Jan. 6, 2021, as the president beseeched his supporters to halt the certification of the election results.

“My office didn’t spy on anyone,” Smith said during a hearing in January.

Smith is the subject of a criminal referral from Republicans

Smith was appointed in 2022 by then-Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland to take over investigations into Trump’s efforts to reverse his election loss and Trump’s retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Both investigations resulted in felony indictments, but Smith abandoned the cases after Trump won back the White House in 2024, citing longstanding Justice Department opinions that say sitting presidents cannot be federally indicted.

Smith has remained a top target of retribution for Trump and his administration, which last year announced that it would revoke the security clearances of the lawyers representing the former special counsel. The Office of Special Counsel, an independent watchdog agency responsible for enforcing a law against partisan political activity by federal employees, also announced last year an investigation into Smith.

Jordan’s referral to the Justice Department centers on a December 2025 exchange in which Smith was asked about subpoenas that prosecutors had issued for the toll records.

Smith said the records he requested did not include the content of the communications. But Jordan maintains that answer was misleading in light of records released by Grassley showing that Smith had obtained the contents of 44 lawmakers’ text messages in a separate subpoena to the National Archives and Records Administration that sought the communications of various Trump advisers and aides.

In response, Smith’s lawyers called his answers “unimpeachably truthful” and noted that he was responding to questions explicitly about toll records, which did not include the contents of any text messages.

Tucker and Richer write for the Associated Press.

Vente Venezuela members embraced Claudia Macero on Sunday night. Photo by Vente Joven.

Since the aftermath of the June earthquakes, the media had spread stories about Maria Corina Machado trying to come back to Venezuela and local officials in the US and neighboring countries frustrating her plans. The most recent case exploded in simultaneity with the triumphal trip of Delcy Rodriguez to the United Nations, that included a meeting and a picture with Donald Trump. Now we know, from journalists like Idania Chirinos and David Alandete, that Machado has tried seven times in total to come back. Vente Venezuela is using the public reaction to those news to organize rallies in many cities and made a big party of the return of Claudia Macero, Machado’s communications chief, who was one of Vente’s refugees in the Argentinean Embassy. They are clearly turning the apparent join effort of Delcy and Trump to keep Machado out into an Odyssey when Machado is the hero looking for the friends to complete the voyage while the Neptune of Mar-a-Lago and the Suitors of Miraflores block the beaches of Ithaca.

Once Machado finally overcomes those obstacles, as she would eventually do, she would have to leave her story behind and focus on the stories of the population. She needs to face the alliance dilemma, use her popularity and manage the expectations trap.

Machado needs to build alliances. Her Vente Venezuela party is disciplined and attractive to many activists and voters, but they can’t do this alone. The problem is that Machado is reluctant to forge alliances with other politicians, and her followers don’t want to see her with them.

Her dilemma here is that she needs to widen her influence by building a broader platform without alienating her followers.

She has a known history of trouble dealing with politicians from other parties. Machado is a product of what Venezuelans got used to call “civil society” in the 1990s: neighbors and parents associations, business chambers, groups organized mostly in the middle class to protect and improve conditions for specific realms like suburbs, private schools and businesses, and to organize and fund charity NGOs or networks like Dividendo Voluntario para la Comunidad. All of them tended to have a common drive for initiative, besides ethics: we need to do what politicians aren’t doing. Súmate, the platform for electoral rights where Machado emerged before the recall referendum against Chávez, was a civil society organization and was key to collecting the millions of signatures that opposition parties were not collecting, not only because of Súmate’s organizational skills but because people trusted them more than the parties. Machado later became a lawmaker but as an independent, and created her own party instead of joining another.  

Her dilemma here is that she needs to widen her influence by building a pressure platform with other parties, including the people currently sitting at the small opposition fraction in the National Assembly and the dialogue experiment behind Dinorah Figuera, but at the same time she needs to do so without alienating her followers, who can turn hope into frustration if they start to see her as another regular politician who will betray them. 

The voice of the people   

Machado has something anyone else in Venezuela has: real, solid popularity. Besides Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia —whose prestige among voters is pretty much an extension of Machado’s—, María Corina holds a 50% approval rate that has endured the three years passed since the opposition primaries she famously won with more than 90% of the vote, the two years after the fraudulent 2024  vote and the ten months with Delcy.  

Machado’s political career rocketed in 2023 and 2024 when she connected with the collective trauma of families broken by mass migration and embodied the nation’s grief, especially in countryside villages ravaged by economic collapse and population loss.

The people’s expectation is that a new election will turn María Corina into president and remove chavismo from power, creating the space for the country’s reconstruction.

In 2026, she has the opportunity to achieve that political miracle again, with the domestic following she already has and the global fame the Nobel Prize gave her, to make everyone hear the voice of the nation that is being ignored by the interim chavista regime and the Trump administration. The voice of those people who saw Maduro and Cilia removed but the rest of the dictatorship staying, who waited in vain for the authorities to help save lives and recover bodies after the earthquakes, and who see American officials and CEOs signing deals without any improvement in the ordinary citizen’s daily struggle to survive.  

