Politics Desk

WASHINGTON — The government shutdown has reopened debate on what has been a central issue for both major political parties in the last 15 years: the future of health coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

Tax credits for people who get health insurance through the marketplaces created by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, expire at the end of the year.

Democrats say they won’t vote to reopen the government until Republicans negotiate an extension of the expanded subsidies. Republicans say they won’t negotiate until Democrats vote to reopen the government. Lawmakers in both parties have been working on potential solutions behind the scenes, hoping that leaders will eventually start to talk, but it’s unclear if the two sides could find compromise.

As Congress circles the issue, a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that about 6 in 10 Americans are “extremely” or “very” concerned about their health costs going up in the next year. Those worries extend across age groups and include people with and without health insurance, the poll found.

A look at the subsidies that are expiring, the politics of the ACA and what Congress might do:

Enhanced premium help during the pandemic

Passed in 2010, the ACA was meant to decrease the number of uninsured people in the country and make coverage more affordable for those who don’t have private insurance. The law created state by state exchanges, some of which are run by the individual states, to try to increase the pool of the insured and bring down rates.

In 2021, when Democrats controlled Congress and the White House during the COVID-19 pandemic, they expanded premium help that was already in the law. The changes included eliminating premiums for some lower-income enrollees, ensuring that higher earners paid no more than 8.5% of their income and expanding eligibility for middle-class earners.

The expanded subsidies pushed enrollment to new levels and drove the rate of uninsured people to a historic low. This year, a record 24 million people have signed up for insurance coverage through the ACA, in large part because billions of dollars in subsidies have made the plans more affordable for many people.

If the tax credits expire, annual out-of-pocket premiums are estimated to increase by 114% — an average of $1,016 — next year, according to an analysis from KFF.

Democrats push to extend subsidies

Democrats extended those tax credits in 2022 for another three years but were not able to make them permanent. The credits are set to expire Jan. 1, with Republicans now in full control.

Lacking in power and sensing a political opportunity, Democrats used some of their only leverage and forced a government shutdown over the issue when federal funding ran out on Oct. 1. They say they won’t vote for a House-passed bill to reopen the government until Republicans give them some certainty that the subsidies will be extended.

Democrats introduced legislation in September to permanently extend the premium tax credits, but they have suggested that they are open to a shorter period.

“We need a serious negotiation,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer has repeatedly said.

Republicans try to scale the ACA back, again

The Democratic demands on health care have reignited longstanding Republican complaints about the ACA, which they have campaigned against for years and tried and failed to repeal in 2017. Many in the party say that if Congress is going to act, they want to scrap the expanded subsidies and overhaul the entire law.

The problem is not the expiring subsidies but “the cost of health care,” Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida said Tuesday.

In a virtual briefing Tuesday, the libertarian Cato Institute and the conservative Paragon Health Institute branded the subsidies as President Joe Biden’s “COVID credits” and claimed they’ve enabled fraudsters to sign people up for fully subsidized plans without their knowledge.

Others have pitched more modest proposals that could potentially win over some Democrats. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has said he is open to extending the subsidies with changes, including lower income limits and a stop to auto-enrollment that may sign up people who don’t need the coverage.

The ACA is “in desperate need of reform,” Thune has said.

House Republicans are considering their own ideas for reforming the ACA, including proposals for phasing out the subsidies for new enrollees. And they have begun to discuss whether to combine health care reforms with a new government funding bill and send it to the Senate for consideration once they return to Washington.

“We will probably negotiate some off-ramp” to ease the transition back to pre-COVID-19 levels, said Maryland Rep. Andy Harris, the head of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, during a virtual town hall Tuesday.

Is compromise possible?

A number of Republicans want to extend the subsidies. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said most people who are using the exchanges created by the ACA “don’t really have another option, and it’s already really, really expensive. So I think there are things we can do to reform the program.”

Hawley said he had been having conversations with other senators about what those changes could be, including proposals for income limits, which he said he sees as a “very reasonable.”

Bipartisan groups of lawmakers have been discussing the income limits and other ideas, including making the lowest-income people pay very low premiums instead of nothing. Some Republicans have advocated for that change to ensure that all enrollees are aware they have coverage and need it. Other proposals would extend the subsidies for a year or two or slowly phase them out.

It’s unclear if any of those ideas could gain traction on both sides — or any interest from the White House, where President Donald Trump has remained mostly disengaged. Despite the public stalemate, though, lawmakers are feeling increased urgency to find a solution as the Nov. 1 open enrollment date approaches.

Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire has been talking to lawmakers since the shutdown began, trying to find areas of compromise. On Tuesday, she suggested that Congress could also look at extending the enrollment dates for the ACA since Congress is stalled on the subsidies.

“These costs are going to affect all of us, and it’s going to affect our health care system,” she said.

Jalonick writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Lisa Mascaro and Joey Cappelletti in Washington and Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.

SAO PAULO — Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said Thursday he will run for reelection next year, seeking a fourth nonconsecutive term.

“I’m turning 80, but you can be sure I have the same energy I had when I was 30. And I’m going to run for a fourth term in Brazil,” Lula told reporters during his official visit to Indonesia.

The Brazilian leader is traveling across Asia. After his visit to Indonesia, where he met with President Prabowo Subianto, Lula will head to Malaysia to attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit.

Brazilian media reported that he is expected to meet for the first time with President Trump in Malaysia on Sunday, following a conciliatory phone call earlier this month. The two leaders are expected to discuss the 50% trade tariff Trump imposed on Brazil.

Brazil’s constitution allows presidents to serve only two consecutive terms. Lula returned to office in 2023 after 13 years out of power and remains eligible to run again.

Before defeating Jair Bolsonaro in 2022 to win a third nonconsecutive term, Lula had said that would be his final campaign both because of his age and because he believed the country needed political renewal. But early in his current term, he began hinting that he might run again.

In February 2023, the president said he could seek reelection in 2026, adding that his decision would depend on the country’s political context and his health.

A dominant figure on Brazil’s left, Lula is the country’s longest-serving president since its return to democracy 40 years ago.

Some Brazilian politicians have expressed concern about Lula’s age and recent health issues. He underwent emergency surgery to treat a brain bleed late last year after a fall in the bathroom. Still, Lula frequently insists he remains healthy and energetic, often sharing workout videos on social media.

Lula currently leads all polls for the 2026 election, though roughly half of voters say they disapprove of him. Trump’s tariffs reenergized the Brazilian leader and pushed his popularity up.

His main political rival, Bolsonaro, has been barred from running for office and sentenced to 27 years in prison for attempting a coup. While no strong opposition candidate has yet emerged, analysts say a viable contender is likely to depend on Bolsonaro’s backing as he serves his sentence under house arrest.

Pessoa writes for the Associated Press.

Hello and happy Thursday. It’s Anita Chabria again. Today, I’m coming to you from a coffee shop where I just used Apple Pay to buy a dirty chai.

Why does that matter? Because in the last five minutes, I’ve dropped all kinds of data into the universe. What I drink, how much I’ll pay for it, how long I sat here using this Wi-Fi and dozens of other details that companies are willing to pay for but that I don’t even think about — much less benefit from.

Every day, we all walk around dropping data like garbage — when in reality it’s gold. Especially in the age of budding artificial intelligence, when the smallest bit of insight is being crammed into these new robo-gods in the hope of making them seem ever smarter and more human.

It all raises the question, if it’s our data, shouldn’t we be paid for it?

André Vellozo thinks so, and is working to make that a reality. He’s a Brazilian hippie based in Silicon Valley, an outsider in an increasingly conservative and insular community with an idea that’s more about equality than power.

“Everything you do generates value and data,” Vellozo said. “Now you can collect.”

Here’s what he envisions — and why it’s as much politics as business.

A bus stop advertises Artisan AI, an artificial intelligence software company, along the Embarcadero in downtown San Francisco.

(Florence Middleton / For The Times)

Pennies add up

Think of Vellozo’s idea a bit like streaming royalties, giving you a small paycheck every time information you create is used, be it details of a coffee purchase or your hospital stay. Obviously, an artist could never keep track of every single time their show or song is played — they rely on managers and brokers.

Vellozo’s company, DrumWave, would act as that broker for individuals’ data. In his scenario, every person from birth would have a digital wallet where every bit of data they drop is accounted for. This is stuff you are already creating, whether you’re aware of it or not — and which companies are too often collecting, whether you are aware of it or not.

How many “accept all” buttons have you clicked in your life without reading the details of what you are agreeing to, including allowing others to sell your data for their own profit?

When companies want to use that data — which they do to understand economics in the macro and micro, or to study health outcomes, or to feed those large language models such as ChatGPT — DrumWave packages it and licenses it for use without identifying details, but with each consumer’s consent.

Data goes out, payment comes it — over and over for the life of the account.

It’s not as far-fetched as it might seem. Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed a similar idea in 2019, arguing, “California’s consumers should also be able to share in the wealth that is created from their data.”

Nothing ever came of it, in no small part due to the lobbying and money thrown at government by big tech. I asked the governor’s office if there was still any interest around the idea and got nothing back from them. But California already has a law that could give folks control of their data, though it isn’t often used the way Vellozo envisions.

Downsides

There are, of course, many obstacles and potential pitfalls. Data privacy is one that comes up often — do we really want to be selling the details of our most recent colonoscopy, anonymous or not?

And of course, there’s also the potential for exploitation. What data would the poor or desperate be willing to sell, and how cheaply?

Annemarie Butler is an associate professor of philosophy at Iowa State University who specializes in the ethics of AI. She wonders if people would really understand what their data was being used for or by whom, and if they would be able to pull it back in any way once it’s out there.

She also said that there may be no meaningful way to opt out.

“Our own data are not always restricted to that one person,” she warns. “DNA is probably the clearest example of this: When one shares a DNA sample, she shares vital (and immutable) information about any of her blood relatives. And yet only she provides the consent.”

Of course, privacy is something of an illusion right now.

And, Vellozo points out, it’s not just that we are currently giving data away for free under the current system — we are all actually paying to create that data in the first place. We pay for the electricity that charges our phones. We pay the monthly service charge on our devices. We are actively putting in our time and labor to create the information.

Vellozo’s company is currently running a pilot of digital wallets with rideshare drivers in California.

He points out that these drivers spend a lot of money and energy creating information that will likely be used to train their AI replacements — their gas, the cost of the car, insurance, maintenance and time. Then all that information — who they pick up, when, how long the ride is and a million other details — is just collected and used to create profit for others.

