WASHINGTON — President Trump hosted Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa at the White House on Monday, welcoming his once-pariah state into a U.S.-led global coalition to fight the Islamic State group.
Al-Sharaa arrived at the White House around 11:30 a.m. and shortly after began his Oval Office meeting, which remained closed to the press. The Syrian president entered the building through West Executive Avenue, adjacent to the White House, rather than on the West Wing driveway normally used for foreign leaders’ arrivals. He left the White House about two hours later and greeted a throng of supporters gathered outside before getting into his motorcade.
“We’ll do everything we can to make Syria successful because that’s part of the Middle East,” Trump told reporters later Monday. The U.S. president said of Al-Sharaa that “I have confidence that he’ll be able to do the job.”
Syria’s foreign ministry, in a statement, described the meeting as “friendly and constructive.”
Trump “affirmed the readiness of the United States to provide the support that the Syrian leadership needs to ensure the success of the reconstruction and development process,” the statement said.
It added that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had then met with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who arrived in Washington on Monday, and that they agreed to proceed with implementing an agreement reached in March between Damascus and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces to integrate the SDF into the new Syrian army. Implementation of the deal has repeatedly stalled amid tensions between the two sides. It was unclear what concrete steps were agreed upon in Monday’s meeting.
The statement said the “American side also affirmed its support for reaching a security agreement with Israel,” but it did not say how Syria had responded.
Al-Sharaa’s visit was the first to the White House by a Syrian head of state since the Middle Eastern country gained independence from France in 1946 and comes after the U.S. lifted sanctions imposed on Syria during the decades the country was ruled by the Assad family. Al-Sharaa led the rebel forces that toppled Syrian President Bashar Assad last December and was named the country’s interim leader in January.
Trump and Al-Sharaa — who once had ties to Al Qaeda and had a $10-million U.S. bounty on his head — first met in May in Saudi Arabia. At the time, the U.S. president described Al-Sharaa as a “young, attractive guy. Tough guy. Strong past, very strong past. Fighter.” It was the first official encounter between the U.S. and Syria since 2000, when then-President Clinton met with Hafez Assad, the father of Bashar Assad.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday’s visit is “part of the president’s efforts in diplomacy to meet with anyone around the world in the pursuit of peace.”
One official with knowledge of the administration’s plans said Syria’s entry into the global coalition fighting Islamic State will allow it to work more closely with U.S. forces, although the new Syrian military and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the country’s northeast had already been fighting the group.
Before Al-Sharaa’s arrival in the U.S., the United Nations Security Council voted to lift sanctions on the Syrian president and other government officials in a move that the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Mike Waltz, said was a strong sign that Syria is in a new era since the fall of Assad.
Al-Sharaa came to the meeting with his own priorities. He wants a permanent repeal of sanctions that punished Syria for widespread allegations of human rights abuses by Assad’s government and security forces. While the Caesar Act sanctions are currently waived by Trump, a permanent repeal would require Congress to act.
One option is a proposal from Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that would end the sanctions without any conditions. The other was drafted by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a hawkish Trump ally who wants to set conditions for a sanctions repeal that would be reviewed every six months.
But advocates argue that any repeal with conditions would prevent companies from investing in Syria because they would fear potentially being sanctioned. Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, likened it to a “hanging shadow that paralyzes any initiatives for our country.”
The Treasury Department said Monday that the Caesar Act waiver was extended for another 180 days.
Kim writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Abby Sewell in Beirut and Fatima Hussein and Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report.
Eric Preven, one of L.A. County’s most prominent citizen watchdogs, has died at 63, according to his family.
Preven, a well-known government transparency advocate, garnered a reputation as an eagle-eyed observer of local meetings, a savvy wielder of the state’s public records act, and a reliable thorn in the sides of his government.
Relatives said Preven died Saturday in his Studio City home of a suspected heart attack.
The term “gadfly” often is bandied about local government to describe those who never miss a public meeting. But politicians and his family say the term doesn’t quite do Preven justice.
“You may not agree with him, but it wasn’t just like [he was] shooting from the hip. He would do his research,” said Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who watched Preven testify for more than a decade. “He would let the facts speak for themselves.”
In 2016, Preven and the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California took a lawsuit all the way to the California Supreme Court, which ruled in his favor, finding the public had a right to know how much the county was paying outside lawyers in closed cases. Three years later he successfully forced the city to expand its rules around public testimony after he argued he’d been unlawfully barred from weighing in on a Studio City development.
Many attendees of local public meetings tend to drift into offensive diatribes that have little to do with the matter at hand. Preven never did.
Instead he fine-tuned the art of presenting minute-long, logical arguments on everything from budget shortfalls to seemingly excessive settlements. He could be cutting but he always had a point to make.
And he never missed a meeting.
“Thank you for this exhausting dressing down of the probation department,” Preven said last Tuesday after the supervisors wrapped up rebuking officials for paltry programming inside juvenile halls. “The idea that we’re paying for these programs, these programs are scheduled, and nothing is happening is terrible.”
A New York native, Preven moved to Los Angeles to work in Hollywood, landing TV writing gigs on shows including “Popular” and “Reba.” His path into local activism began 15 years ago after his mother’s two chocolate labs were removed by the county’s animal control department following a fight with an off-leash dog, according to his family.
Preven, a canine lover known to throw parties with members of his local dog park, found the removal of the labs unjustifiable. He went to the Board of Supervisors meeting to tell them so. Then he went again. And again. And again.
Long after the dogs were returned, Preven kept going back.
“He started listening to the meeting and looking at the agenda, and he became just appalled at so many things that he saw,” said his brother, Joshua Preven. “He became so incensed by it.”
Preven became a fierce advocate for the public’s right to know what was happening in local meetings and kept close track of staff changes at City Hall. He was known to text local government reporters early on weekend mornings to ask why someone had stepped down from a city agency, or self-deprecatingly share his latest blog post on CityWatch, a local news site.
“My latest deep dive into my own navel,” he texted two weeks ago with his new article on the famed architect behind his historic home in Studio City’s foothills.
He often sent Times editors and reporters weekly emails on successes and shortcomings in their coverage. The county’s politicians and officials received similar messages about their governance.
“He could be irascible,” his brother said. “When he came and encountered the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, it became a really good use of that stubbornness.”
Preven was a dogged user of the California Public Records Act, finding gems of records buried in seldom-scrutinized agencies. He filed so many record requests to the Animal Care and Control department that the county assigned an attorney just to deal with them, according to Dawyn Harrison, the county’s top lawyer.
“Eric was the epitome of an engaged constituent and critic of local government, persistently questioning and challenging government officials,” Harrison said. “As his interest in County government grew, so did the range of his requests; so, my office decentralized the handling of his requests because no one person could cover all the subjects he looked into. He was a true watchdog.”
Supervisor Janice Hahn said Preven had been scrutinizing her and her colleagues ever since she was a councilmember at City Hall.
“Eric Preven never let those with power in government forget who we work for. … He pushed us, he challenged us, and he had an opinion on everything — from the biggest issue of the day to the more routine contract votes that too often go overlooked,” she said. “While some people wrote him off, I thought there was always truth in what he had to say.”
Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, whose district includes parts of Studio City, said he “took seriously the role of citizen, religiously participating in County meetings.”
In addition to his brother, Preven is survived by his sister, Anne Preven, his mother, Ruth Preven, his father, David Preven, and two children, 28-year-old Isaac Rooks Preven and 26-year-old Reva Jay Preven.
Preven ran several times for public office, launching idiosyncratic campaigns for mayor, city council and county supervisor. He barely fundraised and wasn’t allowed in many of the debates, said his brother, who helped out as his campaign manager.
“We didn’t know what the hell we were doing at all,” Joshua Preven said. “But he kept showing up.”
Times reporters Dakota Smith and David Zahniser contributed to this report.
A judge on Monday allowed the continued deployment of more than 300 West Virginia National Guard members to patrol the streets of Washington, D.C., as part of President Trump’s push to send the military into Democratic-run cities.
Kanawha County Circuit Judge Richard D. Lindsay made the ruling after hearing arguments in a lawsuit by a civic organization that argued Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey exceeded his authority when he authorized the Guard’s deployment in August.
“The question before this court is whether or not state law allows West Virginia to do this,” Lindsay said. “… This court believes that the federal law allows for the request made by the president to the governor.”
West Virginia is among several states that sent National Guard members to the nation’s capital. While the state National Guard has said its deployment could last until the end of November, it is consulting with the governor’s office and others on the possibility of extending the stay.
Formal orders were issued last week extending the deployment of the District of Columbia’s National Guard in the city through the end of February.
“We are pleased with the judge’s decision,” Jace Goins, the state’s chief deputy attorney general, said outside the court in Charleston. “The National Guard are going nowhere. They’re staying in D.C. They’re not going to be redeployed to West Virginia.
“The judge made the determination that the governor made a lawful decision deploying the National Guard to D.C. by a lawful request of the president.”
The West Virginia Citizen Action Group, which filed the lawsuit, argued that under state law, the governor could deploy the National Guard out of state only for certain purposes, such as responding to a natural disaster or another state’s emergency request.
The civic group claimed that it was harmed by the deployment by being forced to refocus its resources away from government accountability and transparency. The state attorney general’s office sought to reject the case, saying the group has not been harmed and lacked standing to challenge Morrisey’s decision.
“It was a simple issue of a broad, lawful request by the president and a lawful deployment by the governor. That’s all,” Goins said.
Aubrey Sparks, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union’s West Virginia chapter, said she didn’t believe it was the correct decision.
“I think that West Virginia law is clear,” Sparks said. “I think what the state was permitted to do here is to skirt past West Virginia law simply because Trump asked them to. And that’s not how the law works. We remain deeply concerned about it.”
Trump issued an executive order in August declaring a crime emergency in the nation’s capital, although the Department of Justice itself says violent crime there is at a 30-year low.