Machado is echoing the people’s call for an election. The citizens seem to have taken as a fait accompli that the 2024 elections were stolen, but they took that event as proof that, if elections are repeated, Maria Corina will win. So elections now! is spreading as the common claim that encapsulates the urgency to have a legitimate government elected by the people instead of Delcy’s. The expectation is that a new election will turn María Corina into president and remove chavismo from power, creating the space for the country’s reconstruction. Because while chavismo is still there, there is no hope that things will improve. On that, people are quite convinced.

The challenge of patience management

Machado needs to keep hopes alive, no doubt. Many people are looking at her as the only source of hope available. However, she also needs to sustain that hope with achievements. It won’t suffice to keep telling people that freedom is inevitable and unstoppable. People know it isn’t.

She needs, with Vente and their allies, to build up expectations toward a horizon of possibilities; this is why Machado will focus on pressuring for an election date, which they are suggesting should be July 24, 2027, Simón Bolívar’s birthday.

Machado knows, on the other hand, that she can’t afford to make the same mistake that Juan Guaidó and many other opposition leaders of the past made: promising that paradise is around the corner. Actually, she has been walking that tightrope for a while. Finding the equilibrium between giving hope and adjusting the people’s expectations into a moderate frame will be very hard, especially in an unprecedented context when it is impossible to predict how the next year will be.

An enormous pressure on a person who holds no office and is not even a candidate yet.

For Dylan Feierabend, there are few things more life-affirming than fishing for redtail surfperch and smelt at Centerville Beach in rural Humboldt County.

His favorite spot, where the Eel River meets the Pacific Ocean, is a few miles from the main road — too far to walk with fishing poles and an ice chest in tow. He instead gets there by driving a side-by-side, a small off-road vehicle, right onto the sand.

He might not be able to do so much longer.

If the California Coastal Commission has its way, vehicular access will soon be nixed at Centerville Beach County Park outside Ferndale — one of just a handful of beaches along the state’s 840-mile coastline where driving is allowed.

This month, the Coastal Commission approved a request from Humboldt County for a coastal development permit to rebuild a 0.17-mile segment of a storm-battered road adjacent to the fast-eroding beach — but only if the county stops people from driving on the sand.

Coastal Commission staff, in a 78-page report, said motorized vehicles threaten both sensitive vegetation and critical habitat for the federally threatened western snowy plover, a small, white-bellied shorebird.

“California’s dune habitats are particularly rare and important, so where driving could damage these sensitive areas, the Coastal Act requires that we protect them,” commission spokesman Joshua Smith said in a statement to The Times.

However, he said, the agency does not “have a one-size-fits-all policy on driving on the beach.”

But Humboldt County residents and officials decry the move as just the latest example of overregulation and government overreach in liberal California — and of the disconnect between its rural and urban places.

“What you see in Southern California isn’t what we see up here,” resident Joey Sancho told the Coastal Commission during its meeting in Eureka this month. “The beaches aren’t overly populated. They’re not being torn up by ATVs and so forth. But yet, [it’s] just one more thing just to take away from us up here in the North Coast.”

Humboldt County wants to make improvements to Centerville Road.

(Google street view)

Feierabend, a 36-year-old loan officer, told The Times: “It’s about slowly choking out the individuals that utilize the beach and gaining control under the ruse, or the guise, of conservation.”

The discord in Humboldt County comes as the Trump administration is taking aim at what it calls “environmental extremism” in California, with federal officials trying — largely over state objections — to open the treasured coastline to more offshore oil drilling, expanded rocket launches and floating nuclear reactors.

Amid this wider debate, beach driving has emerged as an unexpected flashpoint.

Last month, Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton called coastal commissioners “idiots” for their years-long effort to end off-road driving at Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area, the only state park that allows recreational driving on the beach.

Cars, bikes and pedestrians share the sand at Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area near Pismo Beach in February 2021.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Oceano Dunes, near Pismo Beach in San Luis Obispo County, temporarily closed to off-roaders this spring amid long-running legal battles between recreation advocates and environmentalists who say all-terrain vehicles are tearing through western snowy plover habitat and sending clouds of unhealthy dust into nearby neighborhoods.

“Surprise, the Coastal Commission are trying to shut it down because they’re joyless bureaucrats who don’t want anyone to have fun,” Hilton said in a social media video as he leaned on a bright yellow dune buggy on the sand. “And it’s not just about fun. This is a real economic engine for this community.”

If elected, he said, he would create a state “Office of Fun and Freedom.” Its first task? Protecting off-roading at Oceano Dunes.

The campaign for Xavier Becerra, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, did not return requests for comment.

In Humboldt County, residents have stressed that rural Centerville Beach is nothing like Oceano Dunes, where thousands of pickup trucks, ATVs and dirt bikes may carve through the sand on a given day.