In another milestone, Brazil — a country that has embraced a national model of digital payments much to the chagrin of many technology and banking companies, and President Trump for that matter — is on board with the idea of a digital wallet for all citizens. Vellozo was back home this week to work on that effort.

A check on AI

So why does all this matter in a politics newsletter?

Beyond money, data ownership offers another benefit: Regulation. Although California has arguably done more to regulate AI than almost any other state, the controls on the technology remain woefully slim. The federal government, after a fancy dinner redolent in flattery at the White House, has made it clear it has no interest in protecting people from this powerful technology, or the men who would wield it.

Vellozo sees the ownership of data as an important step in curbing the power of corporations to pursue ever-mightier AI models without oversight.

The coming changes induced by artificial intelligence are going to be profound for the average person. Already, we are seeing a world in which physical money, or at least the movement of it, is increasingly a relic. Financial companies are becoming tech companies, and money is digital (yes, economists, I know this is technically too simple).

Combine that with the changes in our ability to earn money through work, and the power imbalance already faced by the poor and working class becomes, well, really bad. Remember the railroad barons? This is going to make it seem like they were running ice cream trucks.

We need to rethink what a successful economy looks like. Because AI is going to give a few people not just a lot of money, but a lot of power — by scavenging the knowledge and work of the rest of us. It will take all of us to build successful AI, but the rewards will go to a handful.

So the idea of owning our data is not really about Vellozo’s company or if it accomplishes its goal.

It’s about creating a future in which individual power isn’t a thing of the past.

And where the coming changes benefit society, not just the corporate titans who would like us all to remain too confused to object.

What else you should be reading:

The must-read: Just like humans, AI can get ‘brain rot’ from low-quality text and the effects appear to linger, pre-print study says
The what happened: Trump empowers election deniers, still fixated on 2020 grievances
The L.A. Times special: Malibu residents flee as international buyers snap up burned-out lots

P.S. We’re continuing to look at the blatant (and frankly frightening) propaganda that Homeland Security is posting on its official social media. Case in point, this recruitment ad with … medieval knights? Not only is this image chock-full of Christian nationalism dog whistles, it’s aimed at the young men Immigration and Customs Enforcement is hoping to recruit with its edgelord/video game fanatasies that would turn legimate law enforcement efforts into a religious crusade against immigrants.

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How democratic is your water utility?

Does everyone who is registered to vote get to choose their leaders in elections? Or do only property owners get to vote for the managers? Maybe the public has no say at all in selecting the people who make decisions that determine safe and affordable drinking water?

“We see significant differences based on democracy,” said Kristin Dobbin, a researcher at UC Berkeley. “It really does influence the outcomes of a water system.”

In a new study she led, it turns out that water utilities where all voters have a say in choosing leaders tend to perform better.

I contacted Dobbin to learn more about what she and her colleagues discovered about what they call “water democracy” in California.

The researchers analyzed nearly all of the state’s residential water suppliers, more than 2,400 of them. They looked at three categories: those where all registered voters can elect board members; those where only property owners can; and those where people have no vote in choosing decision-makers. Fully 25% of the systems fall into this last category.

In 2012, California became the first state in the nation to declare access to clean, accessible and affordable drinking water a human right. The researchers wanted to see how these different types of utilities have fared in achieving that.

They already knew more than 700,000 Californians rely on water systems that are failing to meet drinking water standards, according to the State Water Resources Control Board, and an additional 1.8 million have systems considered “at risk” of failing.

The study, published this month in the journal Nature Water, found that 13% of water utilities with limited voting rights are identified as “failing,” similar to those where customers can’t vote on leaders. For fully democratic water systems, only 9% fall into that category.

Fully democratic water purveyors, which tend to be larger, also have significantly fewer cases of E. coli contamination from sewage leaks or agricultural runoff.

Those with the most cases of bacterial contamination are water utilities with no elected boards that are run by companies or mobile home parks. These serve many low-income communities and tend to serve more African Americans.

“We find very clearly that low-income communities of color are less likely to have water democracy than others,” Dobbin said.

The group of for-profit utilities led by unelected managers is also more likely to rely on a single source of water rather than diversifying, which Dobbin said puts them more at risk of an emergency if a well goes dry or tests reveal contamination.

Growing numbers of Californians are also struggling to afford the rising costs of their water bills. And on affordability, the group that performs the worst is utilities that allow only property owners, not all registered voters, to vote. The researchers found the utilities with the most democracy perform much better in delivering affordable water.

One caveat: Another recent study, led by UC Davis professor Samuel Sandoval Solis, examined who is leading nearly 700 public water agencies in California, and found that Latinos, as well as Black and Indigenous people, remain significantly underrepresented on their boards, as do women.

Here’s a look at other news about water, the environment and climate change this week:

Water news this week

I wrote about how tribes are urging Los Angeles to pump less groundwater in the Owens Valley. In addition to siphoning water from streams into its aqueduct, the Department of Water and Power says the city has 96 wells it can use to pump groundwater. Indigenous leaders told me the pumping has dried up springs and meadows. DWP says the water is used locally for purposes including controlling dust on the dry bed of Owens Lake, and that the city is taking steps to ensure protection of the environment.

Meanwhile, in a unanimous vote, the board of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which delivers water for 19 million people, chose the agency’s new general manager: Shivaji Deshmukh, who leads the Inland Empire Utilities Agency. His appointment comes nearly nine months after the board fired general manager Adel Hagekhalil after an investigation into allegations of discrimination that exposed divisions within the agency.

Up north along the California-Oregon border, one year after the last of four dams was dismantled on the Klamath River, tribes and environmentalists say the river and its salmon are starting to rebound. Damon Goodman, regional director of the group California Trout, says shortly after the dams were removed, “the fish returned in greater numbers than I expected and maybe anyone expected,” Debra Utacia Krol reports in the Arizona Republic. Oregon Public Broadcasting also reports that Chinook salmon have returned to southern Oregon for the first time in more than a century.

In a new report, researchers say President Trump’s proposed budget would slash funding for federal programs aimed at bringing clean drinking water to Native communities by about $500 million, a nearly 70% decrease. The researchers, part of an initiative called Universal Access to Clean Water for Tribal Communities, said the proposal would reverse “hard-won progress toward clean, reliable water supplies for Native communities,” and they’re urging Congress to reject the cuts.

More climate and environment news

California hasn’t issued an emergency plea for the public to conserve energy, known as a Flex Alert, since 2022. As my L.A. Times colleague Hayley Smith reports, much of the credit for that goes to new battery energy storage, which has grown more than 3,000% since 2020.

The Trump administration plans to further cut staff at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department. Inside Climate News’ Katie Surma reports that the Interior Department plans to slash about 2,000 positions affecting national parks, endangered species and research. The plan surfaced in a court case after a judge temporarily blocked the administration from cutting staff during the government shutdown.

Earlier this year, my colleague Grace Toohey wrote about problems in Ventura County during the Thomas fire of 2017 and the Mountain fire of 2024, when firefighters saw hydrants run dry and found themselves short of water. Assemblymember Steve Bennett (D-Ventura) introduced legislation requiring Ventura County water suppliers to take various steps to try to prevent that, including having 24 hours of backup power to pump water for firefighting. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill, which Bennett says is “implementing the lessons learned” from the fires.

One other thing

My former colleague Sammy Roth recently left the L.A. Times and has started his own newsletter about climate and culture called Climate-Colored Goggles. His first edition just came out, focusing on how Toyota has tarnished its green reputation so much that some of Hollywood’s leading environmentalists no longer want to be associated with it. Sammy writes that the Environmental Media Assn., Hollywood’s leading sustainability group, appears poised to cut ties with Toyota, its sponsor.

Sammy’s piece is, as usual, hard-hitting and insightful. I hope you’ll join me in continuing to follow and subscribe to his work.

Boiling Point, which Sammy helmed so brilliantly, will be back with a new installment next week from another member of our Climate and Environment team.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

For more water and climate news, follow Ian James @ianjames.bsky.social on Bluesky and @ByIanJames on X.

To say that President Trump is unfazed by Saturday’s nationwide “No Kings” rally, which vies for bragging rights as perhaps the largest single-day protest in U.S. history, is the sort of understatement too typical when describing his monarchical outrages.

Leave aside Trump’s grotesque mockery of the protests — his post that night of an AI-generated video depicting himself as a becrowned pilot in a fighter jet, dropping poop bombs on citizens protesting peacefully below. Consider instead two other post-rally actions: On Sunday and Wednesday, “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth announced first that on Trump’s orders the military had struck a seventh boat off Venezuela and then an eighth vessel in the Pacific, bringing the number of people killed over two months to 34. The administration has provided no evidence to Congress or the American public for Trump’s claims that the unidentified dead were “narco-terrorists,” nor any credible legal rationale for the strikes. Then, on Monday, Trump began demolishing the White House’s East Wing to create the gilded ballroom of his dreams, which, at 90,000 square feet, would be nearly twice the size of the White House residence itself.

As sickening as the sight was — heavy equipment ripping away at the historic property as high-powered hoses doused the dusty debris — Trump’s $250-million vanity project is small stuff compared to a policy of killing noncombatant civilian citizens of nations with which we are not at war (Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador). Yet together the actions reflect the spectrum of consequences of Trump’s utter sense of impunity as president, from the relatively symbolic to the murderous.

“In America the law is king,” Thomas Paine wrote in 1776. Not in Trump’s America.

Among the commentariat, the president’s desecration of the East Wing is getting at least as much criticism as his extralegal killings at sea. Many critics see in the bulldozing of the People’s House a metaphor for Trump’s destructive governance generally — his other teardowns of federal agencies, life-saving foreign aid, healthcare benefits and more. The metaphor is indeed apt.

But what’s more striking is the sheer sense of impunity that Trump telegraphs, constantly, with the “je suis l’état” flare of a Louis XIV — complete (soon) with Trump’s Versailles. (Separately, Trump’s mimicry of French emperors now includes plans for a sort of Arc de Triomphe near Arlington Cemetery. A reporter asked who it would be for. “Me,” Trump said. Arc de Trump.)

No law, domestic or international, constrains him, as far as the convicted felon is concerned. Neither does Congress, where Republicans bend the knee. Nor the Supreme Court, with its 6-3 right-wing majority, including three justices Trump chose in his first term.

