Rep. Eric Swalwell, a leading Democratic candidate for governor of California, has accused President Trump of trying to sway the election following reports that FBI Director Kash Patel may release documents from a decade-old investigation into the congressman’s ties to a suspected Chinese spy.
According to a report by the Washington Post, Patel has directed agents in the bureau’s San Francisco office to redact the case files for public release. According to the outlet, it’s highly unusual for the FBI to release case files tied to a probe that did not result in criminal charges.
The investigation centered on Swalwell’s ties to a suspected intelligence operative, Christine Fang, or Fang Fang, who worked as a volunteer raising money for his congressional campaign. Swalwell cut off ties to Fang in 2015, after intelligence officials briefed him and other members of Congress about Chinese efforts to infiltrate the legislative body.
Swalwell was not accused of impropriety.
The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Through great reporting, we now know the outrageous ends the White House will go to target political opponents,” Swalwell said in a prepared statement Saturday, calling the decade-old story “nonsense.”
“Donald Trump is targeting me. He’s trying to influence the election,” Swalwell said in a post on X. “There is only one reason why: he’s scared.”
Swalwell accused Trump of “desperately trying” to stop him, because he’s now the favored candidate for California governor.
“What Trump wants the most is to have a Western White House. An enabler on the opposite coast,” he said. “A lot of people have bent the knee to this administration. But I will not. And neither will the people of California.”
It’s not the first time Swalwell has accused the administration of targeting Trump’s political opponents.
Last year, Swalwell sued Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte, accusing him of criminally misusing government databases to target Trump’s political opponents. Pulte had accused Swalwell of mortgage fraud and referred him to the Justice Department for a potential federal criminal probe. Swalwell dropped that suit this month.
Swalwell, a former prosecutor who ran for president in 2020, announced his bid for California governor in November. Swalwell said his decision was driven by the serious problems facing California and the threats posed to the state and nation with Trump in the White House.
U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who has endorsed Swalwell for governor, shared the Post story on X Saturday, saying, “This abuse of the FBI is as dangerous as it is unlawful.” Schiff served with Swalwell on the House Intelligence Committee, where they riled Republicans by investigating President Trump during his first term.
Schiff served as the lead manager of Trump’s first impeachment and Swalwell as a manager of Trump’s second impeachment.
“Time and again, the President and his appointees have weaponized the Department of Justice against those who dare stand up to Trump,” Schiff wrote. He added that there was no doubt that Trump and Patel “will stop at nothing to try to tell Californians who their next governor should be.”
The Post story unleashed a flood of critiques from California politicians, including Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles), who sits on the House Intelligence Committee. On X, Gomez accused Patel of “wasting resources” on a “closed, decade-old case where Swalwell cooperated with the FBI and was found innocent of any wrongdoing.”
“Reopening it now, right as he leads in the polls and ballots are about to drop, is a political hit-job!” Gomez said. “Trump and Kash Patel are weaponizing the FBI against people they deem political enemies.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, released a statement accusing Patel of working at “the behest of the White House” and “wasting the resources of the FBI and perhaps violating the Hatch Act by ordering agents to spend hours preparing a political smear file for a personnel vendetta.”
According to the Associated Press, Fang came into contact with Swalwell’s campaign as he was first running for Congress in 2012. She also participated in fundraising for his 2014 campaign and helped place an intern in his office, the report said. Federal investigators alerted Swalwell to their concerns — and briefed Congress — about Fang in 2015, at which point the California Democrat says he cut off contact with her, the AP reported in 2021.
In 2023, the House Ethics Committee closed a two-year investigation into the allegations of his ties to Fang.
In closing the probe, the ethics committee wrote in a letter to Swalwell that it had “previously reviewed allegations of improper influence by foreign agents and in doing so, cautioned that Members should be conscious of the possibility that foreign governments may attempt to secure improper influence through gifts and other interactions.”
Times staff writer Kevin Rector contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — The House on Monday approved allocating an extra $30 million to community and migrant medical centers, a move aimed at reducing infant deaths.
The bill, passed on a voice vote, requires the Department of Health and Human Services to give spending priority to centers that serve high-risk areas and to population groups with high infant mortality rates.
The bill was sent to the Senate, which passed a similar measure Aug. 6. Conferees will work on a compromise between the two.
The Reagan Administration opposes the legislation. It has proposed instead to test innovative ways of providing services to Medicaid-eligible pregnant women and infants up to a year old.
When the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved the House version last month, several Republican members called it unnecessary and said they found no reason to believe the extra spending would help more newborns survive.
WASHINGTON — In a case that echoes the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling scandal, two Northern California Republican congressmen used their official positions to try to stop a federal investigation of a wealthy Texas businessman who provided them with political contributions.
Reps. John T. Doolittle and Richard W. Pombo joined forces with former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas to oppose an investigation by federal banking regulators into the affairs of Houston millionaire Charles Hurwitz, documents recently obtained by The Times show. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was seeking $300 million from Hurwitz for his role in the collapse of a Texas savings and loan that cost taxpayers $1.6 billion.
The investigation was ultimately dropped.
The effort to help Hurwitz began in 1999 when DeLay wrote a letter to the chairman of the FDIC denouncing the investigation of Hurwitz as a “form of harassment and deceit on the part of government employees.” When the FDIC persisted, Doolittle and Pombo — both considered proteges of DeLay — used their power as members of the House Resources Committee to subpoena the agency’s confidential records on the case, including details of the evidence FDIC investigators had compiled on Hurwitz.
Then, in 2001, the two congressmen inserted many of the sensitive documents into the Congressional Record, making them public and accessible to Hurwitz’s lawyers, a move that FDIC officials said damaged the government’s ability to pursue the banker.
The FDIC’s chief spokesman characterized what Doolittle and Pombo did as “a seamy abuse of the legislative process.” But soon afterward, in 2002, the FDIC dropped its case against Hurwitz, who had owned a controlling interest in the United Savings Assn. of Texas. United Savings’ failure was one of the worst of the S&L; debacles in the 1980s.
Doolittle and Pombo did not respond to requests for interviews last week. They publicly defended Hurwitz at the time, saying the inquiry was unfair. Hurwitz’s lawyer said Friday that the FDIC had been overzealous. This summer, a judge in Texas agreed and awarded Hurwitz attorney fees and other costs in a civil suit he filed. “They sought to humiliate him,” U.S. District Judge Lynn N. Hughes, said in the ruling. The government is appealing the decision.
In key aspects, the Hurwitz case follows the pattern of the Abramoff scandal: members of Congress using their offices to do favors for a politically well-connected individual who, in turn, supplies them with campaign funds. Although Washington politicians frequently try to help important constituents and contributors, it is unusual for members of Congress to take direct steps to stymie an ongoing investigation by an agency such as the FDIC.
And the actions of the two Californians reflect DeLay’s broad strategy of cementing relationships with individuals, business interests and lobbyists whose financial support enabled Republicans to extend their grip on Congress and on government agencies as well. The system DeLay developed and Abramoff took part in went beyond simple quid pro quo; it mobilized whatever GOP resources were available to help those who could help the party.
In the Hurwitz case, Doolittle and Pombo were in a position to pressure the FDIC and did so. Pombo received a modest campaign contribution. In another case, Pombo helped one of Abramoff’s clients, the Mashpee Indians in Massachusetts, gain official recognition as a tribe; the congressman received contributions from the lobbyist and the tribe in that instance.
Andrew Wheat, research director for Texans for Public Justice, a nonpartisan electoral reform group based in Austin, put it this way: “DeLay and Hurwitz seem like natural allies in that they have geographic and ideological proximity. Mr. Hurwitz is a guy who has a reputation of being willing to pay to play. And DeLay likes to play that game too, so there’s a natural affinity.”
DeLay announced Saturday that he was giving up his efforts to regain the majority leader position. He was majority whip when he first became involved in helping Hurwitz.
In the Abramoff scandal, members of Congress allegedly did favors for the politically connected lobbyist’s clients — including Indian casinos — and received campaign contributions and lavish free entertainment. Last week, the lobbyist pleaded guilty in separate cases in Miami and Washington in a deal that government investigators hope will lead to more prosecutions. Others involved have also made deals to cooperate, and Washington is braced for new criminal charges to come.
The episode involving Hurwitz and the two California congressmen took place with little public notice just before the Abramoff scandal began to escalate. The Sacramento Bee published a story when Doolittle inserted FDIC investigative documents into the Congressional Record, noting that it occurred at a time when Congress was distracted by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the anthrax episode.
But what lay behind Doolittle’s action, and the actions of Pombo and DeLay, did not become clear until recently, when the government documents and copies of letters between the congressmen and FDIC officials were obtained by The Times.
J. Kent Friedman, the general counsel for Hurwitz’s vast Houston-based holding company, said last week that the FDIC was overzealous in its dealings with his boss.
“Their case was weak from the start. They had a terrible case,” Friedman said. He said anyone trying to connect the congressmen to the fact that the case fell apart would be “attempting to put a bow on a pig.”
The Texas S&L; in which Hurwitz held a controlling interest of about 25% collapsed in 1988 as part of a financial fiasco that took federal regulators years to untangle. The investigation of Hurwitz began in 1995 and continued for about seven years before it was dropped.
After DeLay’s 1999 letter attacking the investigation failed to dissuade the FDIC, Doolittle weighed in with a statement on the House floor in 2001, saying the FDIC investigators were “clearly out of control” and should have “dropped the case, period.”
Pombo, in his own 2001 floor statement, suggested that the banking regulators were using strong-arm methods against Hurwitz, or what Pombo called “tools equivalent to the Cosa Nostra — a mafia tactic.”
Doolittle, 55, an eight-term congressman, represents California’s fourth district, the Sierra Foothills region and the eastern suburbs of Sacramento. He has a consistent conservative voting record, opposing gun control and abortion and siding with property rights, timber and utility interests against environmental groups.
By 2000, he had grown close to DeLay, working with the Republican leader to oppose proposed changes to campaign finance law and restrictions on fundraising. When DeLay was indicted in Texas last year, Doolittle distributed about 100 lapel pins in the shape of tiny hammers as a tribute to the man nicknamed the “Hammer” for his ability to pound congressional Republicans into line.
Doolittle also was closely aligned with Abramoff. Records show that Abramoff gave Doolittle tens of thousands of dollars in contributions and employed the congressman’s wife for other fundraising activities.
Pombo, the son of cattle ranchers, plays up his cowboy roots, often appearing in his district wearing a ranch-hand’s hat and ostrich-skin boots. Forty-five years old, a seven-term congressman, he represents the fertile farming expanse of the Central Valley.
He had impressed DeLay with his fundraising prowess, garnering about $1 million for his 2002 House reelection, which he won easily.
And not long after his role in helping Hurwitz, the GOP House caucus — led by DeLay — helped get Pombo elected chairman of the Resources Committee over several more senior Republicans.
Hurwitz has been a prolific campaign donor since the early 1990s.
He has contributed personally and with funds provided by his Houston-based flagship company, Maxxam Inc., through subsidiaries such as Kaiser Aluminum, and through a company political action committee, Maxxam Inc. Federal PAC.
In the last three federal elections cycles, those entities have given about $443,000 in political contributions — most of it to conservative politicians, including President Bush, for whom Hurwitz pledged to raise $100,000 in the 2000 campaign and also helped during that year’s vote tally deadlock in Florida.
Hurwitz has been generous with DeLay too.
Starting in the 2000 election cycle, the businessman and his committees have distributed at least $30,000 to DeLay and his federal causes, including $5,000 for his current legal defense fund in the Texas money-laundering case.
