Politics Desk

NEW YORK — Nearly a year into his second term, President Trump’s work on the economy hasn’t lived up to the expectations of many people in his own party, according to a new AP-NORC survey.

The poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds a significant gap between the economic leadership Americans remembered from Trump’s first term and what they’ve gotten so far as he creates a stunning level of turmoil at home and abroad.

Just 16% of Republicans say Trump has helped “a lot” in addressing the cost of living, down from 49% in April 2024, when an AP-NORC poll asked Americans the same question about his first term.

At the same time, Republicans are overwhelmingly supportive of the president’s leadership on immigration — even if some don’t like his tactics.

John Candela, 64, who lives in New Rochelle, N.Y., said the cost of living hasn’t improved for his family — his salary and bills remain the same as before.

“Still paying $5 for Oreos,” he said. But he’s willing to be patient: “I would expect it to be different by the time his four years are up.”

The poll reveals signs of weakness among consumers on the economy, especially Trump’s core campaign promise to reduce costs. Inflation has cooled somewhat, but prices on many goods are higher than when the Republican president took office last January.

There is little sign overall, though, that the Republican base is abandoning Trump. The vast majority of Republicans, about eight in 10, approve of his job performance, compared with four in 10 for adults overall.

“I don’t like the man as a human being. I don’t like his brashness. I don’t like his roughness. I don’t like how he types out his texts all capital as if he’s yelling at everybody. But what I approve of is what he is doing to try and get the country on track,” Candela said.

Trump not improving costs, most Republicans say

On various economic factors, Trump has yet to convince many of his supporters that he’s changing things for the better.

Only about four in 10 Republicans overall say Trump has helped address the cost of living at least “a little” in his second term, while 79% said he helped address the issue that much in his first term, based on the 2024 poll. Just over half of Republicans in the new poll say Trump has helped create jobs in his second term; 85% said the same about his first term, including 62% who said he helped “a lot.”

Only 26% of Republicans in the January survey say he’s helped “a lot” on job creation in his second term.

And on healthcare, about one-third of Republicans say Trump has helped address costs at least “a little,” while 53% in the April 2024 poll said he helped reduce healthcare costs that much during his first term. Federal healthcare subsidies for more than 20 million Americans expired Jan. 1, resulting in healthcare costs doubling or even tripling for many families.

In the town of Waxahachie, Texas, south of Dallas, 28-year-old three-time Trump voter Ryan James Hughes, a children’s pastor, doesn’t see an improvement in his family’s financial situation. He said the medical bills haven’t declined.

But, he said, “I’m not looking to the government to secure my financial future.”

Immigration is a strength among the Trump base despite controversy

The new poll underscores that Republicans are largely getting what they want on immigration, even as some report concerns about the federal immigration agents who have flooded U.S. cities at Trump’s direction.

About eight in 10 Republicans say Trump has helped at least “a little” on immigration and border security in his second term. That’s similar to the share in the April 2024 poll that saw a positive effect from Trump’s leadership on immigration and border security during his first term.

Most Republicans say Trump has struck the right balance when it comes to deporting immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, and about one-third think he hasn’t gone far enough.

But Trump’s approval on immigration has also slipped among Republicans over the last year, falling from 88% in March to 76% in the new poll.

Kevin Kellenbarger, 69, a three-time Trump voter who retired from a printing company, said his Christian faith led him to the Republican Party. The Lancaster, Ohio, resident thinks the president’s immigration crackdown is necessary, though he expressed dissatisfaction at the recent killing of Renee Good by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis.

“I don’t like anybody getting killed, but it wasn’t Trump’s fault,” Kellenbarger said, adding that President Joe Biden, a Democrat, “let millions of people in. They have to be taken out.”

Several Republicans said in interviews they thought the aggressive tactics seen recently in Minneapolis went too far, suggesting that Trump should focus more on immigrants with criminal backgrounds as he promised during the campaign.

Overall, just 38% of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s leadership on immigration, while 61% disapprove.

“These families that are being separated and they’re just here to try to live the American dream,” said Republican Liz Gonzalez, 40, the daughter of Mexican immigrants and a self-employed rancher and farmer from Palestine, Texas.

At the same time, Gonzalez said, she doesn’t think people opposed to the crackdown should be interfering at all. “I think if they just let (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), you know, like the patrol people, do their jobs, then they would see it’s not — it doesn’t have to be chaos,” she said.

More Republicans see the country improving than their personal lives

About two-thirds of Republicans say the country as a whole is “much” or “somewhat” better off than before Trump took office, but only about half say this about themselves and their family.

The broad sense that the country is moving in the right direction may be counteracting Republican dissatisfaction with the state of the economy.

Phyllis Gilpin, a 62-year-old Republican from Boonville, Mo., praised Trump’s ability to “really listen to people.” But she doesn’t love his personality.

“He is very arrogant,” she said, expressing frustration about his name-calling. But she said the divisive politics go both ways: “I really, honestly, just wish that we could all just not be Democrat or Republican — just come together.”

Peoples, Catalini, Bedayn and Thomson-Deveaux write for the Associated Press. Catalini reported from Trenton, N.J., Bedayn reported from Denver and Thomson-DeVeaux reported from Washington. The AP-NORC poll of 1,203 adults was conducted Jan. 8-11 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points. The poll included interviews with 404 Republicans, and the margin of sampling error for Republicans overall is plus or minus 6 percentage points.

WASHINGTON — Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado said Friday she’s confident of her country’s eventual transition to democracy after the U.S. military ousted former President Nicolás Maduro.

But when pressed, she took pains to avoid giving any details on her plans to return home or any timetable for elections in Venezuela.

Her remarks reflect how President Trump’s endorsement of a Maduro loyalist to lead Venezuela for now has frozen out the nation’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning crusader for democracy. Still, Machado has looked to get closer to Trump, presenting her Nobel medal to him a day earlier at the White House.

As Machado was meeting with Trump, CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Venezuela to meet with acting President Delcy Rodríguez, further confirmation that Maduro’s longtime second in command was the woman the White House preferred to see managing Venezuela for now.

Speaking to reporters at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, Machado said she was “profoundly, profoundly confident that we will have an orderly transition” to democracy that would also transform Venezuela’s self-proclaimed socialist government long hostile to the U.S. into a strong U.S. ally.

She rejected the notion that Trump chose to work with Rodríguez, Maduro’s former vice president, over her opposition movement, whose candidate was widely believed to have won the 2024 presidential election.

“This has nothing to do with a tension or decision between Delcy Rodríguez and myself,” she said. But she stopped short of elaborating, instead pivoting to vague assertions about her movement’s popular mandate and the government’s dismal human rights record.

In apparent deference to Trump, she provided almost no details Friday about what they discussed or even what she thought the U.S. should do in Venezuela.

“I think I don’t need to urge the president on specific things,” she said.

Machado traveled to Washington looking to rekindle the support for democracy in Venezuela that Trump showed during his first administration. She presented him with the prize she won last year, praising him for what she said was his commitment to Venezuela’s freedom. The Nobel Institute has been clear, however, that the prize cannot be shared or transferred.

Trump, who has actively campaigned to be awarded the prize, said Machado left the medal for him to keep. “And by the way, I think she’s a very fine woman,” he said. “And we’ll be talking again.”

But her efforts have so far done little to alter the Trump administration’s perception that Rodríguez is best prepared to stabilize the South American nation.

Trump has pressed ahead with plans for American oil companies to revive Venezuela’s crumbling energy infrastructure and is exploring the possibility of reopening the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, which he closed during his first administration.

Trump has said it would be difficult for Machado to lead because she “doesn’t have the support within or the respect within the country.”

Machado crisscrossed Venezuela ahead of the 2024 presidential elections, rallying millions of voters looking to end 25 years of single party rule. When she was barred from the race, a previously unknown former diplomat, Edmundo Gonzalez, replaced her on the ballot. But election officials loyal to the ruling party declared Maduro the winner despite ample credible evidence to the contrary.

Machado, revered by millions in Venezuela, went into hiding but vowed to continue fighting until democracy was restored. She reemerged months later to pick up her Nobel Peace Prize in Norway, the first time in more than a decade that she had left Venezuela.

Goodman and Debre write for the Associated Press. Debre reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina. AP writer Meg Kinnard contributed to this report.

MINNEAPOLIS — The Justice Department is investigating Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, alleging the Democratic leaders may have impeded federal immigration enforcement through their public statements, two people familiar with the matter said Friday.

The investigation, which Walz and Frey said was a bullying tactic by the Republican administration meant to threaten political opposition, focused on potential violation of a conspiracy statute, said the people, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss a pending investigation by name.

CBS News first reported the investigation.

The investigation comes during a weeks-long immigration crackdown in Minneapolis and St. Paul that the Department of Homeland Security called its largest recent immigration enforcement operation, resulting in more than 2,500 arrests.

The operation has become more confrontational since the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good on Jan. 7, with agents pulling people from cars and homes and frequently being confronted by angry bystanders demanding they leave. State and local officials repeatedly have told protesters to remain peaceful.

In response to reports of the investigation, Walz said in a statement: “Two days ago it was Elissa Slotkin. Last week it was Jerome Powell. Before that, Mark Kelly. Weaponizing the justice system and threatening political opponents is a dangerous, authoritarian tactic.”

Sens. Kelly, from Arizona, and Slotkin, from Michigan, are under investigation by the Trump administration after appearing with fellow Democratic lawmakers in a video urging members of the military to resist “illegal orders,” as U.S. military code requires. The administration also launched a criminal investigation of Powell, a first for a sitting Federal Reserve chair, a nonpartisan position.

Walz’s office said it has not received any notice of an investigation. Frey in a statement described the investigation as an attempt to intimidate him for “standing up for Minneapolis, our local law enforcement, and our residents against the chaos and danger this Administration has brought to our streets.”

The U.S. attorney’s office in Minneapolis did not immediately comment.

In a post on social media following reports of the investigation, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said: “A reminder to all those in Minnesota: No one is above the law.” She did not specifically mention the investigation.

State calls for peaceful protests

With more protests expected in the Twin Cities this weekend, state authorities urged demonstrators to avoid confrontation.