Centerville Beach’s nearest town, Ferndale, the childhood home of celebrity chef Guy Fieri, has a population of just 1,500. Residents say the beach typically sees a handful of four-wheelers and side-by-sides — with most heading out to fish, not joy-riding.

“Centerville is not a beach anyone can just drive on — you’ve got to know what you’re doing,” said Shawn Griggs, a painter who surfs there most mornings. “It’s a very volatile beach with coarse sand. It’s steep right off the shore; the sand bars are transient.”

A view of Centerville Beach, near where Humboldt County is looking to repair a stretch of Centerville Road.

(Beau Sanders / For The Times)

Griggs, 57, described himself as “an environmentalist at heart” who appreciates efforts to protect threatened species. But he doubts vehicles are doing much harm at Centerville.

“With the amount of sand that is pushed off that beach every year and moved around, it’s hard for me to imagine that beach would be a super stable beach for the snowy plover,” he said.

The Coastal Commission staff report says the area is “moderately suitable for plovers,” but that “heavy human use” has degraded the habitat.

In Humboldt County, driving is allowed on a handful of county-maintained beaches, as well as portions of the Samoa Dunes Recreation Area, which is managed by the federal Bureau of Land Management.

Feierabend, who grew up next to Centerville Beach, said vehicles are not destroying the beach — the ocean is.

“No one’s going too fast,” he told the Coastal Commission. “No one’s driving through dunes. In fact, there are no dunes.”

Centerville Beach, home to some of the state’s fastest-eroding cliffs, has been shrinking for decades. The rising and warming sea has accelerated that process in recent years, and powerful El Niño-charged storms this fall and winter could wreak further havoc on the coastline.

A beach parking lot that once accommodated up to 100 vehicles has already washed away. And Centerville Road — a narrow county thoroughfare that provides access to the beach, a few rural homes and the federally managed Lost Coast Headlands — is so regularly slammed by powerful storm waves that it is often covered with sand and made impassable.

The road is what initially brought Centerville Beach to the Coastal Commission’s attention.

The Humboldt County Department of Public Works applied for a required coastal development permit to repair a short stretch of storm-damaged roadway, a project for which it had already secured federal and state funding.

The county has proposed elevating the road 10 feet and adding a new parking area. It also is looking to build a revetment — a sloping layer of rocks on the sand meant to protect the road from waves, at least for a few decades.

Humboldt County initially pushed to move the roadway farther inland, but faced resistance from private landowners.

According to the Coastal Commission staff report, beach erosion puts Centerville Road at “severe risk of being destroyed” within the next five years.

Given the urgency of the needed repairs, the decision to tie the development permit to beach driving felt like “a backroom deal stuck into the project,” Humboldt County Planning Commissioner Iver Skavdal said at the Coastal Commission meeting.

The commission is “holding the project, the residents and the county hostage,” said Skavdal, noting that seven generations of his family had enjoyed the beach.

Though the commission approved the permit on the condition beach driving will be stopped, it added an amendment after locals pushed back — giving Humboldt County an opportunity to write a plan to allow restricted driving, provided it would not harm sensitive habitats. That plan would have to come back to the commission for approval.

The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors still must decide whether to accept the stipulations of the coastal development permit before any construction begins.

The potential loss of driving on Centerville Beach — a unique attraction in California’s sparsely populated, economically depressed northwest corner — struck a chord with residents, about two dozen of whom sat through several hours of a Coastal Commission meeting on a Wednesday morning to speak about it.

“Families here don’t have a lot to do,” Sue Long, former mayor of the nearby city of Fortuna, told the commission. “There’s not a lot of the kind of entertainment you guys have, with waterslides and Disneyland and all of those things. … We count on nature.”

Mike Astry, who runs a small off-road recovery business pulling out vehicles stuck in sand or mud throughout the region, told the commission most people towed off Centerville Beach are out-of-town tourists who traveled just to drive on the beach.

Stopping vehicular access is “a big deal to a lot of people,” Astry, 49, said in an interview. “People driving from out of town that want to come drive on that beach are not going to come to our town and spend money on hotels and food.”

Astry, who also is an automotive maintenance supervisor for Humboldt County, started the towing business with his souped-up Jeep during the COVID-19 pandemic, when people flocked to outdoor spaces during lockdowns. Now, he typically gets one or two calls a week.

At Centerville Beach, he said, “I’ve had some pretty gnarly tows,” including some “little old ladies who thought, ‘Oh, I thought my Prius could go here,’ and it can’t.”

A few years ago, he yanked a Tesla out of the ocean. Powerful waves ripped off its bumper. The driver was from the Bay Area.

“People are just sick of California, their mandates, and this is just one more thing to add to it,” he said of the coastal commission decision. “It’s just a power trip. We pay our frickin taxes.”

Jennifer Savage — California policy associate director for the Surfrider Foundation, a coastal protection nonprofit — was one of the few speakers at the Coastal Commission meeting who focused on a different aspect of the county’s Centerville Beach proposal: the rock revetment next to the old, crumbling road.