Within a month, more than 2,300 Guard troops from eight states and the District of Columbia were patrolling under the Army secretary’s command. Trump also deployed hundreds of federal agents to assist them.
Separately, a federal judge heard arguments Oct. 24 on District of Columbia Atty. Gen. Brian Schwalb ’s request for an order that would remove National Guard members from Washington streets. U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, an appointee of former President Biden, did not rule from the bench.
WASHINGTON — President Trump has pardoned his former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, his onetime chief of staff Mark Meadows and others accused of backing the Republican’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The “full, complete, and unconditional” pardon for dozens of Trump allies are largely symbolic. It applies only to federal crimes, and none of the people named in the proclamation were charged federally over the bid to subvert the election won by Democrat Joe Biden. It doesn’t affect state charges, though state prosecutions stemming from the 2020 election have hit a dead end or are just limping along.
Ed Martin, the Department of Justice’s point person on pardons and a former lawyer for the Jan. 6 defendants, linked his announcement of the pardons to a post on X that read “No MAGA left behind.”
Also named were Republicans who acted as fake electors for Trump and were charged in state cases accusing them of submitting false certificates that confirmed they were legitimate electors despite Biden’s victory in those states.
The pardon described efforts to prosecute the Trump allies as “a grave national injustice perpetrated on the American people” and said the pardons were designed to continue “the process of national reconciliation.” Giuliani and others have denied any wrongdoing, arguing they were simply challenging an election they believed was tainted by fraud.
“These great Americans were persecuted and put through hell by the Biden Administration for challenging an election, which is the cornerstone of democracy,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an emailed statement.
Those pardoned were not prosecuted by the Biden administration, however. They were charged only by state prosecutors who operate separately from the Justice Department.
An Associated Press investigation after the 2020 election found 475 cases of potential voter fraud across the six battleground states, far too few to change the outcome.
Impact of the pardons is limited
Giuliani, a former New York City mayor, was one of the most vocal supporters of Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of large-scale voter fraud after the 2020 election. He also is an example of the limited impact of the pardons.
Giuliani has been disbarred in Washington, D.C., and New York over his advocacy of Trump’s bogus election claims and lost a $148-million defamation case brought by two former Georgia election workers whose lives were upended by conspiracy theories he pushed. Since pardons only absolve people from legal responsibility for federal crimes, they’re unlikely to ease Giuliani’s legal woes.
Ted Goodman, a spokesperson for Giuliani, said the former mayor “never sought a pardon but is deeply grateful for President Trump’s decision.”
“Mayor Rudy Giuliani stands by his work following the 2020 presidential election, when he responded to the legitimate concerns of thousands of everyday Americans,” Goodman said in an emailed statement.
While the pardons may have no immediate legal impact, experts warned they send a dangerous message for future elections.
“It is a complete abdication of the responsibility of the federal government to ensure we don’t have future attempts to overturn elections,” said Rick Hasen, a UCLA law professor. “Ultimately, the message it sends is, ‘We’ll take care of you when the time comes.’”
Some pardoned were co-conspirators in Trump’s federal case
Trump himself was indicted on federal felony charges accusing him of working to overturn his 2020 election defeat, but the case brought by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith was abandoned in November after Trump’s victory over Democrat Kamala Harris because of the department’s policy against prosecuting sitting presidents. Giuliani, Powell, Eastman and Clark were alleged co-conspirators in the federal case brought against Trump but were never charged with federal crimes.
Giuliani, Meadows and others named in the proclamation had been charged by prosecutors in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin over the 2020 election, but the cases have repeatedly hit roadblocks or have been dismissed. A judge in September dismissed the Michigan case against 15 Republicans accused of attempting to falsely certify Trump as the winner of the election in that battleground state.
Eastman, a former dean of Chapman University Fowler School of Law in Southern California, was a close adviser to Trump in the wake of the 2020 election and wrote a memo laying out steps Vice President Mike Pence could take to stop the counting of electoral votes while presiding over Congress’ joint session on Jan. 6 to keep Trump in office.
Clark, who is now overseeing a federal regulatory office, also is facing possible disbarment in Washington over his advocacy of Trump’s claims. Clark clashed with Justice Department superiors over a letter he drafted after the 2020 election that said the department was investigating “various irregularities” and had identified “significant concerns” that may have affected the election in Georgia and other states.
Clark said in a social media post Monday that he “did nothing wrong” and “shouldn’t have had to battle this witch hunt for 4+ years.”
Richer writes for the Associated Press. AP reporter Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York is facing mounting pressure to step aside as leader of the Senate Democratic caucus after eight members voted against his wishes Sunday, joining Republicans in a bid to end the longest government shutdown in history.
The vote was just the latest development in a troubling week for the 74-year-old Schumer, who, after eight years as the top Senate Democrat, has faced growing calls from within the party to make way for a new generation of leadership.
Elections last week revealed the emergence of a growing progressive movement in Schumer’s hometown, where the longtime senator declined to endorse Zohran Mamdani in his successful bid for New York City mayor.
National progressive organizations on Monday urged him to step down and have encouraged a popular congresswoman in the state, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to run for his Senate seat in 2029. Polls show Schumer faces the lowest approval numbers of any national leader in Washington.
His leadership troubles come on the heels of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), the first female speaker of the House, announcing her retirement, a decision that generated praise across the political aisle last week reflecting on her shrewd ability to control a sprawling House Democratic caucus during high-stakes votes.
“Schumer is no longer effective and should be replaced,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) wrote on X after the Sunday night vote. “If you can’t lead the fight to stop healthcare premiums from skyrocketing for Americans, what will you fight for?”
Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the top Democrat in the House, told reporters Monday that he strongly disapproved of the emerging deal in the Senate, where seven Democrats and one independent who caucuses with the party voted to proceed with government funding.
For seven weeks, House and Senate Democrats said they would not vote for legislation to reopen the government unless they were able to secure an extension of health insurance subsidies. But the deal reached in the Senate indicated how some Democrats gave in on that bottom-line negotiation.
Schumer reiterated his disapproval of the spending deal in a speech from the floor Monday. He criticized the compromise as a “Republican bill” even though members of his party helped broker the deal.
“Republicans now own this healthcare crisis,” Schumer said. “They knew it was coming. We wanted to fix it and they said no, and now it is on them.”
As Schumer delivered his speech, Jeffries spoke to reporters at a news conference on the other side of the Capitol.
Asked whether he thought Schumer remained an effective leader and should remain in his position, Jeffries replied, “yes and yes.”
When pressed to elaborate, Jeffries said “the overwhelming majority of Senate Democrats led by Chuck Schumer waged a valiant fight,” and turned his disapproval to the Democrats who voted with Republicans on the bill.
“I am not going to explain what a handful of Senate Democrats have decided to do,” Jeffries said. “That’s their explanation to offer to the American people.”
Now that the effort turns to the House, Jeffries said Democrats in the chamber will try to block a deal that does not address healthcare costs.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom offered harsh criticism of Senate Democrats on Monday, who he said had “rolled over.”
After speaking at the Milken Institute’s Global Investors’ Symposium in São Paulo, Newsom told The Times that the move blunted the momentum his party was experiencing following a string of victories last week.
“You don’t start something unless you’re going to finish,” said Newsom, who next heads to the climate summit known as COP30 in Belém, Brazil. “Why the hell did we do this in the first place? We could have gotten this deal in 20 minutes. … Honestly, I don’t know what’s going on with my party.”
Zach Wahls, a Democratic candidate for Senate in Iowa, said Schumer had “failed to lead this party in one of its most critical moments,” calling for him to step down. And Rep. Seth Moulton, a Democrat from Massachusetts, wrote that an effective leader would have been able to keep party members in line.
“Tonight is another example of why we need new leadership,” Moulton wrote on X.
The eight members who voted to reopen the government — 15% of the Senate Democratic caucus — voted directly against Schumer, who voted against the measure.
Wahls speculated that the moderate members who voted with Republicans were privately given Schumer’s blessing to do so.
“The fact that he voted against this deal, while he clearly gave it his blessing in private, is a perfect illustration of why people no longer trust the Democratic Party,” Wahls said, “and as long as he stays in a leadership role, it is going to be impossible for anybody — whether it’s in Iowa or any other swing state — to win a majority.”
Times staff writers Wilner and Ceballos reported from Washington, and Gutierrez contributed from São Paulo.
SACRAMENTO — One takeaway from last week’s elections: The role model for California Gov. Gavin Newsom as he runs for president should be New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.
Actually, Mamdani should be emulated not only by Newsom but by Democrats running for office anywhere.
Neither Newsom, of course, nor any candidate outside the most leftist burgs in America should wear the label “democratic socialist,” as Mamdani calls himself. That would frighten too many voters.
But what does appeal to voters — and always has in America — is a strong, positive message of hope. People like to think that a candidate understands their daily troubles and has a vision of how to make their lives better.
Mamdani is a 34-year-old Ugandan-born Muslim of Indian descent and a back-bench New York state assemblyman who the political experts would never figure to win a top-tier elective post such as New York mayor. But he has charisma, exudes authenticity and fills voters with hope.
OK, some of his campaign promises are undeliverable, even in liberal New York: free bus service, free child care and city-run grocery stores. But I suspect many voters didn’t take those pledges literally. It was the boldness and commitment to change for their betterment that drew people to him.
It’s a message framework that has been a winner throughout history.
Franklin D. Roosevelt promised “a new deal for the American people” and gave them hope with his radio fireside chats during the Great Depression.
John F. Kennedy offered a “new frontier.” Barack Obama chanted, “Yes we can” and ran on a slogan of “hope.”
They were all Democrats. But Republican founder Abraham Lincoln urged Americans to “vote yourself a farm and horses” and promised them homesteads on the western frontier.
Ronald Reagan declared: “Let’s make America great again.” Then Donald Trump stole the line and ruined it for any future candidate.