Hurwitz also contributed $1,000 to Pombo for his 1996 reelection campaign. And through the Maxxam PAC, Hurwitz gave Doolittle $5,000 for his 2002 reelection campaign and then followed up with $2,000 more for his 2004 race.
When DeLay went to bat for Hurwitz, he was particularly critical of reported internal government discussions that would have pressed Hurwitz to settle his obligations for the collapsed S&L; by selling the government vast forest areas and redwood trees in Northern California near Scotia. The forest land was owned by Hurwitz’s Pacific Lumber company
“I am extremely concerned,” DeLay told then-FDIC Chairwoman Donna A. Tanoue, “about the apparent abuse of governmental power and what appears to be misconduct in the form of harassment and deceit on the part of government employees.”
Tanoue responded by telling DeLay “we can assure you that the FDIC lawsuit against Mr. Hurwitz was not filed for political reasons.”
The investigation pressed on, and a year later the House Resources Committee, which had jurisdiction because of the forest area, set up a special Headwaters Forest Task Force and launched its own review. Doolittle was appointed task force chairman, and Pombo one of its members.
Duane Gibson, the committee’s general counsel who later went to work for Abramoff, was named the chief investigator. They immediately subpoenaed internal records from the FDIC and the Office of Thrift Supervision, which also had responsibilities for S&Ls.;
Both agencies were wary and, although complying with the subpoenas, repeatedly urged the lawmakers not to make the documents public or share them with Hurwitz.
William F. Kroener III, general counsel at the FDIC, warned the committee that Hurwitz and his lawyers were not entitled to see many of the documents.
Kroener told the panel that, should the material end up in their hands, it “could significantly injure our ability to litigate this matter and reduce damages otherwise recoverable to reimburse taxpayers.”
Carolyn J. Buck, chief counsel at the Office of Thrift Supervision, also wrote the committee emphasizing that “we note our objection to any publication or release of these documents.”
The task force was set up for six months, and disbanded in December 2000. It held one hearing, and called FDIC and Office of Thrift Supervision officials as witnesses.
At that hearing, Tanoue defended the FDIC’s investigation.
“I have listened to and considered the arguments made directly to me by representatives of Mr. Hurwitz,” she testified. “However, I have found no compelling reason to take the extraordinary step of … taking this case out of the hands of the judicial system.”
Kroener testified that the FDIC was not interested in a trees-for-debt swap, saying his agency “has expressed its preference for a cash settlement.”
Six months later, in June 2001, Pombo submitted a portion of the subpoenaed documents that filled 14 pages in the Congressional Record.
Six months after that, in December 2001, Doolittle did the same, even though he was no longer a member of the committee. And his submission was much larger — filling 111 pages.
The documents were so voluminous that Doolittle and Pombo had to pay a total of about $20,000 from their congressional accounts to cover the extra printing costs.
The FDIC was outraged over the documents’ release.
Its chief spokesman, Phil Battey, said in a statement to the Sacramento Bee at the time that the publication of the materials was a “subordination … and a seamy abuse of the legislative process.”
Not long afterward, the FDIC dismissed its case, and the Office of Thrift Supervision settled with Hurwitz for about $200,000 in administrative costs.
*
Times staff writer Ted Rohrlich contributed to this report.
Safiya Baidi spent six months living in a 1987 Mitsubishi Galant. She slept in the front seat; her two baby girls slept in the back seat. Food was stored in the trunk.
It was a way to keep orderly the only home she had. Most nights, though, that order was interrupted by her children’s needs.
“They always wanted me to sleep close to their noses, so I put the seat back,” Baidi said. “It was very uncomfortable, but that’s what they wanted.”
On Thursday, the needs of her children led Baidi to join about 150 frustrated tenants who converged on downtown’s Pershing Square to protest the suspension of federal housing assistance to 1,500 families in Los Angeles.
The problem, advocates say, may soon grow worse. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that about 10,000 families in Los Angeles County could be cut from the Section 8 program if the 2005 budget proposed by the Bush administration is passed by Congress.
Officials with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, however, view the proposed budget in a starkly different way.
“The president’s proposal would provide enough flexibility for local housing authorities to still cover as many people with vouchers as it currently does,” said Larry Bush, a HUD spokesman. “In the case of Los Angeles, this will require better management than we have seen to date.”
Section 8 is a federal program that subsidizes the rents of low-income tenants, who pay about 30% of their income in rent. The federal government pays the rest.
In Los Angeles, for example, a family of four with an income of $29,750 is considered very low income. A family of four with an income of $17,850 or less is considered extremely low income.
With her voucher, Baidi would have been able to rent a two-bedroom apartment. She had found a place in Hawthorne. Now that her voucher is suspended, the 22-year-old, who works full time at a hospital, remains in the homeless shelter that took her in after her long stint living in her car.
“My job is minimum wage,” she said, above the chants of protesters. “That won’t get me in anywhere.”
The protests, which included speeches by single mothers, the mentally ill and others in need of housing assistance, was organized by the Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness. State Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sylmar) and Los Angeles Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa joined the group in demanding that Congress, the state and federal government do more to assist those who need housing.
“These are people struggling to find the American dream and our president is trying to take it away,” Alarcon said to the crowd. “I think we need to take away his public housing and kick him out of the White House.”
The program had been supported by previous administrations because they “understood something about Section 8,” he said, calling the program “a path to a better place.”
Earlier this year, officials at the Los Angeles Housing Authority canceled housing vouchers of those who had not yet entered into rental contracts. Officials estimated that about 5,000 subsidized households — families already in rental contracts — might lose their assistance unless help came soon.
Local officials pushed HUD for additional funds, more vouchers or an agreement that certain funds could be used to pay for the vouchers. Federal officials blamed problems on the local agency.
On Monday, HUD and local officials announced the signing of an agreement that averted the loss of assistance to the 5,000 families, but so far no hope has been offered that assistance will be restored to those with suspended vouchers. Those families, about 400 of whom are homeless, according to the Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness, have been left in limbo: stuck in hotels, in shelters or on the streets.
One of the protesters, Laura Figueras, spent 10 years living on the streets, mentally ill and unable to care for herself.
She credits a Santa Monica shelter with helping her reform her life. Now her illness is controlled with medication and she has started to imagine herself living in her own home. She is on a list to receive a voucher.
“It took me a long time to get that far,” Figueras said. When she learned about the suspensions “my world fell apart…. I was pretty devastated,” she said. “But I’m not giving up.”
The voucher suspensions and concerns about possible cuts in the program have given rise to the Save the Section 8 Coalition, several organizations that are pushing for HUD “to release emergency funds to honor the 1,500 Section 8 vouchers.” The coalition is also demanding that the program “remain fully funded to at least its current level. No massive cuts as the Bush administration has proposed.”
Stu Spencer, guru of political gurus, towed three old Latino buddies to the side at his annual holiday party. “Here, listen to these guys,” he said. “You don’t need to quote me.” Minutes later he returned with another, and then another. “They’ll tell ya. . . . Hey Manuel, don’t talk his ear off.”
Manuel Hidalgo, 67, East Los Angeles attorney. Frank Veiga, 59, East Los Angeles mortician. Albert Zapanta, 55, executive vice president of the U.S.-Mexico Chamber of Commerce. . . .
All had one thing in common besides their Mexican ancestry. They’re lifelong California Republicans who are disenchanted with their party. Not just disappointed and discouraged, but downright disgusted.
“I like the [Republican] philosophy, but they don’t like me,” Hidalgo said. “I like ‘em, but I can’t go to the party.”
Zapanta: “The party has too much of a bigot streak in it. And that’s 25 years of Republican activism talking.”
They’ve been working up to this point for years. Proposition 187 pushed them to the edge. Proposition 209 was one more boot. In their view, the policies were bad enough–taking public services from illegal immigrants and dismantling race-based affirmative action. Much worse was the politics.
“187 was racist, bigoted,” said Veiga. “Who’d you see in the ads?”
Not Russians or Asians, he and his friends noted. TV viewers saw Mexicans streaming across the border and were told, in ominous tones, that “they keep coming.” Latinos–even third-generation Americans–saw Republican fingers pointed at them. This year, again, GOP ads pointed to brown skins.
And Latino fingers pointed back–particularly at Gov. Pete Wilson, the wizard of wedge.
“We’ve lost a lot of respect for him,” Veiga said. Added Zapanta: “Pete’s a big boy. He knows what he’s doing.”
*
Playing the race card?
“Pete does not play the race card,” Spencer insisted. “He just got to the point where he believes [the policy].”
Spencer has been a Wilson loyalist for 30-plus years. He won’t criticize him personally. But he does think that the governor’s 187 ads, in the heat of a reelection campaign, “scared the hell out of” Latinos. “The fallout’s going to be around for awhile.”
In fact, Spencer said the dubious duo of 187 and immigrant bashing by conservatives nationally could drive Latinos away from the GOP en masse–just as blacks aligned solidly with Democrats during FDR’s New Deal and, later, the civil rights movement.
Rather than pushing punitive 187, asserted the guru and his Latino buddies, the GOP merely should have attacked President Clinton for neither enforcing the border nor reimbursing the state for its illegal immigrant costs.
Republicans paid the price in last month’s elections. How much of that price is directly attributable to the state ballot props and the Buchanan-style immigrant bashing is only speculative. But clearly it’s substantial.
We do know, according to The Times’ exit polling, that the Latino slice of the California vote jumped 43% between 1992 and 1996, to 10% of the total. In 1992, 51% of Latinos voted for Clinton; this year, 75% did.
Latinos apparently tipped the balance in several legislative and congressional races. A record 14 Latinos were elected to the Assembly, which then elected its first Latino speaker, Cruz Bustamante (D-Fresno).
Bustamante attended Spencer’s party Tuesday night.
*
Pundits and pols everywhere have been expounding on the growing muscle of Latinos. But Spencer has been doing it for decades, mostly to plugged ears.
Although he could steer Ronald Reagan to the governor’s office and the White House and help elect countless other candidates, Spencer has struck out trying to persuade Republicans to focus on Latinos.
“I keep losing every battle,” he lamented. “They don’t get it.”
Spencer, 69, cut his political teeth in East L.A. in the 1950s, organizing Mexican Americans for the party. In the early ‘60s, he opened a community “service center”–precursor to a would-be political machine–and “handed out goodies” like free polio shots. But the GOP shut it down when he left.
“We never have taken advantage of our patronage–judgeships, commissions. You’ve got to get people active and reward them. You’ve got to look at the figures and see that the future of this state is going to be determined by Mexicans. We don’t have to change our basic message–get government off our back, low taxation, family values. . . .
“But I’m past that point. There’s got to be a young Stu Spencer out there somewhere who understands it.”
Expense reports filed over a decade of the Calderon family’s engagement in the California Legislature sheds light on the variety of ways political funds can be spent.
The expenses include $1 million spent at golf resorts, $220,000 on steak dinners, $4,000 for cigars, and $325 for a set of false eyelashes. The filings also show $1.3 million charged on credit cards, where expenses are not itemized and the monthly bill sometimes topped $27,000.
The reports, filed with the California secretary of State’s office, cover 23 political accounts active since 2000 for former Assembly Majority Leader Charles Calderon, his brothers Sen. Ron Calderon and former Assemblyman Tom Calderon, and Charles’ son Assemblyman Ian Calderon. All hail from the Los Angeles County town of Montebello and have represented districts in or near there.
The reports detail extended stays in spa resorts and hideaways in such settings as Las Vegas, Hawaii, Tahoe and Palm Springs. The getaways are sometimes listed as fundraisers, but also as conferences, retreats and “holiday” events.