Revetments and sea walls, which generally are not allowed for developments built after the Coastal Act took effect in 1977, “make a beach erode significantly faster,” she told The Times.

Erosion has been a known problem for a long time, she said, and “the failure to prepare doesn’t justify sacrificing the public beach.”

Federal investigators have sent Los Angeles County elections officials at least five grand jury subpoenas for individual voter records as part of a criminal investigation into illegal voting, according to partially redacted records reviewed by The Times.

The subpoenas — released in response to a public records request — appear related to a nationwide effort by the Trump administration to identify noncitizens who have illegally cast ballots in U.S. elections.

The subpoenas were issued in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. They were sent to L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan’s office at the request of prosecutors in the office of First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli.

“The enclosed subpoena has been issued in connection with an official criminal investigation being conducted by the Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations,” Assistant. U.S. Atty. Michael Wheat — based out of the district’s Orange County office — wrote in a letter accompanying a Sept. 10 subpoena.

Wheat wrote that a custodian of records from Logan’s office must either appear before the grand jury to present the records or deliver the materials to a special agent from Homeland Security Investigations.

Four of the subpoenas — one issued on July 13 and three on Sept. 10 — request “any and all original and non-redacted voter records” from Jan. 1, 2020, to the present for a list of individual voters stretching across two pages. The lists were redacted by Los Angeles County officials, and it is unclear how many individuals each list contained.

Each of those subpoenas notes that records to be produced include information on individual voters, such as their “registration file” and “addresses listed, history and method of voting, [and] any and all attestation regarding citizenship status.”

A fifth subpoena, issued July 31, appears to request similar information for a single voter, and notes that the voter’s “ballot content or vote selections” should not be included.

Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesman for Essayli’s office, declined to comment on the investigations Monday.

The Times first reported the existence of the subpoenas, but not details from the records themselves, last week, after Logan confirmed that his office was complying with the federal inquiry despite having concerns that investigators may be using incorrect or outdated information to produce their lists of voters to investigate.

“We’re responding appropriately as directed through a subpoena, but that doesn’t afford the dialogue for us to get the background on what they’re looking for and how they came up with the names that they did,” Logan said. “There’s really no information being provided to us on that.”

President Trump has alleged for years that illegal voting by noncitizens is widespread, though experts say the problem — which they acknowledge occurs — is exceedingly rare. Homeland Security officials have been leading a campaign in recent months to identify such fraud nationwide, and the subpoenas received by L.A. County appear to match others received by elections officials elsewhere in the country.

Essayli — a Trump loyalist who has not been confirmed to lead the Los Angeles prosecutor’s office by the U.S. Senate and whose de facto leadership has been contested in court — has been vocal about his office’s pursuit of voter fraud, including by noncitizens.

His office has announced two voter fraud cases in recent weeks, including one involving the arrest of 30-year-old Honduran national on two felony charges of falsely claiming U.S. citizenship and fraudulently registering to vote. That man, Darwin Jonathan Rivera-Flores, has pleaded not guilty and is out on bond pending trial.

Rivera-Flores and his attorney declined to comment.

The Justice Department also recently announced it had charged 16 noncitizens in six other states with illegal voting and other election-related crimes.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin publicly claimed in July — without providing evidence — that there may be more than 190,000 such voters on California rolls, a claim California officials dismissed as baseless.

Three of the five subpoenas received by Logan’s office ask that the voter information be shared with Al Rossi, the acting assistant head of Homeland Security Investigations in Los Angeles.

Reached by phone, Rossi referred questions to an agency spokesperson, who did not respond to a request for comment.

Wheat had asked that the subpoenas be kept secret, so as not to impede an open investigation. Logan’s office released the records in accordance with California public records law, but redacted the names of voters on the grounds that doing so “protects those individuals from undue attention, harassment, intimidation, or possible harm” and “protects the integrity” of the investigation.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday upheld Trump’s expanded use of government data to search for noncitizens who are registered to vote. A lower court order had blocked use of the data over concerns — shared by the Supreme Court’s liberal wing — that the data are error-prone.

Voting rights experts have expressed concern that misuse of the data could lead to legitimate voters being purged from rolls.

States across the country, including California, have successfully fought off lawsuits from the Trump administration demanding the states’ complete voter rolls.

It is unclear why a subpoena for a single voter’s information would come between subpoenas for information on longer lists of voters. But it lines up with the case against Rivera-Flores.

In an affidavit filed with a criminal complaint against Rivera-Flores, Special Agent Christopher Kuzma — the same agent listed on the July 31 subpoena requesting a single voter’s information — said he received a series of texts he believed were from Rivera-Flores, who had previously been issued a misdemeanor citation on suspicion of disrupting immigration law enforcement operations at the federal building in Camarillo.

One text sent in April 2026 stated, “Your not the good guy I can’t wait until the mid terms you dont have qualified immunity then we can start and indict all you guys one bye one.”