Newsom’s spiel has mostly been that Trump is lower than a worm. That has worked up until now. He has established himself as the Democrats’ most aggressive combatant against Trumpism — and the leader in early polling for the party’s 2028 presidential nomination.
Last week, his national party credentials were bolstered after orchestrating landslide voter approval of Proposition 50, aimed at countering Trump-coerced congressional redistricting in Texas and other red states.
Trump is desperate for the GOP to retain its narrow majority in the House of Representatives during next year’s midterm elections. But Proposition 50 gerrymandering could flip five California seats from Republican to Democrat — perhaps helping Democrats capture House control. Newsom becomes a party hero.
“He’s now a serious front-runner for the Democratic nomination,” says Bob Shrum, a former Democratic consultant who is director of the Center for the Political Future at USC.
Political strategist Mike Murphy, a former Republican turned independent, says “the Democratic presidential race in ‘25 has been won by Gavin Newsom. He made a bet [on Proposition 50] and it paid off.”
But Shrum, Murphy and other veteran politicos agree that Newsom at some point must change his script from predominantly anti-Trump to an appealing agenda for the future.
“He has to have an affordability message, for one,” Shrum says. “And he has to connect with voters. Voters just don’t go down a list of issues. FDR, JFK, Obama, they all were very connected with voters.”
Murphy: “He’s going to have to expand from fighting Trump to talking about his vision for helping the middle class. I’d say, ‘The era of Trump will soon be over. I have a way to bring back the American dream and here’s how I’m going to do it.’”
Easier said than done, especially if you’re the governor of troubled California.
“If it’s about a referendum on California, he has a vulnerability,” Murphy says. “He can’t run on ‘California is great.’”
Newsom consistently brags that California is a pacesetter for the nation. But lots of Americans want nothing to do with our pacesetting.
“You can’t have the highest unemployment, highest gas prices and the biggest homeless problem and tell Americans that everything in California is hunky-dory,” says Republican consultant Rob Stutzman. “Because voters don’t believe that.”
But Democratic consultant Bill Carrick, a South Carolina native, dismisses the effect of anti-California attitudes in Democratic presidential primaries.
“The notion that he can’t win in the South and border states, that’s nonsense,” Carrick says. “People who say that are Republicans. They don’t like Newsom or any other Democrat. People who vote in primaries are hardcore Democrats.”
But Carrick acknowledges that an anti-California bias could hurt Newsom in some states during a general election.
Here’s another takeaway from the elections: The Democratic Party is not in the toilet as far as it has been soul-searching since last November’s presidential election.
Last week, Democrats won everything from local commissioner to governor in much of the country. It confirmed my belief that the party’s chief problem in 2024 was a lousy presidential effort.
President Biden didn’t withdraw early enough for the party to hold primaries that would have allowed its nominee to build wide support. And Kamala Harris simply lacked appeal and didn’t inspire.
Democratic voter enthusiasm was contagious this time.
“There was one of the most exciting ground operations I’ve seen in a long time for 50,” says Democratic strategist Gale Kaufman. “Local party clubs, activists, union members all came together.”
Democrats can thank Trump.
“Voters really don’t trust Democrats but they‘re so angry with Trump it doesn’t matter,” says Dan Schnur, a political science instructor at USC and UC Berkeley.
Final takeaway: Trump has morphed into a Republican albatross.
The so-called resistance party has given up the shutdown fight, ensuring that millions of Americans will face Republican-created skyrocketing healthcare costs, and millions more will bury any hope that the minority party will find the substance and leadership to run a viable defense against Trump.
Sunday night, eight turncoat Democrats sold out every American who pays for their own health insurance through the affordable marketplaces set up by President Obama.
As has been thoroughly reported in past weeks, Republicans are dead set on making sure that insurance is entirely out of financial reach for many Americans by refusing to help them pay for the premiums with subsidies that are part of current law, offered to both low- and middle-income families.
Republicans — for reasons hard to fathom other than they hate Obama, and apparently basics such as flu shots — have long desired to kill the ACA and now are on the brink of doing so, in spirit if not actuality, thanks to Democrats.
Trump must be doing his old-man jig in the Oval Office.
The pain this craven cave-in will cause is already evident. Rates for 2026 without the government subsidies have been announced, and premiums have doubled on average, according to nonpartisan health policy researchers KFF. Doubled.
Insurance companies are planning on raising their rates by about 18%, already devastating and symptomatic of the need for a total overhaul of our messed-up system. That increase, coupled with the loss of the subsidies beginning at the start of next year, means a 114% jump in costs for the folks dependent on this insurance. Premiums that cost an average $888 in 2025 will jump to $1,904 in 2026, according to KFF.
But it’s the middle-income people who will really be hit.
“On average, a 60-year-old couple making $85,000 … would see yearly premium payments rise by over $22,600 in 2026,” KFF warns, meaning that instead of paying 8.5% of their entire income toward health insurance, it will now jump to about 25%.
Merry Christmas, America.
While the eight Democrats who broke from their party to allow this to happen are directly responsible (thankfully our California senators are not among them), Democratic leadership should also be held accountable.
A party that can’t keep itself together on the really big votes isn’t a party. It’s a a bunch of people that occasionally have lunch together. Literally, they had one job: Stick together.
The failure of Democratic leadership to make sure its Senate votes didn’t shatter in this intense moment isn’t just shameful, it’s depressing. For all of the condemnation of the Republican members of Congress for failing to uphold their duty to be a check on the power of the presidency, here’s the opposition party rolling over belly up on the pivotal issue of healthcare.
As California Rep. Ro Khanna put it on social media, “Senator Schumer is no longer effective and should be replaced. If you can’t lead the fight to stop healthcare premiums from skyrocketing for Americans, what will you fight for?”
If the recent elections had any lessons in them, it’s that Democrats — and voters in general — want courage. Love or hate Zohran Mamdani, his win as New York City mayor was due in no small part for daring to forge his own path. Ditto on Gov. Gavin Newsom and Proposition 50.
Mamdani put that sentiment best in his victory speech, promising an age when people can “expect from their leaders a bold vision of what we will achieve, rather than a list of excuses for what we are too timid to attempt.”
Before you start angry-emailing me, yes, I do understand how much pain the shutdown in causing, especially for furloughed workers and those about to see their SNAP benefits cut off. I feel for every person who doesn’t know how they will pay their bills.
But here are the facts that we can’t forget. Republicans have purposefully made that pain intense in order to break Democrats. Trump has found ways to pay his deportation agents, while simultaneously not paying critical workers such as airport screeners and air traffic controllers, where the chaos created by their absence is both visible and disruptive. He has also threatened to not give back pay to some of those folks when this does end.
And on the give-in-or-don’t-eat front, he’s actually been ordered by courts to pay those SNAP benefits and is fighting it. Republicans could easy band together and demand that money goes out while the rest is hashed out, but they don’t want to. They want people to go hungry so that Democrats will break, and it worked.
But at what cost?
About 24 million people will be hit by these premium increases, leaving up to 4 million unable to keep their insurance. Unable to go to the doctor for routine care. Unable to pay for cancer treatments. Unable to have that lump, that pain, the broken bone looked at. Unable to get their kid a flu shot.
In many ways, this isn’t a California problem. The majority of these folks are in southern, Republican states that refused to expand Medicaid when they had the chance. About 6 in 10 subsidy recipients are represented by Republicans, according to KFF, led by those living in Florida, Georgia and Mississippi. But Americans have been clear that we want access to care for all of us, as a right, not an expensive privilege.
Which makes it all the more mystifying that Democrats are so eager to give up, on an issue that unites voters across parties, across demographics, across our seemingly endless divides.
A strange scene unfolded at the Adams/Vermont farmers market near USC last week.
The pomegranates, squash and apples were in season, pink guavas were so ripe you could smell their heady scent from a distance, and nutrient-packed yams were ready for the holidays.
But with federal funding in limbo for the 1.5 million people in Los Angeles County who depend on food aid from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — or SNAP — the church parking lot hosting the market was largely devoid of customers.
Even though the market accepts payments through CalFresh, the state’s SNAP program, hardly anyone was lined up when gates opened. Vendors mostly idled alone at their produce stands.
A line of cars stretches more than a mile as people wait to receive a box of free food provided by the L.A. Food Bank in the City of Industry on Wednesday.
“So far we’re doing 50% of what we’d normally do — or less,” said Michael Bach, who works with Hunger Action, a food-relief nonprofit that partners with farmers markets across the greater L.A. area, offering “Market Match” deals to customers paying with CalFresh debit cards.
The deal allows shoppers to buy up to $30 worth of fruit produce for only $15. Skimming a ledger on her table, Bach’s colleague Estrellita Echor noted that only a handful of shoppers had taken advantage of the offer.
All week at farmers markets where workers were stationed, the absence was just as glaring, she said. “I was at Pomona on Saturday — we only had six transactions the whole day,” she said. “Zero at La Mirada.”
CalFresh customers looking to double their money on purchases were largely missing at the downtown L.A. market the next day, Echor said.
A volunteer loads up a box of free food for a family at a drive-through food distribution site in the City of Industry.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
“This program usually pulls in lots of people, but they are either holding on to what little they have left or they just don’t have anything on their cards,” she said.
The disruption in aid comes as a result of the Trump administration’s decision to deliver only partial SNAP payments to states during the ongoing federal government shutdown, skirting court order to restart funds for November. On Friday night, Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson temporarily blocked the order pending a ruling on the matter by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
A study published by her team last year found that 25% of residents in L.A. County — or about 832,000 people — experienced food insecurity, and that among low-income residents, the rate was even higher, 41%. The researchers also found that 29% of county residents experienced nutrition insecurity, meaning they lacked options for getting healthy, nutritious food.
Those figures marked a slight improvement compared to data from 2023, when the end of pandemic-era boosts to state, county and nonprofit aid programs — combined with rising inflation — caused hunger rates to spike just as they did at the start of the pandemic in 2020, de la Haye said.