“While peaceful expression is protected, any actions that harm people, destroy property or jeopardize public safety will not be tolerated,” said Commissioner Bob Jacobson of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety.

His comments came after President Trump backed off slightly from his threat a day earlier to invoke an 1807 law, the Insurrection Act, to send troops to suppress demonstrations.

“I don’t think there’s any reason right now to use it, but if I needed it, I’d use it,” Trump told reporters outside the White House.

A U.S. judge in Minnesota ruled Friday that federal officers working in the Minneapolis-area enforcement operation can’t detain or tear-gas peaceful protesters who aren’t obstructing authorities, including when they’re observing agents. The case was filed before Good’s shooting on behalf of six Minnesota activists represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota.

Government attorneys argued that the officers have been acting within their legal authority to enforce immigration laws and protect themselves. But the ACLU said government officers are violating the constitutional rights of Twin Cities residents.

Richer, Tucker and Brook write for the Associated Press. Richer and Tucker reported from Washington, Brook from Minneapolis. AP writers Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis, Ed White and Corey Williams in Detroit, Graham Lee Brewer in Oklahoma City, Jesse Bedayn in Denver, Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu, Hallie Golden in Seattle and Ben Finley in Washington contributed to this report.

MINNEAPOLIS — Federal officers in the Minneapolis area participating in the largest recent U.S. immigration enforcement operation can’t detain or tear-gas peaceful protesters who aren’t obstructing authorities, including when these people are observing the agents, a judge in Minnesota ruled Friday.

U.S. District Judge Kate Menendez’s ruling addresses a case filed in December on behalf of six Minnesota activists. They are among the thousands who have been observing the activities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol officers enforcing the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area since last month.

Federal agents and demonstrators repeatedly have clashed since the crackdown began. The confrontations escalated after an immigration agent fatally shot Renee Nicole Good in the head on Jan. 7 as she drove away, a killing captured on video. Agents have arrested or briefly detained many people in the Twin Cities crackdown.

The activists in the case are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, which says government officers are violating the constitutional rights of Twin Cities residents.

After the ruling, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin issued a statement saying her agency was taking “appropriate and constitutional measures to uphold the rule of law and protect our officers and the public from dangerous rioters.”

She said people assaulted officers, vandalized their vehicles and federal property, and attempted to impede officers from doing their work.

“We remind the public that rioting is dangerous — obstructing law enforcement is a federal crime and assaulting law enforcement is a felony,” McLaughlin said.

The ACLU didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Friday night.

The ruling prohibits the officers from detaining drivers and passengers in vehicles when there is no reasonable suspicion they are obstructing or interfering with the officers. Safely following agents “at an appropriate distance does not, by itself, create reasonable suspicion to justify a vehicle stop,” the ruling said.

Menendez said the agents would not be allowed to arrest people without probable cause or reasonable suspicion the person has committed a crime or was obstructing or interfering with the activities of officers.

Menendez also is presiding over a lawsuit filed Monday by the state of Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul seeking to suspend the federal enforcement crackdown, and some of the legal issues are similar. She declined at a hearing Wednesday to grant the state’s request for an immediate temporary restraining order in that case.

“What we need most of all right now is a pause. The temperature needs to be lowered,” state Assistant Atty. Gen. Brian Carter told her.

Menendez said the issues raised by the state and cities in that case are “enormously important.” But she said it raises high-level constitutional and other legal issues, and for some of those issues there are few on-point precedents. So she ordered both sides to file more briefs next week.

McAvoy and Karnowski write for the Associated Press and reported from Honolulu and Minneapolis, respectively. AP writer Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — President Trump plans to pardon former Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vázquez, a White House official said Friday.

Vázquez pleaded guilty last August to a campaign finance violation in a federal case that authorities say also involved a former FBI agent and a Venezuelan banker. Her sentencing was set for later this month.

Federal prosecutors had been seeking one year behind bars, something that Vázquez’s attorneys opposed as they accused prosecutors of violating a guilty plea deal reached last year that saw previous charges including bribery and fraud dropped.

They noted that Vázquez had agreed to plead guilty to accepting a promise of a campaign contribution that was never received.

Attorneys for Vázquez did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The official who confirmed the planned pardon indicated Trump saw the case as political prosecution and said the investigation into Vázquez, a Republican aligned with the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, had begun 10 days after she endorsed Trump in 2020. The official wasn’t authorized to reveal the news by name and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Pablo José Hernández, Puerto Rico’s representative in Congress and a member of the island’s main opposition party, condemned a pardon for Vázquez.

“Impunity protects and fosters corruption. The pardon … undermines public integrity, shatters faith in justice, and offends those of us who believe in honest governance,” said Hernández, a Democrat with Puerto Rico’s Popular Democratic Party.

Vázquez, an attorney, was the U.S. territory’s first former governor to plead guilty to a crime, specifically accepting a donation from a foreigner for her 2020 political campaign.

She was arrested in August 2022 and accused of engaging in a bribery scheme from December 2019 through June 2020 while governor. At the time, she told reporters that she was innocent.

Authorities said that Puerto Rico’s Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions was investigating an international bank owned by Venezuelan Julio Martín Herrera Velutini because of alleged suspicious transactions that had not been reported by the bank.

Authorities said Herrera and Mark Rossini, a former FBI agent who provided consulting services to Herrera, allegedly promised to support Vázquez’s campaign if she dismissed the commissioner and appointed a new one of Herrera’s choosing.

Authorities said Vázquez demanded the commissioner’s resignation in February 2020 after allegedly accepting the bribery offer. She also was accused of appointing a new commissioner in May 2020: a former consultant for Herrera’s bank.

Vázquez was the second woman to serve as Puerto Rico’s governor and the first former governor to face federal charges.

She was sworn in as governor in August 2019 after former Gov. Ricardo Rosselló resigned following massive protests. Vázquez served until 2021, after losing the primaries of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party to former Gov. Pedro Pierluisi.

Superville writes for the Associated Press. AP reporter Dánica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Friday said he would like to keep his top economic advisor, Kevin Hassett, at the White House rather than potentially nominate him to replace Jerome H. Powell as chair of the Federal Reserve.

“I actually want to keep you where you are, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said at a White House event, when he saw Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, in the audience. ”I just want to thank you, you were fantastic on television the other day.”

Trump’s comments, while not clearly definitive, have upended expectations around the extensive search the White House has undergone to find a new Fed chair, one of the most powerful financial positions in the world. The president’s remarks have boosted the prospects for Kevin Warsh, a former Fed governor and already a top contender for the position.

Hassett has generally been seen as the front-runner in the race to replace Powell because he has worked for Trump since his first presidential term. Last month, Trump referred to Hassett as a “potential Fed chair.”

Powell’s term as chair will end May 15, though he could take the unusual step of remaining on the board as governor afterward. Trump appointed Powell in 2018 but soon soured on him for raising the Fed’s key interest rate that year.

Warsh’s candidacy probably has also been boosted by the Justice Department’s subpoenas of the Federal Reserve last week, revealed Sunday in an unusually direct video statement by Powell. The Fed chair charged that the subpoenas were essentially punishment for the central bank’s refusal to lower interest rates as sharply as Trump would like.

The criminal investigation — a first for a sitting Fed chair — sparked pushback on Capitol Hill, with many Republican senators dismissing the idea that Powell could have committed a crime. The subpoenas related to testimony Powell gave in June before the Senate Banking Committee that touched on a $2.5-billion building renovation project.

The backlash has intensified concerns in the Senate, analysts say, that the Trump administration is seeking to undermine the Fed’s independence from day-to-day politics. That, in turn, may reduce Hassett’s prospects.

The brouhaha over the subpoenas is “making it harder to confirm Hassett, who is distinctively close to the president,” Krishna Guha, an analyst at investment bank Evercore ISI, wrote in a client note. “Warsh is trusted by Senate Republicans and would be much easier to confirm.”

Yet Warsh, historically, is known as a “hawk,” or someone who traditionally supports higher interest rates to ward off inflation, as opposed to a “dove,” or someone who prefers lower borrowing costs to spur hiring and growth.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose Friday, to just above 4.2%, from about 4.17% Thursday. The increase probably reflected a sense that Warsh’s chances had improved, and as a result the Fed would be less likely over time to cut rates than under a Hassett chairmanship.

Rugaber writes for the Associated Press.

Billionaire developer Rick Caruso will not run for Los Angeles mayor or California governor, after months of speculation that he would seek one of the two posts.

Caruso, who had been teasing a possible run for months, made his decision Friday, saying it came after “many heartfelt conversations” with his family.

“Though my name will not be on a ballot, my work continues,” Caruso said on X. “Public service does not require a title. It is, and always will be, my calling.”

Caruso’s plans were the talk of political circles for many months. Recently, he seemed to confirm that he would seek one of the two positions.

When asked by a reporter on Jan. 7 if it was possible he would not run for any position, Caruso responded: “That option is pretty much off the table now.”

Caruso said he will focus on his nonprofit, Steadfast LA, which brings industry leaders together to help with the Palisades fire recovery.

The 66-year-old developer behind popular L.A. malls like the Grove and the Americana at Brand spent $100 million of his own fortune against Karen Bass in 2022, outspending her 11 to 1 in his failed bid. But Bass beat him by nearly 10 percentage points.

Caruso served as president of the L.A. Police Commission in the 2000s and helped the city hire William Bratton as police chief. He was appointed to the Department of Water and Power board in 1984, at age 26 — the youngest commissioner in city history at the time.

Caruso has steadily critiqued the mayor online and in public appearances since 2022, seemingly honing and refining his argument for voters to reject the incumbent, whom he has described as incompetent.

“Her record is so bad,” Caruso said at a town hall he hosted at the Americana on Nov. 3.

Caruso’s decision not to run for mayor solidifies the 2026 field against Bass. Former Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Austin Beutner is running a moderate campaign, with arguments about Bass’ response to the Palisades fire and quality of life concerns that are similar to Caruso’s. The developer’s entry could have thrown a wrench into Beutner’s campaign.

Bass also faces a challenge from her left with Rae Huang, a community organizer and reverend, announcing a run for mayor in November.