Kuzma said in his affidavit that he took the message to mean Rivera-Flores “has both an interest in the voting process and an intent to participate in the election process.”

According to the affidavit, Kuzma said he conducted several record checks through public databases, including on the California secretary of state’s website, which “disclosed an online voter registration record” for a “Darwin Rivera” at Rivera-Flores’ address.

In July 2026, Kuzma said in the affidavit, he reviewed records from California Secretary of State Shirley Weber’s office for “Darwin J Rivera,” which showed the applicant had checked a box stating he was a U.S. citizen.

Kuzma’s affidavit said in August 2026 he received certified voter registration records from Los Angeles County.

The spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office did not respond to a question about whether Kuzma’s July 31 subpoena was specific to Rivera-Flores, but the office has previously said Wheat is prosecuting the case.

When Rivera-Flores’ arrest was announced, Essayli said it was “the first of many to come.”

In May, when Samuel Gonzalez Terrones was diagnosed with depression and schizophrenia, he started seeing a therapist and taking medication that he hoped would finally alleviate the dark thoughts that had begun creeping up so frequently he would sometimes seek help by calling the police on himself.

A month later, his mom, Minerva Terrones Dominguez, 54, had just hopped off a bus on her way to a grocery store in San Bernardino when immigration agents arrested her for being in the country illegally. While she languished in detention, the family said, Samuel grew increasingly despondent.

To help pay for an immigration lawyer, his siblings and dad had taken up extra shifts at their jobs. But because Samuel’s condition meant he couldn’t hold a steady job, he spent more and more time alone at home in Rialto.

“My mom was the one who would take care of him when he would have those bad thoughts,” said his older sister Sari Gonzalez, 32. “Everybody would be at work or at school, so my mom was the only one that would be here to calm him down, to say, ‘Your siblings will be here in a bit, just wait.’”

The lawyer, Arturo Burga, had figured out a way to free Minerva from detention and allow her to stay permanently in the U.S. The legal pathway, called cancellation of removal, hinged on proving that her deportation would cause extreme hardship to a U.S. citizen: Samuel.

They never got to file the paperwork.

Samuel Gonzalez Terrones, 21.

(Gonzalez family)

At 3:55 a.m. on Aug. 12, San Bernardino police responded to a railroad crossing. Samuel was pronounced dead at the scene, according to a San Bernardino County coroner’s news release. He was 21.

In a letter Samuel wrote before his death, an excerpt of which was shared with The Times, he talked about his mother’s detention. He said her being taken away by Immigration and Customs Enforcement made him feel like he’d hit “one last wall.”

“To the ICE agent who took away my mother: I hope it was worth it,” Samuel wrote. “I can’t handle anymore injustices in this world.”

Motivations for suicide are often complex and unknowable, and it’s unclear how the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration policies may have moved an immigrant or family member to harm themselves. But immigrant advocates say they have heard of such deaths.

This month, a 20-year-old Haitian man in Springfield, Ohio, walked into oncoming traffic after the Trump administration ended his Temporary Protected Status and ICE fitted him with an ankle monitor.

In May, the Associated Press found that at least 10 detainees had died by suicide since President Trump took office — a pace that far exceeds the growth in the detainee population.

ICE did not respond to requests for comment.

Samuel’s family describes him, the second youngest of seven siblings, as a caring and generous person who, at his best, was quick to laugh, loved chocolate conchas and video games, and dreamed of becoming a graphic designer.

He kept a dark aesthetic, with a lip piercing and nails frequently painted black or red. But he also had a lighter side, Sari said, as evidenced by the Hannah Montana stickers decorating his bedroom wall.

When the siblings were younger, they worked out together and would challenge each other to see how many pull-ups they could do. They liked hanging out at a skate park, laughing as he guided Sari’s small dog, Polar, down a rail on a board.

His mental health struggles started in 2021, when he was a freshman at Cajon High School. Little by little, he lost his passion for the gym, Sari said, and everything else.

An undated photo of Samuel Gonzalez Terrones.

(Gonzalez family)

Sari said she and her siblings each played a different role in helping Samuel through his struggles. He and his younger sister played video games. Sari would talk to him about adulthood. Their older brother would take him to church. On good days, their father would bring him along to landscaping jobs.

“He really did try to get better,” she said. “He held on for a really long time, and I’m proud of him for being so strong.”

The day Minerva was detained, Samuel and Sari were at home.

According to a federal court petition seeking Minerva’s release from ICE custody, federal agents stopped her, said she “looked like someone” they were seeking and mocked her when they found her EBT card while searching her belongings.

Minerva has lived in the U.S. for 33 years, had never been arrested or convicted of a crime and had never been in removal proceedings, according to her lawyer.

Sari said an ICE agent called her and said she had an hour to pick up her mother’s things from the agency’s local office and to say goodbye before ICE moved her to a detention center.

Samuel was inconsolable. “I’ve never seen him cry like that,” Sari said.