“That was a big wake-up call — we had 1 in 3 folks in 2020 be food insecure,” de la Haye said. “We had huge lines at food pantries.”
But while the USC study shows the immediate delivery of food assistance through government programs and nonprofits quickly can cut food insecurity rates in an emergency, the researchers discovered many vulnerable Angelenos are not participating in food assistance programs.
Despite the county making strides to enroll more eligible families over the last decade, de la Haye said, only 29% of food insecure households in L.A. County were enrolled in CalFresh, and just 9% in WIC, the federal nutrition program for women, infants and children.
De la Haye said participants in her focus groups shared a mix of reasons why they didn’t enroll: Many didn’t know they qualified, while others said they felt too ashamed to apply for aid, were intimidated by the paperwork involved or feared disclosing their immigration status. Some said they didn’t apply because they earned slightly more than the cutoff amounts for eligibility.
Even many of those those receiving aid struggled: 39% of CalFresh recipients were found to lack an affordable source for food and 45% faced nutrition insecurity.
De la Haye said hunger and problems accessing healthy food have serious short- and long-term health effects — contributing to higher rates of heart disease, diabetes and obesity, as well greater levels of stress, anxiety and depression in adults and children. What’s more, she said, when people feel unsure about their finances, highly perishable items such as fresh, healthy food are often the first things sacrificed because they can be more expensive.
The USC study also revealed stark racial disparities: 31% of Black residents and 32% of Latinos experienced food insecurity, compared to 11% of white residents and 14% of Asians.
De la Haye said her team is analyzing data from this year they will publish in December. That analysis will look at investments L.A. County has made in food system over the last two years, including the allocation of $20 million of federal funding to 80 community organizations working on everything from urban farming to food pantries, and the recent creation of the county’s Office of Food Systems to address challenges to food availability and increase the consumption of healthy foods.
“These things that disrupt people’s ability to get food, including and especially cuts to this key program that is so essential to 1.5 million people in the county — we don’t weather those storms very well,” de la Haye said. “People are just living on the precipice.”
LONDON — The BBC reported Monday that President Trump sent a letter threatening legal action over the way a speech he made was edited in a documentary aired by the British broadcaster.
The BBC’s top executive and its head of news both quit Sunday over accusations of bias and misleading editing of a speech Trump delivered on Jan. 6, 2021, before a crowd of his supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington.
Asked about a letter from Trump threatening legal action over the incident, the BBC said in a statement on Monday that “we will review the letter and respond directly in due course.” It did not provide further details.
Earlier, Trump welcomed the resignations of BBC Director-General Tim Davie and news chief Deborah Turness, saying the way his speech was edited was an attempt to “step on the scales of a Presidential Election.”
The hourlong documentary — titled “Trump: A Second Chance?” — was broadcast as part of the BBC’s “Panorama” series days before the 2024 U.S. presidential election. It spliced together three quotes from two sections of the 2021 speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.” Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.
In a resignation letter to staff, Davie said: “There have been some mistakes made and as director-general I have to take ultimate responsibility.”
Turness said the controversy was damaging the BBC, and she quit “because the buck stops with me.”
Turness defended the organization’s journalists against allegations of bias.
“Our journalists are hardworking people who strive for impartiality, and I will stand by their journalism,” she said Monday. “There is no institutional bias. Mistakes are made, but there’s no institutional bias.”
BBC chairman Samir Shah apologized Monday for the broadcaster’s “error of judgment,” saying the broadcaster “accept[s] that the way the speech was edited did give the impression of a direct call for violent action.”
Trump posted a link to a Daily Telegraph story about the speech-editing on his Truth Social network, thanking the newspaper “for exposing these Corrupt ‘Journalists.’ These are very dishonest people who tried to step on the scales of a Presidential Election.” He called that “a terrible thing for Democracy!”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reacted on X, posting a screen grab of an article headlined “Trump goes to war with ‘fake news’ BBC” beside another about Davie’s resignation, with the words “shot” and “chaser.”
Trump speech edited
Pressure on the broadcaster’s top executives has been growing since the right-leaning Daily Telegraph published parts of a dossier compiled by Michael Prescott, who had been hired to advise the BBC on standards and guidelines.
As well as the Trump edit, it criticized the BBC’s coverage of transgender issues and raised concerns of anti-Israel bias in the BBC’s Arabic service.
The “Panorama” episode showed an edited clip from the January 2021 speech in which Trump claimed the 2020 presidential election had been rigged. Trump is shown saying: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
According to video and a transcript from Trump’s comments that day, he said: “I’ll be there with you, we’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down. Anyone you want, but I think right here, we’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
“Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.
“I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Trump used the “fight like hell” phrase toward the end of the speech, but without referencing the Capitol.
“We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” Trump said.
In a letter to Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Shah said the purpose of editing Trump’s words had been “to convey the message of the speech” so that viewers could understand how it had been received by Trump’s supporters and what was happening on the ground.
He said the program had not attracted “significant audience feedback” when it first aired but had drawn more than 500 complaints since Prescott’s dossier was made public.
Shah acknowledged in a BBC interview that “it would have been better to have acted earlier. But we didn’t.”
A national institution
The 103-year-old BBC faces greater scrutiny than other broadcasters — and criticism from its commercial rivals — because of its status as a national institution funded through an annual license fee of 174.50 pounds ($230) paid by all households who watch live TV or any BBC content.
The broadcaster is bound by the terms of its charter to be impartial, and critics are quick to point out when they think it has failed. It’s frequently a political football, with conservatives seeing a leftist slant in its news output and some liberals accusing it of having a conservative bias.
It has also been criticized from all angles over its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. In February, the BBC removed a documentary about Gaza from its streaming service after it emerged that the child narrator was the son of an official in the Hamas-led government.
Governments of both left and right have long been accused of meddling with the broadcaster, which is overseen by a board that includes both BBC nominees and government appointees.
Some defenders of the BBC allege that members of the board appointed under previous Conservative governments have been undermining the corporation from within.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s spokesman, Tom Wells, said the center-left Labor Party government supports “a strong, independent BBC” and doesn’t think the broadcaster is biased.
“But it is important that the BBC acts to maintain trust and corrects mistakes quickly when they occur,” he said.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed without comment a long-shot challenge to the constitutional right to marry for same-sex couples.
The justices turned away an appeal petition from Kim Davis, a former Kentucky county clerk who defied the court’s landmark decision in 2015 and repeatedly refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
She appealed after one couple sued and won $100,000 in damages plus attorneys fees for her deliberate violation of their constitutional rights.
She argued the court should hear her case to decide whether the free exercise of religion guaranteed by the 1st Amendment should have protected her from being sued.
Her appeal also posed a separate question she had not raised before in her long legal fight. She said the court should decide “whether Obergefell v. Hodges” which established the right to same-sex marriage “should be overturned.”
That belated question drew wide attention to her appeal, even though there was little or no chance it would be seriously considered by the high court.
Some LGBTQ+ advocates were concerned, however, because the conservative court had overturned Roe vs. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion in the Dobbs case of 2022.
Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for himself alone, said then “we should reconsider all of this court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” referring to cases on the rights to contraception, private sexual conduct and same-sex marriages.
But other conservative justices had disagreed and said abortion was unique. “Rights regarding contraception and same-sex relationships are inherently different from the right to abortion because the latter (as we have stressed) uniquely involves what Roe … termed ‘potential life,’ ” Justice Samuel Alito Jr. wrote in his opinion for the court.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett in her new book “Listening to the Law” described the right to marry as a “fundamental right” that is protected by the Constitution.
“The complicated moral debate about abortion stands in dramatic contrast to widespread American support for liberties like the rights to marry, have sex, procreate, use contraception, and direct the upbringing of children,” she wrote.
In July, the Williams Institute at the UCLA Schooll of Law school estimated there are 823,000 married same-sex couples in the United States and nearly 300,000 children being raised by them.
Davis had suffered a series of defeats in the federal courts.
A federal judge in Kentucky and the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati rejected her claims based on the free exercise of religion.
Former Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis speaks to reporters in Kentucky in 2015. The Supreme Court rejected her appeal to overturn the right to same-sex marriage.
(Timothy D. Easley / Associated Press)
Those judges said government officials do not have free speech or religious right to refuse to carry out their public duties.
“That is not how the Constitution works. In their private lives, government officials are of course free to express their views and live according to their faith. But when an official wields state power against private citizens, her conscience must yield to the Constitution,” wrote Judge Helene White wrote for the 6th Circuit Court in March.
Ten years ago, shortly after the court’s ruling in Obergefell vs. Hodges, Kentucky’s governor, the county’s attorney and a federal judge all told Davis that she was legally required to give a marriage license to same sex couples who applied for one.
She refused and said the county would issue no marriage licenses until she had been given a special exemption.
David Moore and David Ermold had been a couple for 19 years, and they filed suit after they were turned away from obtaining a marriage license on three occasions. Davis said she was acting “under God’s authority.”
A federal judge held her in contempt for refusing to comply with the law. While she was in jail, the couple finally obtained a marriage license from one of her deputies but their lawsuit continued.
The Kentucky legislature revised the law to say that county clerks need not put their name on the licenses issued by her office. Davis said that accommodation was sufficient, and she tried to have the lawsuit dismissed as moot.
The 6th Circuit refused because the claim for damages was still valid and pending. The Supreme Court turned away one of her appeals in 2019.
A federal judge later ruled she had violated the rights of Moore and Ermold, and a jury awarded each of them $50,000 in damages.
Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel in Orlando which advocates for religious freedom, appealed on her behalf.
His petition to the Supreme Court said the court should hear her case to decide whether the 1st Amendment’s protection for the free exercise of religion should shield a public official from being sued “in her individual capacity.”