Most recently, the entry of former reality star and Palisades fire victim Spencer Pratt has added new intrigue to the race.

Bass’ campaign declined to comment on Caruso’s decision.

As for governor, some voters in deep blue pockets of the state may have rejected Caruso, a former Republican who registered as a Democrat in 2022 and has faced questions over his past party registration.

Still, the developer, who has made public safety and quality of life issues his main talking points, might have attracted California voters unhappy with the current crop of gubernatorial candidates.

No single candidate has dominated the field, while some potential contenders, including Sen. Alex Padilla and Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, have announced they’re not running.

As he weighed a bid for governor in the last year, Caruso traveled multiple times to Sacramento and around the state to meet with labor leaders, community groups and politicians.

“My guess is he did polling and he did not see a path forward,” said Sara Sadhwani, a professor of politics at Pomona College.

“Had he jumped into either race and lost, it would have made the prospects of elected office even further away,” she said.

SAN FRANCISCO — With California facing deep budget uncertainty and widening economic divides, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday vowed to protect residents on both ends of the income spectrum — from wealthy business leaders he fears could leave the state to unhoused Californians relying on state-funded services.

That balancing act was on display as Newsom sharpened his criticism of a proposed ballot measure to tax billionaires, a measure opponents say may push tech companies and other businesses out of the state and wound California’s economy.

“It’s already had an outsized impact on the state,” said Newsom, speaking to reporters in San Francisco’s Mission District.

Newsom is trying to head off a union’s plan for a November ballot measure that would put a one-time tax on billionaires. If approved by voters, it would raise $100 billion by imposing a one-time wealth tax of 5% on fortunes.

Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, the union behind the proposal, wants to raise money to help millions of Californians affected by widespread healthcare cuts by the Trump administration.

California political leaders, facing a tough budget year, warn that the state does not have the financial capacity to backfill those cuts.

Newsom, who is working behind the scenes with SEIU-UHW in an effort to stop the ballot measure, on Friday appeared doubtful that a deal could be struck with proponents of the measure.

“I don’t know what there is to compromise,” said Newsom, calling the measure “badly drafted” and arguing the money raised wouldn’t be spread among other groups.

“It does not support our public educators. Does not support our teachers and counselors, our librarians. It doesn’t support our first responders and firefighters. Doesn’t support the general fund and parks.”

Two top Newsom advisors, Dan Newman and Brian Brokaw, are raising money and have formed a committee to oppose the measure.

The billionaire tax measure is dividing political leaders in California and the rest of the country, with both Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) supporting the tax.

“It’s a matter of values,” Khanna said on X. “We believe billionaires can pay a modest wealth tax so working-class Californians have the Medicaid.”

Already, some prominent business leaders are taking steps that appear to be part of a strategy to avoid a potential levy.

On Dec. 31, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel announced that his firm had opened a new office in Miami, the same day venture capitalist David Sacks said he was opening an office in Austin.

Suzanne Jimenez, chief of staff for SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, called it a myth that billionaires are leaving the state and criticized Newsom.

“Right now, his priority seems to be protecting roughly 200 ultra-wealthy individuals,” she said. “Healthcare workers are focused on protecting emergency room access and lifesaving care for all 39 million Californians.”

The proposed tax has reverberated throughout the Silicon Valley and Bay Area, home to some of the world’s most lucrative tech companies and financially successful venture capitalists.

Newsom was in San Francisco on Friday, where he served two terms as mayor, to address a separate, more pressing concern for Californians on the opposite end of the economic spectrum — those living in poverty and on the city streets.

Newsom, who is weighing a 2028 presidential run, spoke at Friendship House, a substance-use treatment provider, where the governor said California is turning around the state’s homelessness crisis.

He pointed to a recent 9% statewide drop in unsheltered homelessness as evidence that years of state investment and policy changes are beginning to show results.

That was the first such drop in more than 15 years on an issue that is a political vulnerability for the two-term governor. California still accounts for roughly a quarter of the nation’s homeless population, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

Newsom said Friday that the decline reflects years of expanded state investment in shelter, housing and behavioral healthcare, combined with stricter expectations for local governments receiving state funds. He said the state’s efforts contrast with what is happening elsewhere, pointing to homelessness continuing to rise nationally.

The governor’s budget proposal, which was released Jan. 9, includes $500 million for California’s Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention program, which provides grants to cities, counties and local continuums of care to prevent and reduce homelessness.

That money is paired with investments from Proposition 1, a 2024 ballot measure backed by Newsom and approved by voters. The measure authorized billions in state bonds to expand mental health treatment capacity and housing for people with serious behavioral health needs.

Following Newsom’s budget proposal, legislators, housing advocates and local officials said the funding falls short of the scale of the problem.

That concern is unfolding against a constrained budget backdrop, with the governor’s finance director warning that even as AI-related tax revenues climb, rising costs and federal cuts are expected to leave the state with a projected $3 billion deficit next year.

The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office said Newsom’s plan leaves California financially exposed, noting that the administration’s higher revenue estimates exclude the risk of a stock market correction that could significantly worsen the state’s budget outlook.

The analyst’s office said those risks are compounded by projected multiyear deficits of $20 billion to $35 billion annually, underscoring what it called a growing structural imbalance.

Newsom on Friday called the LAO’s projections about the budget too pessimistic, but said the office is “absolutely right about structural problems in the state.”

Newsom’s budget does not include significant funding to offset federal cuts to Medicaid and other safety-net programs under President Trump and a Republican-led Congress, reductions that local officials warn could have far-reaching consequences for local governments and low-income residents.

Addressing those broad concerns, the governor defended his budget and suggested the spending plan will change by May, when the state’s financial outlook is more clear.

Times staff writer Seema Mehta and Caroline Petrow-Cohen contributed to this report.

Southern California Edison sued Los Angeles County, water agencies and two companies including SoCalGas Friday, saying their mistakes contributed to the deadly and destructive toll of last year’s Eaton wildfire.

Edison now faces hundreds of lawsuits by victims of the fire, which claim its transmission line started the devastating fire that killed at least 19 people and destroyed thousands of homes in Altadena. The cost of settling those lawsuits could be many billions of dollars.

Doug Dixon, an attorney who represents Edison in the fire litigation, told the Times that Edison filed the lawsuits “to ensure that all those who bear responsibility are at the table in this legal process.”

The utility’s two legal filings in L.A. County Superior Court paint a picture of sweeping mismanagement of the emergency response on the night of the fire.

Edison blames the county fire department, sheriff’s department and office of emergency management for their failure to warn Altadena residents west of Lake Avenue to evacuate.

The Times revealed last January that west Altadena never received evacuation warnings, and orders to evacuate came hours after flames and smoke threatened the community. All but one of the 19 who died in the Eaton fire were found in west Altadena.

Edison also sued L.A. County for failing to send fire trucks to the community. A Times investigation found that during a critical moment in the fire, only one county fire truck was west of Lake Avenue.

The electric company also filed suit against six water agencies, including Pasadena Water & Power, claiming there were insufficient water supplies available for firefighters.

“Compounding the unfolding disaster, the water systems servicing the areas impacted by the Eaton Fire failed as the fire spread, leaving firefighters and residents with no water to fight the fire,” the lawsuit states.

Another lawsuit aims at SoCalGas. Edison says the company failed to turn off gas lines after the fire started, making the disaster worse.

“SoCalGas did not begin widespread shutoffs for four days—until January 11, 2025—in the area affected by the Eaton Fire,” the complaint states. “In the meantime, the Eaton Fire continued to spread fueled by natural gas.”

“ The risks and deficiencies with SoCalGas’s system that led to it spreading the fire were long known to SoCalGas, and yet it nevertheless failed to adequately account for them in designing, building, and maintaining its system,” the complaint said. “The result was catastrophic.”

Edison also sued Genasys, a company that provides the county with emergency alert software.

In addition, the utility sued the county for failing to remove brush, which it claims made the fire hotter and spread faster, causing more damage.

In March, L.A. County filed suit against Edison, claiming that its transmission line sparked the blaze, requiring the county to incur tens of millions of dollars responding to the fire and its aftermath. The county is seeking compensation for destroyed infrastructure and parks, as well as for cleanup and recovery efforts, lost taxes and overtime for county workers.

Edison’s new cross claims will be heard in the consolidated Eaton fire case in Superior Court, which is also handling the lawsuit that the county and other public agencies have filed against the electric utility.

Officials from the county and water agencies, as well as from the two companies, could not be immediately reached.

The water agencies that Edison sued also include the Sierra Madre City Water Dept., Kinneloa Irrigation District, Rubio Canyon Land & Water Association, Las Flores Water Company and Lincoln Avenue Water Company.

The government investigation into the fire, which is being handled jointly by L.A. County Fire and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, has not yet been released.

Edison has said that a leading theory is that its unused, century-old transmission line in Eaton Canyon somehow became re-energized on the night of Jan. 7, 2025 and sparked the blaze.

The fire roared through Altadena, burning 14,021 acres and destroying more than 9,400 homes and other structures.

RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia voters will decide whether to back a redrawn district map that favors Democrats in the tit-for-tat battle for the U.S. House after the left-leaning Senate advanced a proposed constitutional amendment on Friday that supports mid-decade congressional redistricting.

Such a congressional map has not been publicly released, though lawmakers say that will change by the end of the month. Officials have repeatedly vowed that voters would see a proposed map before the referendum is held, likely in April.

“Because this is a Virginian-led process and we’re asking for their permission, voters will be able to see the maps prior to their vote,” Democratic Del. Cia Price said Wednesday.

The closely divided state Senate, where Democrats hold a slim majority, voted along party lines on Friday afternoon, following a similar vote by House Democrats earlier this week.

Trump teed up an unusual redistricting plan last year and pushed Texas Republicans to create more favorable districts for the party by way of new congressional maps. That triggered something of a mid-decade redistricting dogfight.

Since then, Texas, Missouri and North Carolina all approved new Republican-friendly House districts. Ohio also enacted a more favorable House map for Republicans.

On the Democratic side, California voters approved new House districts helping Democrats, and a Utah judge adopted a new House map that benefits Democrats.