Sari took up extra hours at the plastics factory where she works as a machine operator. On Sundays, her only day off each week, she would take Samuel and their youngest sister to visit their mom at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center. The drive was 45 minutes without traffic, but they’d always arrive three hours early to join other families on the wait list to see loved ones.

On the way to the facility, Samuel was visibly happy. But on the way home, Sari said, all would be crying.

Friends and relatives attend the graveside service for Samuel Gonzalez Terrones.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

The extra expense of legal representation left the family struggling to pay for bills and food. In the evenings, Samuel stopping spending time with his siblings and retreated to his bedroom.

Burga, the lawyer, alerted ICE of Samuel’s death via email and requested Minerva’s emergency release under humanitarian grounds. He said the ICE deportation officer who replied struck a softer tone than usual, offering sincere condolences to the family.

“Our office was devastated,” said Amber Burga, executive director of the law firm. “I thought to myself, it takes somebody committing suicide for them to have compassion.”

Sari waited two weeks to tell Minerva. She waited, in part, because her mom had an upcoming court hearing and she didn’t want grief to cloud her thinking.

Sari was given 10 minutes in a visitation room to break the news about Samuel’s death to her mother.

“It was just me, my aunt and the officer who was watching,” she said. “When I told her, they wouldn’t even let me hug her while my mom was crying. They told me, ‘You can’t hug her. You can’t touch her.’”

Three days later, on Aug. 31, a federal judge — who didn’t know about Samuel’s death — issued an order granting her petition for release from detention, finding that she had been held illegally “based solely on DHS’s mistake.”

In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Brianna Fuller Mircheff wrote that when Minerva was detained, another federal judge had already declared it unlawful for Homeland Security to require mandatory detention for people who, like her, had entered the U.S. illegally.

Minerva had been arrested without a warrant, and an immigration judge had not determined whether she was a flight risk or a danger to the public.

Referring to Minerva and similar cases, Mircheff wrote, “Hundreds, if not thousands of individuals were held without process that was owed to them.”

Lawyers for the federal government had argued that Minerva could simply wait until she had been detained for six months, at which point she’d be entitled to a bond hearing, court records show. That suggestion didn’t fly with Mircheff, either.

“It is beyond cruel to suggest that this Court would let her sit in custody another four months,” she wrote.

Minerva is still in deportation proceedings. Without Samuel, she no longer qualifies for the legal pathway her lawyers had built a case around. Sari said she’s now considering joining the U.S. military to access the immigration benefits available for undocumented parents of enlisted members.

The family started a fundraiser to cover the cost of Samuel’s funeral.

Samuel’s parents, siblings, and a few dozen other family members and friends arrived on Sept. 22 at noon to bury him at the Rialto Park Cemetery. Each person held a white, long-stemmed rose.

Sari sobbed. Minerva looked on at the black casket holding her youngest boy, the goofball who loved his family, the one who had longed for her support while she was detained.

Times staff photographer Gina Ferazzi contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Under a light rain on Sunday at the Australian ambassador’s residence in Washington, CNN hosted its third annual tennis tournament, the Kangaroo Cup, pitting Beltway journalists against administration officials. The event aims to inject some levity into an historically adversarial relationship, reminding both sides of the spirit of the game. Themed drinks and tennis whites set the tone.

White House officials played with grace. But the mood this year was altogether different down Pennsylvania Avenue. Despite a federal judge demanding the administration reverse course on President Trump’s punitive actions toward his disfavored news outlets — CNN, MS NOW and Politico — he has refused to resume full access to the storied cable news channel, dismissing its reporters as “fake news.”

It is only the latest attack on press freedom by a president whose drive to punish critics and exert influence over the media appears to be growing.

During last week’s lavish state visit for Xi Jinping, Trump praised China for having “the friendliest press corps” and dismissed their repression of speech, despite the World Press Freedom Index ranking China among the world’s worst offenders — at the bottom of the list, alongside North Korea and Eritrea — for restrictions on journalists.

Five times in the last two months, the president has sneered at and insulted female reporters, mocking their appearance or dismissing their credentials.

He has declined to name a successor for his former press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, whose final news conference, on Aug. 27, was one of only a handful of briefings held throughout the summer. His administration launched its own streaming service last week, called Trump TV, in an attempt to circumvent traditional cable news. And on Monday, he posted renderings of the White House briefing room reconverted to its former use as a presidential pool and spa.

Trump’s escalating attacks on the press come just weeks before the midterm elections, as former officials and election experts warn the administration could seek to undermine confidence in the results. They also come at a precarious moment for public trust in the media, with more Americans saying limits on the press can be justified to combat misinformation.

A Pew Research Center survey released earlier this month found that 73% of Americans regard a free press as “very” or “extremely” important to society. Yet the country remains deeply divided over whether journalists should be barred from reporting “inaccurate” information, with a majority, 53%, supporting limits in some circumstances — even if it means the government itself would have the final say in determining what is true.

Trump’s attempt to bar three outlets from the White House grounds came just three days after the Pew poll was released.