The expenses include more than $135,000 spent on trips to Vegas, $115,000 on events at the Bandon Dunes Resort in Oregon, and $101,000 for trips to Hawaii during which Calderon family members sometimes also accepted “gifts” to attend conferences at those locations at the same time, staged by two California foundations that don’t reveal their funding sources or publish public agendas.
Gifts can be a big part of public office. The more than $27,000 the Calderons spent giving away money from campaign contributions includes gift certificates for contributors and staff members, and also more than $4,000 in gifts from one Calderon to another. Those include a $325 certificate for Calderon sister-in-law and campaign manager Leslie Rodriguez at Longmi Lashes, a Beverly Hills eyelash extension salon that touts its celebrity clientele. The “appreciation” gift came from the Assembly campaign of Charles Calderon, who married Rodriguez’s sister and listed Leslie Rodriguez as a campaign consultant.
California campaign finance laws generally give politicians wide latitude on how they can spend campaign funds. Fair Political Practices Commission records show few enforcement actions against Calderon family members. Charles Calderon, fined in 1995 and again in 1998 for misusing campaign funds for family birthdays and vacations, in 2009 was found to have failed to report all gifts, but the commission accepted his explanation and took no action. The commission in 2009 dismissed a complaint that Ron Calderon used three of his campaign funds for personal expenses with a warning that crossing the line between personal and political benefit in the future “could result in an enforcement action.”
WASHINGTON — With the Iran war in its fifth week, support for President Trump is at its lowest point ever, with a growing body of recent polling showing him losing ground with key voting blocs that helped power his 2024 victory.
While public dissatisfaction is evident among many groups surveyed, the decline in support for the president has been most pronounced among Latino voters.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released March 24 found 36% of voters approve of the president’s job performance, the lowest it has been during his second term. The poll found 62% disapproved.
Other polls, such as the AP-NORC poll, placed the figure at 38%.
In all, the president is underwater on almost every single public policy issue. With the exception of crime, which sits around 47% approval, he has recorded no gains in any polled category, according to experts.
On immigration, the president’s marquee issue, approval fell from roughly 45% in late 2025 to 39% in February, according to Reuters.
About 1 in 4 respondents approved of Trump’s handling of the economy, Reuters found, as domestic gas prices surged by more than $1 per gallon after fighting commenced last month. The share of Republicans who disapprove of his handling of cost-of-living issues rose 7 points in one week to 34%.
The shift comes amid growing economic unease and amplified backlash over the war in Iran. About 1 in 3 Americans approve of the military operation, according to a Reuters survey.
And a growing divide among prominent conservatives has emerged over the U.S. involvement in the Middle East.
The clashes have played out in public and are exposing tensions within the Republican Party, with conservative commentators such as Megyn Kelly openly questioning whether the war is in America’s best interest.
“This is not a foreign policy that makes sense and it is not what Trump ran on. It is, in many ways, a betrayal of his campaign promises, what he sold himself as and of his MAGA base,” Kelly said earlier this month.
Other conservative pundits, including Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, are also opposed.
But the real damage is showing up in the one place Trump can’t afford to lose: his base.
Trump entered his second term buoyed by historic gains with Latino voters. Exit polls indicated he improved his standing with them by more than 20 percentage points in 2024 compared with his 2016 victory, fueling widespread narratives that the demographic was undergoing a durable shift toward Republicans. In all, 48% of Latinos gave him their support in the last election.
Since then, his approval among Latino voters has plummeted to 22%, according to a March 2026 analysis by the Economist.
In a bipartisan poll by UnidosUS released in November, 14% of Latino voters said their lives were better after Trump took office, while 39% said they had gotten worse.
The president’s rapport with Latinos reflects a deep dissatisfaction with economic conditions, according to Mike Madrid, a veteran California Republican political consultant and expert on Latino voting trends.
“Overwhelmingly, this is a function of the economy and affordability,” he said. “Latino voters moved away from Biden-Harris for the exact same reasons that they’re moving away from Donald Trump right now.”
Research and polling suggests Latino voters prioritize cost-of-living issues — such as housing, wages and inflation — over immigration, a topic often emphasized in national messaging.
“It’s not even close,” Madrid said. “Immigration is not even a top 5 issue for Latino voters.”
Madrid suggested the demographic rallying is less a “reversion” and more a reflection of a rapidly changing electorate.
“Latinos have emerged as the only true swing vote in America,” he said. “And they’re rejecting whichever party is in power.”
These volatile, double-digit voting shifts directly contrast more stable voting patterns among other major demographic groups, including the Black and white electorates, where shifts from cycle to cycle tend to be just a few points.
The reason: dramatic turnout fluctuations. Who decides to show out or stay home on election day tends to change by the year. It’s compounded by the fact that there are far more first-time Latino voters than in any other category.
Polling this month suggests Trump is also losing ground among young voters, another group that contributed to his 2024 gains.
More than half of men under the age of 30 supported Trump in that election, helping him turn several swing states.
In just a year, that demographic has cratered by 20 points.
“Trump won in 2024 because of men. They are abandoning him right now,” CNN senior data analyst Harry Enten said Tuesday.
The reversals could have massive implications for the November midterm elections, particularly in competitive congressional districts where small swings could determine control of the House.
Republicans have warned that if they lose hold of their narrow congressional majority, Trump is likely to face a third impeachment.
UCLA political scientist Matt Barreto said movement away from Republicans is already visible in real-world election outcomes, not just polling.
“We’ve already seen in the Virginia and New Jersey legislative and gubernatorial elections really large shifts in the Latino vote, 25 points back to the Democratic Party,” Barreto said. He added that similar patterns have emerged in places such as Miami and Texas, where Democratic candidates have outperformed expectations with strong Latino support.
Latino Democrats who sat out the 2024 election are returning to the electorate, while some Latino Republicans are disengaging, he said.
That dynamic could prove decisive in November. There are more than 40 congressional districts where the number of registered Latino voters exceeds the margin of victory in 2024, Barreto said. Many of them are closely divided between the parties.
“At the district level, the Latino vote is going to make a huge impact,” he said.
Months after Kaiser Permanente doctors saw a patient, federal prosecutors said, administrators pushed the physicians to add new, false diagnoses to the medical record in a billion-dollar scheme to defraud the government. Kaiser in February paid $556 million to settle the allegations.
“Deliberately inflating diagnosis codes to boost profits is a serious violation of public trust,” said Scott Lambert, acting deputy inspector general for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Kaiser faced further scrutiny a month later when the nonprofit healthcare giant paid $30 million to settle another case brought by federal investigators, this one involving claims it had failed for years to provide patients with adequate access to mental health care.
Kaiser said it settled the fraud case without admitting wrongdoing. It said the mental health settlement did not involve its current practices.
Yet critics have pointed to the repeated legal payouts, saying they reflect how Kaiser has veered from its charitable mission in recent years and is now virtually indistinguishable from its for-profit competitors keenly focused on the bottom line.
That shift has also fueled recent tensions with its employees, who have complained about inadequate resources to address staffing shortages and patient delays.
“Their focus is on profit and in doing more with less,” said Kadi Gonzalez, a nurse who works in Kaiser’s obstetrics and gynecology clinic in Downey. Gonzalez was one of more than 30,000 nurses and other Kaiser professionals who walked out in a four-week strike that ended last month.
The unions said their strike was as much about staffing levels and patient safety as it was about wages.
“The more patients a nurse has, the higher the mortality rate,” Gonzalez said. “We don’t have enough providers.”
The Oakland-based giant insures almost 1 of every 4 Californians. It operates as both an insurer and a provider of care in a closed system that makes it difficult for patients to get treatment elsewhere.
Kaiser declined to make its executives available for comment, but issued a statement disputing the claims.
“Our charitable purpose guides every decision we make,” the statement said. “Driven by our mission, we offer better care and coverage to our members, invest billions of dollars in our communities every year, and work to advance high-quality, affordable, equitable, evidence-based care in communities across the country.”
The statement added that its hospitals are “among the best staffed in California” and that staffing levels always meet or exceed state requirements.
A surge in profits
Founded in 1945, Kaiser has long gained national attention for its managed care model and focus on preventative care.
The nonprofit says its mission is “to provide high-quality, affordable health care services and to improve the health of our members and the communities we serve.”
The Kaiser system — the largest healthcare nonprofit in the country — serves 9.5 million Californians. The Times offers Kaiser insurance to its employees.
Last year, Kaiser took in more than $127 billion in revenue, earning a profit of $9.3 billion. The net income was mainly from investments, with a smaller share ($1.4 billion) from its sprawling operations as well as insurance premiums.
Kaiser has continued to hike its insurance premiums faster than inflation.
In 2025, premiums increased an average of 5.1% in Southern California and 8.2% in Northern California, according to Beere & Purves, a general insurance agency. In January, it raised them by another 6.5% in Southern California and 7.1% in the northern part of the state.
Kaiser has been rapidly expanding nationwide. It now has hospitals and clinics in at least 10 states and the District of Columbia, some operating under a separate nonprofit that it created in 2023 called Risant Health.
Kaiser said in its statement that D.C.-based Risant “is a way for us to expand access to high-quality, affordable care to millions more people, in fulfillment of our mission.”
“As a nonprofit, any returns are reinvested back into patient care, infrastructure, workforce benefits, and community health programs—not distributed to shareholders,” it said.
Kaiser said that its annual premium increases were “generally lower” than its competitors.
The surge of money has increased Kaiser’s reserve of cash and investments, which reached $73 billion in 2025 — 68% higher than in 2019, according to its financial statements.
Because Kaiser is registered as a charity, it pays no taxes on its profits or its extensive real estate holdings. After a recent buying spree, the nonprofit system said it had 847 medical offices and 55 hospitals at the end of 2025.
The arm of Kaiser that operates its hospitals and clinics avoided $784 million in federal income tax, $372 million in state income tax and $204 million in property tax in 2024, according to an analysis by the Lown Institute, a healthcare think tank.
In all, Kaiser Foundation Hospitals received nearly $1.5 billion in tax and other benefits by registering as a charity, the institute calculated.
Laws exempt nonprofits from paying taxes with the assumption they will give back to the community.
In 2024, Kaiser Foundation Hospitals provided $963 million in patient financial assistance and contributions to community health programs, but that still fell short of its tax benefit by more than $500 million, according to the Lown Institute.
Dr. Vikas Saini, the institute’s president, said that amount of money could help solve a myriad of California’s social problems.
“If they closed that gap, what would that $500 million get you?” he asked.
In a 2024 study, the institute found that Kaiser had the largest gap between its tax benefits and charitable spending of any of the nation’s nonprofit hospital systems.
Kaiser said in its statement that its combined charitable spending was far more than the institute’s calculation for its hospital arm. It said it not only provided patients with financial assistance, but also spent money on affordable housing, food access, community health and disaster recovery — efforts that totaled $5.3 billion last year.
After the January 2025 wildfires, Kaiser said it provided 2,400 households with financial assistance, opened evacuation centers, deployed mobile health vehicles and provided mental health services to victims.
“We have never been prouder of how we are delivering on our mission for the public good,” the statement said.
As Kaiser has grown, so has compensation for its top executives, which is among the highest of all California nonprofits.
In 2024, Greg Adams, Kaiser’s chief executive, was paid nearly $13 million, according to its filings. At least 40 other executives received total compensation of more than $1 million that year.
The nonprofit has a board of directors of more than a dozen members, with all but a few receiving $250,000 or more a year, according to the filing.
The board helps to oversee Kaiser’s fast-growing operations as well as its $73-billion financial reserve, which healthcare advocates and experts have said is far higher than its competitors and the level the state requires.