There have been some defections in the nationwide redistricting battle: Kansas Republicans dropped plans for a special session on redistricting. Indiana’s Republican-led Senate also defeated a plan that could have helped the GOP win all of the state’s U.S. House seats.

It’s still up in the air as to whether new maps will be created in other states, such as Republican-leaning Florida, and Democratic-led Illinois and Maryland.

The redistricting battle has resulted, so far, in nine more seats that Republicans believe they can win and six more seats that Democrats think they can win, putting the GOP up by three. However, redistricting is being litigated in several states, and there is no guarantee that the parties will win the seats they have redrawn.

In Virginia, the redistricting resolution sparked raucous debate among lawmakers on the merits of gerrymandering a battleground state known to have independent voters, particularly after a recent years-long push for fair maps in the state.

Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell said when Republican-led states “rig elections in their favor, our commitment to fairness that we made — that our voters made — effectively becomes unilateral disarmament.”

Virginia Republicans have admonished Democrats’ redistricting efforts, arguing gerrymandering isn’t the answer. Republican Senate Minority Leader Ryan McDougle said, “Republicans in Indiana stood up to political pressure and said, ‘We’re not going to play these political games.’ And they stopped.”

The state currently is represented in the U.S. House by six Democrats and five Republicans who ran in districts whose boundaries were imposed by a court after a bipartisan redistricting commission failed to agree on a map after the census.

That commission came about following a 2020 referendum, in which voters supported a change to the state’s constitution aimed at ending legislative gerrymandering.

The new proposed constitutional amendment, if backed by voters, would only be in effect until 2030. The resolution also has trigger language, meaning Virginia lawmakers can only redraw congressional maps if such action is taken by other states.

In January, Democratic Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger backed Democrats’ redistricting effort but has not committed to a particular plan.

“Ultimately, it’s up to the people of Virginia to choose whether or not to move forward with the referendum,” she said.

Diaz writes for the Associated Press. AP writer John Raby in Charleston, W.Va., contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court announced Friday it will hear Monsanto’s claim that it should be shielded from tens of thousands of lawsuits over its weed killer Roundup because the Environmental Protection Agency has not required a warning label that it may cause cancer.

The justices will not resolve the decades-long dispute over whether Roundup’s key ingredient, glyphosate, causes cancer.

Some studies have found it is a likely carcinogen, and others concluded it does not pose a true cancer risk for humans.

However, the court may free Monsanto and Bayer, its parent company, from legal claims from more than 100,000 plaintiffs who sued over their cancer diagnosis.

The legal dispute involves whether the federal regulatory laws shield the company from being sued under state law for failing to warn consumers.

In product liability suits, plaintiffs typically seek to hold product makers responsible for failing to warn them of a known danger.

John Durnell, a Missouri man, said he sprayed Roundup for years to control weeds without gloves or a mask, believing it was safe. He sued after he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

In 2023, a jury rejected his claim the product was defective but it ruled for him on his “strict liability failure to warn claim,” a state court concluded. He was awarded $1.25 million in damages.

Monsanto appealed, arguing this state law verdict is in conflict with federal law regulating pesticides.

“EPA has repeatedly determined that glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide, does not cause cancer. EPA has consistently reached that conclusion after studying the extensive body of science on glyphosate for over five decades,” the company told the court in its appeal.

They said the EPA not only refused to add a cancer warning label to products with Roundup, but said it would be “misbranded” with such a warning.

Nonetheless, the “premise of this lawsuit, and the thousands like it, is that Missouri law requires Monsanto to include the precise warning that EPA rejects,” they said.

On Friday, the court said in a brief order that it would decide “whether the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act preempts a label-based failure-to-warn claim where EPA has not required the warning.”

The court is likely to hear arguments in the case of Monsanto vs. Durnell in April and issue a ruling by late June.

Monsanto says it has removed Roundup from its consumer products, but it is still used for farms.

Last month, Trump administration lawyers urged the court to hear the case.

They said the EPA has “has approved hundreds of labels for Roundup and other glyphosate-based products without requiring a cancer warning,” yet state courts are upholding lawsuits based on a failure to warn.

Environmentalists said the court should not step in to shield makers of dangerous products.

Lawyers for EarthJustice said the court “could let pesticide companies off the hook — even when their products make people sick.”

“When people use pesticides in their fields or on their lawns, they don’t expect to get cancer,” said Patti Goldman, a senior attorney. “Yet this happens, and when it does, state court lawsuits provide the only real path to accountability.”

WASHINGTON — Edward J. Rollins, who created a furor by claiming he schemed to suppress the turnout of black voters in the New Jersey gubernatorial election, has agreed to run a black businessman’s Senate campaign in Pennsylvania.

Joseph Watkins said Thursday he wanted to hire Rollins despite the controversy because “Ed has a great political background and knows how to win races, and I wanted him on my team.”

Watkins, 40, is a Philadelphia business consultant and a Baptist minister. He said he will announce his candidacy next week for the Republican nomination for the seat now held by Democratic Sen. Harris Wofford.

Watkins worked for then-Indiana Sen. Dan Quayle and later worked in the George Bush White House as associate director of public liaison. He said he approached Rollins about a month ago and asked him to run the campaign. He said Rollins agreed and insisted on not being paid.

“He said he made a mistake, he said he was sorry, he said he was wrong, he asked to be forgiven, and I forgave him,” Watkins said of his decision to hire Rollins.

Rollins, a veteran GOP political consultant who ran Ronald Reagan’s 1984 reelection campaign, was out of the country and unavailable for comment. But an associate confirmed that Rollins had agreed to advise Watkins.

Rollins was the lead consultant in New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman’s campaign. A week after she defeated Democratic incumbent James J. Florio, Rollins told reporters that a major factor in her victory was the use of $500,000 in “walking around money” to pay campaign workers and ministers to suppress the black vote in Democratic areas.

Rollins quickly recanted and said he fabricated the story, but state and federal agencies launched investigations of potential voting law violations. On Jan. 12, a week before Whitman’s inauguration, authorities said they had found no evidence that Republicans paid anyone to hold down the Democratic vote.

COPENHAGEN — President Trump suggested Friday that he may punish countries with tariffs if they don’t back the U.S. controlling Greenland, a message that came as a bipartisan Congressional delegation sought to lower tensions in the Danish capital.

Trump for months has insisted that the U.S. should control Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark, and said earlier this week that anything less than the Arctic island being in U.S. hands would be “unacceptable.”

During an unrelated event at the White House about rural health care, he recounted Friday how he had threatened European allies with tariffs on pharmaceuticals.

“I may do that for Greenland too,” Trump said. “I may put a tariff on countries if they don’t go along with Greenland, because we need Greenland for national security. So I may do that,” he said.

He had not previously mentioned using tariffs to try to force the issue.

Earlier this week, the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland met in Washington this week with U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

That encounter didn’t resolve the deep differences, but did produce an agreement to set up a working group — on whose purpose Denmark and the White House then offered sharply diverging public views.

European leaders have insisted that is only for Denmark and Greenland to decide on matters concerning the territory, and Denmark said this week that it was increasing its military presence in Greenland in cooperation with allies.

A relationship that ‘we need to nurture’

In Copenhagen, a group of senators and members of the House of Representatives met Friday with Danish and Greenlandic lawmakers, and with leaders including Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen.

Delegation leader Sen. Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, thanked the group’s hosts for “225 years of being a good and trusted ally and partner” and said that “we had a strong and robust dialogue about how we extend that into the future.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, said after meeting lawmakers that the visit reflected a strong relationship over decades and “it is one that we need to nurture.” She told reporters that “Greenland needs to be viewed as our ally, not as an asset, and I think that’s what you’re hearing with this delegation.”

The tone contrasted with that emanating from the White House. Trump has sought to justify his calls for a U.S. takeover by repeatedly claiming that China and Russia have their own designs on Greenland, which holds vast untapped reserves of critical minerals. The White House hasn’t ruled out taking the territory by force.

“We have heard so many lies, to be honest and so much exaggeration on the threats towards Greenland,” said Aaja Chemnitz, a Greenlandic politician and member of the Danish parliament who took part in Friday’s meetings. “And mostly, I would say the threats that we’re seeing right now is from the U.S. side.”

Murkowski emphasized the role of Congress in spending and in conveying messages from constituents.

“I think it is important to underscore that when you ask the American people whether or not they think it is a good idea for the United States to acquire Greenland, the vast majority, some 75%, will say, we do not think that that is a good idea,” she said.

Along with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat, Murkowski has introduced bipartisan legislation that would prohibit the use of U.S. Defense or State department funds to annex or take control of Greenland or the sovereign territory of any NATO member state without that ally’s consent or authorization from the North Atlantic Council.

Inuit council criticizes White House statements

The dispute is looming large in the lives of Greenlanders. Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said on Tuesday that “if we have to choose between the United States and Denmark here and now, we choose Denmark. We choose NATO. We choose the Kingdom of Denmark. We choose the EU.””

The chair of the Nuuk, Greenland-based Inuit Circumpolar Council, which represents around 180,000 Inuit from Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Russia’s Chukotka region on international issues, said persistent statements from the White House that the U.S. must own Greenland offer “a clear picture of how the U.S. administration views the people of Greenland, how the U.S. administration views Indigenous peoples, and peoples that are few in numbers.”

Sara Olsvig told the Associated Press in Nuuk that the issue is “how one of the biggest powers in the world views other peoples that are less powerful than them. And that really is concerning.”

Indigenous Inuit in Greenland do not want to be colonized again, she said.

Niemann and Superville write for the Associated Press. Superville reported from Washington. Emma Burrows in Nuuk, Greenland and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Most American presidents aspire to the kind of greatness that prompts future generations to name important things in their honor.

Donald Trump isn’t leaving it to future generations.

As the first year of his second term wraps up, his Republican administration and allies have put his name on the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Kennedy Center performing arts venue and a new class of battleships that’s yet to be built.

That’s on top of the “Trump Accounts” for tax-deferred investments, the TrumpRx government website soon to offer direct sales of prescription drugs, the “Trump Gold Card” visa that costs at least $1 million and the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, a transit corridor included in a deal his administration brokered between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

On Friday, he plans to attend a ceremony in Florida where local officials will dedicate a 4-mile stretch of road from the airport to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach as President Donald J. Trump Boulevard.