The court’s ruling last year in Trump vs. United States gives Trump virtual immunity from criminal prosecution, but U.S. servicemembers don’t have that protection when it comes to the deadly Caribbean Sea attacks or any other orders from the commander in chief that might one day be judged to have been illegal.

The operation’s commander, Navy Adm. Alvin Holsey, reportedly expressed concerns about the strikes within the administration. Last week he announced his retirement after less than a year as head of the U.S. Southern Command. It could be a coincidence. But I’m hardly alone in counting Holsey as the latest casualty in Trump and Hegseth’s purge of perceived nonloyalists at the Pentagon.

“When the president decides someone has to die, the military becomes his personal hit squad,” military analyst and former Republican Tom Nichols said Monday on MSNBC. Just like with kings and other autocrats: Off with their heads.

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a rare maverick Republican, noted on Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that in years past, the Coast Guard would board foreign boats suspected of ferrying drugs and, if contraband were found, take it and suspected traffickers into custody, often gleaning information about higher-ups to make a real dent in the drug trade. But, Paul added, about one in four boats typically had no drugs. No matter nowadays — everyone’s a target for deadly force. “So,” Paul said, “all of these people have been blown up without us knowing their name, without any evidence of a crime.” (Paul was the only Republican senator not invited to lunch with Trump on Monday in the paved-over Rose Garden.)

On Monday, Ecuador said no evidence connects a citizen who survived a recent U.S. strike to any crime. Colombian President Gustavo Petro accused the United States of murdering a fisherman in a September strike, provoking Trump to call Petro a “drug leader” and unilaterally yank U.S. foreign aid. A Venezuelan told the Washington Post that the 11 people killed in the first known U.S. strike were fishermen; national security officials told Congress the individuals were headed back to shore when hit. Meanwhile, the three countries and U.S. news reports contradict Trump’s claims that he’s destroying and seizing fentanyl — a drug that typically comes from Mexico and then is smuggled by land, usually by U.S. citizens.

Again, no matter to America’s king, who said last week that he’s eyeing land incursions in Venezuela now “because we’ve got the sea very well under control.” Trump’s courtiers say he doesn’t need Congress’ authorization for any use of force. The Constitution suggests otherwise.

Alas, neither it nor the law limits Trump’s White House makeover. He doesn’t have to submit to Congress because he’s tapping rich individuals and corporations for the cost. Past presidents, mindful that the house is a public treasure, not their palace, voluntarily sought input from various federal and nonprofit groups. After reports about the demolition, which put the lie to Trump’s promise in July that the ballroom “won’t interfere with the current building,” the American Institute of Architects urged its members to ask Congress to “investigate destruction of the White House.”

Disparate as they are, Trump’s ballroom project and his Caribbean killings were joined last week. At a White House dinner for ballroom donors, Trump joked about the sea strikes: “Nobody wants to go fishing anymore.” The pay-to-play titans laughed. Shame on them.

Trump acts with impunity because he can; he’s a lame duck. But other Republicans must face the voters. Keep the “No Kings” protests coming — right through the elections this November and next.

Bluesky: @jackiecalmes
Threads: @jkcalmes
X: @jackiekcalmes

Like with cigarettes, la migra should come with a warning label: Proximity to ICE could be hazardous for your health.

From Los Angeles to Chicago, Portlandand New York, the evidence is ample enough that wherever Trump sends in the immigration agency, people get hurt. And not just protesters and immigrants.

That includes 13 police officers tear-gassed in Chicago earlier this month. And, now, a U.S. marshal.

Which brings us to what happened in South L.A. on Tuesday.

Federal agents boxed in the Toyota Camry of local TikToker Carlitos Ricardo Parias — better known to his hundreds of thousands of followers as Richard LA. As Parias allegedly tried to rev his way out of the trap, an ICE agent opened fire. One bullet hit the 44-year-old Mexican immigrant — and another ricocheted into the hand of a deputy U.S. marshal.

Neither suffered life-threatening injuries, but it’s easy to imagine that things could have easily turned out worse. Such is the chaos that Trump has caused by unleashing shock troops into U.S. cities.

Rather than take responsibility and apologize for an incident that could’ve easily been lethal, Team Trump went into their default spin mode of blaming everyone but themselves.

Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that the shooting was “the consequences of conduct and rhetoric by sanctuary politicians and activists who urge illegal aliens to resist arrest.”

Acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli chimed in on social media soon after: “I urge California public officials to moderate their rhetoric toward federal law enforcement. Encouraging resistance to federal agents can lead to deadly consequences.” Hours later, he called Times reporter James Queally “an absolute joke, not a journalist” because my colleague noted it’s standard practice by most American law enforcement agencies to not shoot at moving vehicles. One reason is that it increases the chance of so-called friendly fire.

Federal authorities accuse Parias of ramming his car into agents’ vehicles after they boxed him in. He is being charged with assault on a federal officer.

Time, and hopefully, evidence, will show what happened — and very important, what led to what happened.

The Trump administration keeps claiming that the public anger against its immigration actions is making the job more dangerous for la migra and their sister agencies. McLaughlin and her boss, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, keep saying there’s been a 1,000% increase in assaults on immigration agents this year like an incantation. Instead of offering concrete figures, they use the supposed stat as a shield against allegations ICE tactics are going too far and as a weapon to excuse the very brutality ICE claims it doesn’t practice.

Well, even if what they say is true, there’s only one side that’s making the job more dangerous for la migra and others during raids:

La migra.

It turns out that if you send in phalanxes of largely masked federal agents to bully and intimidate people in American cities, Americans tend not to take kindly to it.

Who knew?

Gregory Bovino, center, of U.S. Border Patrol, marches with federal agents to the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in Los Angeles on Aug. 14.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

We’re about to enter the sixth month of Trump’s plan to rid the country of undocumented immigrants. Sycophants are bragging that he’s doing the job, but they’re not caring to look at the mess left in its wake that’s becoming more and more perilous for everyone involved. They insist that those who are executing and planning raids are professionals, but professionals don’t make constant pendejos out of themselves.

Professionals don’t bring squadrons to chase after tamale ladies or day laborers, or stage flashy raids of apartments and parks that accomplish little else than footage for propaganda videos. They don’t go into neighborhoods with intimidation on their mind and ready to rough up anyone who gets in their way.

A ProPublica investigation showed that ICE has detained at least 170 U.S. citizens this year, many whom offered proof that they were in this country legally as la migra cuffed them and hauled them off to detention centers.

Professionals don’t lie like there’s a bonus attached to it — but that’s what Trump’s deportation Leviathan keeps doing. In September, McLaughlin put out a news release arguing that the shooting death of 38-year-old Silverio Villegas González in Chicago by an ICE agent was justified because he was dragged a “significant distance” and suffered serious injuries. Yet body cam footage of local police who showed up to the scene captured the two ICE agents involved in the incident describing their injuries as “nothing major.”

Closer to home, a federal jury in Los Angeles last month acquitted an activist of striking a Border Patrol agent after federal public defender Cuauhtémoc Ortega screened footage that contradicted the government’s case and poked holes in the testimony of Border Patrol staff and supervisors. Last week, ICE agents detained Oxnard activist Leonardo Martinez after a collision between their Jeep and his truck. McLaughlin initially blamed the incident on an “agitator group … engaged in recording and verbal harassment,” but footage first published by L.A. Taco showed that la migra trailed Martinez and then crashed into him twice — not the other way around.

Professionals don’t host social media accounts that regularly spew memes that paint the picture of an American homeland where white makes right and everyone else must be eliminated, like the Department of Homeland Security does. A recent post featured medieval knights wearing chain mail and helmets and wielding longswords as they encircle the slogan “The Enemies are at the Gates” above ICE’s job listing website.

The Trump administration has normalized racism and has turned cruelty into a virtue — then its mouthpieces gasp in mock horror when people resist its officially sanctioned jackbootery.

This evil buffoonery comes straight from a president who reacted to the millions of Americans who protested this weekend at No Kings rallies by posting on social media an AI-generated video of him wearing a crown and dropping feces on his critics from a jet fighter. And yet McLaughlin, Noem and other Trump bobbleheads have the gall to question why politicians decry la migra while regular people follow and film them during raids when not shouting obscenities and taunts at them?

As I’ve written before, there’s never a nice way to conduct an immigration raid but there’s always a better way. Or at least a way that’s not dripping with malevolence.

Meanwhile, ICE is currently on a hiring spree thanks to Trump’s Bloated Beastly Bill and and has cut its training program from six months to 48 days, according to The Atlantic. It’s a desperate and potentially reckless recruitment drive.

And if you think rapidly piling more people into a clown car is going to produce less clown-like behavior by ICE on the streets of American cities, boy do I have news for you.

Reporting from Washington — President Trump could contain his anger for only so long — about 14 hours — before lashing out on Twitter on Thursday to protest “the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!”

But in attacking Wednesday’s appointment of former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III as a special counsel to head the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and any role that Trump’s associates may have played, the president risks alienating potential supporters in his own party.

He could create an enemy out of a prosecutor who commands both a vast army of investigators and bipartisan respect.

And, yet again, he has undercut advice from top Republicans inside and outside the White House who say that an independent investigation could help Trump. If only he could control his evident anxiety about the case, the secrecy of a special counsel investigation could keep the story out of the daily headlines, they say. And Mueller’s credibility could provide exoneration for the president and his aides if the investigation finds that they have done nothing wrong.

The mix of grievance, hyperbole and defiance in Trump’s response, however, was hardly surprising at this point in his public life. His statements fit a pattern he long ago established of fighting back against enemies real or perceived and of seldom letting go of a grudge.

In a second tweet, Trump complained that President Obama and Hillary Clinton had not been subjected to the same treatment.

“With all of the illegal acts that took place in the Clinton campaign & Obama Administration, there was never a special counsel appointed!” he wrote. He initially misspelled counsel as “councel” before sending a corrected tweet.

Trump did not specify what he meant by illegal acts.

During a lunch with television anchors ahead of a nine-day foreign trip that is scheduled to begin Friday, Trump continued to criticize the special counsel appointment.

He called the investigation “a pure excuse for the Democrats” for losing the election. “It hurts our country terribly,” he said. “It shows we’re a divided, mixed-up, not unified country.”

At a joint news conference later in the day with the visiting president of Colombia, Trump took a slightly more muted tone.

“I respect the decision” to appoint Mueller, he said, before adding that he believed the “entire thing” was “a witch hunt.”