“Plenty of presidents have complained about the press before. And presidents have restricted certain forms of press access or press action during wartime,” said Peter Kastor, chair of the History Department at Washington University in St. Louis. “In the moment — and especially afterward — Americans condemned this as antithetical to the constitutional protections for press freedom and the national commitment to an open democracy.

“What I find most striking about Trump’s press action is that he has made it unabashedly personal,” Kastor added. “He doesn’t like the way media outlets are covering him, so he is going to punish them.”

President Nixon famously limited White House access for the Washington Post over its coverage of the Watergate scandal. But he never attempted to bar press credentials completely — and ultimately authorized the conversion of the pool facility into the briefing room that exists today.

Other presidents have jostled with the press. President Obama was accused of limiting access to independent photojournalists, and famously favored nontraditional media outlets at the advent of the social media age. President George W. Bush limited his personal interactions with the press and curtailed access to government records.

Thomas Jefferson, the nation’s third president, once stated he “deplored” the “putrid state into which our newspapers have passed, and the malignity, the vulgarity, and mendacious spirit of those who write for them.”

Yet, “it is however an evil for which there is no remedy,” he also said. “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”

Trump’s particular style — as a showman and his own spokesman — makes his relationship with the media innately personal, said Andrew Rudalevige, a professor of government at Bowdoin College and author of “The New Imperial Presidency.”

“Presidents almost always feel that bad press is a feature of their staff’s poor communication of their policies — not that the policies themselves are unpopular or ill-advised,” Rudalevige said.

“Since President Trump does so much of his communication, though, this deflection is less available,” he added, and “thus the problem is with the press itself, not the policy or its purveyor.”

CNN’s legal fight continues, even after securing temporary reprieve from a judicial restraining order. So does the Associated Press’ lawsuit over the administration’s effort last year to punish the wire service for refusing to adopt Trump’s preferred name, “Gulf of America,” for the internationally recognized Gulf of Mexico.

While he keeps losing in court on 1st Amendment grounds, the president keeps testing new limits, looking for what will stick.

On the tennis court Sunday, at least, his administration won.

Sept. 24, 2026 9:29 PM PT

PITTSBURGH — James Copenhaver, one of three campaign rally attendees shot in 2024 during an assassination attempt on then-candidate Donald Trump, has died in Pittsburgh, his lawyer said Thursday. He was 76.

Copenhaver was in the bleachers during the event in Butler, Pa., when a 20-year-old gunman opened fire from a nearby rooftop, grazing Trump’s right ear with one bullet. Copenhaver was struck in the arm and in the abdomen, wounds that left him with lingering injuries and walking with a cane.

Two other attendees were also shot: David Dutch, who survived, and Corey Comperatore, who shielded his family from gunfire and was killed.

Copenhaver died Wednesday at Allegheny Health Network’s West Penn Hospital in Pittsburgh, according to a statement from the Allegheny County medical examiner cited in local media accounts.

Copenhaver’s lawyer, Joseph Feldman, said in a statement issued on behalf of the family that he died surrounded by loved ones. The statement did not specify whether his death was directly related to the injuries he suffered at the rally.

Copenhaver and his wife, Marianne Copenhaver, sued the federal government in June, alleging that the Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security had “utterly failed” to provide appropriate security at the rally. Copenhaver’s injuries required multiple surgeries, including a transection of his colon, and he had lingering kidney and other damage, including a loss of feeling in his leg. The lawsuit described the wounds as “debilitating, grievous, permanent and life altering.”

The family’s statement Thursday called Copenhaver above all else a devoted husband, father and grandfather who instilled the values of hard work, integrity and the service to others in his children.

“James’s dedication to this great country was a defining part of his life,” it said. “As a veteran, he proudly served our nation in the armed forces, and his love of country never wavered. James was a true American patriot who believed deeply in the freedoms and ideals upon which this nation was founded, and he embodied the very best traits of our great nation.”

In a statement posted to social media, President Trump on Thursday called Copenhaver “a true American Patriot.”

“Jim showed tremendous bravery, courageously continuing to FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT, and maintaining a positive spirit despite unimaginable hardships,” Trump wrote.

Johnson and Smyth write for the Associated Press.

A proposal to tax California’s billionaires has fractured Democratic politics, repelled some of the state’s richest residents and exploded into a costly battle that’s overshadowing even the gubernatorial election.

Known as Proposition 40, the ballot measure is also dividing the very industry it’s supposed to help. The healthcare workers union behind the initiative, which would authorize a wealth tax on billionaires, says the levy would raise sorely needed funds to shore up health coverage.

By contrast, leading California hospital and doctor groups are opposing the measure ahead of the November vote. They say the one-time 5% levy on the state’s wealthiest is a risky gambit with an uncertain path to victory — as well as a distraction from other proposals to shore up healthcare.