Another example of the unorthodoxy of Trump’s career

It’s unprecedented for a sitting president to embrace tributes of that number and scale, especially those proffered by members of his administration. And while past sitting presidents have typically been honored by local officials naming schools and roads after them, it’s exceedingly rare for airports, federal buildings, warships or other government assets to be named for someone still in power.

“At no previous time in history have we consistently named things after a president who was still in office,” said Jeffrey Engel, the David Gergen Director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “One might even extend that to say a president who is still alive. Those kind of memorializations are supposed to be just that — memorials to the passing hero.”

White House spokeswoman Liz Huston said the TrumpRx website linked to the president’s deals to lower the price of some prescription drugs, along with “overdue upgrades of national landmarks, lasting peace deals, and wealth-creation accounts for children are historic initiatives that would not have been possible without President Trump’s bold leadership.”

“The Administration’s focus isn’t on smart branding, but delivering on President Trump’s goal of Making America Great Again,” Huston said.

The White House pointed out that the nation’s capital was named after President George Washington and the Hoover Dam was named after President Herbert Hoover while each was serving as president.

For Trump, it’s a continuation of the way he first etched his place onto the American consciousness, becoming famous as a real estate developer who affixed his name in big gold letters on luxury buildings and hotels, a casino and assorted products like neckties, wine and steaks.

Trump’s for-profit branding has continued

As he ran for president in 2024, the candidate rolled out Trump-branded business ventures for watches, fragrances, Bibles and sneakers — including golden high tops priced at $799. After taking office again last year, Trump’s businesses launched a Trump Mobile phone company, with plans to unveil a gold-colored smartphone and a cryptocurrency memecoin named $TRUMP.

That’s not to be confused with plans for a physical, government-issued Trump coin that U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach said the U.S. Mint is planning.

Trump has also reportedly told the owners of Washington’s NFL team that he would like his name on the Commanders’ new stadium. The team’s ownership group, which has the naming rights, has not commented on the idea. But a White House spokeswoman in November called the proposed name “beautiful” and said Trump made the rebuilding of the stadium possible.

The addition of Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center in December so outraged independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont that he introduced legislation this week to ban the naming or renaming of any federal building or land after a sitting president — a ban that would retroactively apply to the Kennedy Center and Institute of Peace.

“I think he is a narcissist who likes to see his name up there. If he owns a hotel, that’s his business,” Sanders said in an interview. “But he doesn’t own federal buildings.”

Sanders likened Trump’s penchant for putting his name on government buildings and more to the actions of authoritarian leaders throughout history.

“If the American people want to name buildings after a president who is deceased, that’s fine. That’s what we do,” Sanders said. “But to use federal buildings to enhance your own position very much sounds like the ‘Great Leader’ mentality of North Korea, and that is not something that I think the American people want.”

Although some of the naming has been suggested by others, the president has made clear he’s pleased with the tributes.

Three months after the announcement of the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, a name the White House says was proposed by Armenian officials, the president gushed about it at a White House dinner.

“It’s such a beautiful thing, they named it after me. I really appreciate it. It’s actually a big deal,” he told a group of Central Asian leaders.

Engel, the presidential historian, said the practice can send a signal to people “that the easiest way to get access and favor from the president is to play to his ego and give him something or name something after him.”

Supporters say the tributes are well-deserved

Some of the proposals for honoring Trump include legislation in Congress from New York Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney that would designate June 14 as “Trump’s Birthday and Flag Day,” placing the president with the likes of Martin Luther King Jr., George Washington and Jesus Christ, whose birthdays are recognized as national holidays.

Florida Republican Rep. Greg Steube has introduced legislation that calls for the Washington-area rapid transit system, known as the Metro, to be renamed the “Trump Train.” North Carolina Republican Rep. Addison McDowell has introduced legislation to rename Washington Dulles International Airport as Donald J. Trump International Airport.

McDowell said it makes sense to give Dulles a new name since Trump has already announced plans to revamp the airport, which currently is a tribute to former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.

The congressman said he wanted to honor Trump because he feels the president has been a champion for combating the scourge of fentanyl, a personal issue for McDowell after his brother’s overdose death. But he also cited Trump’s efforts to strike peace deals all over the world and called him “one of the most consequential presidents ever.”

“I think that’s somebody that deserves to be honored, whether they’re still the president or whether they’re not,” he said.

More efforts are underway in Florida, Trump’s adopted home.

Republican state lawmaker Meg Weinberger said she is working on an effort to rename Palm Beach International Airport as Donald J. Trump International Airport, a potential point of confusion with the Dulles effort.

The road that the president will see christened Friday is not the first Florida asphalt to herald Trump upon his return to the White House.

In the south Florida city of Hialeah, officials in December 2024 renamed a street there as President Donald J. Trump Avenue.

Trump, speaking at a Miami business conference the next month, called it a “great honor” and said he loved the mayor for it.

“Anybody that names a boulevard after me, I like,” he said.

He added a few moments later: “A lot of people come back from Hialeah, they say, ‘They just named a road after you.’ I say, ‘That’s OK.’ It’s a beginning, right? It’s a start.”

Price and Weissert write for the Associated Press.

In the aftermath of the U.S. military strike that seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3, the Trump administration has emphasized its desire for unfettered access to Venezuela’s oil more than conventional foreign policy objectives, such as combating drug trafficking or bolstering democracy and regional stability.

During his first news conference after the operation, President Trump claimed oil companies would play an important role and that the oil revenue would help fund any further intervention in Venezuela.

Soon after, “Fox & Friends” hosts asked Trump about this prediction.

“We have the greatest oil companies in the world,” Trump replied, “the biggest, the greatest, and we’re gonna be very much involved in it.”

As a historian of U.S.-Latin American relations, I’m not surprised that oil or any other commodity is playing a role in U.S. policy toward the region. What has taken me aback, though, is the Trump administration’s openness about how much oil is driving its policies toward Venezuela.

As I’ve detailed recently, U.S. military intervention in Latin America has largely been covert. And when the U.S. orchestrated the coup that ousted Guatemala’s democratically elected president in 1954, the U.S. covered up the role that economic considerations played in that operation.

By the early 1950s, Guatemala had become a top source for the bananas Americans consumed, as it remains today.

The United Fruit Company, based in Boston, owned more than 550,000 acres of Guatemalan land, largely thanks to its deals with previous dictatorships. These holdings required the intense labor of impoverished farmworkers who were often forced from their traditional lands. Their pay was rarely stable, and they faced periodic layoffs and wage cuts.

The international corporation networked with dictators and local officials in Central America, many Caribbean islands and parts of South America to acquire immense estates for railroads and banana plantations.

The locals called it the pulpo — “octopus” in Spanish — because the company seemingly had a hand in shaping the region’s politics, economies and everyday life. The Colombian government brutally crushed a 1928 strike by United Fruit workers, killing hundreds of people.

The company’s seemingly unlimited clout in the countries where it operated gave rise to the stereotype of Central American nations as “banana republics.”

In Guatemala, a country historically marked by extreme inequality, a broad coalition formed in 1944 to overthrow its repressive dictatorship in a popular uprising. Inspired by the anti-fascist ideals of World War II, the coalition sought to make the nation more democratic and its economy more fair.

After decades of repression, the nation democratically elected Juan José Arévalo and then Jacobo Árbenz, under whom, in 1952, Guatemala implemented a land reform program that gave landless farmworkers their own undeveloped plots. Guatemala’s government asserted that these policies would build a more equitable society for Guatemala’s impoverished, Indigenous majority.

United Fruit denounced Guatemala’s reforms as the result of a global conspiracy. It alleged that most of Guatemala’s unions were controlled by Mexican and Soviet communists and painted the land reform as a ploy to destroy capitalism.

United Fruit sought to enlist the U.S. government in its fight against the elected government’s policies. While its executives did complain that Guatemala’s reforms hurt its financial investments and labor costs, they also cast any interference in its operations as part of a broader communist plot.

It did this through an advertising campaign in the U.S. and by taking advantage of the anti-communist paranoia that prevailed at the time.

United Fruit executives began to meet with officials in the Truman administration as early as 1945. Despite the support of sympathetic ambassadors, the U.S. government apparently wouldn’t intervene directly in Guatemala’s affairs.

The company turned to Congress.

It hired well connected lobbyists to portray Guatemala’s policies as part of a communist plot to destroy capitalism and the United States. In February 1949, multiple members of Congress denounced Guatemala’s labor reforms as communist.

Sen. Claude Pepper called the labor code “obviously intentionally discriminatory against this American company” and “a machine gun aimed at the head of this American company.”

Two days later, Rep. John McCormack echoed that statement, using the exact same words to denounce the reforms.

Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., Sen. Lister Hill and Rep. Mike Mansfield also went on the record, reciting the talking points outlined in United Fruit memos.

No lawmaker said a word about bananas.

Seventy-seven years later, we may see many echoes of past interventions, but now the U.S. government has dropped the veil: In his appearance after the strike that seized Maduro this month, Trump said “oil” 21 times.

Aaron Coy Moulton is an associate professor of Latin American history at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas and the author of “Caribbean Blood Pacts: Guatemala and the Cold War Struggle for Freedom.” This article was produced in collaboration with the Conversation.

A year after the Eaton fire, survivors and the state’s electric utilities are clashing over whether state law should continue to protect the companies from the cost of disastrous wildfires they ignite.

Southern California Edison says that with the help of those state laws it expects to pay little or even none of the damage costs of the Eaton fire, which its equipment is suspected of sparking.

But in recent filings to state officials, fire victims and consumer advocates say the law has gone too far and made the utilities’ unaccountable for their mistakes, leading to even more fires.

“What do you think will happen if you constantly protect perpetrators of fires,” said Joy Chen, executive director of the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.

At the same time, Edison and the state’s two other big for-profit electric companies are lobbying state officials for even more protection from the cost of future fires to reassure their investors.

If government investigators find Edison’s equipment ignited the Eaton fire, at least seven of the state’s 20 most destructive wildfires would have been caused by the three utilities’ equipment.