“There’s no collusion between, certainly, myself and my campaign — but I can always speak for myself — and the Russians — zero,” he said. He appeared to mean that he could “only” speak for himself.

“There is no collusion,” he repeated several times.

He also emphatically said, “No, no,” when asked whether he had urged then-FBI Director James B. Comey to back off an investigation of Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security advisor. Comey, in a memo reportedly written for his files, said that Trump had made such a request at a meeting in the Oval Office on Feb. 14.

Trump’s lashing out is not unique. President Clinton, for example, was known to rage about what he saw as the unfairness of the long-running special prosecutor investigations his administration faced. Clinton, however, kept his red-faced fury to private conversations, and, of course, Twitter didn’t exist.

But neither is Trump’s very public display of anger a completely irrational move. Trump and some of his advisors clearly see anger over the investigation as a way to unite his core supporters against a common enemy at a time when at least some of his voters have begun showing signs, in polls, of wavering.

In fundraising emails Thursday, Trump boasted that he had set a new postelection high for his campaign in online money raising despite “unrelenting and unprecedented political attacks against a sitting president” by the media and political establishment.

“The American people sent President Trump to Washington not to get along with the establishment but to repair the damage done to our economy and our prestige around the world by their policies and practices,” he wrote.

Trump’s instinct to battle, however, and the political desire to use the fight to unite his supporters is at odds with the strategy that many of his advisors would prefer — one closer to the approach other administrations have used of trying to insulate the White House’s daily functions from scandal.

Clinton’s press office hired an outside agency to handle questions about the investigation that eventually led to his impeachment over the Monica Lewinsky affair. Although it did not end the saga for him, it did take some of the pressure off his White House staff, allowing them to speak more about policy during public briefings.

Wednesday night, the White House seemed to be inching toward a similar goal, issuing a statement that offered muted approval of the investigation and urged a speedy conclusion.

Congressional Republican leaders appeared to be following that playbook Thursday.

After Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein briefed senators on the investigation, several Republican lawmakers suggested that with Mueller in place, the time had come for congressional committees to scale back their investigations, which involve highly public hearings, and allow the special counsel to carry out his probe, which can be expected to offer fewer headlines until it reaches a conclusion.

The appointment of Mueller “has really limited what Congress can do,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “This was a counter-intelligence investigation. It is now a criminal investigation.”

Trump’s advisors have been frustrated that he has so often failed to stick to such strategies.

“Clearly they’re not on the same page, but I don’t know why,” said Barry Bennett, a former advisor to Trump’s campaign who has friends serving in the White House.

Bennett said Trump continues to rely mostly on advice from “his New York buddies” — friends closer to his age and wealth whom he respects more, but who lack experience in politics and communications. Like others, Bennett expects Trump to shake up his staff, dispensing with Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, upon his return from the foreign trip.

Anxiety over a potential staff shakeup, Bennett said, has left those inside with even less clout to advise the president.

“It’s a combination of his frustration and people’s exhaustion,” he said.

But another person in close contact with White House staff, who requested anonymity to discuss the issue, said many of Trump’s aides remain devoted and united behind the task of defending him. The stress staffers are feeling is endemic to any White House, the person said.

“Anybody that’s surprised by” Trump’s disdain for listening to his press team and political advisors “should have been paying attention to the campaign,” the person said. “To think it would be any different in the White House makes you dumb.”

With the rush of events at home, Trump’s overseas trip now promises to be even more fraught for the new president.

Trump would like the trip to be shorter, a White House official said. His son-in-law and close advisor, Jared Kushner, orchestrated the stops in Saudi Arabia and Israel, which lengthened a trip that originally was designed to go only to Italy and NATO headquarters in Brussels.

Trump liked the broader mission, but being away from a familiar bed for more than a week is difficult for him. He is often teased by his children as being a “homebody,” the official said.

One person who will be staying behind is Trump’s strategic advisor Stephen K. Bannon. He has stepped back from foreign policy in the last two months as Kushner showed he had more influence with the president in that arena.

The last several days offered a preview of how the current distractions, combined with Trump’s disdain for scripted protocols, could leave the president ill-prepared for his debut abroad.

On Tuesday, Trump repeatedly mispronounced the name of Recep Tayyip Erdogan as the Turkish president stood beside him. He also appeared bored or distracted when Erdogan spoke, coming to life when the Turkish president injected some fulsome praise for Trump and his election victory.

On Thursday, he appeared to struggle to keep focus while Colombia’s president, Juan Manuel Santos, was speaking.

Over the last two weeks, Trump’s official schedule was relatively light as aides made time for him to cram on geopolitics for a trip that will take him from the complexities of the Middle East to summit meetings with skeptical-to-hostile leaders in Europe.

Presidents usually sit through “pre-trip briefings galore” before foreign visits, said Michael Allen, who was an advisor to President George W. Bush.

Before Bush traveled, his White House chief of staff would carve out extensive time for senior directors on the National Security Council and other experts to brief the president. Allen said the briefings could get quite precise: “This is what you will see, what they will say, what you might discuss, what you need to know.”

But with Trump, said a Republican who formerly worked in the White House, “the trouble will be if he goes off script. Trump can’t control himself.”

At the same time, the official said, everywhere “he will be treated to respect and pageantry. Trump will eat of lot of that up.”

[email protected]

Twitter: @noahbierman

Times staff writer Michael Memoli contributed to this article

ALSO:

Arrests on civil immigration charges go up 38% in the first 100 days since Trump’s executive order

Meet Robert Mueller, the former San Francisco lawyer chosen to lead the Trump-Russia investigation

Rod Rosenstein heads to Capitol Hill after appointing special counsel

UPDATES:

2:45 p.m.: This article was updated with quotes from President Trump’s news conference and other additional details.

This article was first published at 7:30 a.m.

Early voter turnout is exceeding expectations in California’s Nov. 4 special election over redrawing the state’s congressional districts, a Democratic-led effort to counter Republican attempts to keep Congress under GOP control.

“We’re seeing some pretty extraordinary numbers of early votes that have already been cast, people sending back in their ballots,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a livestream with former President Obama on Wednesday.

More than 3.4 million mail ballots have been returned as of Wednesday, with votes from Democrats outpacing ballots from Republicans and Californians registered as not having a party preference, according to a ballot tracker run by Democratic strategist Paul Mitchell. Mitchell is deeply involved in the Democratic effort, and drafted the proposed congressional districts on the Nov. 4 special election ballot.

That’s roughly the same number of ballots returned by this time in the White House contest between then-Vice President Kamala Harris and then-former President Trump in 2024, notable because turnout during presidential elections is higher than in other years.

About a million more ballots had been turned in by this point in the unsuccessful 2021 attempt to recall Newsom, but that was during the COVID pandemic.

This year’s turnout is also especially significant because Proposition 50 is about the esoteric topic of redistricting. Redrawing congressional districts is usually a once-a-decade process that takes place after the U.S. census to account for population shifts.

California’s 52 congressional districts currently are crafted by a voter-approved independent commission, but Newsom and other California Democrats decided to ask voters to allow a rare mid-decade partisan gerrymandering to blunt Trump’s efforts in GOP-led states to boost his party’s numbers in the House.

Obama, who has endorsed Proposition 50 and stars in a television ad supporting the effort, on Wednesday said the ballot measure will affect the entire country.

“There’s a broader principle at stake that has to do with whether or not our democracy can be manipulated by those who are already in power to entrench themselves further,” Obama said. “Or, whether we’re going to have a system that allows the people to decide who’s going to represent them.”

About 51% of the ballots that have been returned to date are from registered Democrats, while 28% are from registered Republicans and 21% are from voters who do not express a party preference.

It’s unknown how these voters cast their ballots, but the Democratic advantage appears to give an edge to supporters of Proposition 50, which needs to be passed by a simple majority to be enacted. About 19.6 million ballots — roughly 85% of those mailed to California voters — are outstanding, though not all are expected to be returned.

The current trend of returned ballots at this point shows Democrats having a small edge over Republicans compared with their share of the California electorate. According to the latest state voter registration report, Democrats account for 45% of California’s registered voters, while Republicans total 25% and “no party preference” voters make up 23%. Californians belonging to other parties make up the remainder.

Mitchell added that another interesting data point is that the mail ballots continue to flow in.

“Usually you see a lull after the first wave — if you don’t mail in your ballot in the first week, it’s going to be sitting on the counter for a while,” Mitchell said. But ballots continue to arrive, possibly encouraged by the “No Kings” protests on Saturday, he said.

A spokesperson for the pro-Proposition 50 campaign said they are taking nothing for granted.

“With millions of ballots still to be cast, we will keep pushing to make sure every Californian understands what’s at stake and turns out to vote yes on Nov. 4th to stop Trump’s power grab,” said spokesperson Hannah Milgrom.

Some Republican leaders have expressed concerns that the GOP early vote may be suppressed by Trump’s past criticism about mail balloting, inaccuracies in the voter guide sent to the state’s 23 million voters and conspiracy theories about the ballot envelope design.

“While ballot initiatives are nonpartisan, many Republicans tend to hold on to their ballots until in-person voting begins,” said Ellie Hockenbury, an advisor to the “No on Prop 50 — Stop Sacramento’s Power Grab” campaign committee. “As this next phase starts — and with nearly two weeks until Election Day — we expect already high turnout to continue rising to defeat Proposition 50 and stop Gavin Newsom’s partisan power grab.”

Amy Thoma, a spokesperson for the other major group opposing the proposition, said the data show that the voters who have returned ballots so far are not representative of the California electorate.

“Special elections tend to be more partisan, older and whiter than general elections, which is one of the reasons we’ve been concerned about the speed with which the politicians pushed this through,” she said.

BATON ROUGE, La. — Women taken into custody by U.S. immigration agents while pregnant say they received inadequate care in a letter Wednesday that calls on the Trump administration to stop holding expectant mothers in federal detention facilities.

The letter to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is part of a broader campaign in recent months by Democrats and immigrant rights groups to draw attention to what they say is the mistreatment of pregnant detainees.

The Department of Homeland Security has defended its care, saying pregnant detainees get regular prenatal visits, mental health services, nutritional support and accommodations “aligned with community standards of care.”

In addition, Homeland Security Department spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a written statement Wednesday that such detentions are “rare” and involve “elevated oversight and review.” The agency didn’t provide figures on the number of pregnant women in detention, a number Democrats have sought for months.

The letter sent by the American Civil Liberties Union cites accounts from pregnant women who say they were shackled while being transported, placed in solitary confinement for multiple days and given insufficient food and water while detained in Louisiana and Georgia.