“I’m flabbergasted,” Saini said when told of the reserve’s size. “Who decides how big of a reserve is enough?”
Kaiser said it maintained the large financial reserve “to ensure long-term stability, manage emergencies, support major capital investments, and support our people’s retirement benefits.”
And it said senior managers were paid less than most for-profit health plans.
Patients delays, staffing shortages
Some longtime Kaiser members have left for other insurers, citing a decline in care.
Mark Schubb, a Santa Monica resident, had been a Kaiser member since 1995. He said he left in 2022 after experiencing months-long delays to visit his primary care doctor and specialists.
When he complained, Schubb said, “the answer was, ‘Well, you can always go to urgent care.’ “
Gonzalez, the nurse in Downey, said patients often wait three months for an appointment. And when they finally get in, the 20-minute appointment may be double-booked, she said, leaving the physician assistant with 10 minutes to see them.
“They can wait months for an appointment and then they are rushed through,” she said. “Kaiser has the resources to fix these things.”
In one case, 53-year-old Francisco Delgadillo arrived at the Kaiser ER in Vallejo, Calif., in December 2023 with severe chest pain. After an initial assessment, he waited eight hours for care, according to state regulators.
He died in the lobby.
A state and federal investigation found multiple violations, including that Kaiser failed to have a licensed nurse monitoring the dozens of patients in the ER’s waiting room.
Kaiser didn’t respond to a request to comment on the death but has disputed claims of inadequate staffing at its hospitals.
Complaints about a lack of available mental health care go back more than a decade.
In 2023, Kaiser agreed to a $200-million settlement after the state found it had canceled tens of thousands of mental health appointments and failed to provide timely care. The settlement included a $50-million fine — the largest the state had ever levied against a health plan.
Garie Connell, a Kaiser therapist and licensed clinical social worker in Encino, said the system had been rationing mental health care for years, while earning big profits.
“They’ve really lost their way,” she said.
Kaiser said it had “made significant investments to expand choice and access to mental health care over the past several years.” The healthcare provider said it now has more than 35,000 employed and contracted clinicians delivering mental health and addiction care.
Unsupported diagnoses
Kaiser said that it settled the alleged $1-billion fraud case last month to avoid the “cost of prolonged litigation” and that the findings of federal investigators involved “a dispute regarding certain documentation practices.”
In their complaint, prosecutors alleged that Kaiser mined data to find possible diagnoses that could be added to patients’ records to make them look sicker than they were. The patients were in Kaiser’s Medicare Advantage plan, which received bigger government payments for patients with multiple ailments.
Doctors were praised and given gifts, including bottles of champagne, the complaint said, for agreeing to the administrators’ requests to add the diagnoses.
As one Kaiser slide in an internal training session explained, “Medicare Queries: Why Now?”
The slide then provided the answer: “Diagnoses = Revenue.”
“Trump’s endorsement would be huge,” said Jon Fleischman, a conservative strategist and former executive director of the state GOP.
“Actually,” he went on, ‘I think it would be determinative” — virtually guaranteeing either Hilton or Bianco finished in the top two in the June 2 primary, ushering them past the rope line into November’s runoff.
If there’s an inside edge in the Trump Endorsement Sweepstakes, it would seemingly go to Hilton.
He’s familiar to the president as a former Fox News host. He’s interviewed Trump several times and the two occasionally text and talk on the phone. Bianco has no such personal connection, which might explain his ballot-seizing stunt.
Steve Hilton could have the inside track on a Trump endorsement, given their personal relationship.
A Trump endorsement comes in all sorts of flavors.
As The Downballot recently noted, “His bag of tricks includes dual endorsements, triple endorsements, pre-endorsements, Election Day endorsements, yanking endorsements … belated endorsement of a candidate after initially endorsing just one candidate [and] non-endorsements after promising to endorse.”
There was also the time Trump endorsed “ERIC” when Republicans Eric Schmitt and Eric Greitens faced each other in Missouri’s Senate primary. (Schmitt won and is now the state’s junior U.S. senator.)
Trump’s backing still counts a good deal, even as his approval ratings sink to sub-basement levels. The president remains popular with Republicans and, critically, the kind of GOP loyalists who vote in primary contests, which is why both Hilton and Bianco would welcome a presidential laying on of hands.
There’s good reason, however, to think Trump might pass on endorsing in the governor’s race, or opt to deliver one of his dual he-and-him endorsements.
The GOP’s best — and perhaps only — hope of winning the governorship is the Democratic-freeze-out scenario. So, tactically, Trump’s wisest move may be to bless neither Hilton nor Bianco. Or support both. That would avoid elevating one over the other, which could make it easier for a Democrat to finish among the top two and advance past the June primary.
“I think Trump’s people are smart enough to know that there’s a reason why he may not be served by endorsing a candidate,” Fleischman said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the prevailing wisdom there is we better not endorse anybody, because we don’t want to tilt this one way or the other.”
If Trump were to back Hilton or Bianco, it’s not hard to imagine Democratic interests seizing upon the president’s benediction and putting significant money behind an ad blitz promoting the president’s favorite in hopes of boosting him — and him alone — into the top two.
In 2018, his main rival was fellow Democrat Antonio Villaraigosa. Two major Republicans were also in the race, John Cox and Travis Allen. There was no real concern about those two nabbing both spots in the June primary. Rather, Newsom and Cox had a shared interest in boxing out Villaraigosa.
So the Newsom and Cox campaigns opened a private back-channel, trading gossip, swapping insights on the race and even sharing some empirical data. One poll, showing Cox getting a bigger boost from a Trump endorsement than Allen, passed from Democratic hands in hopes it would reach the White House and nudge the president into supporting Cox.
WASHINGTON — President Trump says the United States is winning the war with Iran, even as thousands of additional American troops deploy to the Middle East.
He has pilloried other countries for not helping the U.S., only to say later he does not need their assistance. He has twice delayed deadlines for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. He has threatened to “obliterate” Iran’s energy plants if the vital waterway remains largely shut down and said the U.S. was “not affected” by the closure.
At one point this month, Trump claimed that one of his predecessors — who, he strongly suggested, was a Democrat — privately told him he wished he had taken similar action against Iran. Representatives for every living former president denied that any such conversation happened.
As the war entered its second month over the weekend, Trump’s penchant for embellishments, exaggerations and falsehoods is being tested in an environment where the stakes are much higher than a domestic political fight.
A president who has long embraced bluster and salesmanship to shape narratives and focus attention is confronting the unpredictability of war.
Leon Panetta, who served Democratic presidents as Defense secretary, CIA director and White House chief of staff, said he has “seen enough wars where truth becomes the first casualty.”
“It’s not the first administration that has not told the truth about war,” he said. “But the president has made it kind of a very standard approach to almost any question to in one way or another kind of lie about what’s really happening and basically describe everything as fine and that we’re winning the war.”
Michael Rubin, a historian at the American Enterprise Institute who worked as a staff advisor on Iran and Iraq at the Pentagon from 2002 to 2004, said Trump is “the first president of any party in recent history that hasn’t self-constrained to live within rhetorical boundaries.”
“So of course it creates a great deal of confusion,” he said.
The zigs and zags are the point
To his critics, Trump’s style is a sign that doesn’t have a coherent long-term strategy. But for Trump, the zigs and zags seem like the point, a method that keeps his opponents — and pretty much everyone else — always on their heels.
The approach was clear last week in the hours before he announced the second delay of the deadline for Iran to reopen the strait. Asked what he would do about the deadline, Trump said that he did not know and that he had a day before he had to decide.
“In Trump time, a day, you know what it is, that’s an eternity,” Trump said to laughter from members of his Cabinet.
But investors are unimpressed, with U.S. stocks closing out their worst week since the war began. To some on Capitol Hill, the freewheeling is more frustrating than amusing.
Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, lamented that Trump is “going back and forth and constantly contradicting himself.”
“The administration is winging it,” he said. “So how can you trust what the president says?”
Republicans were not willing to go that far, but their concern was apparent heading into a two-week break from Washington. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said his constituents “support what the president has done.”
“But most of my people are also equally or even more so concerned about cost of living,” he said.
Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, who sits on the House Budget Committee and is a member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, said his constituents were on board with “blowing some crap up.” Nonetheless, he expressed reservations about the prospect of ground troops and said the administration has not provided enough details in briefings for lawmakers. Such sessions, he said, only reveal information you “read in the papers.”
“Taking out bad guys, taking out conventional [weapons], taking out or at least working to take out nuclear capability, pressing to keep the straits open, all those are good things and I’ve been supportive and will continue to be supportive,” Roy said. “But we’ve got to have a serious conversation about how long this is going to go, boots on the ground, all those things, press for further briefings and understanding of where it’s all headed.”
Political risks ahead
While Trump has maintained deep support among Republicans, a poll last week from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research indicates that the president risks further frustrating his voters if the U.S. gets involved in the kind of prolonged war in the Middle East that he promised to avoid. He campaigned against starting new foreign wars altogether, and his reversal on that already has irked some of his longtime supporters.
Although 63% of Republicans back airstrikes against Iranian military targets, the survey found, only 20% back deploying American ground troops.
That reflects the political challenges ahead for Trump, who did not prepare the country for such an extensive overseas conflict. If the war drags on or escalates, pressure on Republicans could build before the November elections, when their majorities in Congress are at risk. Some in the party have said sending in ground troops would be a red line that Trump should not cross.
The administration also will probably need congressional support for an additional $200 billion he seeks to support the war. That amount of money, which Trump has said would be “nice to have,” even as he said the war was “winding down,” would be a tough vote at any time. But it poses particular risks for Republicans in an election year.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement that Trump is “right to highlight the vast success of Operation Epic Fury,” the military name for the war in Iran.
“Iran desperately wants to make a deal because of how badly they are being decimated, but the President reserves all options, military or not, at all times,” she said.
Some see ‘logic’ to Trump’s approach
Rubin, the former Iran and Iraq advisor at the Pentagon, said there could be some “logic” to the president’s ever-evolving rhetorical approach to the war. He said Trump’s initial comments about ongoing negotiations, which Iran denied, could “spread suspicion and fear within the regime circles.”
“Perhaps Donald Trump or those advising him simply want the Iranians to grow so paranoid they refuse to cooperate with each other or perhaps they even turn on each other,” he said. “But then again, there’s always a danger with Donald Trump of assuming that his rhetoric is anything more than shooting from the hip.”
Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said Trump is not going to be able to fully achieve his objectives, even those that have been clearly articulated — including the complete elimination of Iran’s nuclear program — “in the current trajectory.”
And if that is the case, Smith said, the president has the option to rely on his rhetorical skills to simply say the U.S. won — and end the war.
“As I’ve jokingly said, nobody I have ever met or heard of in human history is better at exaggerating his own accomplishments than Donald Trump,” Smith said. “So go knock yourself out and claim this was some great success.”
SACRAMENTO — California has a huge deficit, a looming cash crisis, an angry public and pressure to raise taxes — and in this dismal state of affairs, the state’s minority Republicans see opportunity.
GOP lawmakers hope to use their leverage over the state budget, which cannot pass without some of their votes, to roll back landmark policies implemented by Democrats and the governor. Among them are curbs on greenhouse gas emissions, regulations banning the dirtiest diesel engines and rules dictating when employers must provide lunch breaks for workers.
None of those laws has any direct connection to the state budget; changing them will do nothing to close California’s $15.2-billion deficit. And the Democrats who control the Legislature already have rejected Republican proposals to delay or eliminate the laws through the regular legislative process.