The debate over how far the state should go to protect the electric companies from the cost of utility-sparked wildfires is playing out in Sacramento at the California Earthquake Authority. The authority is managing a broad study, ordered by Gov. Gavin Newsom, aimed at determining how to better protect Californians from catastrophic wildfires.

Chen said she was concerned by a meeting this month that she and another survivor had been invited to by authority officials and consultants they had hired to work on the study.

She said a primary focus of the discussion was how to shield utilities and their shareholders from the damages of future fires, rather than on the costs to survivors and other Californians “living with the consequences of utility-caused fires.”

Chen later sent authority officials an email pointing to a Times story that detailed how four of five top executives at Edison International were paid higher bonuses the year before the Eaton fire even as the number of fires sparked by the utility’s equipment soared.

“The predictable outcome of continuing to protect shareholders and executives from the consequences of their own negligence is not theoretical. It is observable. More catastrophic fires,” she wrote.

“The Eaton Fire was the predictable outcome of this moral hazard,” she added.

An authority spokesman said Chen and other wildfire victims’ perspectives were “invaluable” to officials as they complete the study that is due April 1.

He said the authority had made “no foregone conclusions” of what the report will say.

Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, told the Times last month that he disagreed strongly with claims that state law had gone too far in protecting utilities.

“The law keeps us very accountable,” Pizarro said. He added that the laws were needed to shield utilities from bankruptcy, which could drive electric bills higher.

In December, Edison and the two other utilities told authority officials in a filing that they and their shareholders shouldn’t have to pay any more into the state wildfire fund, which was created to pay for the damages of utility-caused fires.

So far, electric customers and utility shareholders have split the cost of the fund.

The companies said that making their shareholders contribute more to the fund “undermines investor confidence in California utilities.”

They proposed that officials instead find a new way to help pay for catastrophic fires, possibly using state income taxes, which require the wealthy to pay a higher share.

“Instead of relying on an increase in utility bills to cover extreme catastrophic losses, something that disproportionately impacts lower-income Californians, this system could share costs more equitably across society,” the three companies wrote.

While the investigation into the cause of the Eaton fire has not yet been released, Edison has said a leading theory is that a century-old transmission line no longer in service was briefly re-energized and sparked the fire.

Edison last used that transmission line in Eaton Canyon more than fifty years ago. Utility executives said they kept it up because they believed it would be used in the future.

Utilities and state regulators have long known that old, unused lines posed fire risks. In 2019, investigators traced the Kincade fire in Sonoma County, which destroyed 374 homes and other structures, to a dormant transmission line owned by Pacific Gas & Electric.

The electric companies’ legal protections from utility-sparked fires date back to 2019 when Gov. Newsom led an effort to pass a measure known as AB 1054.

Then, PG&E was in bankruptcy because of costs it faced from a series of wildfires, including the 2018 Camp fire. That blaze, caused by a decades-old transmission line, destroyed most of the town of Paradise and killed 85 people.

Under the 2019 law, a utility is automatically deemed to have acted prudently if its equipment starts a wildfire. Then, all fire damages, except for $1 billion dollars covered by customer-paid insurance, are covered by the state wildfire fund.

The law allows outside parties to provide evidence that the utility didn’t act prudently before the fire, but even in that event, the utility’s financial responsibility for damages is capped.

Edison has told its investors that it believes it acted prudently before the Eaton fire and will have the damage costs fully covered.

The company says the maximum it may have to pay under the law if it is found to be imprudent is $4 billion. Damages for the Eaton fire have been estimated to be as high as $45 billion.

Pizarro said the possibility of Edison paying as much as $4 billion shows that state law is working to keep utilities accountable.

“If we were imprudent and we end up getting penalized by $4 billion for the Eaton fire, that’s going to be a very painful day for this company — not only the pain of being told that we were imprudent, but also the financial toll of a penalty of that size,” he said.

Chen’s group is not alone in urging the state to change the laws protecting utilities from wildfire costs.

William Abrams of the Utility Wildfire Survivor Coalition detailed in a filing how the present laws had been shaped by the utilities and “a small circle of well-resourced legal and financial actors.”

AB 1054 had weakened safety regulations, he said, while leaving wildfire survivors across California “under-compensated and struggling to rebuild.”

He proposed that the companies be required to use shareholder money and suspend their dividends to pay for fire damages.

Carmen Balber, executive director of Consumer Watchdog, told state officials that Edison is expected to have damages of the Eaton fire covered despite questions of why it did not remove the “ghost line” in Eaton Canyon and failed to shut down its transmission lines, despite the high winds on the night of the fire.

“We recommend establishing a negligence standard,” Balber said, “for when utilities’ shareholders need to pay.”

Among the consultants the authority has hired to help write the study is Rand, the Santa Monica-based research group; and Aon, a consulting firm.

Both Rand and Aon have been paid by Edison for other work. Most recently, Edison hired Rand to review some of the data and methods it used to determine how much to offer Eaton fire victims in its voluntary compensation program.

Chen said hiring Edison’s consultants to help prepare the study created a conflict of interest.

The authority spokesman said officials were confident that their “open and inclusive study process” will protect its integrity.

Aon did not return a request for comment.

“Our clients have no influence over our findings,” said Leah Polk, a Rand spokesperson. “We follow the evidence and maintain strict standards to ensure our work remains objective and unbiased.”

Chen said she was not convinced. “You have the fox guarding the hen house,” she said.

Venezuela has banks, but it no longer has banking in the functional sense. Branches are open, digital platforms work, and companies process payroll and manage accounts. What has disappeared is the core of any financial system: the ability to extend credit and working capital solutions at scale and at maturities that support productive investment. This is not a temporary liquidity problem. It is the result of two decades of policy intervention, macroeconomic collapse, and institutional erosion that left the country with the façade of a banking system but almost none of its substance.

Understanding this transformation requires retracing how a once-normal Latin American financial sector was rewired into a system that processes transactions but cannot perform financial intermediation—and how Venezuelan corporations have adapted to an economy where banks exist but lending, for all practical purposes, does not.

The Chávez–Maduro restructuring

Before 1999, Venezuela had a volatile yet recognizable banking model. Private banks dominated, interest rates generally tracked inflation, and although the 1994 crisis inflicted serious damage, the system broadly resembled that of its regional peers. Foreign banks operated locally, corporate lending mattered, and financial institutions played a visible role in funding economic activity.

Chavismo altered this trajectory. Throughout the 2000s, the government nationalized banks, created new state institutions, and converted them into channels for social programs and politically directed credit. Regulation shifted from prudential oversight to political management. Interest-rate caps, mandated lending quotas, and tight currency controls after 2003 trapped the system in a multi-tiered foreign exchange regime that eroded the bolívar’s credibility and strangled lending incentives.

The hyperinflationary spiral that intensified from 2017 onward delivered the final blow. With nominal interest rates capped far below inflation, real lending returns turned sharply negative. Loan portfolios shrank to irrelevance, and banks survived by pivoting toward payments, payroll, and cash-management services—the activities least distorted by regulation. Credit intermediation effectively disappeared.

The scale of collapse is visible in the numbers: by 2023, total banking sector assets had shrunk to roughly $3 billion—less than what a single mid-sized regional bank in Colombia or Peru might hold. This is an economy that once had a banking system managing tens of billions in assets. The financial system didn’t simply contract: its fundamental function ceased to operate.

Our corporate banking today

On paper, Venezuela still has the institutional layout of a modern financial system. SUDEBAN supervises banks, the Central Bank manages monetary policy and FX operations, SUNAVAL oversees securities markets, and FOGADE provides deposit insurance. Private institutions such as Banesco and Mercantil coexist with public entities like Banco de Venezuela. Microfinance firms and small fintech platforms also exist.

But this resembles scaffolding rather than load-bearing structure. Public banks dominate assets yet lack operational strength. Private banks are better managed but constrained by regulation, small capital bases, and the absence of meaningful lending. Political influence has blurred the lines between regulator and regulated, turning compliance into a mechanism of control rather than stability.

Most private lending takes place offshore, secured by foreign receivables or export flows. Domestic institutional private credit is effectively nonexistent.

Venezuelan banks still serve corporate clients, though in a radically diminished role compared to regional norms. Their value proposition is almost entirely transactional: checking and custodial accounts (including limited USD-denominated products), payroll processing, electronic payment channels, and basic trade-payment facilitation. What they do not provide is medium-term, scalable, predictable credit.

Companies across sectors—retail, logistics, pharmaceuticals, food importation, light manufacturing, agro-industry—maintain bank relationships, but these relationships revolve around moving money, not financing growth. Banks function as utilities, not credit providers.

Traditional investment banking has also largely disappeared. Underwriting, mergers and acquisitions advisory, capital-raising, and structured finance have retreated offshore or into highly specialized boutique work tied to restructurings or distressed assets. Local securities markets are too thin, volatile, and uncertain to support meaningful deal flow.

Markets that should exist but don’t

In most emerging markets where bank credit contracts, private equity and private credit step in. That pattern never took root in Venezuela.

Private equity requires predictable regulation, enforceable contracts, credible exits, and transparent corporate information. Venezuela lacks these conditions. Public markets are weak, expropriation risk remains salient, and capital controls complicate repatriation. What little PE-style activity exists is limited to family-office investments or distressed-asset acquisitions structured abroad.

Private credit faces the same obstacles. Even though Venezuela exhibits every condition that theoretically invites direct-lending funds—a collapsed banking sector, high demand for working capital—legal uncertainty and currency instability make enforcement and repayment unpredictable. Most private lending takes place offshore, secured by foreign receivables or export flows. Domestic institutional private credit is effectively nonexistent.

Venezuela is thus in the rare position of having vast financing needs and a large inventory of underutilized assets, yet lacking the institutional channels to mobilize capital toward them.

Financing in a credit desert

Without functioning bank credit, Venezuelan companies rely on alternative mechanisms that would be unrecognizable to CFOs in neighboring countries.

Supplier credit has become the backbone of financing. Importers and wholesalers extend terms to distributors, creating an informal credit chain in lieu of bank financing.

Offshore financing is available only for firms with foreign affiliates or export-related revenue. Domestic subsidiaries borrow against offshore balance sheets, not Venezuelan assets.