The ACLU said that over the last five months it has met with more than a dozen females who were pregnant while in ICE custody — including some who had a miscarriage while detained. The women reported “gravely troubling experiences,” the letter states, including lack of translation during medical encounters and medical neglect. One suffered a “severe” infection after her miscarriage.

In an interview with the Associated Press, one of the women said she was kept in handcuffs while being transported to Louisiana — a journey that lasted five hours and spanned two plane rides. The woman, who has since been released from custody and given birth, spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of facing retaliation during her ongoing case.

An officer told her he considered taking off the handcuffs but worried she would escape. “How am I going to escape if I’m pregnant?” the woman said she responded.

She said she felt as if she’d been kidnapped and experienced dizziness, nausea and vaginal bleeding. During her time in detention, she said pregnant women were not offered special diets and described the food as horrible. She alleged that detainees had to “beg” for water and toilet paper.

The ACLU’s letter is the latest call for an investigation into the arrests and treatment of pregnant detainees.

Senate Democrats wrote Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in September, expressing concerns about the “prevalence and treatment” of pregnant, postpartum and nursing women in ICE custody. They demanded that the agency stop detaining such people unless there are “exceptional circumstances.”

“Proper care for pregnancy is a basic human right, regardless of whether you are incarcerated or not and regardless of your immigration status,” said Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, a California Democrat. She signed on to a Democratic Women’s Caucus letter to Homeland Security officials in July sharing concerns about the “treatment of women” and demanding answers — including how many have given birth while detained.

Kamlager-Dove said she’s working on legislation that would “severely restrict the use of restraints on pregnant, laboring and postpartum women who are in federal custody.”

ICE guidelines already say that agents “should not detain, arrest, or take into custody for an administrative violation of the immigration laws” people “known to be pregnant, postpartum or nursing,” based on a policy sent to the AP by Homeland Security. But the document does state that such people may be detained and held in custody under “exceptional circumstances” or if their release is prohibited by law.

The policy also prohibits using restraints on pregnant detainees, but here too there are exceptions — including if there is a serious threat that the detainee will hurt herself or others, or if “an immediate and credible risk” of escape cannot be “reasonably minimized” through other methods.

Cline and Gonzalez write for the Associated Press. Gonzalez reported from McAllen, Texas.

NEW YORK — A day after a mass of federal agents questioned street vendors and sparked protests on Manhattan’s Canal Street, sellers were scarce on the busy strip. Some who did venture out Wednesday, though, were disheartened or riled up by a sweep in which they said people, including U.S. citizens, were pressed to show their papers.

Federal authorities said 14 people, including immigrants and demonstrators, were arrested in Tuesday’s sweep. The Department of Homeland Security said it was a targeted operation focused on the alleged sale of counterfeit goods, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting Director Todd Lyons said it was “definitely intelligence-driven.”

“It’s not random. We’re just not pulling people off the street,” he told Fox News on Wednesday.

But some vendors saw it as an indiscriminate and heavy-handed crackdown by masked agents who queried a wide swath of sellers.

Awa Ngam was selling sweaters Wednesday from a table at a Canal Street intersection where at least one of her fellow vendors was taken away the previous afternoon.

She said she also was asked for ID, showed it, and then for her passport, which she doesn’t carry around. Agents quizzed her about how she had come to the U.S., but they eventually backed off after her husband explained that she’s an American citizen, she said.

“They asked every African that was here for their status,” Ngam said.

She returned to the spot Wednesday unafraid but upset.

“I’m saddened because they should not walk around and ask people for their passport in America,” said Ngam, who said she came to the U.S. from Mauritania in 2009. She added that if not for her legal immigration status, she would be fearful: “What if they took me? What would happen to my kids?”

Some other sellers decried the sweep as harassment. Others were keeping a low profile and shied from speaking with journalists.

Signs freshly posted on streetlights mentioned Tuesday’s sweep and urged people at risk of detention to call an immigration law group’s helpline.

Separately, state Atty. Gen. Letitia James, a Democrat, asked New Yorkers to send in photos or videos of Tuesday’s immigration sweep so that her office could assess whether laws were broken.

Law enforcement raids aimed at combating counterfeiting are relatively frequent on Canal Street, which is known for its stalls and shops where some vendors hawk knockoff designer goods and bootlegged wares. Federal authorities often team up with the New York Police Department and luxury brands on crackdowns aimed at shutting down illicit trade.

But the sight of dozens of masked ICE and other federal agents making arrests drew instant protests.

Bystanders and activists converged at the scene and shouted at the agents, at one point blocking their vehicle. ICE, Border Patrol and other federal agents tried to clear the streets, sometimes shoving protesters to the ground and threatening them with stun guns or pepper spray before detaining them.

Nine people were arrested in the initial immigration sweep, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said. Four more people were arrested on charges of assaulting federal law enforcement officers, she said, adding that a fifth was arrested and accused of obstructing law enforcement by blocking a driveway.

McLaughlin said some of the people arrested had previously been accused of crimes, including robbery, domestic violence, assaulting law enforcement, counterfeiting and drug offenses.

The sweep came after at least two conservative influencers shared video on X of men selling bags on Canal Street’s sidewalks.

While clashes between immigration authorities and protesters have played out in Los Angeles and other cities, such scenes have been rarer on New York City streets, which Mayor Eric Adams has attributed in part to his working relationship with President Trump’s administration.

Adams, a Democrat, said city police had no involvement in Tuesday’s immigration sweep.

“Our administration has been clear that undocumented New Yorkers trying to pursue their American dreams should not be the target of law enforcement, and resources should instead be focused on violent criminals,” he said.

Peltz and Offenhartz write for the Associated Press.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — A Cuban man deported by the United States to the African nation of Eswatini is on a hunger strike at a maximum-security prison, having been held there for more than three months without charge or access to legal counsel under the Trump administration’s third-country program, his U.S.-based lawyer said Wednesday.

Roberto Mosquera del Peral was one of five men sent to the small kingdom in southern Africa in mid-July as part of the U.S. deportation program to Africa. It has been criticized by rights groups and lawyers, who say deportees are being denied due process and exposed to rights abuses.

Mosquera’s lawyer, Alma David, said in a statement sent to the Associated Press that he had been on a hunger strike for a week, and there were serious concerns over his health.

“My client is arbitrarily detained, and now his life is on the line,” David said. “I urge the Eswatini Correctional Services to provide Mr. Mosquera’s family and me with an immediate update on his condition and to ensure that he is receiving adequate medical attention. I demand that Mr. Mosquera be permitted to meet with his lawyer in Eswatini.”

The Eswatini government said Mosquera was “fasting and praying because he was missing his family” and described it as “religious practices” that it wouldn’t interfere with, a characterization disputed by David. She said in response: “It is not a religious practice. It’s an act of desperation and protest.”

Mosquera was among a group of five men from Cuba, Jamaica, Laos, Vietnam and Yemen deported to Eswatini, an absolute monarchy ruled by a king who is accused of clamping down on human rights. The Jamaican man was repatriated to his home country last month, but the others have been kept at the prison for more than three months, while an Eswatini-based lawyer has launched a case against the government demanding they be given access to legal counsel.

Civic groups in Eswatini have also taken authorities to court to challenge the legality of holding foreign nationals in prison without charge. Eswatini said that the men would be repatriated but could be held there for up to a year.

U.S. authorities say they want to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Eswatini under the same program.

The men sent to Eswatini were criminals convicted of serious offenses, including murder and rape, and were in the U.S. illegally, the Department of Homeland Security said. It said that Mosquera had been convicted of murder and other charges and was a gang member.

The men’s lawyers said they had all completed their criminal sentences in the U.S. and are now being held illegally in Eswatini.

Homeland Security has cast the third-country deportation program as a means to remove “illegal aliens” from American soil as part of President Trump’s immigration crackdown, saying they have a choice to self-deport or be sent to a country like Eswatini.

The Trump administration has sent deportees to at least three other African nations — South Sudan, Rwanda and Ghana — since July under largely secretive agreements. It also has an agreement with Uganda, though no deportations there have been announced.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said that it has seen documents that show that the U.S. is paying African nations millions of dollars to accept deportees. It said that the U.S. agreed to pay Eswatini $5.1 million to take up to 160 deportees and Rwanda $7.5 million to take up to 250 deportees.

Another 10 deportees were sent to Eswatini this month and are believed to be held at the same Matsapha Correctional Complex prison outside the administrative capital, Mbabane. Lawyers said that those men are from Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, Cuba, Chad, Ethiopia and Congo.

Lawyers say the four men who arrived in Eswatini on a deportation flight in July haven’t been allowed to meet with an Eswatini lawyer representing them, and phone calls to their U.S.-based attorneys are monitored by prison guards. They have expressed concern that they know little about the conditions in which their clients are being held.

“I demand that Mr. Mosquera be permitted to meet with his lawyer in Eswatini,” David said in her statement. “The fact that my client has been driven to such drastic action highlights that he and the other 13 men must be released from prison. The governments of the United States and Eswatini must take responsibility for the real human consequences of their deal.”

Imray writes for the Associated Press. Nokukhanya Musi contributed to this report from Manzini, Eswatini.

Three of the country’s most powerful judges met in Pasadena on Wednesday for a rare conclave that could rewrite the legal framework for President Trump’s expansive deployment of troops to cities across the United States.

The move to flood Los Angeles with thousands of federalized soldiers over the objection of state and local leaders shocked the country back in June. Five months later, such military interventions have become almost routine.

But whether the deployments can expand — and how long they can continue — relies on a novel reading of an obscure subsection of the U.S. code that determines the president’s ability to dispatch the National Guard and federal service members. That code has been under heated debate in courts across the country.

Virtually all of those cases have turned on the 9th Circuit’s decision in June. The judges found that the law in question requires “a great level of deference” to the president to decide when protest flashes into rebellion, and whether boots on the ground are warranted in response.

On Wednesday, the same three judge panel — Jennifer Sung of Portland, Eric D. Miller of Seattle and Mark J. Bennett of Honolulu — took the rare move of reviewing it, signaling a willingness to dramatically rewrite the terms of engagement that have underpinned Trump’s deployments.

“I guess the question is, why is a couple of hundred people engaging in disorderly conduct and throwing things at a building over the course of two days of comparable severity to a rebellion?” said Miller, who was appointed to the bench in Trump’s first term. “Violence is used to thwart the enforcement of federal law all the time. This happens every day.”