But as pressure mounts on lawmakers to resolve the budget crisis, the GOP’s renewed requests could get some traction. Republican clout grows along with the state’s financial problems — at least during the summer budget season.
“We think the budget is an appropriate place to talk about these issues,” said Sen. George Runner (R-Lancaster). “We are setting them on the table for discussion.”
Runner acknowledges that the proposals won’t help balance the books in the coming fiscal year, but he argues that they would stimulate the economy and thus generate cash for the state over time.
“They are reasonable issues to bring up” now, he said.
Lawmakers are making little progress in those negotiations. Legislators did not meet their June 15 constitutional deadline for passing a budget, and they are saying publicly that a spending plan is unlikely to be in place by the July 1 start of the fiscal year.
The state will run out of cash in September, according to the state treasurer, and finance officials say that borrowing to remain solvent will be extremely tough without a budget in place by July. Securing a loan takes time, and lenders look for an enacted budget as assurance that the state will have enough cash to repay them.
Democrats, meanwhile, are calling for as much as $11.5 billion in new taxes — though they have not specified what they want to tax.
Republicans say cuts in government services and programs are the way to go — though they, too, mostly demur when it comes to specifics.
Republicans have made clear, however, that relaxing the environmental and labor laws would put them in more of a mood to compromise. That position has drawn a sharp rebuke from Democrats and activists.
“Using a fiscal crisis to delay and roll back protections for Californians is just wrong,” said Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach).
Sierra Club lobbyist Bill Magavern called the GOP lawmakers “a dwindling minority trying to exploit the limited leverage they have.”
Environmentalists are particularly outraged by the Republican call for a delay in the curbs on greenhouse emissions.
The global warming measure is one of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proudest accomplishments. It has landed the governor, himself a Republican, on the covers of magazines around the world.
State officials are drafting rules for implementing the emissions caps, which are scheduled to take effect in January 2010. GOP legislators say complying with the rules will be costly for businesses at a time when they already are reeling from the poor economy and higher oil prices.
They want the governor to exercise a provision in the law that allows him to postpone implementation by declaring that it would cause the state “significant economic harm.”
“We’ve got a major downturn in the economy,” said Dave Cogdill of Modesto, leader of the state Senate’s Republicans. “We’re trying to convince the governor to give us more time on this.”
Republicans are making the same case for new rules requiring retrofitting of diesel engines on trucks, tractors and heavy construction equipment. The engines are a leading source of pollution and have been singled out by scientists as a cause of thousands of premature deaths and hospital admissions for respiratory problems in California each year.
Supporters of the laws say that the sickness they will prevent and the boost they will give to “green” technologies promise to be far more helpful to California’s economy than a delay in their implementation.
Schwarzenegger has said through aides that he does not wish to postpone environmental regulations and won’t let the budget situation sidetrack his long-term goals. But he also says nothing is off the table.
“We have open doors where everything is on the table,” Schwarzenegger said in a speech last month to the California Peace Officers Assn. “I don’t want to go and say to anything, ‘No.’ ”
Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear said the governor is interested, for example, in working with Republicans on a relaxation of workplace rules that dictate when employees must be granted lunch breaks.
The governor, an ally of the state Chamber of Commerce and other business groups, is sympathetic to complaints from business owners that some workplace rules cost them money without benefiting employees.
The example most often cited comes from restaurant owners who say they must give their workers breaks at particular times, even if it is in the middle of the busiest shift, when many would rather be working tables to collect tips.
The Legislature must sign off on changes to such laws, something Democrats say they have no intention of doing. Their labor allies say budget season is a cynical time to raise the issue.
“If these were viable policy proposals, they would pass on their own merits,” said Emily Clayton, policy coordinator with the California Labor Federation.
Republicans, she said, “are trying to hold the budget negotiations hostage.”
Donald Trump wanted only the pretty ones, his employees said.
After the Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes opened for play in 2005, its world-famous owner didn’t stop by more than a few times a year to visit the course hugging the coast of the Pacific.
When Trump did visit, the club’s managers went on alert. They scheduled the young, thin, pretty women on staff to work the clubhouse restaurant — because when Trump saw less-attractive women working at his club, according to court records, he wanted them fired.
“I had witnessed Donald Trump tell managers many times while he was visiting the club that restaurant hostesses were ‘not pretty enough’ and that they should be fired and replaced with more attractive women,” Hayley Strozier, who was director of catering at the club until 2008, said in a sworn declaration.
Initially, Trump gave this command “almost every time” he visited, Strozier said. Managers eventually changed employee schedules “so that the most attractive women were scheduled to work when Mr. Trump was scheduled to be at the club,” she said.
A similar story is told by former Trump employees in court documents filed in 2012 in a broad labor relations lawsuit brought against one of Trump’s development companies in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
The employees’ declarations in support of the lawsuit, which have not been reported in detail until now, show the extent to which they believed Trump, now the Republican presidential nominee, pressured subordinates at one of his businesses to create and enforce a culture of beauty, where female employees’ appearances were prized over their skills.
A Trump Organization attorney, in a statement to The Times, called the allegations “meritless.”
In a 2009 court filing, the company said that any “allegedly wrongful or discriminatory acts” by its employees, if any occurred, would be in violation of company policy and were not authorized.
Employees said in their declarations that the apparent preference for attractive women came from the top.
“Donald Trump always wanted good looking women working at the club,” said Sue Kwiatkowski, a restaurant manager at the club until 2009, in a declaration. “I know this because one time he took me aside and said, ‘I want you to get some good looking hostesses here. People like to see good looking people when they come in.’ ”
As a result, Kwiatkowski said, “I and the other managers always tried to have our most attractive hostesses working when Mr. Trump was in town and going to be on the premises.”
Trump has struggled to win the support of female voters as he seeks the nation’s highest office. In the past, he has insulted women’s appearances, sometimes calling them “pigs” or “dogs.”
Trump’s record with women got renewed attention after this week’s presidential debate, when Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton told the story of a former beauty pageant winner who said Trump called her “Miss Piggy” when she gained weight.
Trump has previously defended himself by saying he has “great respect for women” and “will do far more for women” than Clinton. He has also said that “all are impressed with how nicely I have treated women.”
As part of the lawsuit over a lack of meal and rest breaks at Trump’s golf club about 30 miles south of downtown Los Angeles — his largest real estate holding in Southern California — several employees said managers staffed Trump’s clubhouse restaurant with attractive young women rather than more experienced employees in order to please Trump.
The bulk of the lawsuit was settled in 2013, when golf course management, without admitting any wrongdoing, agreed to pay $475,000 to employees who had complained about break policies. An employee’s claim that she was fired after complaining about the company’s treatment of women was settled separately; its terms remain confidential.
A public relations firm working for the Trump campaign referred questions about the lawsuit to one of the attorneys who represented the Trump National Golf Club in the case.
“We do not engage in discrimination of any kind and have always complied with all wage laws, including by providing our employees with meal and rest breaks,” said the attorney, Jill Martin, assistant general counsel for the Trump Organization.
The former employees’ statements primarily describe the club’s work culture from the mid- to late 2000s. The Times spoke at length to one of the ex-employees, who described in detail the allegations about workplace culture. The person declined to be quoted by name, citing a fear of being sued.
In their sworn declarations, some employees described how Trump, during his stays in Southern California, made inappropriate and patronizing statements to the women working for him.
On one visit, Trump saw “a young, attractive hostess working named Nicole … and directed that she be brought to a place where he was meeting with a group of men,” former Trump restaurant manager Charles West said in his declaration.
“After this woman had been presented to him, Mr. Trump said to his guests something like, ‘See, you don’t have to go to Hollywood to find beautiful women,’” West said. “He also turned to Nicole and asked her, ‘Do you like Jewish men?’”
One of the few older people on the wait staff who served Trump, Maral Bolsajian, said she was “uncomfortable” when he visited, calling his behavior toward her “inappropriate.”
“Although I am a grown woman in my forties, Mr. Trump regularly greeted me with expressions like ‘how’s my favorite girl?’” Bolsajian said in a declaration. “Later, after he learned (by asking me) that I was married — and happily so — he regularly asked, ‘are you still happily married?’ whenever he saw me.”
Trump also asked her to pose for photos with him, said Bolsajian, who added that she felt she “had little recourse given that Donald Trump is not only the head of the company but also one of the most powerful, well-known people in the United States.”
Bolsajian said, “In short, I consistently found Mr. Trump to be overly familiar and unprofessional.”
The lawsuit focused on the course’s high-pressure work culture. Employees said they were not allowed to take the breaks required under California law.
The statements about Trump’s preference for young, attractive employees were filed in support of a separate claim for retaliation, lodged after former restaurant host Lucy Messerschmidt, then 45, contended that she had been fired for complaining about age discrimination.
Jeffrey W. Cowan, a Santa Monica attorney who represented the employees in the lawsuit, said the case targeted Trump’s development company, VH Property Corp., but “the evidence certainly suggested” that the club’s work culture flowed from Trump.
Donald Trump takes an unfinished pathway at the Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes in 2005.
(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times )
Although Trump was mostly absent from the course he purchased in 2002, workers said his company maintained a rigorous work environment that often left workers exhausted.
Employees said managers urged them to hurry through brief meal breaks, sometimes even expressing impatience with bathroom breaks.
“My manager insisted that because this was Trump’s golf course, it had to be top-notch,” one employee said in a declaration. “He was concerned that if Trump observed employees eating or resting, Trump would not be pleased.”
Another employee said his manager “seemed obsessed with the fact that this was Donald Trump’s golf course,” believing that “Mr. Trump wouldn’t like it if he saw employees sitting around because he would think the golf course was inefficient and overstaffed.” A valet described a stretch where “someone got fired every week.”
One busboy said in a declaration that he took up smoking so that he would have an excuse for going outside for a break.
In response, Trump’s company filed declarations from more than a dozen other employees who said they regularly were offered lunch breaks of at least 30 minutes for every five-hour shift, and were counseled by managers if they didn’t take them.
Lili Amini, general manager, said in a declaration that the company implemented a firm policy about such breaks in 2009.
Employees said managers started instituting breaks after the class-action lawsuit was filed.
The Trump National Golf Club on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in 2005.
(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times )
Female employees said they faced additional pressures.
Strozier, the former catering director, said Vincent Stellio — a former Trump bodyguard who had risen to become a Trump Organization vice president — approached her in 2003 about an employee that Strozier thought was talented.
Stellio wanted the employee fired because she was overweight, Strozier said in her legal filing.
“Mr. Stellio told me to do this because ‘Mr. Trump doesn’t like fat people’ and that he would not like seeing [the employee] when he was on the premises,” wrote Strozier, who said she refused the request. (Stellio died in 2010.)
A year later, Mike van der Goes — a golf pro who had been promoted to be Trump National’s general manager — made a similar request to fire the same overweight employee, Strozier said.
“Mr. van der Goes told me that he wanted me to do this because of [the employee’s] appearance and the fact that Mr. Trump didn’t like people that looked like her,” Strozier wrote.
When Strozier protested, Van der Goes returned a week later “and announced he had a plan of hiding [the employee] whenever Mr. Trump was on the premises,” Strozier wrote.
West, who worked as a restaurant manager at the club until 2008, wrote that Van der Goes ordered him “to hire young, attractive women to be hostesses.” West also said Van der Goes insisted that he “would need to meet all such job applicants first to determine if they were sufficiently pretty.”
Van der Goes, who worked at the club until 2008, did not respond to requests for comment, though he defended Trump in a February interview with the Santa Clarita Gazette.