The 6th Circuit Court rejected that claim in a 3-0 ruling.
“The Bill of Rights would serve little purpose if it could be freely ignored whenever an official’s conscience so dictates,” Judge White said.
“Indeed, it is not difficult to imagine the dire possibilities that might follow if Davis’s argument were accepted. A county clerk who finds interracial marriage sinful could refuse to issue licenses to interracial couples. An election official who believes women should not vote could refuse to count ballots cast by females. A zoning official personally opposed to Christianity could refuse to permit the construction of a church,” she said.
Judge Chad Readler, a Trump appointee, said even if public employees have some rights based on their religious views, “her conduct here exceeded the scope of any personal right. … Rather than attempting to invoke a religious exemption for herself, Davis instead exercised the full authority of the Rowan County Clerk’s office to enact an official policy of denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples, one every office employee had to follow.”
The California Supreme Court rejected a 1st Amendment challenge to a state law that protects the rights of gay and transgender people in nursing homes and forbids employees of those sites from using the wrong pronouns to address a resident or co-worker.
The ruling, handed down Friday, holds that violations of the LGBT Long-Term Care Residents’ Bill of Rights are not protected by the 1st Amendment because they relate to codes of conduct in what is in effect a workplace and a home.
“The pronouns provision constitutes a regulation of discriminatory conduct that incidentally affects speech,” the court ruled.
The opinion reversed an appeals court ruling that held provisions in the 2017 law relating to patient pronouns and names could impede an employee’s freedom of speech. Five justices signed on to the main opinion; two signed on to a concurrence. There were no dissents.
“All individuals deserve to live free from harmful, disrespectful rhetoric that attacks their sense of self, especially when receiving care necessary for their continued well-being,” Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said in a written statement commending the ruling. “State law prohibits discrimination and harassment in the workplace. I am glad that the California Supreme Court agrees with us on the importance of these protections and has affirmed their constitutionality.”
The group challenging the law, Taking Offense, asserted in its lawsuit that the provision mandating that long-term care facilities use people’s chosen pronouns amounts to “criminalizing and compelling speech content.”
Taking Offense described itself in court documents as a group opposing efforts “to coerce society to accept transgender fiction that a person can be whatever sex/gender s/he thinks s/he is, or chooses to be.”
The court ruled that the LGBT Long-Term Care Residents’ Bill of Rights “will be violated when willful and repeated misgendering has occurred in the presence of a resident, the resident hears or sees the misgendering, and the resident is harmed because the resident perceives that conduct to be abusive.”
The LGBT Long-Term Care Residents’ Bill of Rights is enforced by a section of California’s Health and Safety Code. Penalties can range from civil fines to criminal misdemeanor prosecutions — the potential for criminal penalties was a major element of Taking Offense’s argument. The court’s decision noted that other protections for long-term care facility residents have long carried both civil and criminal penalties.
“It seems apparent that the Legislature does not intend for such criminal penalties to be imposed except as a last resort, in the most egregious circumstances,” wrote the decision’s author, California Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero.
The opinion made comparisons to other free-speech decisions with similar elements, such as the 1995 U.S. Supreme Court decision holding that the the Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston could not force St. Patrick’s Day parade organizers to include them.
“By contrast, the present case does not involve any analogous creative product or expressive association,” Guerrero wrote, concluding that the California law is instead regulating people’s conduct.
States administering a federal food aid program serving about 42 million Americans faced uncertainty Monday over whether they can — and should — provide full monthly benefits during an ongoing legal battle involving the U.S. government shutdown.
President Donald Trump’s administration over the weekend demanded that states “undo” full benefits that were paid under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program during a one-day window between when a federal judge ordered full funding and a Supreme Court justice put a temporary pause on that order.
A federal appeals court in Boston left the full benefits order in place on Sunday, though the Supreme Court order ensures the government won’t have to pay out for at least 48 hours. The Trump administration is also expected to ask the justices to step in again, and Congress is considering whether to fund SNAP as part of a proposal to end the government shutdown.
Some states are warning of “catastrophic operational disruptions” if the Trump administration does not reimburse them for those SNAP benefits they already authorized. Meanwhile, other states are providing partial monthly SNAP benefits with federal money or using their own funds to load electronic benefit cards for SNAP recipients.
Millions receive aid while others wait
Trump’s administration initially said SNAP benefits would not be available in November because of the government shutdown. After some states and nonprofit groups sued, two judges each ruled the administration could not skip November’s benefits entirely.
The administration then said it would use an emergency reserve fund to provide 65% of the maximum monthly benefit. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell said that wasn’t good enough, and ordered full funding for SNAP benefits by Friday.
Some states acted quickly to direct their EBT vendors to disburse full monthly benefits to SNAP recipients. Millions of people in those states received funds to buy groceries before Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson put McConnell’s order on hold Friday night, pending further deliberation by an appeals court.
Millions more people still have not received SNAP payments for November, because their states were waiting on further guidance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP.
Trump’s administration has argued that the judicial order to provide full benefits violates the Constitution by infringing on the spending power of the legislative and executive branches.
States are fighting attempt to freeze SNAP benefits
On Sunday, the Trump administration said states had moved too quickly and erroneously released full SNAP benefits after last week’s rulings.
“States must immediately undo any steps taken to issue full SNAP benefits for November 2025,” Patrick Penn, deputy undersecretary of Agriculture, wrote to state SNAP directors. He warned that states could face penalties if they did not comply.
Wisconsin, which was among the first to load full benefits after McConnell’s order, had its federal reimbursement frozen. As a result, the state’s SNAP account could be depleted as soon Monday, leaving no money to reimburse stores that sell food to SNAP recipients, according to a court filing submitted by those that had sued.
Some Democratic governors vowed to challenge any federal attempt to claw back money.
In Connecticut, Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont said “those who received their benefits should not worry about losing them.”
“No, Connecticut does not need to take back SNAP benefits already sent to the 360,000 people who depend on them for food and who should have never been caught in the middle of this political fight,” Lamont said. “We have their back.”
Lieb and Mulvihill write for the Associated Press. Associated Press writers Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin; John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; and Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.
The Los Angeles Police Department took more than a year to begin fully disclosing domestic abuse allegations against officers after the state passed a law that mandates reporting and can trigger permanent bans from police work in California.
The revelation came out through testimony at an administrative hearing last month for a rookie LAPD officer who was fired after the department alleged she committed time card fraud and physically assaulted her former romantic partner, a fellow cop.
A sergeant from the LAPD’s serious misconduct unit testified in a proceeding against Tawny Ramirez, according to Ramirez’s attorney and evidence from the closed-door hearing reviewed by The Times. The sergeant said the department did not start reporting certain spousal abuse cases to the state until after Ramirez was terminated in early February 2024. That is more than a year after rules took effect requiring the LAPD and other police agencies to promptly report officers accused of “serious misconduct” to the state’s police accreditation body, which grants authorization to work in law enforcement.
Senate Bill 2, passed in 2021, made domestic violence one of the nine categories of “serious misconduct” — including excessive force, dishonesty, sexual assault and acts of bias on the basis of factors including race, sexual orientation and gender — that police agencies are obligated to report to the state’s Commission on Police Officer Standards and Training, or POST.
The LAPD sergeant testified that the reporting practices were based on guidance from POST’s former compliance director, who said at a training session that agencies did not have to “report first-time misdemeanor domestic violence,” according to Ramirez’s attorney Nicole Castronovo and the hearing evidence reviewed by The Times.
Ramirez appealed the basis for her firing and has maintained she did not commit any misconduct. She denied allegations she abused her former partner.
LAPD officials believed the partial POST reporting went “against best practices” and tried to get the directive in writing, the sergeant testified, but still went along with what the official advised, according to Castronovo and the hearing evidence.
When the department sought further clarification from the POST compliance director’s successor, officials were informed that nearly all domestic-related incidents must be reported, Castronovo said.
She said she tried to press the LAPD about how many of these cases may have gone unreported, but the department said it didn’t know.
When SB 2 took effect in January 2023, police agencies were supposed to start disclosing “serious misconduct” to POST within 10 days of learning of credible allegations.
The sergeant who testified declined comment and directed questions to the department’s press office, which in a statement said that at the time SB 2 was being rolled out the LAPD “consulted” with POST “to determine which misconduct types required reporting.”
“The Department was advised that first-time, non-aggravated domestic battery did not meet the reporting threshold,” the statement read. “The Department followed this guidance, reporting only those cases with aggravating factors. In 2024, the Department adopted a new standard of reporting all allegations of domestic battery, regardless of severity.”
Ramirez’s lawyer said the testimony raises questions about the LAPD’s compliance with the law — and whether it has gone back to report other officers’ past offenses.
“It’s very scary to think that that crime wouldn’t be reported,” Castronovo said.
The LAPD accused Ramirez of assaulting her ex, Jorge Alvarado, in May 2023 based on a texted photo he provided that showed yellowish bruising on his arm from where she had squeezed it, according to the hearing evidence. Ramirez maintains Alvarado was bruised during consensual sex and argued at her at an administrative hearing that the department was unwilling to consider emails, text messages and other evidence she tried to provide that cast doubt on her accuser’s account.
The couple started dating in 2022 while both were at the Police Academy, according to Ramirez. She claims she tried to end the relationship after a few months when Alvarado turned overbearing and possessive. A colleague from Topanga Division helped her fill out an application for a temporary restraining order, Ramirez said.
A judge denied the stay away order on the grounds that Ramirez wasn’t in imminent danger, and Alvarado did not face any charges.
Alvarado did not respond to a request for comment sent to his department email.
According to hearing evidence, Alvarado first disclosed the alleged abuse by Ramirez during an interview with LAPD Internal Affairs in January 2024. Ramirez was fired less than a month later — weeks shy of completing her 18-month probationary period — after the department alleged that she lied about her reason for taking time off from work.