The question he posed has riven the judicial system, splitting district judges from appellate panels and the Pacific Coast from the Midwest. Some of Trump’s judicial appointees have broken sharply with their colleagues on the matter, including on the 9th Circuit. Miller and Bennett appear at odds with Ryan D. Nelson and Bridget S. Bade, who expanded on the court’s June ruling in a decision Monday that allowed federalized troops to deploy in Oregon.

Most agreethat the statute itself is esoteric, vague and untested. Unlike the Insurrection Act, which generations of presidents have used to quell spasms of violent domestic unrest, the law Trump invoked has almost no historical footprint, and little precedent to define it.

“It’s only been used once in the history of our country since it was enacted 122 years ago,” California Solicitor General Samuel Harbourt told the court Wednesday.

Attorneys from both sides have turned to legal dictionaries to define the word “rebellion” in their favor, because the statute itself offers no clues.

“Defendants have not put forward a credible understanding of the term ‘rebellion’ in this litigation,” Harbourt told the panel Wednesday. “We’re continuing to see defendants rely on this interpretation across the country and we’re concerned that the breadth of the definition the government has relied on … includes any form of resistance.”

The wiggle room has left courts to lock horns over the most basic facts before them — including whether what the president claims must be provably true.

In the Oregon case, U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut of Portland, another Trump appointee, called the president’s assertions about a rebellion there “untethered to the facts.”

But a separate 9th Circuit panel overruled her, finding the law “does not limit the facts and circumstances that the President may consider” when deciding whether to use soldiers domestically.

“The President has the authority to identify and weigh the relevant facts,” the court wrote in its Monday decision.

Nelson went further, calling the president’s decision “absolute.”

Upon further review, Sung signaled a shift to the opposite interpretation.

“The court says when the statute gives a discretionary power, that is based on certain facts,” she said. “I don’t see the court saying that the underlying decision of whether the factual basis exists is inherently discretionary.”

That sounded much more like the Midwest’s 7th Circuit decision in the Chicago case, which found that nothing in the statute “makes the President the sole judge of whether these preconditions exist.”

“Political opposition is not rebellion,” the 7th Circuit judges wrote. “A protest does not become a rebellion merely because the protestors advocate for myriad legal or policy changes, are well organized, call for significant changes to the structure of the U.S. government, use civil disobedience as a form of protest, or exercise their Second Amendment right to carry firearms as the law currently allows.”

The Trump administration’s appeal of that decision is currently before the Supreme Court on the emergency docket.

But experts said even a high court ruling in that case may not dictate what can happen in California — or in New York, for that matter. Even if the justices ruled against the administration, Trump could choose to invoke the Insurrection Act or another law to justify his next moves, an option that he and other officials have repeatedly floated in recent weeks.

The administration has signaled its desire to expand on the power it already enjoys, telling the court Wednesday there was no limit to where troops could be deployed or how long they could remain in the president’s service once he had taken control of them.

“Would it be your view that no matter how much conditions on the ground changed, there would be no ability of the district court or review — in a month, six months, a year, five years — to review whether the conditions still support [deployment]?” Bennett asked.

“Yes,” Deputy Assistant Atty. Gen. Eric McArthur said.

Bennett pressed the point, asking whether under the current law the militia George Washington federalized to put down the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 could “stay called up forever” — a position the government again affirmed.

“There’s not a word in the statute that talks about how long they can remain in federal service,” McArthur said. “The president’s determination of whether the exigency has arisen, that decision is vested in his sole and exclusive discretion.”

As a Los Angeles City Council aide, Jose Ugarte failed to disclose years worth of outside income he made from lobbying and consulting — and, as a result, was prepared to pay a fine.

But the city’s Ethics Commission has now rejected a $17,500 settlement agreement with the council candidate. Two commissioners said the fine was not quite large enough.

“We need to signal that this is a serious violation,” said Manjusha Kulkarni, the president of the commission, who voted against the settlement.

Ugarte is deputy chief of staff to Curren Price and is running to replace his longtime boss on the City Council. Price has endorsed him. But the council aide failed to report outside income from his consulting firm, Ugarte & Associates, for the years 2021, 2022 and 2023, according to Ethics Commission documents.

He said the failure to report the outside income was a “clerical reporting error.”

Although two of the commissioners want a steeper fine against Ugarte, the suggested bump isn’t that large.

Two commissioners voted in favor of the $17,500 settlement, but Kulkarni and another commissioner, Terry Kaufmann, agreed the settlement amount should be around $20,000.

It’s an amount that they believe could send a clearer message.

“There is great concern about what is happening in Los Angeles. … Individuals routinely violate the laws we put in place to ensure trust,” Kulkarni said.

Kaufmann added that she was concerned by the fact that Ugarte still worked for a council member and was running for office.

The proposed settlement with Ugarte included seven counts against him, and each comes with a potential $5,000 penalty. But since Ugarte was cooperative, the commission’s director of enforcement reduced the overall penalty by 50%, bringing it down from $35,000 to the $17,500 figure.

Ugarte told The Times that his work with Ugarte & Associates never overlapped with his time in Price’s office.

He started working for Price in 2013 but left the office in 2019. He returned in 2021. Ugarte & Associates was formed in 2018 and still conducts business. He co-owns the company with his sister.

SACRAMENTO — Assembly and Senate budget negotiators, intent on cutting $1.4 billion from the proposed $45-billion state budget, sharply cut proposed spending increases for state colleges and universities Friday, and slashed even deeper into Gov. George Deukmejian’s programs.

The Democrat-dominated six-member budget conference committee reduced the University of California budget by $75 million, a cut of 3.7%. The committee cut the California State University system budget by the same 3.7%, a $56.9-million trim. Despite the cuts, the budgets of both institutions would increase by nearly 3% from the current year.

The UC and CSU spending cuts were among dozens made by the committee during its third full day of work on the budget for the 1988-89 fiscal year that will begin July 1. The committee hopes to wrap up its work Monday, then send the budget out for votes by the Assembly and Senate in time for final action by the start of the new fiscal year.

In addition to the cuts already made, Democrats on the committee are considering reducing the basic public school financial aid budget of $8.4 billion by $300 million to $400 million, which would take half to three-quarters of the increase being proposed by Deukmejian.

Although the committee’s four Democrats are cutting spending in nearly every area, they continued to go after programs earmarked as high priorities by the governor with a special vengeance. They remain angry over Deukmejian’s retreat on tax increase legislation that he first proposed, then dropped because of political opposition.

On Friday, the Democrats, with the two Republicans on the committee dissenting, cut the budget of the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, run by a Deukmejian appointee, by 20%, or about $1.4 million. Moments later, they removed the $91,000-a-year salary of Department of Industrial Relations Director Ronald Rinaldi from the budget. Rinaldi is a key Deukmejian Administration adviser who oversaw the dismantling of the popular CAL/OSHA worker safety program.

On Thursday, the committee, with its two Republican members dissenting, cut the $1.6-billion state prisons budget by $100 million, and took another $17 million from the California Youth Authority. The action came on the heels of earlier votes that would completely wipe out the state Resources Agency and the Department of Commerce’s office of tourism, both controlled by Deukmejian appointees.

Assemblyman William P. Baker of Danville, one of the committee’s two Republican members, said the Democrats “are just trying to embarrass the governor” with their actions. He said most of the budget actions were shortsighted. “The prison system’s going to have 10,000 more prisoners next year. Cutting the budget $100 million doesn’t make sense. What are we going to do with the prisoners?” he asked.

Predicts Defeat

Baker’s GOP colleague, Sen. Marian Bergeson of Newport Beach, said the budget in its present form probably will not be able to get the two-thirds majority vote it will need in both the Assembly and Senate for final approval.

“We’ll have to backtrack and undo a lot of these actions. You can’t reduce the dollar amounts of some of these budgets, like the Department of Corrections, without causing irreparable damage,” Bergeson said.

But Democrats insisted that Deukmejian’s flip-flop on tax increase legislation left the Legislature with a huge hole in its budget.

“We just don’t have the revenues to support the governor’s budget. We have to cut somewhere,” said Sen. John Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove).

Assemblyman John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara), chairman of the committee, said Deukmejian is responsible for the cuts. He called the series of reductions “the Deukmejian destruction derby.”

Governor Drops Plan

Deukmejian had proposed raising taxes $800 million in late May to help deal with a $2-billion revenue shortage caused by changes in federal and state tax law, but then the Republican chief executive dropped the plan.

The loss of the $800 million in revenues that would have been generated by the tax bill, coupled with $600 million in an additional spending added to the budget by lawmakers, left them with a need to cut $1.4 billion. By Friday, they had reduced the budget by nearly $1 billion.

One issue the committee has yet to resolve is which set of tax revenue projections it will use as a basis for next year’s budget projections. Revenue estimates being made by the Legislature’s two nonpartisan budget advisers–the legislative analyst’s office and the Commission on State Finance–are about $370 million higher than the estimates being used for the budget by the Department of Finance.

The committee so far has been using the Department of Finance’s estimates, but if it decides to use the higher revenue projections it will substantially ease the committee’s problem of proposing a balanced budget.

In another of its dramatic reductions, the committee voted to end state support for the operations budget of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

The Trump administration is sending federal agents to San Francisco following weeks of threats from the president to deploy the National Guard to the Bay Area.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom released a statement on X confirming and criticizing the agents’ upcoming arrival. He called deployment a “page right out of the dictator’s handbook” intended to create the conditions of unrest necessary to then send in the National Guard.

“He sends out masked men, he sends out Border Patrol, he sends out ICE, he creates anxiety and fear in the community so that he can lay claim to solving that by sending in the [National] Guard,” said Newsom. “This is no different than the arsonist putting out the fire.”

Around 100 federal agents, including members of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, are en route to the U.S. Coast Guard’s Alameda base, according to reporting from the San Francisco Chronicle. The Coast Guard and DHS did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment.

Trump has suggested for weeks that San Francisco is next on his list for National Guard deployment, after the administration sent troops to Los Angeles and Chicago and is battling in court to send them to Portland, Ore.

On Sunday, Trump told Fox News, “We’re going to San Francisco and we’ll make it great. It’ll be great again.”

Trump has suggested that the role of the National Guard in San Francisco would be to address crime rates. However, the National Guard is generally not allowed to perform domestic law enforcement duties when federalized by the president.