“This is an experiment on a taxation scheme that’s not been done before, and it puts healthcare in a more vulnerable position as a result,” California Medical Assn. Chief Executive Dustin Corcoran said at a recent briefing in Sacramento. “It’s not a healthcare ballot measure.”

Less than six weeks before election day, polls show a divided electorate. But whatever the outcome, the fight is exposing a broader problem confronting California: how to preserve one of the nation’s largest expansions of publicly funded healthcare as a big chunk of the money that helped pay for it disappears.

Over the last decade, California increased access to publicly funded healthcare by broadening eligibility for Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program, and other types of insurance, allowing millions more residents to gain coverage. The number of people without insurance fell to 2.4 million in 2024 from about 6.5 million in 2011.

Now, that trend is expected to reverse. According to the Congressional Budget Office, President Trump’s budget bill last year will lead to $1 trillion in healthcare-related cuts over a decade. Earlier this week, the Trump administration said it recently removed 760,000 people from Obamacare plans across the nation, alleging that some were enrolled improperly and others don’t exist.

Combined with strict work requirements, more frequent eligibility checks and a pullback in state spending pushed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, the changes are projected to push California’s uninsured population under the age of 65 to 4.6 million by 2030, according to the UC Berkeley Labor Center.

“Without trying to be melodramatic, when millions of people lose coverage, it is entirely predictable that thousands will die unnecessarily because of foregone treatment,” said Dave Regan, president of SEIU-UHW, the healthcare-workers union pushing the billionaire tax.

“There is an absolute consensus on what the problem is, and there’s a consensus that there’s no other solution on the table,” he said in an interview at Bloomberg’s San Francisco offices.

Even before the budget cuts start to bite, financial strains are mounting at institutions such as Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital in South Los Angeles.

MLKCH’s waiting room is now mostly used for treating patients, with 16 wooden cubicles functioning as care rooms. Sick or injured people are also cared for in the hospital’s front hallways and in what used to be the meditation chapel and the gift shop.

The hospital opened in 2015 with an emergency department built for 25,000 visits annually. In 2024, it handled 130,000. Dr. Elaine Batchlor, its CEO, said further funding reductions “would threaten the sustainability of the hospital.”

Batchlor isn’t taking a position on Proposition 40 and has been looking for other sources of revenue. SEIU-UHW’s Regan argues there’s no other way to raise the money needed to fill the massive gap.

The California Budget & Policy Center estimates the state stands to lose roughly $30 billion in federal Medi-Cal funding each year. Asking California lawmakers for that amount is a “fool’s errand,” Regan said. “And on top of that, the only people the legislature will tax are ordinary people.”

The union estimates the levy would raise $100 billion over five years, with 90% earmarked to shore up health coverage amid impending budget cuts.

Critics dispute the projection. The state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office says the tax would probably raise tens of billions of dollars, but potentially reduce income-tax revenue in the long run, as some ultrawealthy residents depart the state.

Recent polls show an increasingly contested path for Proposition 40. A recent UC Berkeley-Politico poll found 45% of likely voters in favor, but opposition has increased since early this year and now stands at 43%. A separate Public Policy Institute of California survey put support at 52% and opposition at 46%.

Led by Sergey Brin, wealthy opponents have poured almost $230 million into funding Building a Better California, according to a filing late Thursday. That’s helping them flood the airwaves with anti tax advertising. There are also two competing ballot measures designed to torpedo Proposition 40 if they pass.

Billionaires aren’t the only detractors. Critics have also assailed Proposition 40 for carving out an exception to California’s constitutional funding rules to steer most proceeds to healthcare. While the state generally earmarks at least 40% of General Fund revenue to public schools and community colleges, the billionaire-tax proposal excludes the new levy from that calculation.

Corcoran, the medical association chief, argues that even if Proposition 40 passes in November, legal challenges would potentially delay its implementation for years.

“There’s a lot that we can do looking ahead to 2028 when these cuts start taking greater effect that frankly would provide more immediate relief than Proposition 40 would,” he said. His group and others are pushing instead for large corporations to help cover the cost of public insurance for their workers.

Regan called that proposal “the worst public policy on planet Earth,” saying costs will be passed on to consumers and that it essentially acts as a payroll tax on low-wage workers.

He also disputed the notion the billionaire tax would lead the ultrawealthy to leave the state, pointing to Nvidia Corp. CEO Jensen Huang, who earlier this year said he would be “perfectly fine” with the levy. As for legal challenges to the billionaire tax, Regan said he believes they can be resolved in 12 months.

The uncertain funding picture has many hospitals bracing for cuts.

James Suver, CEO of Ridgecrest Regional Hospital, about 150 miles north of Los Angeles, said he’s not betting on proceeds from the billionaire tax. He’s weighing options that include pausing maternity care again, cutting physician recruitment and reducing emergency-room service.

“Our future under the most likely scenario is not looking very good,” Suver said. “We’re beyond doing minor nips and tucks to be able to offset some of the changes that I suspect may be happening in the future.”

Clanton writes for Bloomberg. Kara Wetzel of Bloomberg contributed.