Domestic intra-group lending within business families and conglomerates substitutes for external credit markets.

Since 2023, authorities have tightened scrutiny over cash-dollar usage, imposed taxes on FX transactions (IGTF), and encouraged re-bolivarization through regulation rather than credibility.

Multinational parent financing sustains foreign subsidiaries but usually at a conservative operating scale.

Ultra-short cash cycles are core to survival—firms rotate inventory quickly and avoid holding cash in bolívars.

Banks do offer some small FX-indexed credit products, but these are short-term, tightly regulated, and immaterial to corporate expansion. Even the most efficient companies operate with minimal leverage, not because they prefer low risk, but because credit simply does not exist at scale.

A dollar reality that complicates everything

Between 2019 and 2022, Venezuela underwent a largely spontaneous, market-driven dollarization. Prices, wages, savings, and accounting practices migrated to USD despite the absence of formal legal approval. Banks adapted by offering custodial dollar products, facilitating conversions, and enabling local dollar payments.

But the state never fully legalized dollarization. Dollar products required BCV approval, oversight fluctuated, and rules shifted with political priorities. Since 2023, authorities have tightened scrutiny over cash-dollar usage, imposed taxes on FX transactions (IGTF), and encouraged re-bolivarization through regulation rather than credibility.

The result is a hybrid currency system: the dollar dominates transactions, the bolívar dominates regulation. Corporate treasury management now requires dual accounting, parallel liquidity planning, and constant adaptation to policy signals.

Why trade finance matters and what happens without it

For economies built on commodities, trade finance is essential infrastructure. Instruments like letters of credit, pre-export financing, receivables discounting, and supply-chain finance allow producers to operate at scale, smoothing cash flow between harvest and payment, reducing counterparty risk, and attracting external capital tied to exportable output.

Brazil’s agribusiness relies on pre-export finance to fund soy and meat exports. Colombia’s coffee sector depends on letters of credit. Peru’s mining operations use receivables-backed credit to expand production. These mechanisms let firms scale quickly even under volatile prices.

Venezuela has almost none of this today. Over the last decade, capital controls, sanctions, and the loss of correspondent relationships dismantled the machinery that supports cross-border financing. Traditional trade-finance instruments became difficult or impossible to execute through local banks.

A cacao exporter who once could finance an entire harvest with a pre-export credit line now operates cycle-by-cycle on partial prepayments. Agro-industrial firms can no longer use inventory-backed financing to expand storage or processing.

What remains operates through improvisation: exporters rely on advance payments that cap growth and transfer risk back to producers. Importers use supplier financing, not banks, to fund inventory. Offshore entities when possible handle letters of credit, bypassing the local system entirely. Producers with export potential cannot leverage pre-export loans, limiting their ability to scale.

For commodity producers—cacao, coffee, fisheries, metals, and emerging agricultural clusters—this is crippling. A cacao exporter who once could finance an entire harvest with a pre-export credit line now operates cycle-by-cycle on partial prepayments. Agro-industrial firms can no longer use inventory-backed financing to expand storage or processing. Venezuela has the resources but not the financial infrastructure that resource-based economies require.

Venezuela’s banking sector retains institutional memory. Bank staff understand underwriting, risk management, and trade-finance mechanics. Executives remember normal intermediation. Correspondent relationships can be rebuilt. Capability exists. The policy environment and stability do not.

A post-transition recovery could rebuild credit intermediation within several years—if there is macroeconomic stabilization, credible monetary policy, realistic interest rates, recapitalization of banks, legalization of dollar-based banking, and a restoration of correspondent links. Trade finance, in particular, could rebound quickly, unlocking immediate gains for agriculture, mining, and manufacturing.

Until then, the sector remains an accurate reflection of the broader economy: functional enough to survive, too constrained to support growth, and waiting—like much else in Venezuela—for the space to operate like a real financial system again.

Former U.S. President George Bush says his son, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, was “a rambunctious little guy” but that the leading Republican presidential contender never gave his parents cause to believe he used illegal drugs. “All this stuff about George’s totally irresponsible past, we never saw it,” Bush said in a television interview on the Fox News Channel program “The Edge With Paula Zahn.” “Barbara and I never saw this. We knew he had some problems that he faced up to, but no different than most kids,” the former president said. The younger Bush, 53, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, has been dogged by unsubstantiated rumors about his alleged use of cocaine in the past.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) tried again this week to shift focus away from a divisive debate over impeachment and move it to a signature issue that Democrats credit with helping them win back a majority in that chamber: healthcare.

After a panel discussion on the Democrats’ health policy agenda in Monterey Park on Monday, Pelosi deflected questions about impeachment from reporters and said the news media were placing “a great deal of attention” on the topic.

“What we’re doing is legislating. We’ve sent bills to the Senate that talk about our Dreamers, we’ve sent bills to the Senate that talk about gun violence prevention,” Pelosi said, adding that she believes those issues are “unifying, they’re not dividing for our country.”

Minutes after the event concluded, Orange County freshman Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine) announced in a video that she supports opening an impeachment inquiry against President Trump.

The conflicting messages provide a preview of the ongoing struggle House leaders face as they try to contain talk of impeachment this summer. More than a quarter of Democrats in the House have publicly supported opening an impeachment inquiry, 14 of them from California.

Pelosi’s panel on Monday, which also included Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) and Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis, was billed by Democrats as part of a “weekend of action” on healthcare. The renewed focus on key issues for Democrats is the latest sign that party leaders aren’t willing to budge on impeachment until public support is clear.

“When we won that election in November, it was all healthcare, healthcare, healthcare, healthcare,” Pelosi told the audience of several hundred people at East Los Angeles College in Chu’s district. “It was because it is so important to people’s lives.”

Meanwhile, Trump said over the weekend that he is working on a new healthcare plan, promising to roll out details within two months. Republicans on Capitol Hill want to move on from the debate over repealing the Affordable Care Act and are focusing instead on more narrow legislation to reduce healthcare costs.

House Democratic leaders said more than 140 healthcare-focused events were planned by House members across the country, part of a “drumbeat across America” on healthcare over the weekend.

But the beat wasn’t very loud in California’s most competitive districts. Although Rep. TJ Cox (D-Fresno) visited a rural health center in the Central Valley and Rep. Gil Cisneros (D-Yorba Linda) toured a nonprofit hospital and held a roundtable discussion with administrators in Orange County, neither event was publicized and both were closed to the news media.

Invitations to a telephone town hall on healthcare hosted by Rep. Katie Hill (D-Agua Dulce) went out to “randomly selected” constituents without advance notice to reporters. And Porter did not host a healthcare-focused event this weekend, her staff said.

The events coincided with a series of pro-impeachment rallies Saturday, including actions in all four Orange County swing districts that Democrats must protect to hold on to their majority in the House.

At a gathering in the coastal Orange County district of Rep. Harley Rouda (D-Laguna Beach), dozens of people lined up, using their bodies to spell out “IMPEACH” in the sand.

Several in attendance seemed willing to give Rouda, who has not yet come out in full support of impeachment, some leeway in his Republican-leaning district, particularly after Rouda said recently that he would call for impeachment proceedings if the White House fails to comply with congressional subpoenas by the end of June.

“I think we should impeach, but I am not ready to condemn [Rouda] for not doing it yet,” retired teacher Phyllis Totri said. “I keep thinking Nancy Pelosi has some secret plan.”

Carol Churchill, who lives in the reliably Democratic Long Beach district of Rep. Alan Lowenthal and contributed money to Rouda and Porter last year, said she’s eager for California Democrats to take more active roles in calling for impeachment.

As an attorney, Churchill said, she understands the desire to follow a trail of evidence through House investigations.

“I get that, but it’s not fast enough for me,” she said. “I want them to take vocal action.”

While some Democratic activists are torn as to what strategy they’d like to see House members take on impeachment, Californians — and Americans — are split on whether it should be pursued at all.

In a recent NBC national poll, 27% of Americans and 48% of Democrats said Congress should begin the impeachment process. A statewide poll conducted for The Times by the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley showed a slim majority of California Democrats, 53%, and 35% of registered voters supported starting impeachment proceedings.

The findings illustrate the difficult position Pelosi faces in trying to protect a House majority built on vulnerable new members who must navigate between the left-leaning activists who helped elect them and independent voters they must win over to ensure they hang on to their seats.

Totri and others said they hoped the weekend’s rallies would help turn the tide of public opinion in support of impeachment and show Pelosi and other members that their constituents support it.

“We’re saying to our representatives specifically that we want impeachment, we think that’s the next step and we want them to take that step as well,” said Aaron McCall, chairman of the group Indivisible OC 48 in Rouda’s district. “These are the people in their districts who went out and volunteered for them and fought for them and supported them, and they’re saying, ‘We need you to go out and take a stand and do what’s right.’”

Times staff writer Jennifer Haberkorn contributed to this report.

christine.maiduc@latimes.com

For more on California politics, follow @cmaiduc.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s disaster chief quietly retired in late December amid criticism over the state’s indecisive stance on whether soil testing was necessary to protect survivors of the Eaton and Palisades fires.

One year ago, Nancy Ward, then the director of the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES), petitioned the Federal Emergency Management Agency to spearhead the cleanup of toxic ash and fire debris cloaking more than 12,000 homes across Los Angeles County.

Although Ward’s decision ensured the federal government would assume the bulk of disaster costs, it came with a major trade off. FEMA was unwilling to pay for soil sampling to confirm these homes weren’t still heavily contaminated with toxic substances after the cleanup — testing that California state agencies have typically done following similar fires in the past.

Following intense backlash from fire survivors and California lawmakers, Ward pleaded with FEMA to reconsider its soil-testing stance, writing in a Feb. 19 letter that it is “critical to protect public health” and “ensure that survivors can safely return to their homes.” Her request was denied.

However, in October, Cal OES — under Ward’s leadership — privately considered discontinuing state funding for soil testing in the aftermath of future wildfires, according to a confidential, internal draft memo obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

The Times requested an interview with Ward, and sent questions to her office asking about her initial decision to forgo soil testing and for clarity on the future of state’s fire recovery policy. Ward declined the request; The Times later published an article on Dec. 29 about allegations that federal contractors illegally dumped toxic ash and misused contaminated soil in breach of state policy.