In September, he said that cities with Democratic political leadership such as San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles “are very unsafe places and we are going to straighten them out.”

Trump said he told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that “we should use some of these dangerous cities as training for our military, our national guard.”

Newsom urged Californians to remain peaceful in the face of the arrival of federal agents.

“President Trump and [White House Deputy Chief of Staff] Stephen Miller’s authoritarian playbook is coming for another of our cities, and violence and vandalism are exactly what they’re looking for to invoke chaos,” said Newsom on X.

The sending of federal agents to San Francisco comes as the Trump administration continues to crack down on immigration across the nation in an attempt to carry out what the president has proclaimed is the largest deportation effort in U.S. history.

WASHINGTON — The White House started tearing down part of the East Wing, the traditional base of operations for the first lady, to build President Trump’s $250-million ballroom despite lacking approval for construction from the federal agency that oversees such projects.

Dramatic photos of the demolition work that began Monday showed construction equipment tearing into the East Wing façade and windows and other building parts in tatters on the ground. Some reporters watched from a park near the Treasury Department, which is next to the East Wing.

On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that the plan now called for the demolition of the entire East Wing and that the tear-down should be completed by Sunday. Citing a source, The Times said it marks an escalation over earlier plans for the ballroom.

Trump announced the start of construction in a social media post and referenced the work while hosting 2025 college baseball champs Louisiana State University and LSU-Shreveport in the East Room. He noted the work was happening “right behind us.”

“We have a lot of construction going on, which you might hear periodically,” he said, adding, “It just started today.”

The White House has moved ahead with the massive construction project despite not yet having sign-off from the National Capital Planning Commission, which approves construction work and major renovations to government buildings in the Washington area.

Its chairman, Will Scharf, who is also the White House staff secretary and one of Trump’s top aides, said at the commission’s September meeting that the agency does not have jurisdiction over demolition or site preparation work for buildings on federal property.

“What we deal with is essentially construction, vertical build,” Scharf said last month.

It was unclear whether the White House had submitted the ballroom plans for the agency’s review and approval. The White House did not respond to a request for comment and the commission’s offices are closed because of the government shutdown.

The Republican president had said in July when the project was announced that the ballroom would not interfere with the mansion itself.

“It’ll be near it but not touching it and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of,” he said of the White House.

The East Wing houses several offices, including those of the first lady. It was built in 1902 and and has been renovated over the years, with a second story added in 1942, according to the White House.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said those East Wing offices will be temporarily relocated during construction and that wing of the building will be modernized and renovated.

“Nothing will be torn down,” Leavitt said when she announced the project in July.

Trump insists that presidents have desired such a ballroom for 150 years and that he’s adding the massive 90,000-square-foot, glass-walled space because the East Room, which is the largest room in the White House with an approximately 200-person capacity, is too small. He also has said he does not like the idea of hosting kings, queens, presidents and prime ministers in pavilions on the South Lawn.

Trump said in the social media announcement that the project would be completed “with zero cost to the American Taxpayer! The White House Ballroom is being privately funded by many generous Patriots, Great American Companies, and, yours truly.”

The ballroom will be the biggest structural change to the Executive Mansion since the addition in 1948 of the Truman Balcony overlooking the South Lawn, even dwarfing the residence itself.

At a dinner he hosted last week for some of the wealthy business executives who are donating money toward the construction cost, Trump said the project had grown in size and now will accommodate 999 people. The capacity was 650 seated people at the July announcement.

The White House has said it will disclose information on who has contributed money to build the ballroom, but has yet to do so.

Trump also said at last week’s event that the head of Carrier Global Corp., a leading manufacturer of heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems, had offered to donate the air-conditioning system for the ballroom.

Carrier confirmed to the Associated Press on Monday that it had done so. A cost estimate was not immediately available.

“Carrier is honored to provide the new iconic ballroom at the White House with a world-class, energy-efficient HVAC system, bringing comfort to distinguished guests and dignitaries in this historic setting for years to come,” the company said in an emailed statement.

The clearing of trees on the south grounds and other site preparation work for the construction started in September. Plans call for the ballroom to be ready before Trump’s term ends in January 2029.

Superville writes for the Associated Press.

RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina Republican legislative leaders completed their remapping of the state’s U.S. House districts on Wednesday, intent on picking up one more seat to help President Trump’s efforts to retain GOP control of Congress in next year’s midterm elections.

The new boundaries approved by the state House could thwart the reelection of Democratic U.S. Rep. Don Davis, who currently represents more than 20 northeastern counties. The state Senate already approved the plan in a party-line vote on Tuesday.

Republicans hold majorities in both General Assembly chambers, and Democratic Gov. Josh Stein is unable under state law to use his veto stamp on redistricting maps. So the GOP’s proposal can now be implemented unless likely litigation by Democrats or voting rights advocates stops it. Candidate filing for 2026 is scheduled to begin Dec. 1.

Republican lawmakers made the intent of their proposed changes crystal clear — it’s an attempt to satisfy Trump’s call for GOP-led states to secure more seats for the party nationwide, so that Congress can continue advancing his agenda. Democrats have responded with rival moves in blue states. A president’s party historically loses seats in midterm elections, and Democrats currently need just three more seats to flip House control.

“The new congressional map improves Republican political strength in eastern North Carolina and will bring in an additional Republican seat to North Carolina’s congressional delegation,” GOP Rep. Brenden Jones said during a debate that Republicans cut off after an hour.

Democratic state Rep. Gloristine Brown, an African American who represents an eastern North Carolina county, made an impassioned floor speech in opposition, saying “You are silencing Black voices and are going against the will of your constituents.”

“North Carolina is a testing ground for the new era of Jim Crow laws,” Brown said.

Republican-led Texas and Missouri already have revised their U.S. House districts to try to help Republicans win additional seats. Democratic-led California reciprocated by asking the state’s voters to approve a map revised to elect more Democrats, and Jones accused California Gov. Gavin Newsom of ramping up the redistricting fight.

“We will not let outsiders tell us how to govern, and we will never apologize for doing exactly what the people of this state has elected us to do,” Jones said.

North Carolina’s replacement map would exchange several counties in Davis’ current 1st District with another coastal district. Statewide election data suggests this would favor Republicans winning 11 of 14 House seats, up from the 10 they now hold, in a state where Trump got 51% of the popular vote in 2024.

Davis is one of North Carolina’s three Black representatives. Map critics suggested this latest GOP map could be challenged as an illegal racial gerrymander in a district that has included several majority Black counties, electing African Americans to the U.S. House continuously since 1992.

Davis is already vulnerable — he won his second term by less than 2 percentage points, and the 1st District was one of 13 nationwide where both Trump and a Democratic House member was elected last year, according to the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

Davis on Tuesday called the proposed map “beyond the pale.”

Hundreds of Democratic and liberal activists swarmed the legislative complex this week, blasting GOP legislators for doing Trump’s bidding with what they called a power grab through a speedy and unfair redistricting process.

“If you pass this, your legacy will be shredding the Constitution, destroying democracy,” Karen Ziegler with the grassroots group Democracy Out Loud, told senators this week. She accused the state GOP of “letting Donald Trump decide who represents the people of North Carolina.”

Democrats said this map is a racial gerrymander that will dismantle decades of voting rights progress in North Carolina’s “Black Belt” region. Republicans counter that no racial data was used in forming the districts, and the redrawing was based on political parties, not race.

Based on last week’s arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in a Louisiana redistricting case, the Democrats may lose this line of attack. A majority of justices appears willing to neuter a key tool of the Voting Rights Act that has protected political boundaries created to help Black and Latino residents elect favored candidates, who have tended to be Democrats.

State GOP leaders say Trump won North Carolina all three times that he’s run for president — albeit narrowly last year — and thus merits more GOP support in Congress. Senate leader Phil Berger called it appropriate “under the law and in conjunction with basically listening to the will of the people.”

Robertson writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military has built up an unusually large force in the Caribbean Sea and the waters off the coast of Venezuela since this summer, when the Trump administration first began to shift assets to the region as part of its so-called war against narcoterrorism.

Here is a look at the ships, planes and troops in the region:

Ships

The Navy has eight warships in the region — three destroyers, three amphibious assault ships, a cruiser and a smaller littoral combat ship that’s designed for coastal waters.

The three amphibious assault ships make up an amphibious readiness group and carry an expeditionary unit of Marines. As a result, those ships also have on board a variety of Marine helicopters, Osprey tilt rotor aircraft and Harrier jets that have the capability of either transporting large numbers of Marines or striking targets on land and sea.

While officials have not offered specific numbers, destroyers and cruisers typically deploy with a missile loadout that contains Tomahawk cruise missiles — a missile that can strike hundreds of miles from its launch point.

A U.S. Navy submarine, the USS Newport News, also is operating in the broader area of South America and is capable of carrying and launching cruise missiles.

Planes and drones

A squadron of advanced U.S. Marine Corps F-35B Lightning II jets have been sent to an airstrip in Puerto Rico. The planes were first spotted landing on the island territory in mid-September.

MQ-9 Reaper Air Force drones, capable of flying long distances and carrying up to eight laser-guided missiles, also have been spotted operating out of Puerto Rico by commercial satellites and military watchers, as well as photojournalists, around the same time.

It has been widely reported that the Navy is operating P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft out of the region as well.

Earlier this month, the military released a photo of an U.S. Air Force AC-130J Ghostrider, a heavily armed plane capable of firing its large guns with precision onto ground targets, also sitting on the tarmac in Puerto Rico.

There have been a multitude of other military aircraft that have temporarily flown through the region as part of military operations there.

For example, the U.S. Air Force flew a group of B-52 Stratofortress bombers through the region last week for what the Pentagon dubbed as a “bomber attack demo” in photos online.

Troops

All told, there are more than 6,000 sailors and Marines that are now operating in the region based on the ships that have been confirmed by defense officials.

The Pentagon has not offered specific numbers on how many drones, aircraft or ground crew are in the region so their impact on that broader figure is unknown.

Toropin writes for the Associated Press.

PORTLAND, Maine — His U.S. Senate campaign under fire, Maine Democrat Graham Platner said Wednesday that a tattoo on his chest has been covered to no longer reflect an image widely recognized as a Nazi symbol.

The first-time political candidate said he got the skull and crossbones tattoo in 2007, when he was in his 20s and in the Marine Corps. It happened during a night of drinking while he was on leave in Croatia, he said, adding he was unaware until recently that the image has been associated with Nazi police.