Meagan Poulos, a spokesperson for POST, said she wasn’t familiar with Ramirez’s case but if anything, the state agency deals with police departments “over-reporting” misconduct. Poulos said data on serious misconduct reports from the LAPD were not immediately available for review.
She added that reporting is not mandatory for spousal abuse cases that are quickly deemed unfounded or that don’t prompt an Internal Affairs investigation, and suggested LAPD officials may have “misconstrued” that to mean they didn’t have to report any such cases.
“I don’t know if that’s the case in this particular case, but I can say that’s not something that POST would advise any agency to not do,” she said.
According to Poulos and data from the agency, in 2023 there were 250-plus law enforcement agencies — the vast majority of which have fewer than 50 officers — that didn’t report a single case of serious misconduct. She said the agency regularly sends out reminders about their obligations under SB 2.
Larger agencies like the LAPD and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department have their own coordinators or standalone units charged with referring qualifying cases to state authorities for consideration. In a brief statement, the Sheriff’s Department said it has been its “practice since the inception of SB 2 to report all allegations of acts that violate the law.”
POST revoked 57 officers’ certification this year, compared to 84 last year. Another 43 officers voluntarily surrendered their certifications, while 77 had theirs at least temporarily suspended.
A POST notification doesn’t automatically result in an officer losing his or her policing certificate. Cases are reviewed by a disciplinary board comprised of civilians with a professional or personal background related to police accountability. That board convenes every few months to review POST’s investigation of misconduct allegations and recommend whether the commission should seek decertification.
Ramirez told The Times the LAPD initially said domestic violence had nothing to do with her firing. She says she was unfairly accused of violating department policy during a 2023 incident in Canoga Park in which she and another officer used force while trying to take a man into custody. It was only later that the photos of Alvarado’s bruises were used against her, Ramirez said, along with an allegation of time card fraud — which she also denies.
The LAPD said Ramirez lied and told her supervisor she needed time off to take care her of her ailing brother when she actually went to apply for a job at the Beverly Hills Police Department.
Ramirez said she was a caregiver for her brother — who has since died — and that she was applying to the Beverly Hills job in an attempt to get away from Alvarado.
Alvarado was placed on administrative leave after Ramirez reported him but has since completed his probationary period and been elevated to the rank of Police Officer II.
A decision from the LAPD disciplinary review process on whether Ramirez can be fired remains pending. She thinks it’s unfair her ex has been allowed to return to work while she’s stuck in limbo.
“Here I am still trying to get my job back and he’s a happy officer, enjoying his benefits, while I’m living this nightmare,” she said.
Times staff writer Connor Sheets and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — A group of moderate Democrats has a tentative deal to reopen the government if Republicans promise to hold a vote on expiring healthcare subsidies by December, a potential breakthrough as lawmakers seek to end the shutdown.
The group of three former governors — New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan and Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine — has a deal to pass three annual spending bills and extend the rest of government funding until late January, according to three people familiar with the agreement who requested anonymity until the deal is made public.
The deal was far from assured, and final passage of the legislation could take several days. Republicans had not yet said whether they supported the deal, and it was unclear whether there would be enough Democrats to support it absent their central demand through the now 40-day shutdown — an extension of the Affordable Care Act tax credits that expire Jan. 1.
After Democrats met for more than two hours to discuss the proposal, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer emerged to say he would vote “no.” Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who caucuses with the Democrats, said as he walked into the meeting that it would be a “horrific mistake to cave in to Trump right now.”
Republicans have been working with the group of moderates as the shutdown continues to disrupt flights nationwide, threaten food assistance for millions of Americans and leave federal workers without pay. But many Democrats have warned their colleagues against giving in, arguing that they can’t end the fight without an agreement to extend the health subsidies.
Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said earlier in the day that a potential deal was “coming together.” But he has not yet publicly endorsed it.
“We’ll see where the votes are,” Thune said.
Returning to the White House on Sunday evening after attending a football game, Trump did not say whether he endorsed the deal. But he said, “it looks like we’re getting close to the shutdown ending.”
Democrats have now voted 14 times not to reopen the government as they have demanded the extension of tax credits that make coverage more affordable for health plans offered under the Affordable Care Act. Republicans have refused to negotiate on the healthcare subsidies while the government is closed, but they have so far been supportive of the proposal from moderate Democrats as it emerged over the last several days.
The contours of a deal
The agreement would fund parts of government — food aid, veterans programs and the legislative branch, among other things — and extend funding for everything else until the end of January. It would take up Republicans on their longstanding offer to hold a future vote on the healthcare subsidies, with that vote occurring by the middle of December, the people said.
The deal would reinstate federal workers who received reduction-in-force, or layoff, notices and reimburses states that spent their own funds to keep federal programs running during the shutdown. It would also protect against future reductions in force through January, the people said, and guarantee all federal workers would be paid once the shutdown is over.
Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, home to millions of federal workers, said he would support the deal.
“I have long said that, to earn my vote, we need to be on a path toward fixing Republicans’ healthcare mess and to protect the federal workforce,” Kaine said.
Alongside the funding fix, Republicans released final legislative text of three full-year spending bills Sunday. That legislation keeps a ban on pay raises for lawmakers but boosts their security by $203.5 million in response to increased threats. There’s also a provision championed by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to prevent the sale of some hemp-based products.
Democratic pushback expected
Republicans only need five votes from Democrats to reopen the government, so a handful of senators could end the shutdown with only the promise of a later vote on healthcare. Around 10 to 12 Democrats have been involved in the talks, and the three people familiar with the agreement said they had enough votes to join with Republicans and pass the deal.
Many of their Democratic colleagues are saying the emerging deal is not enough.
“I really wanted to get something on healthcare,” said Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin. “I’m going to hear about it right now, but it doesn’t look like it has something concrete.”
House Democrats were also chiming in against it. Texas Rep. Greg Casar, the chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said a deal that didn’t reduce healthcare costs was a “betrayal” of millions of Americans who were counting on Democrats to fight.
“Accepting nothing but a pinky promise from Republicans isn’t a compromise — it’s capitulation,” Casar said in a post on X. “Millions of families would pay the price.”
Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota posted that “if people believe this is a ‘deal,’ I have a bridge to sell you.”
Even if the Senate were to move forward with funding legislation, getting to a final vote could take several days if Democrats who oppose the deal object and draw out the process. The first vote, which could come as soon as Sunday evening, would be to proceed to consideration of the legislation.
Republicans preview healthcare debate
There is no guarantee that the Affordable Care Act subsidies would be extended if Republicans agreed to a future vote on healthcare. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has said he will not commit to a health vote.
Some Republicans have said they are open to extending the COVID-19-era tax credits as premiums could skyrocket for millions of people, but they also want new limits on who can receive the subsidies and argue that the tax dollars for the plans should be routed through individuals.
Other Republicans, including Trump, have used the debate to renew their years-long criticism of the law and called for it to be scrapped or overhauled.
“THE WORST HEALTHCARE FOR THE HIGHEST PRICE,” Trump said of the Affordable Care Act in a post Sunday.
Shutdown effects worsen
Meanwhile, the consequences of the shutdown were compounding. U.S. airlines canceled more than 2,000 flights on Sunday for the first time since the shutdown began, and there were more than 7,000 flight delays, according to FlightAware, a website that tracks air travel disruptions.
Treasury Secretary Sean Duffy said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that air travel ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday would be “reduced to a trickle” if the government didn’t reopen.
At the same time, food aid was delayed for tens of millions of people as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits were caught up in legal battles related to the shutdown. More than two dozen states warned of “catastrophic operational disruptions” as Trump’s administration was demanding states “undo” benefits paid out under judges’ orders last week, now that the U.S. Supreme Court has stayed those rulings.
And in Washington, home to millions of federal workers who have gone unpaid, the Capital Area Food Bank said it was providing 8 million more meals than it had prepared to in this budget year — a nearly 20% increase.
Jalonick and Mascaro write for the Associated Press. Associated Press writers Stephen Groves and Kevin Freking contributed to this report.
PALM DESERT — Joy Miedecke, who runs the largest Republican club in the Coachella Valley, handed out scores of “No on Prop. 50” lawn signs before election day.
But Tuesday morning, she knew the ballot measure would pass.
Proposition 50, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to challenge President Trump, easily prevailed last week. The ballot measure, created to level the playing field with Republican gerrymandering efforts in Texas and other GOP states, reconfigured California congressional districts to favor Democrats as they try to take back the U.S. House of Representatives in next year’s midterms.
As a consequence, Coachella Valley’s Republicans could soon be represented by anti-Trump Democrats in Washington.
California Republicans, far outnumbered by those on the left, for years have felt ignored in a state where Democrats reign, and the passage of Proposition 50 only adds to the sense of political hopelessness.
“The Democrats get their way because we don’t have enough people,” said Miedecke, of her party’s struggles in California.
Bordered by the San Jacinto and Santa Rosa mountains, the desert basin has long been a magnet for conservative retirees and vacationers, including former Republican presidents.
A cluster of palm trees light the evening landscape on Frank Sinatra Drive in Rancho Mirage.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
The local hospital is named after President Eisenhower. President Ford enjoyed the many emerald golf courses in his later years and his wife, former first lady Betty Ford, founded her namesake addiction treatment center in the desert valley.
Voters in Indian Wells, parts of La Quinta and Cahuilla Hills backed Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Under Prop. 50, some or all of those areas will move to a congressional district led by Democrat Raul Ruiz, an emergency room physician raised in the Coachella Valley, or join with left-leaning San Diego County suburbs in a new meandering district specifically crafted to favor Democratic candidates.
Joy Miedecke of Indio is president of the East Valley Republican Women Patriots. She blames the California GOP for failing to adequately fund opposition to Proposition 50.
“The party is at the bottom,” said Miedecke, 80. “It’s at the very bottom. We have nowhere to go but up.”