Ward, who served as Cal OES director for three years, retired on Dec. 30; her deputy director, Christina Curry, stepped into the role as the interim chief. Ward also did not respond to several requests for comment for this article.

Ward was the first woman to serve as Cal OES director. She had also previously served as a FEMA regional administrator, overseeing federal disaster response in the Southwest and Pacific Islands from 2006 to 2014.

A Cal OES spokesperson said Ward’s retirement had been planned well in advance.

“Director Nancy Ward has been a steady hand and a compassionate leader through some of California’s largest disasters,” the spokesperson said. “Her decades of service have made our state stronger, safer, and more resilient. The Governor is deeply grateful for her dedication and wishes her the very best in retirement.”

The internal memo obtained by The Times was written by Ward’s assistant director, and titled: “Should the state continue to pay for soil testing as part of Private Property Debris Removal (PPDR) programs? ”

It laid out three possible answers: The state could keep funding soil testing after future wildfires; the state could defer soil testing decisions to the affected counties with the possibility of reimbursing them; or the state could stop paying for soil testing entirely.

A Cal OES spokesperson said the memo was only a draft and did not represent a policy change. “The state’s position on soil testing remains unchanged,” the spokesperson said. “California is committed to advocating for the safe, timely removal of wildfire debris. Protecting the public health and well-being of impacted communities remains the state’s foremost priority.”

The primary reason for soil testing is to prevent harmful exposures to toxic metals, such as brain-damaging lead or cancer-causing arsenic. Since 2007, comprehensive soil testing has been conducted after 64 wildfire cleanups in California, according to the memo. When soil contamination still exceeded state benchmarks after the initial cleanup, the state government redeployed cleanup workers to remove more dirt and then retest the properties.

This approach, the memo said, was critical in identifying harmful substances that “pose exposure hazards via ingestion, inhalation of dust, or through garden/food production.” Soil testing “helps ensure the safety” of children, seniors, pregnant women and people with health issues who are “more vulnerable to soilborne toxins.”

“The State has a long precedent of conducting or paying for soil testing,” the Cal OES assistant director wrote in the memo.  “Pivoting from this would be a significant policy change.”

The memo cites a report from CalRecycle, the agency that has historically carried out state-led fire cleanups, that stresses the importance of the current practice to public health.

“Soil contamination after a wildfire is an invisible threat,” wrote a CalRecycle official. “If not properly cleaned and remediated in a methodical way, property owners may encounter additional hurdles during the rebuilding process and suffer additional trauma.”

“Soil sampling,” the official adds, “is the metric by which Recyclable demonstrates that debris removal operations have successfully remediated the post-disaster threat to public health and the environment.”

However, such soil testing and additional cleanup prolongs the cleanup timeline and can make it more expensive. The memo cites cost estimates from CalRecycle which show that soil testing and additional cleanup work usually costs some $4,000 to $6,000 per parcel, representing 3% to 6% of overall debris removal costs.

The state cost projections align with those made by independent environmental experts. Andrews Whelton, a Purdue University professor who researches natural disasters, estimated that soil testing and further remediation for the Eaton and Palisades fire would cost between $40 million to $70 million.

All told, the CalRecycle report states the usual soil-testing process has been a “relatively low-cost step” to safeguard public health.

Further, although soil testing may add some cost, when it’s taken as a proactive measure, it can save money down the road.

Forgoing soil testing and evidence-backed remediation can generate uncertainty about toxic contamination, which in turn could lower the value of homes in Altadena and Pacific Palisades, Whelton said. What’s more, the property owner may be liable for soil contamination if they fail to disclose environmental risks when selling or leasing.

The internal CalOES memo alludes to this give and take: “Funds saved initially by skipping testing may be outweighed by later unseen costs, for example, reinvesting in remediation, addressing community complaints, litigation, or cleanup failure.”

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has fielded over 1,100 complaints filed by property owners affected by the Eaton and Palisades fires — over 20% of which were related to the quality of work. According to internal reports obtained by The Times, federal cleanup repeatedly deviated from cleanup protocols, likely spreading contamination in the process.

Since then, FEMA officials have backed down from their hard-line stance against paying for post-fire soil testing in California in an attempt to shore up public confidence in the federal cleanup.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced this week that FEMA will conduct a limited lead-testing program in the Eaton fire burn scar that is intended to “confirm the effectiveness of cleanup methods,” according to an EPA spokesperson. The initiative has already come under the scrutiny of environmental experts who say it lacks the rigor of California’s soil testing regimen.

It remains unclear if California will continue to implement soil-testing safeguards that made the state a national leader in fire recovery. Though state officials say these will remain unchanged, there is no legal mandate to follow these procedures.

The internal CalOES memo circulated under Ward’s leadership has only added to the cloud of uncertainty.

One thing is clear: It’s a moot point for survivors of the Eaton and Palisades fire.

As state and federal officials debated the value of soil testing, most Altadena and Pacific Palisades residents have been left to investigate the extent of environmental fallout on their own.

WASHINGTON — Stacy Keach, released from an English prison after serving six months for cocaine possession, told a House committee today how he started using the drug that eventually took over his life and landed him in jail.

“There is no greater imprisonment than that of being dependent on a chemical substance for one’s existence,” the actor said.

“Freedom from dependency on drugs is one of the most precious freedoms we have, and it must be a loving legacy for our children and their children as well,” Keach testified.

Keach, 44, was arrested in April, 1984, at London’s Heathrow Airport, where authorities discovered 1.3 ounces of cocaine in his luggage.

The star of the CBS-TV series “Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer” told the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control that he first experimented with the drug on social occasions and believed that he would be immune to its seductiveness.

“I felt euphoric, self-confident, alert and even creative,” Keach said of his initial experience.

But within a few months, Keach said, cocaine had become an integral part of his life.

“And this is one of the hallmarks of cocaine’s destructive power,” he said. “It always deludes the user into feeling that he or she is in complete control until it is too late.”

Keach said it took an arrest to make him face up to the fact that he was dependent on cocaine. “I can only thank God that I now have an opportunity to speak out to others –in the hope that they will not have to travel down the same road as I did.”

A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a U.S. Justice Department lawsuit demanding California turn over its voter rolls, calling the request “unprecedented and illegal” and accusing the federal government of trying to “abridge the right of many Americans to cast their ballots.”

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, a Clinton appointee based in Santa Ana, questioned the Justice Department’s motivations and called its lawsuit demanding voter data from California Secretary of State Shirley Weber not just an overreach into state-run elections, but a threat to American democracy.

“The centralization of this information by the federal government would have a chilling effect on voter registration which would inevitably lead to decreasing voter turnout as voters fear that their information is being used for some inappropriate or unlawful purpose,” Carter wrote. “This risk threatens the right to vote which is the cornerstone of American democracy.”

Carter wrote that the “taking of democracy does not occur in one fell swoop; it is chipped away piece by piece until there is nothing left,” and that the Justice Department’s lawsuit was “one of these cuts that imperils all Americans.”

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Thursday.

In a video she posted to the social media platform X earlier Thursday, Assistant Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon — who heads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division — said she was proud of her office’s efforts to “clean up the voter rolls nationally,” including by suing states for their data.

“We are going to touch every single state and finish this project,” she said.

Weber, who is California’s top elections official, said in a written statement that she is “entrusted with ensuring that California’s state election laws are enforced — including state laws that protect the privacy of California’s data.”

“I will continue to uphold my promise to Californians to protect our democracy, and I will continue to challenge this administration’s disregard for the rule of law and our right to vote,” Weber said.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office called the decision another example of “Trump and his administration losing to California” — one day after another court upheld California’s congressional redistricting plan under Proposition 50, which the Trump administration also challenged in court after state voters passed it overwhelmingly in November.

The Justice Department sued Weber in September after she refused to hand over detailed voter information for some 23 million Californians, alleging that she was unlawfully preventing federal authorities from ensuring state compliance with federal voting regulations and safeguarding federal elections against fraud.

It separately sued Weber’s counterparts in various other states who also declined the department’s requests for their states’ voter rolls.

The lawsuit followed an executive order by President Trump in March that purported to require voters to provide proof of citizenship and ordered states to disregard mail ballots not received by election day. It also followed years of allegations by Trump, made without evidence, that voting in California has been hampered by widespread fraud and voting by noncitizens — part of his broader and equally unsupported claim that the 2020 presidental election was stolen from him.

In announcing the lawsuit, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said in September that “clean voter rolls are the foundation of free and fair elections,” and that the Justice Department was going to ensure that they exist nationwide.

Weber denounced the lawsuit at the time as a “fishing expedition and pretext for partisan policy objectives,” and as “an unprecedented intrusion unsupported by law or any previous practice or policy of the U.S. Department of Justice.”

The Justice Department demanded a “current electronic copy of California’s computerized statewide voter registration list”; lists of “all duplicate registration records in Imperial, Los Angeles, Napa, Nevada, San Bernardino, Siskiyou, and Stanislaus counties”; a “list of all duplicate registrants who were removed from the statewide voter registration list”; and the dates of their removals.

It also demanded a list of all registrations that had been canceled due to voter deaths; an explanation for a recent decline in the recorded number of “inactive” voters in California; and a list of “all registrations, including date of birth, driver’s license number, and last four digits of Social Security Number, that were canceled due to non-citizenship of the registrant.”

Carter, in his ruling Thursday, took particular issue with the Justice Department’s reliance on federal civil rights laws to make its case.

“The Department of Justice seeks to use civil rights legislation which was enacted for an entirely different purpose to amass and retain an unprecedented amount of confidential voter data. This effort goes far beyond what Congress intended when it passed the underlying legislation,” Carter wrote.

Carter wrote that the legislation in question — including Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 and the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993 — was passed to defend Black Americans’ voting rights in the face of “persistent voter suppression” and to “combat the effects of discriminatory and unfair registration laws that cheapened the right to vote.”

Carter found that the Justice Department provided “no explanation for why unredacted voter files for millions of Californians, an unprecedented request, was necessary” for the Justice Department to investigate the alleged problems it claims, and that the executive branch simply has no power to demand such data all at once without explanation.