“He’s not a racist. He’s not a bigot,” said Van der Goes, who called Trump “an astute businessman and a marketing genius.”
Employees said several women quit or were fired because they were perceived as unattractive.
A server, John Marlo, recalled seeing a co-worker crying in 2007. The woman had wanted to be promoted to server.
“She told me that she was upset because a manager had told her that she couldn’t be a server because of she had acne on her face,” Marlo said in a declaration. “According to her, she was qualified for the job and wanted it, but couldn’t get it solely because of her acne.”
The woman quit soon after, Marlo wrote.
Messerschmidt, the employee who said she was fired in retaliation for complaining about age discrimination, said in 2008 that one of her managers, Brian Wolbers, changed her schedule to give her time off during one of Trump’s visits because Trump “likes to see fresh faces” and “young girls.”
Wolbers did not respond to a request for comment.
Gail Doner, who worked as a food server from 2007 to 2011, wrote that she was 60 and had often been frustrated by the inefficiency of the restaurant’s young, inexperienced hostesses, who “usually were not competent but were kept anyway.”
“The hostesses that were the youngest and the prettiest always got the best shifts,” Doner wrote.
Meanwhile, Doner — who had 20 years of experience working for wine vendors, and was at “the top of [her] game” while working for Trump National — said managers slowly cut back her shifts until they stopped scheduling her at all, “effectively firing [her].”
“It did not appear to me that this reduction in shifts was happening to any of the younger, more attractive female food servers,” Doner said. She added: “I chose not to fight to get my job back because by that point I was fed up with the toxic environment and the way that I was treated.”
WASHINGTON — Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, is examining ways to reduce capital gains taxes, it was reported today.
Bentsen told the Wall Street Journal in a telephone interview that he intends to ask his tax-writing committee to devise a bill that would raise federal revenues about $8 billion in fiscal 1990, which begins Oct. 1.
Such an increase would extend several tax breaks that are about to expire, including the credit for research and development expenditures.
Bentsen said a capital gains tax cut “is one of those things we’ll have to take a look at” as part of the tax package.
This is the April 14, 2021, edition of the Essential Politics newsletter. Like what you’re reading? Sign up to get it in your inbox three times a week.
Former President Trump‘s banishment from Twitter has had a calming effect on the country that even some of his sharpest critics did not foresee.
Yet political discourse on social media has not fundamentally changed. It remains nasty and brutish at times.
Good morning and welcome to Essential Politics, Kamala Harris edition. This week, I’ll talk about my takeaways from reporting on the vice president’s biggest online cheerleaders, the KHive, a loose-knit network of supporters who say they are responding to the toxicity of social media by fighting back when it comes to Harris. Their critics say they are part of the problem.
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KHive and the political questions it raises.
The story about the KHive, published online last week and in print on Sunday, told of the comradery, celebration and mutual sense of purpose its members find, mostly on Twitter, where they defend Harris against what they see as an unfair standard applied to political women of color. The Harris fans’ biggest fights, with fellow liberals, have gotten personal at times. Some members have had their accounts suspended by Twitter.
I hope you will read the story, because they are an interesting group of people. A few broader political points are worth considering as you do:
These kinds of online groups will be an important force in 2024 and beyond.
Ashley Bryant, a Democratic strategist who specializes in digital politics, told me she sees the early fights among the KHive, Bernie Bros (the nickname for Bernie Sanders’ progressive fans) and other groups as a precursor to the party’s next presidential nomination fight.
That could come in 2024 or 2028, depending on whether President Biden runs for reelection. Hard-core partisans are getting a head start.
Republicans have their social-media fights as well. But Trump’s still-dominant presence in the party, combined with his Twitter ban, has given the Republican version of this battle a different flavor.
Many in the NeverTrump faction seem to have given up on the Republican Party, while the post-Trump crowd of potential presidential aspirants and their followers is paralyzed by Trump’s hold on the party’s base. This week, for example, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haleybacktracked on her prior comments disavowing Trump, telling reporters she would support him if he chose to run in 2024.
But I thought Twitter isn’t real life!
This is an important point. The Biden team’s motto, both when he was a candidate and now that he’s president, is that Twitter is not real life. By that they mean that some of the strongest opinions shared by the partisans and pundits who dominate the platform do not often reflect the broad swath of voters who decide primaries and general elections.
That posture helped Team Biden avoid overreacting to criticism or praise shared on Twitter. And the contrast with Trump, who exhausted Americans with his constant provocative presence online and in the news, appears to be playing a big part in Biden’s relative popularity. Politico published a smart story on Biden’s lower-volume media strategy this week, summarizing his approach as “First, do no self-harm.”
One important caveat: Online debates may not be the driving force in public opinion, but they can stoke debate in Congress. For example, the fight over whether to abolish the filibuster in the Senate — which requires many bills to garner a supermajority of 60 votes to pass — has been much hotter online than it is with the general public, though a change in that relatively obscure practice could have significant policy implications for the country.
Notwithstanding Biden’s relatively low-key online persona, Harris has courted the in-your-face KHive. And it’s easy to see why. Its members provide a sense of passionate support, something she lacked in her 2020 presidential primary run. Some members I spoke with spend 20 hours or more online each week. Others said they are active offline in volunteering for her and the Democratic Party.
But such occasionally confrontational groups also pose risks for her, if she becomes too reactive to online debates or gets dragged into some of the more personal and provocative squabbles among partisans.
Democrats are content right now but still divided.
There is also risk for the Democratic Party. Online, Sanders and Harris boosters accuse each other of all manner of attacks, including a practice known as doxxing, in which a target’s personal information is posted online.
Among many, anger lingers from the 2016 nomination contest between Hillary Clinton and Sanders — when Clinton supporters blamed the other side for costing her the election by resisting her candidacy, and Sanders supporters accused Clinton proxies of controlling the party apparatus to stymie Sanders. Some of the Clinton supporters are now behind Harris.
If Democrats want to hold on to the White House and Congress, they need to hash out policy debates but stay unified.
“I don’t have a crystal ball, I don’t know what 2024 could potentially look like,” Bryant said. “But you don’t want voters not even being willing to open their eyes to another candidate just because they’re aligned to one that may not get the nomination.”
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— From David S. Cloud and Tracy Wilkinson: Biden is planning to withdraw all remaining troops from Afghanistan and will complete the pullout before Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that sparked the United States’ longest war, according to a senior U.S. official.
— Biden began to fill the top posts at the Homeland Security Department on Monday. Its ranks were hollowed out by his predecessor amid politicization and record vacancies. Almost all the appointees have California ties, reports Molly O’Toole.
— Lifting kids out of poverty could be Biden’s legacy. Yet the future of his policies remains uncertain as the administration’s ambitions run into spending limits, writes David Lauter.
— Biden spoke Tuesday morning with Russian President Vladimir Putin, warning him against aggressive moves toward Ukraine but also inviting him to a summit meeting, Lauter and Wilkinson write.
— Biden will address a joint session of Congress for the first time on April 28 after receiving an invitation from Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
The view from Washington
— Congress has a very short window to reverse regulatory actions approved by President Trump’s administration before he left office. Sarah D. Wire writes that at least two are expected to get Senate votes in the coming weeks. Also from Wire: Can Biden really cancel student debt? Here’s where the debate stands.
— The Supreme Court is set to decide soon whether conservative Christians can refuse to work with same-sex couples in a city-funded foster care program. David G. Savage writes that it’s the latest clash at the high court between religious liberty and marriage equality.
— Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill are negotiating a modest bill designed to help law enforcement combat the rise in hate crimes targeting Asian Americans, a rare moment of potential bipartisan compromise on legislation, Jennifer Haberkorn reports.
The view from California
— In 2020, demonstrators began ditching traditional protest venues to instead chant, fulminate and sit-in outside the front doors of officials’ homes. Sacramento has begun to push back, with officials saying “no more,” reports James Rainey.
— There have been hundreds of attempts to break up California. Those forces are driving the effort to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom, writes columnist Mark Z. Barabak.
— And speaking of the recall effort: a colorful cast of hopefuls who want to replace the Democratic leader has started to emerge, including former porn star Mary Carey and Los Angeles billboard icon Angelyne. Both ran in the 2003 recall election to replace then-Gov. Gray Davis, writes Faith E. Pinho.
— A far-reaching proposal to outlaw hydraulic fracturing and ban oil and gas wells from operating near homes, schools and healthcare facilities failed in the California Legislature on Tuesday, writes Phil Willon.
— From John Myers: California law enforcement officers could lose their certification based on the decisions of a panel that includes victims of police misconduct under legislation that moved forward Tuesday in the Legislature. Lawmakers also supported an expansive ban on policing techniques that obstruct a person’s breathing.
A watered-down resolution calling for Congress to “repair” the nation’s “historically broken” immigration laws won bipartisan support by the state Senate on Monday.
The Senate voted 32 to 0 to support Senate Joint Resolution 8 by Sen. Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana).
The measure originally called for illegal immigrants to have access to “a logical and streamlined path to citizenship,” but it was changed to provide that path for “individuals after they gain legal status.”
The resolution also originally said: “This reform should also include a way to help families remain together throughout the lengthy bureaucratic process,” but that provision was removed. It now calls for the reform to “recognize the societal and cultural benefits of keeping the family unit intact.”
Senate Republican leader Robert Huff of Diamond Bar noted that California is home to a large number of illegal immigrants, many of them providing important work in agriculture, and he said immigration laws are not working.
“The status quo is hurting our state,” Huff said.
Sen. Anthony Cannella of Ceres is among the Republicans who have supported proposals in Washington that include a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
“We must recognize the hard work and contribution of our immigrant community,” Cannella told his colleagues Monday.
FT. WORTH — In the city that Jim Wright represented for 34 years, the House Speaker’s resignation Wednesday prompted fear, sorrow and anger at Republicans.
“Anybody who knows anything of the American political process knows the loss of the speakership is a major loss for this area,” said Mayor Bob Bolen, whose city has long counted Wright as a major asset in attracting defense jobs.
Officials said it may be impossible to rebuild the political power or match the economic gain the region enjoyed from Wright’s 34-year tenure and his leadership in the Democratic Party.
“We just lost our right arm in Ft. Worth,” state Rep. Doyle Willis, who represents the city in the Texas House, said in Austin. “I think he got a dirty Republican deal. I think they were after him, and they finally got him.”
In Wright’s 12th Congressional District, people gathered around televisions in an electronics shop to watch his resignation speech.
“I think it’s horrible,” Lynn Bratcher said. “He’s the only one I could call on for help when I needed help. . . . He’s the only one that has ever really done anything for anyone for Texas.”
State Sen. Lucy Killea’s decision to quit the Democratic Party and become an independent is not going to fool any Republicans in her largely GOP district.
But she may succeed in exacerbating the very cynicism toward politicians that she says prompted her to make the change.
In a scathing criticism of her colleagues, Killea said lawmakers “have lost the public’s confidence.” She’s right.
A recent Times Poll found that only 25% of San Diegans have confidence in local elected officials. She also pointed to the public’s deep dissatisfaction and resentment, and its view that the “Legislature is interested only in itself.”
Those are easy chords to strike. Too easy. The public has made its frustration known loudly and repeatedly in recent years.
Quitting the Democratic Party isn’t going to lessen the public fury, and it won’t reform the system.
Plus, Killea’s request for a change in state law to allow her to appear on the June, 1992, ballot as an independent–current law requires at least a year’s notice–smacks of the same self-serving politics of which she accuses her colleagues.
She is also guilty of some of the sins for which she castigated them. For instance, she criticized the Legislature for trying to “undo the will of the people” by going to court to overturn the initiative limiting legislative terms and cutting office budgets by 40%.