Sitting in her club’s retail store on Wednesday, Miedecke blamed the California Republican Party and its allies, saying they failed to raise enough money to blunt Prop. 50’s anti-Trump message.
A life-sized cardboard cutout of California Republican gubernatorial candidate and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco stood near stacks of red MAGA hats and “Alligator Alcatraz” T-shirts. A President Reagan cardboard cutout also greeted visitors.
Volunteer Chris Mahr checks signatures on petitions at the East Valley Republican Women Patriots on Nov. 6 in Palm Desert. Republicans fear Proposition 50’s passage will weaken representation in the Coachella Valley.
Republican voters in the Coachella Valley spent the days after the Nov. 4 special election criticizing the Republican Party and California’s Democratic leadership. In Facebook chat groups, in bars and on neighborhood walks, locals weighed in on the new congressional district lines and the proxy battle between Trump and Newsom.
On Wednesday, gleaming Lincoln Navigators and Cadillac Escalades cruised down a main drag, past tidy green lawns before disappearing into residential communities hidden behind sand-colored gates.
Kay Hillery, 89, who lives in an Indian Wells neighborhood known for its architecturally significant Midcentury Modern homes, is bracing for more bad news.
She anticipates that GOP congressional candidates will have a harder time raising money because the new districts marginalize Republicans.
“I am ashamed of the Republicans for not getting out the vote,” said Hillery, who moved to the desert from Arcadia in 1989.
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1.A ceramic figurine of Trump is on display at the East Valley Republican Women Patriots store in Palm Desert.2.A Trump key chain dangles on top of a large God Bless America button which hangs next to a hair dryer and a Bible inside “Just Marylou” hair salon.3.Inside the “Just Marylou” hair salon is decorated in Republican posters and slogans.
Voters who backed Prop. 50, however, were reenergized.
“It’s important to take a position when we need to, and we needed to take a position as a state,” said Linda Blank, president of the Indian Wells Preservation Foundation.
Indian Wells is best known for its premiere tennis tournament, top-level golf courses and palm tree-lined roadways. Eisenhower, who lived in Indian Wells part time, is memorialized with a statue outside City Hall.
The heavily Republican city for years hosted the state’s Republican Party convention and donor retreats organized by right-wing libertarians David and Charles Koch. (David Koch died in 2019.)
Following Tuesday’s election, Indian Wells will lose its Republican representative, Ken Calvert, and become part of the newly drawn district that reaches into San Diego County.
That area is represented by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Bonsall), but Democrats are trying to oust him by extending his district into bluer neighborhoods.
Michael Ford, left, Sonny Bono, center, and John Gardner Ford, right of Bono, attend the third day of the 1976 Republican National Convention at Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Mo.
(Guy DeLort/Penske Media via Getty Images)
A major portion of the Riverside County desert region once was represented by Rep. Sonny Bono, the singer, who was a Republican. After he was killed in a ski accident in 1998, his wife, Mary Bono, also a Republican, ran for his seat and served in Congress until 2013.
The Coachella Valley is now a political patchwork, home also to the Democratic havens of Palm Springs and Cathedral City and divided towns of Rancho Mirage and Palm Desert.
Today, the region is split into congressional districts held by Calvert, a Republican who lives in far-off Corona, and Democrat Ruiz.
Calvert announced last week that he’ll run in a new district in Orange and Riverside counties. The good news for Calvert is that it’s a heavily Republican district. The bad news is Republican Rep. Young Kim of Anaheim Hills is also running in that district.
Calvert, in an emailed statement, blamed Newsom for disenfranchising Republicans throughout California — who account for 5.7 million of the 22.9 million voters in the state.
“Conservatives deserve to have their voices heard, not be drowned out by partisan moves to advance a one-sided political agenda,” said Calvert. His office didn’t respond when asked about the congressman’s views on Texas’ redistricting actions.
Indian Wells Mayor Bruce Whitman said Calvert was instrumental in directing millions of dollars to a wash project that will help development.
U.S. flags adorn El Paseo Shopping District on Nov. 6 in Palm Desert.
In nearby liberal Palm Springs, city leaders passed a resolution supporting immigrants and celebrated an all-LGBTQ+ city council in 2017.
Indian Wells’ political leadership remains apolitical, Whitman said.
“National issues like sanctuary city resolutions, or resolutions supporting Israel or Palestinians — it’s just not our thing,” he said.
At the Nest bar in Indian Wells, tourists from Canada and Oregon on Wednesday night mingled with silver-haired locals.
As Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” played, 60-something resident John — who declined to give his last name— predicted the redistricting wars would end as a “wash” between California and Texas.
“It’s just a game,” he said, sounding dismissive.
Sandra Schulz of Palm Desert, executive vice president of the East Valley Republican Women Patriots, stands in front of a wall covered with Trump photographs and paintings on Nov. 6 in Palm Desert.
Dan Schnur, who teaches political communications at USC and UC Berkeley, sees another outcome. Taking away congressional representation from the party’s last remaining conservative bastions leaves the party even less relevant, he said.
The California Republican Party hasn’t done meaningful statewide work since then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger left office, Schnur said.
“They decided many years ago that they just weren’t going to engage seriously in state politics anymore,” said Schnur. “If you’re a California Republican, you focus on national politics and you work on local races.”
Tourists look at the Republican items in the store window at the East Valley Republican Women Patriots store on Nov. 6 in Palm Desert.
In 2007, then-Gov. Schwarzenegger spoke at a GOP state party convention in Indian Wells and warned his fellow Republicans that they needed to pivot to the political center and attract more moderates.
Schwarzenegger drew a parallel to the film industry, telling the convention crowd: “We are dying at the box office. We are not filling the seats.”
The former governor opposed Prop. 50, but limited his involvement with Republicans in the campaign to defeat the measure.
Indian Wells resident Peter Rammer, 69, a retired tech executive, described himself as a Republican who didn’t always vote along party lines. He is increasingly frustrated with Democrats’ handling of homelessness in California.
He voted against Prop. 50, but predicted the Democratic wins in New Jersey and Virginia would force the Republican Party to pay more attention to regional issues.
“I’m just not happy with how everything is going on the country right now,” said Rammer, standing outside Indian Wells City Hall. “There’s just so much turmoil, it’s crazy. But Trump — the guy I voted for — causes a lot of it.”
American flags adorn El Paseo Shopping District in staunchly Republican Palm Desert.
Back in Palm Desert, Republican club president Miedecke was focused on the next campaign: Getting the word out about a ballot measure by Assemblymember Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego).
It would require voter ID and proof of citizenship in California elections — another polarizing issue.
SACRAMENTO — A November initiative could dramatically transform California politics, raising taxes to pay for publicly financed campaigns, strictly limiting private giving and taking particular aim at ballot measure spending.
If voters approve Proposition 89 and it withstands court challenges, California will become the first state to restrict spending on ballot measures, though the limits would not apply to two of the biggest players in state politics: trial lawyers and Indian tribes that own casinos.
The initiative’s restrictions apply to corporations. Many trial lawyer firms are limited liability partnerships; Indian tribes are governments.
An unlikely coalition has formed to beat the measure. Led by the California Chamber of Commerce, the foes include the California Republican Party, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and groups that in other instances are their fierce rivals: some of the state’s most influential unions, including the 300,000-member California Teachers Assn.
The initiative’s sponsor is itself a union, albeit a maverick, the California Nurses Assn. The measure’s backers include Treasurer Phil Angelides, Schwarzenegger’s Democratic challenger; Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.); and California Common Cause. Out of deference to Angelides, the Democratic Party is neutral, though Chairman Art Torres said the party might challenge one or more aspects of the initiative if it wins.
The 70,000-member nurses union contends that big-spending healthcare companies have stymied its goal of providing broader medical coverage. The union decided to press its proposal after drug companies spent more than $80 million last year to block a labor-backed initiative to curb prescription drug prices.
“When patients get diagnosed and can’t afford the prescriptions, there is something wrong,” said Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the nurses union.
Dubbed the Clean Money and Fair Elections Act of 2006, Proposition 89 is a highly complex measure of more than 50 pages. It would raise corporate and banking taxes by $200 million a year to create public financing for candidates for state office.
It would cap donations to legislative candidates at $500 and to statewide candidates at $1,000; restrict fundraising by the Republican and Democratic parties; and limit single donors to spending no more than $15,000 a year on candidate-related campaigns.
Current law says donors can give $3,300 to a legislative candidate and $22,300 to a candidate for governor per election, but contributors have no overall cap on the money they can give.
All that might be a big enough bite for a single initiative. But the proposed statute goes further. In one of its most far-reaching provisions, Proposition 89 would rein in spending on ballot measures, a dramatic step that even its backers say could be unconstitutional. The backers hope to overturn past court rulings on such limits.
In any election year, propositions consume the most campaign money. Already, more than $100 million has been raised for and against two initiatives on the November ballot, one that would raise oil taxes and another that would raise tobacco taxes.
Proposition 89 would limit direct corporate donations to $10,000 per ballot measure. The limit would extend from public companies such as Chevron to family farms and large private developers such as the Irvine Co. Chevron has spent more than $16.5 million to defeat the oil tax initiative, Proposition 87, on the November ballot.
Union foes contend that labor groups also would be barred from giving more than $10,000 to a ballot measure campaign if they have side businesses, including printing shops and credit unions. The nurses association says unions would not be subject to the limit. Any affected group or business could give more by establishing political action committees and soliciting donations from executives, stockholders and others.
Individuals still could spend unlimited sums on ballot measures. This year, Hollywood producer Stephen L. Bing, scion of a real estate magnate, promoted the oil tax initiative with at least $39 million of his own money.
At least two other major sources of campaign cash — attorneys who represent plaintiffs and wealthy Indian tribes — could continue spending unlimited amounts for and against propositions.
“It amounts to unilateral disarmament,” said John Sullivan of the corporate-funded group Californians for Civil Justice Reform, which seeks to limit litigation against business and is a rival of the trial attorneys lobby.