Platner, in an Associated Press interview, said that while his campaign initially said he would remove the tattoo, he chose to cover it up with another tattoo due to the limited options where he lives in rural Maine.

“Going to a tattoo removal place is going to take a while,” he said. “I wanted this thing off my body.”

The initial tattoo image resembled a specific symbol of Hitler’s paramilitary Schutzstaffel, or SS, which was responsible for the systematic murders of millions of Jews and others in Europe during World War II. Platner didn’t offer details about the new tattoo, but offered to send the AP a photo later Wednesday.

The oyster farmer is mounting a progressive campaign against Republican Susan Collins, who has held the Senate seat for 30 years. The crowded Democratic primary field includes two-term Gov. Janet Mills.

Platner said he had never been questioned about the tattoo’s connections to Nazi symbols in the 20 years he has had it. He said it was there when he enlisted in the Army, which requires an examination for tattoos of hate symbols.

“I also passed a full background check to receive a security clearance to join the Ambassador to Afghanistan’s security detail,” Platner said.

Questions about the tattoo come after the recent discovery of Platner’s now-deleted online statements that included dismissing military sexual assaults, questioning Black patrons’ gratuity habits and criticizing police officers and rural Americans.

Platner has apologized for those comments, saying they were made after he left the Army in 2012, when he was struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

He has resisted calls to drop out of the race and has the backing of Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who has described Platner as a stronger candidate for the seat than Mills. Another primary rival, Jordan Wood, a onetime chief of staff to former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., said Wednesday that Platner should drop out because “Democrats need to be able to condemn Trump’s actions with moral clarity” and Platner “no longer can.”

Platner said he was not ashamed to confront his past comments and actions because it reflects the lessons he needed to take to get where he is today.

“I don’t look at this as a liability,” he told the AP. “I look at this as is a life that I have lived, a journey that has been difficult, that has been full of struggle, that has also gotten me to where I am today. And I’m very proud of who I am.”

Platner planned a town hall Wednesday in Ogunquit, Maine.

Kruesi and Whittle write for the Associated Press. Kruesi reported from Providence, R.I.

WASHINGTON — President Trump has begun demolition of the East Wing as he remakes the White House in his image, ignoring rules, breaking promises and taking a wrecking ball to the approval process in an echo of the strategies he deployed in Florida and New York as he built his real estate empire.

An excavator ripped off the facade and parts of the roof on Monday, exposing the stone shell below. Windows have been removed. A truck carried trees outside the White House gates and down Pennsylvania Avenue. A crowd gathered outside to witness the partial tear-down of the historic building — which Trump said just weeks ago would not be touched in his plans to build a new ballroom.

“Over the next few days, it’s going to be demolished,” Trump said at a White House dinner last week for donors to the 90,000-square-foot structure estimated to cost between $200 million and $250 million.

“Everything out there is coming down, and we’re replacing it with one of the most beautiful ballrooms that you’ve ever seen.”

He described the forthcoming structure as “four sides of beautiful glass.”

But similar to the rule-breaking tactics he used when pushing through changes to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach and building his Trump Tower in New York, Trump’s sudden and dramatic White House overhaul has been made possible by his disdain for the rules that have protected Washington’s cohesive design. To date, he hasn’t submitted plans for review to the National Capital Planning Commission, which oversees renovation and additions to the federal buildings in the capital, including the president’s historic residence.

Not that the commission — now stacked with Trump’s allies — is complaining.

This summer, the president appointed his top aides — staff secretary Will Scharf, deputy chief of staff James Blair and Office of Management and Budget energy official Stuart Levenbach — to sit on the governing body.

Scharf, a longtime loyal Trump aide who hands him his executive orders to sign, was named chairman by the president. The appointments were so sudden that Scharf, at his first commission meeting on July 10, apologized for not connecting with any of his fellow commissioners ahead of time, noting his appointment had happened the night before.

At the commission’s next meeting, on Sept. 4, Scharf launched into a defense of Trump’s building project, arguing the commission does not have jurisdiction over demolition and site preparation work for federal property; that it just deals with construction.

“I think any assertion that this commission should have been consulted earlier than it has been, or it will be, is simply false,” he said.

The commission will just “play a role in the ballroom project when the time is appropriate for us to do so,” he said.

Not so fast, say past commissioners.

Preston Bryant, a former chairman of the commission, told the Miami Herald in an email that in his nine years on the job “the Commission always works on proposed capital projects in three stages — Conceptual, Preliminary Approval, and Final Approval. Even before conceptual, there’s early consultation.”

Trump is familiar with the process. When he and his Trump Organization were remodeling the Old Post Office Pavilion into a Trump Hotel in 2014, they had to get their plans approved by the commission, which was strict in its adherence to preserving the historical structure of the building.

His team submitted a 52-page proposal showing the design changes, drawings of the new interior and exterior, and detailed the effect the changes would have on local traffic.

But now Trump has plowed on, bulldozing any opposition.

“We’ll have the most beautiful ballroom in the country,” he said Monday at an event in the East Room of the White House, apologizing for any construction noise the guests may hear. “It just started today so that’s good luck.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Trump, in a post on Truth Social, said the new ballroom will be “completely separate from the White House itself, the East Wing is being fully modernized as part of this process, and will be more beautiful than ever when it is complete!”

As photos and videos of the destruction went viral on social media, his top administration aides took to their accounts to defend the project, pointing out that the ballroom was being paid for with private donations and noting other presidents have made changes to the White House.

Past presidents, however, consulted advisers and architects, along with groups like the White House Historical Association and the Committee for the Preservation of the White House in addition to working with the commission, which is currently closed as part of the government shutdown.

One former commissioner noted that Washington, D.C., is a carefully planned city and that the commission strives to keep to the original vision of Pierre L’Enfant, who designed the layout of the capitol.

“If you don’t have a review process you’re basically saying one individual can say what the capital looks like. Washington doesn’t look this way by accident,” the commissioner, who asked for anonymity in order to speak freely, said.

Trump’s history of flouting the rules

Brushing aside red tape has long been a Trump strategy when it comes to changes at historic properties.

In 2006, Trump added an 80-foot flagpole with a 5-feet-by-25-feet flag on the front lawn of Mar-a-Lago — without the proper permit or permission. Palm Beach restricts flagpoles to no higher than 42 feet and flags that are a maximum of 4 feet by 6 feet.

The town fined Trump $250 a day. He countered with a $250 million lawsuit, accusing Palm Beach of violating his First Amendment rights and publicly blasted local officials for fining his patriotic display.

Trump and the town government finally came to an agreement: Trump filed for a permit and was allowed an oversized pole that was 10 feet shorter than the original pole. In return he would donate $100,000 to veterans’ charities.

He also warred with Palm Beach over his original plan for Mar-a-Lago, which was to turn its 17 acres into a subdivision. With millions in upkeep and no income generated, the property was costing him a fortune.

The Palm Beach Town Council vetoed all his construction plans. Once again, Trump sued.

Another deal was made: Trump offered to drop his lawsuit if the town let him turn the estate into a lucrative private club. The council agreed but also set a series of requirements, including capping the membership price and its capacity along with a restriction that no one was to spend more than 21 nights a year at the property.

Trump, however, has hiked the membership fees and, after he left the White House in the first term, he named Mar-a-Lago his permanent residence, getting an exemption to the 21-night stay rule.

Similar actions took place when he built Trump Tower in New York.

In 1980, Trump acquired the historic Bonwit Teller building. He demolished the 1929 Art Deco building to build his namesake tower.

Before the project began, several prominent residents expressed concern about the original building’s limestone relief panels, considered prominent works of art.

Trump agreed to preserve the panels and donate them to The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

But as construction continued, Trump changed his mind and had the panels demolished with the building, saying they had little value and were “without artistic merit.”

It’s a slight still felt in some circles in New York society.

‘Pays total respect to the existing building’

Back in Washington, heads are shaking over the demolition of one-third of the White House structure.

After all, in July, Trump said the current building wouldn’t be touched.

“It won’t interfere with the current building. It won’t be. It’ll be near it but not touching it — and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of,” he said.

Now, in addition to the destruction of the wing, he may touch parts of the original White House. Trump on Monday indicated part of one of East Wing walls will come down to connect his ballroom to the residence.

“That’s a knockout panel — you knock it out,” he explained.

The East Wing was built in 1902 as a guest entrance and expanded in 1942 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It houses the offices of the first lady and her staff, the military office and the visitors office.

It’s unclear what process FDR went through. The planning commission wasn’t established until 1952. But part of the reason he had it built was to cover the underground presidential bunker which was installed for security reasons.

Trump has already made his mark on the White House. He’s added gold gilding to the Oval Office and stacked its walls with portraits. He’s moved around presidential portraits throughout the complex and added paintings of himself.

On the colonnade, which is the walkway leading from the residence to the West Wing, Trump added a photo of each American president. One exception was Joe Biden. Trump instead placed a photo of a pen, referring to his constant criticism for Biden using the auto pen for his signature during his presidency.

He paved over the Rose Garden to make it look similar to the patio at Mar-a-Lago, putting out chairs and tables with yellow umbrellas brought up from his Florida club. And he’s installed two massive flags atop large poles — one on the North Lawn and one on the South Lawn.

And there could be more changes to come.

Scharf, at his September planning commission meeting, mentioned an upcoming beautification and redesign of Pennsylvania Avenue.

He didn’t offer any details but an earlier presentation to the commission showed plans to turn the iconic avenue into a more pedestrian friendly walkway, with a national stage for events, markets and green spaces.

The Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which sits next door to the White House and houses most of the administration staff, could be in his sights. In his first term, Trump mulled adding gold leaf to the white granite building.

But, for now, Trump is working on plans to build a ceremonial arch outside of Arlington National Cemetery, on a traffic circle that sits between it and Memorial Bridge.

It would commemorate the nation’s 250th anniversary next year. The president showed off design models and drawings to the ballroom donors, telling them there were three sizes to pick from and he was leaning toward the largest.

“Whichever one would look good. I happen to think the large one,” Trump said as the group laughed. “Why are you shocked?”

The drawings show an arch similar to France’s Arc de Triomphe with columns, eagles, wreaths and a gilded, winged figure.

Trump, earlier this month, had a model of it on his desk in the Oval Office when he was speaking to reporters on another matter.

The journalists noticed the piece and asked who it was for.

“Me,” he replied.

Emily Goodin writes for The Miami Herald and Tribune News Services.