Yet, Killea is one of only two state senators who have failed to make the budget-reduction goals set by the Senate. She was supposed to cut $110,000 from her $869,000 budget, but has only cut about $65,000.
It’s hard to figure how leaving the Democratic Party will help Killea. She will lose the considerable Democratic financial support that helped her win in 1988.
And the way she is making her exit is winning her no new friends and probably earning the enmity of current allies. How can she help her constituents if she is frozen out of the system?
Her departure also weakens the already ailing Democratic Party. Republicans outnumber Democrats in the county 47.8% to 37.7%–almost 120,000 voters–and GOP registration is still on the rise.
If they lose much more strength, San Diego County Democrats run the risk of becoming an endangered species, as they already are in Orange County. And that could reduce debate on important policy issues, here and in Sacramento.
Killea’s frustrations with the current system, and the “old-boy network,” are understandable. The public may give a brief cheer to hear Killea express its sentiments on the Senate floor.
But Killea’s dramatic gesture is a hollow one that could do more damage than good.
Daniel Terris is director of the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life at Brandeis University
WALTHAM, Mass. — “Throughout my public career,” President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, “I have followed the personal philosophy that I am a free man, an American, a public servant and a member of my party, in that order always and only.”
In the wake of the Sept. 11 tragedies, Americans have shown their patriotic colors. But, as Johnson made clear, patriotism does not require us always to put our national identity first when considering the various roles we play in the world. Our commitment to country is always stronger when it complements and builds upon other commitments. In the 21st century, we should expand Johnson’s list to include our role as citizens of the world.
Americans, after all, are not only Americans. We also belong to a global community.
Americans tend to shy away from thinking of themselves as global citizens. For all our bravado, we are insecure about the depth and the power of our national identity. We worry that something essential to the American character will be lost if we dilute our national feeling with too much commitment to the international.
Global citizenship and patriotism need not compete. Indeed, the one is bound to enrich the other. If we think deeply about the United States and its place in the world, we are bound to think more creatively and more deeply about which aspects of our country matter most to us.
Here are four ways in which we might begin.
First, we can recognize that the sense of suffering, grief and fear we’ve felt so intensely in recent weeks is not uncommon around the globe. Violence on a catastrophic scale is a new experience for most Americans alive today, but it is all too familiar to many people around the world. We miss a vital opportunity for establishing strong bonds across oceans when we neglect to think of our losses as a part of a larger contemporary human tragedy.
Second, we might extend this sense of connection with the fears and passions of others by toning down the constant–and very public–celebration of our national destiny and greatness. It was natural for us to react in the immediate aftermath of tragedy with the swollen rhetoric of injured pride: Our enemies attacked us because we are so strong and so good, we will triumph because no national spirit matches our own, and other similar sentiments.
The time has come to scale back our self-righteousness. Our enemies never bought our assertions of American greatness. Our friends, however, even our closest allies, are beginning to resent our self-importance. Efforts to build a global coalition are bound to be more fruitful if we approach potential partners, not as a swaggering savior, but as fellow citizens of a world in peril.
Third, thinking of ourselves as global citizens can dissuade us from making the glib assumption, underlying one leading edge of patriotic fervor, that “American values” represent the pinnacle of political and cultural ideals. I agree with those who believe that freedom and equality have flourished in the United States to a much greater degree than they have in most other parts of the world. But since we argue among ourselves about the meaning, the priority and the implementation of these ideals at home, we should expect and welcome vigorous debates about the goals of human society in an international context. And we should respect the international organizations and institutions that embody those contested universal ideals. International courts have already played a significant role in helping the world come to terms with atrocities in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda. Americans have been reluctant to support a strong international justice system, but without one, we now lack a crucial element in the struggle against terrorism.
Fourth, and most important, we must recall the essential duty of any patriot: the task of careful, penetrating national self-criticism. This not a matter of tolerating dissent, which we already do reasonably well.
I am speaking of something grander than permitting expressions of outrage: I mean to suggest a collective effort to use the perspective of global identity to reflect on our values, our language and our actions. A consistent effort to see ourselves from outside ourselves paves the way for actions that are considered and collaborative.
The patriotism that emerges from this dialogue will not just be about flags and parades. If we take an active role in making and remaking American ideals and aspirations, if we talk candidly about our nation’s weaknesses, as well as its strengths, we will find it easier to persuade our friends abroad to join with us in causes that matter, and we will find it easier to sustain strong national feeling across the widest spectrum of the American public. That patriotism will flourish, because it is not something static, not something that has simply been handed to us. Global commitment will make America stronger, precisely because it will make us humbler.
Do newspaper endorsements for president still matter? Certainly not as much as they once did, but that doesn’t stop most newspapers (including this one) from exercising their 1st Amendment right to spout off about their choice of candidate, and it doesn’t stop the presidential campaigns from breathlessly reporting each and every endorsement as if it were handed down by the Oracle of Delphi.
So who’s winning the endorsement race?
That all depends on how you look at it.
According to Editor & Publisher, the longtime bible of the newspaper business, the tally as of Saturday was 112 for Republican Mitt Romney and 84 for President Obama. That list didn’t include papers from Sunday, when many delivered their endorsements, but it suggested a shift from 2008, when E&P;’s final tally showed daily newspapers — which historically have skewed Republican — endorsing Obama over Republican John McCain by a better than 3-2 margin, 296 to 180
The American Presidency Project at UC Santa Barbara has also been tracking endorsements, but it limits its list to the 100 largest newspapers. On average, they tend to have more liberal editorial pages, presumably reflecting their locations in Democratic-leaning big cities. As of Sunday, the project showed 33 endorsements for Obama and 27 for Romney. (Although most newspapers have issued their endorsements by now, a significant number are apparently waiting for the final week of the campaign.)
The tally reflects some notable gains for the GOP, however. According to the American Presidency Project, nine of the 100 top newspapers have switched sides from Obama to Romney since 2008, whereas only one went the other direction.
Among those abandoning the president was his Arlington Heights, Il., Daily Herald in his home state, which cast its lot — albeit a bit hesitantly– with Romney on Sunday.
“We believe that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are good and decent men who care about the country,” the newspaper wrote. “We believe each possesses extraordinary skills and talent. But, philosophically, it is clear that one trusts government too much; the other appears to trust it too little.” The editorial went on to criticize “the tone of Obama’s relentless insinuations that wealthy Americans refuse to pay their fair share. That tone is divisive and damaging for the nation and for our economy. It creates villains and victims, and unfairly so.” That, it said, was, “ultimately, the point where we must break with him.”
The San Antonio Express-News was the only one of the big papers to go the other way. It had endorsed McCain in 2008. This year, it said that while Obama has “had his failings,” such as a failure to pursue immigration reform and to tackle the debt crisis, “These shortcomings … don’t justify a change in leadership, particularly when many of Mitt Romney’s proposals — such as an across-the-board 20 percent cut in taxes and the elimination of unspecified itemized deductions — invite skepticism.”
Concluded the Express-News: “No candidate has all the right policies — that includes Barack Obama. But having weathered the challenges of the last four years, we believe he is in a better position to guide the nation over the next four years — and has earned from voters the privilege to do so.”
It is probably in the nature of newspaper editorials to stop short of adulation and unbridled enthusiasm. That certainly is the case with virtually all the endorsements of Obama and Romney, very few of which are wholehearted.
The Chicago Tribune (owned by the Tribune Co., which also owns The Times) endorsed Obama, but its editorial page editors said, “On questions of economics and limited government, the Chicago Tribune has forged principles that put us closer to the challenger in this race, Republican Mitt Romney. We write with those principles clearly in our minds. Romney advocates less spending, less borrowing — overall, a less costly and less intrusive role for government in the lives of the governed.” So why not just endorse Romney? The Trib concluded that he had been “astonishingly willing to bend his views to the politics of the moment: on abortion, on immigration, on gun laws and, most famously, on healthcare.”
And several newspapers that did endorse Romney expressed the hope that, if elected, he would turn out to be the moderate Romney, not the “severe” conservative he presented himself to be in the Republican primaries.
“Let us stipulate,” said the Houston Chronicle, the largest newspaper to switch from Obama in 2008 to Romney this year. “The Mitt Romney we are endorsing is the Massachusetts moderate who worked successfully alongside an 88 percent Democratic majority in the state Legislature to produce what the Obama administration says became its model for national healthcare reform.”
Not everyone was so equivocal. The New York Post, never known for mincing words, did not choose this occasion to begin.
“Four frustratingly long years ago, a war-weary and economically battered America took a flier on a savior,” the Post wrote.
Next paragraph, in full: “It didn’t work out.”
Some newspapers that endorsed candidates in 2008 decided not to pick anyone this year. The Oregonian, in Portland, supported Obama four years ago, during a campaign in which he held one of his largest rallies in that city. The paper sounded a bit miffed this year when it said it wasn’t endorsing anyone this time around because the candidates hadn’t campaigned in Oregon. “The access and close observation that inform our endorsements for state and local offices and Congress do not apply in a national race; our CNN-level view of the presidential race is similar to everyone else’s,” the paper said.
The New York Times was the largest of the nation’s newspapers to endorse a candidate. It concluded Saturday that Obama “has formed sensible budget policies that are not dedicated to protecting the powerful, and has worked to save the social safety net to protect the powerless.” Romney, it said, “has gotten this far with a guile that allows him to say whatever he thinks an audience wants to hear. But he has tied himself to the ultraconservative forces that control the Republican Party and embraced their policies, including reckless budget cuts and 30-year-old, discredited trickle-down ideas.”
The two largest newspapers in the country, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today, do not usually issue formal endorsements, although the Journal has made no secret of its strong preference for Romney.
The Los Angels Times, for what it’s worth, endorsed Obama and followed up with an explanation from Editorial Page Editor Nick Goldberg of why the newspaper endorses anyone at all, given its mandate to be nonpartisan and unbiased in its news articles. The article contained one reminder of the historically less-than-awesome power wielded by newspaper endorsements: The Times’ first endorsement, in 1884, was for Republican James G. Blaine.
A record wave of early voting promises to cut crowding on election day, but the trend has also front-loaded this year’s election with problems — long lines at early-voting stations, missing absentee ballots and controversy over retooled rules for early balloting.
Analysts and opinion surveys project that more than 26 million of an estimated 120 million voters might cast their ballots before the traditional start of polling — at midnight on election eve in Dixville Notch, N.H.
Despite hopes that early voting would reduce anxiety after a highly contentious 2000 election, a recent survey found that 40% of Americans believe that most of the problems exposed in that election have not been corrected. And nearly half of Americans in another survey said they think this year’s results will be challenged in court.
Many local election officials share those fears. Already overtaxed by voting that now lasts for weeks, some doubt that their work will be finished Tuesday.
“It will not be over on Nov. 2, and you can put that on the record,” said Susan Miller, elections director for Colorado’s Jefferson County. “We have 12 days to certify provisional ballots. In Colorado, there is more than likely to be a recount.”
Miller says she has already been told about four or five groups that might file lawsuits to challenge results in her county, which includes the town of Golden. She worries that “another Florida” — with its 36-day recount and disputed ballots — could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“We’ve been working six-day weeks, 12-, 14-hour days for a month,” Miller said. “When the public calls and says they don’t trust us, it breaks my heart…. We’re at the point where we don’t care who wins. We just want him to win by a landslide. Then we don’t have to recount the ballots.”
The Washington-based Committee for the Study of the American Electorate has projected turnout as high as 60% this year (compared with 54% in 2000), which would mean voting by more than 120 million Americans. Twenty-two percent of them, or more than 26 million, planned to cast votes before Tuesday, according to the National Annenberg Election Survey.
That trend has been evident across the country, in states where the presidential election is close and where it is not, such as California.
In Palm Beach County, Fla., requests for absentee ballots have more than doubled, and retirees and others have waited as long as two hours in line at satellite voting stations. Iowa has seen a nearly 55% jump in absentee ballot requests. New Mexico’s secretary of state expects half of her votes to be cast before Tuesday. The number of residents on the Hawaiian island of Oahu asking for mail-in ballots has spiked by nearly 82%.
In California, an enormous jump in absentees has been led by Orange County, with an increase of 200,000 to about 450,000. Los Angeles County has seen a more modest 18% increase, to 740,000, said Conny McCormack, the county’s registrar-recorder.
Officials nationwide say the deluge of early voting has them in effect running two elections — requiring extra staffing and long shifts to handle absentees and then a second push to prepare election day polling places.
“It’s time-consuming and tiring,” McCormack said.
Most of those voting by mail will avoid such a crunch and should have their ballots counted without glitches, experts said. But there already have been some trouble spots.
In Broward County, north of Miami, officials have been deluged with hundreds of complaints from voters who say they never received their absentee ballots. U.S. Postal Service investigators were trying to find an undetermined number of the 60,000 ballots the county mailed out Oct. 7 and 8.
“That is something beyond our control,” said the county’s deputy supervisor of elections, Gisela Salas. “We really have no idea what’s going on.” Salas advised voters who did not receive their ballots to go to the county’s early-voting stations.
But Florida’s voting stations — at libraries, city halls and other civic buildings — have not necessarily made balloting easier.
In Del Rey Beach, Judy Sternberg nearly fainted after a two-hour wait in the sun. Paramedics came to her aid, but Sternberg, 69, was not about to go home.
“They really wanted me to come back a day later,” said Sternberg, who voted for President Bush. “I said, ‘I am not coming back. I am voting.’ ”
Attempts to clarify rules since the 2000 election have not eliminated disputes, particularly over how mail-in ballots should be treated. One of the most emotional and politically charged disagreements has been over military ballots from overseas.
Republican Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania has been pressuring Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell to accept ballots from military personnel up to 15 days after the election.
Rendell has declined, saying he had already attended to the issue by making special accommodations for two counties, Venango and Huntingdon, which have presented evidence that military personnel got their ballots late. Those service members got new absentee ballots by express mail, with prepaid express mail envelopes in which to send their completed ballots back.
A federal judge last week backed Rendell, saying that overseas military voters should cast their ballots by Tuesday.
But other states, including Arkansas, Colorado and Florida — will allow absentee ballots from overseas to arrive at elections offices as much as 10 days after the election, as long as they were postmarked by Tuesday.
Another group that has complained about access to absentee ballots is college students. Although well over half of collegians this year plan to vote absentee, according to a Harvard University study, six states have laws that can make that difficult. In Louisiana, Tennessee, Michigan, Illinois, Nevada and West Virginia, voters must cast their first ballot in person, according to election watchers at Rock the Vote.
That means young people from those states who attend out-of-state universities may not get to vote, said Hans Riemer, Washington director for Rock the Vote.
“This is really made to disenfranchise college students,” Riemer said.
An additional concern could be presented to students in New Hampshire, who are warned on the secretary of state’s website that establishing their residence in the Granite State could affect insurance and some types of financial aid.
“This is a totally outrageous, preposterous, outlandish intimidation of young people,” Riemer said of state restrictions that affect students.
Not surprisingly, supporters of both Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry have claimed their side is getting the best of the early voting.
In most jurisdictions it is impossible to tell who is right. But a few states record the party affiliation of those voting absentee or at early voting locations.
In Polk County, the most populous in hard-fought Iowa, Democrats had a nearly 2-to-1 edge in early ballots cast — 32,924 to 17,340.
In Los Angeles, McCormack was crossing her fingers that voters were prepared for a long ballot, jammed with state propositions. If not, she predicted, “it could be really ugly.”
Gary Smith, the Forsyth County, Ga., director of elections, said many of his colleagues had taken to reciting what he called the “night-before prayer”:
Minnesota public universities can continue to offer in-state tuition and scholarships to some immigrants in the country without legal status, a federal judge ruled Friday, dismissing a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Justice Department last summer that attempted to halt the programs.
The decision follows a series of clashes between the federal government and Minnesota officials over immigration enforcement.
U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez said in her decision that the federal government failed to prove that programs offering in-state tuition for immigrants without legal status discriminated against U.S. citizens.
The federal lawsuit named Democratic Gov. Tim Walz and Democratic state Atty. Gen. Keith Ellison as defendants, along with the state’s Office of Higher Education. It said Minnesota law discriminates against U.S. citizens because it provides in-state tuition and scholarships to students living in the U.S. illegally if they attended a Minnesota high school for three years, and U.S. citizens who attended schools outside of the state cannot receive the same benefits. States generally set higher tuition rates for out-of-state students.
The federal government said those state statutes “flagrantly” violate a federal law that prevents states from providing preferential benefits to immigrants in the U.S. illegally regardless of whether or not they meet residency requirements.
“No state can be allowed to treat Americans like second-class citizens in their own country by offering financial benefits to illegal aliens,” U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said in a statement after the lawsuit was filed last year.
Menendez said the Justice Department misinterpreted the law, enacted during the Clinton administration, because anyone who attended a Minnesota high school for at least three years are granted the same public benefits, regardless of their U.S. residency or immigration status.
She also said the federal government didn’t have standing to sue the state attorney general or governor since neither has the power to change the state laws that determine tuition eligibility.
Ellison celebrated the decision in a statement Friday.
“Today, we defeated another one of Donald Trump’s efforts to misconstrue federal law to force Minnesota to abandon duly passed state laws and become a colder, less caring state,” he wrote.
The funding for immigrants without legal status represents an “investment for our state to do everything we can to encourage a more educated workforce,” Ellison wrote.
The U.S. Justice Department didn’t respond to an email request for comment Friday.
The department has filed similar lawsuits this month against policies in Kentucky and Texas. Last week, a federal judge in Texas blocked that state’s law giving a tuition break to students living in the U.S. illegally after the state’s Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton, said he supported the legal challenge.
In discussing the Texas case last year, Bondi suggested more lawsuits might be coming.
Florida ended in-state tuition eligibility for immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. At least 22 states and the District of Columbia have laws or policies granting the in-state benefit, according to the National Immigration Law Center. Those states include Democratic-led California and New York, but also Republican states including Kansas and Nebraska.
According to the center, at least 13 states in addition to Minnesota allow immigrant students without legal status to receive financial aid and scholarships on top of in-state tuition.
GRAPEVINE, Texas — A generational divide over the Iran war surfaced between older attendees and their political heirs at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, as the group’s leaders pleaded for unity in a challenging midterm election year for Republicans.
Younger conservatives at CPAC, which concluded Saturday, spoke of disappointment and even betrayal over President Trump’s war against Iran, saying in interviews with the Associated Press that the president’s actions run counter to his many pledges to oppose foreign entanglements.
Meanwhile, older conservatives were looking past Trump’s campaign criticism of military action to achieve regime change, arguing that the war in Iran is a pragmatic act necessitated by threats to the United States.
The bright dividing line emerged in conversations with a dozen participants on either end of the age spectrum who gathered this week for the annual meeting of conservatives, being held outside Dallas. That split could reflect flagging enthusiasm for Trump among some younger voters, a potentially troubling sign for Republicans heading into midterm elections and for the conservative movement as it looks beyond Trump’s tenure.
“We did not want to see more wars. We wanted actual America-first policies, and Trump was very explicit about that,” said Benjamin Williams, a 25-year-old marketing specialist for Young Americans for Liberty. “It does feel like a betrayal, for sure.”
Worries about sending troops to Iran
Williams, from Austin, Texas, said he worries about his friends in the military, especially his Air Force officer brother. More broadly, he sees the war as an unnecessary disruption to the stability in the Middle East that could have long-term negative effects on the U.S. economy.
“Trump’s rhetoric was very important for people of my generation,” Williams said.
Auburn University sophomore Sean O’Brien’s support for Trump has slipped, especially with his talk of sending U.S. ground troops into Iran. “I’m not happy,” he said.
Sending troops into Iran, he said, “would be full betrayal.”
With at least 1,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division deploying in the Middle East, O’Brien said, “That’s what keeps me up at night.”
Older attendees’ views
Older CPAC participants were far more supportive of the war effort, describing Trump as wisely responsive to what they described as the threat Iran posed. Several suggested that Trump did not initiate the war, but that Iran had decades ago.
“I don’t believe he started a new war. He was acting in response to a 40-year-old war by Iran,” said 70-year-old retired defense contractor Joe Ropar of McKinney, Texas. “How long were we supposed to wait? I think he did what he had to do when he had to do it.
“Do nothing? I’m not on board with that,” Ropar said.
Echoing a common theme from older participants, Kelle Phillips said Trump’s decision was a pragmatic reaction to a real threat that overrules the best hopes of campaign rhetoric.
“You campaign on what you want to do and then the world’s dynamics happen,” said Phillips, a 61-year-old author and religious instructor from Frisco, Texas. “I think the difference is if you have someone in the Iranian regime who wants to destroy America, you can’t reason with them.”
Trump’s goals in Iran, James Scharre believes, are short-term and not a concern for those adverse to a long slog overseas.
Scharre, 61, also interprets Trump’s steadfast campaign opposition to regime change as a preference, not an ironclad promise.
“I think he said he was against it,” he said. “Trump is a wise leader. He does what works. And I’m for it.”
High-profile conservatives also split
Cracks in the conservative coalition began appearing early in the war, led by influential opinion leaders like podcaster Tucker Carlson, a staunch opponent of the Iran war.
Joe Kent recently quit his post as Trump’s director of the Center for Counterterrorism at the Department of Homeland Security, saying in his departure statement that “I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran” and that “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation.”
Right-wing podcaster Stephen K. Bannon, a longtime Trump advisor and former White House aide who is expected to speak at CPAC, has worried aloud that a protracted Mideast military engagement would cost Republicans support by pushing some conservatives to sit out the November midterms.
This comes at a time when Republicans’ hold on the U.S. House is in jeopardy and the GOP’s thin Senate majority is not as secure as it appeared just a few months ago.
A recent survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research indicates that while Trump’s approval rating is low but holding steady, the conflict could be turning into a major political liability for his administration. About 59% of Americans say U.S. military action in Iran has been excessive, the poll found.
Calls for unity
CPAC Chairman Matt Schlapp acknowledged conservatives were divided over Iran and said the convention’s annual straw poll will include a question about it. The results were to be released later Saturday.
“Any consensus is still to be determined. I think people trust President Trump, so I don’t think there’s been any shaking of his support,” Schlapp told the AP. “But I think underneath there’s concern about where does this lead.”
Tiffany Krieger, a 20-year-old sophomore at the University of Pittsburgh, said her onetime level-10 support for Trump has dipped to 5 over the war.
“It seems like the love for him is plateauing. We see our party splitting apart and we’re supposed to be united,” said Krieger, of Harrisburg, Pa. “I think this issue with the war has put a line through the conservative movement.”
Almost if addressing Krieger directly, Mercedes Schlapp, senior fellow for the CPAC foundation, opened Thursday’s session of the conference in Texas with a direct appeal.
“We cannot divide from within,” she told an audience of hundreds from the stage at the convention center. Referring to political opponents, she added: “Let’s stay united. They want us divided.”