Chamber President Allan Zaremberg denounced Proposition 89 as a “virtual ban on corporate participation in the political process.” Democratic consultant Gale Kaufman, who represents the California Teachers Assn., criticized it as “totally gratuitous.”
Insurance companies, which often clash with trial attorneys in Sacramento, account for more than half of the $1.3 million raised so far against Proposition 89. The nurses union is Proposition 89’s biggest financial supporter, having spent $1.4 million to qualify it for the November ballot and $822,000 on the campaign.
Executives in the nurses union say there was no intention to exempt attorneys or tribes. Rather, their attorneys went as far as they thought they could without clearly violating the Constitution, DeMoro said.
“We don’t have a hidden agenda,” she said.
Most trial lawyer firms are set up as limited liability partnerships, as are many accountancy and venture capital firms and at least one oil company that is siding with Chevron in opposing the oil tax initiative. Such partnerships would not be bound by restrictions on corporate giving to ballot measures, the initiative’s promoters say.
Trial law firms and their organization, the Consumer Attorneys of California, regularly donate more than $1 million a year to state campaigns. The group has not taken a stand on the initiative. But trial lawyers and the California Nurses Assn. have been allies in past campaigns.
In 2004, for example, the two groups fought Proposition 64, which limits lawsuits; it won voter approval. In the June primary, lawyers and nurses also formed an alliance to help fund an $870,000 independent campaign to support and oppose legislative candidates.
Also among the state’s biggest spenders on ballot measures are Indian tribes. They have shelled out more than $150 million on propositions since 1998. Like individuals, they could continue to spend unlimited sums on ballot measures, backers of the initiative say.
“Constitutionally, we cannot restrict tribes’ spending on ballot measures,” said Santa Monica attorney Fredric Woocher, who helped write the initiative.
The U.S. Supreme Court, he noted, has ruled that donors cannot be barred from giving “just because they spend a lot of money.”
Woocher’s firm has represented the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, which owns two casinos in the Palm Springs area and has spent more than $27 million on state campaigns since 1998. However, Woocher said he wasn’t thinking of tribes when he was working on the measure.
Much of Proposition 89 is similar to “clean money” laws in Arizona and Maine. But no other state regulates contributions to ballot measures, in part because the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down past attempts to restrict ballot measure spending.
In addition to hiring Woocher, the nurses retained Richard L. Hasen, a Loyola Law School professor who last year wrote a law review article opining that the issue was “ripe for reexamination in light of the Supreme Court’s new-found deference to campaign finance regulation.”
“Just look at the amount of money. Corporations have an unlimited playground,” said Susan Lerner, executive director of the California Clean Money Campaign, a nonprofit group that is helping to promote Proposition 89.
As some foes see it, the corporate restrictions represent the flip side of initiatives defeated in 2005 and 1998 that attempted to limit union donations. Major unions and California business reached a truce last year, agreeing not to pursue restrictions. Nurses were not a party to that pact.
It was going to make California count, make it a contender after decades spent watching all those other pipsqueak states decide who among the legions of presidential candidates got to move into the Oval Office.
When California legislators–and Gov. Pete Wilson–agreed two years ago to move the state’s 1996 presidential primary forward from June to March, you could almost hear the silent chortles: Take that, New Hampshire! Back to the farm, Iowa!
And now that the state’s early presidential primary is a mere six months away, the nation’s most delegate-rich state can witness the result:
Nothing.
Sure, the candidates still plumb the state for money, just as they did in the old days. But apart from President Clinton’s trips, there are precious few actual campaign visits and little attention given to the issues peculiar to California. Even Wilson spent more than twice as much time out of state last month than he did tending to matters in Sacramento.
Some candidates still believe that California could ultimately play a big role in selecting the Republican nominee, even given the current dearth of activity. The state, after all, controls about 16%–or 163 of the 991–delegates needed to win the Republican nomination.
Scenarios abound, with California either putting a runaway victor over the top or deciding between two strong candidates. Then again, it could also add to a muddle of results that would force the nomination to be decided weeks later.
“California is going to play a significant role,” said Mark Helmke, communications director for Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar, who announced his candidacy in April. “It’s just that none of us could speculate on what that role is.”
Others in the perennially optimistic corps of campaign activists insist that California won’t matter because the front-runner (their candidate, of course) will have it all sewn up beforehand.
“The problem is that California is too late. This thing is going to end in the industrial Midwest,” said Mike Murphy, a senior aide in the campaign of former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander. Murphy was referring to a ring of primaries to be held the week before California’s.
This underwhelming outcome was utterly predictable, according to campaign seers. And there are both logical and logistic reasons.
California moved its primary up, but only to March 26, six weeks after the campaign-opening Iowa caucuses. Not eager to be left in the dust, a host of other states began to clamor.
New York, with the third-largest delegate pool, moved from early April to early March. Pennsylvania and Ohio moved from late spring to March 19, where they will join Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin in the massive Rust Belt regional primary.
The New England states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont and Maine similarly coalesced into a Yankee primary on March 5–three weeks before California’s primary.
All the movement left California in 32nd place in the 1996 campaign chronology, only slightly better positioned than if it had left the primary in June.
“We were dead last, along with New Jersey and a few other states,” said state Sen. Jim Costa (D-Fresno), who lobbied for an early primary for 14 long years. “We’re better off than we were then. We’re just not significantly better off.”
Because the early primary is a one-year experiment, legislators will have to take up its fate after next year. Costa said that he may propose moving it up even further for the 2000 election.
The state senator initially wanted to set this year’s primary for March 5, which would have made California the first big state on the election calendar. But he compromised with others in the Legislature, who argued that the state is so big that it would swallow up all but the richest candidates. Give the poorer candidates a chance to make their mark in earlier, smaller states, the argument went, and then their momentum could offset their lack of funds in California.
The upshot is this: Candidates are still cozying up to Iowa, whose caucuses are scheduled for Feb. 12, and New Hampshire, whose first-in-the-nation primary will be held eight days later.
They are patting backs and kissing babies in South Carolina, whose primary will be held March 2, on the grounds that it will serve either as a fire wall to block a surging campaign or will redouble the momentum of an earlier winner.
They are courting voters elsewhere in the South, where the Super Tuesday primary will be held March 12 and where voters will decide the fates of at least two of their own, Texas’ Phil Gramm and Tennessee’s Alexander.
All of this makes compelling strategic sense.
“The first focus has to be the first caucus and primaries,” said Charles Robbins, a spokesman for Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter. “They come first and if you don’t perform, you’re out of the game.”
Put another way, it would be political malpractice for a candidate to hang out in California when his time is better spent in the earlier states. Compounding matters is California’s status as a winner-take-all primary. That means a candidate who put all his marbles into the state and pulled, say, 48% of the vote would walk away without a delegate. Many other states dispense their delegates proportionally.
“No candidate is going to make a serious commitment to resources in a March primary simply because there’s no guarantee you’re going to get that far,” said an adviser to one of the campaigns. “It’s a huge gamble to put up that money and risk walking away with nothing.”
Another hindrance to actively campaigning in California is the fact that the state is so far from Washington, where no less than six of the nine Republican candidates are based.
One recent Thursday, for example, Specter jetted from Washington to Boston, held two campaign events and was back in the Capitol for Senate business by lunchtime.
“You can’t do that to California,” said his aide Robbins. “Just because of the geography, all the way on the other side of the country, it’s a real project.”
While the Republican candidates have not spent much time in California, their campaigns are starting to lay the foundations of an effort here.
Wilson’s campaign is rebuilding his longstanding organization, despite prominent defections to other camps and surveys that show the governor losing the state to front-runner Bob Dole of Kansas.
Besides having the only full-fledged campaign office in the state, Wilson’s operation has staffers specifically working to buoy his standing here, said spokesman Dan Schnur.
“For all their talk, none of the other campaigns are putting any time or energy into California at all,” he said. “They file in and out for fund-raisers, but beyond that there’s no indication of any serious organizational effort on the part of any of them.”
Wilson does have a leg up, but his opponents argue that his campaign may have folded by late March or, even if he stays in the race, they may be able to build enthusiasm here from the momentum of earlier victories.
Gramm has made the biggest splash, garnering the support of Republican legislative leaders Curt Pringle and Rob Hurtt, both of Orange County, and a host of activists. U.S. Rep. Christopher Cox of Newport Beach, who is heading Gramm’s California campaign, said the effort so far is a “very well-organized, low dollar” effort.
It will remain entirely a volunteer effort through the end of the year, he said.
“When you’re running statewide in California, it’s important to have money when it counts, not lavishly throw it around months in advance,” Cox said.
Dole has been here infrequently, but has tried to make a big splash when he has come. He salted one Los Angeles fund-raising trip with a high-profile assault on the entertainment industry.
Overall, the Dole campaign said, it has raised $1.5 million in its visits to California.
“Some analysts are suggesting that it will all be over before California,” said Dole spokesman Nelson Warfield. “Our attitude is that we are contesting every state very vigorously. We’re proceeding on the assumption that it is up for grabs.”
Former television commentator Patrick J. Buchanan has made three multi-day fund-raising trips to California since March–the same time frame in which he has visited Iowa 11 times and New Hampshire eight times. His aides say they are putting together networks of volunteers who will fan out in support of Buchanan.
Lugar and Alexander have raised money in California, and Lugar aides said they had particular luck with a direct mail drive that touted his proposal to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and replace income taxes with a national sales tax. Like the latter two, Specter has had a low profile here.
At some point, the Republican nominee will begin fighting the general election war here–one that President Clinton is already waging. Mindful that he needs to win the state in order to be reelected, Clinton has visited California 19 times in less than three years, more than any other state.
LONDON — The head of the BBC resigned Sunday after criticism of the broadcaster’s editing of a speech by President Trump.
The BBC said that Director-General Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness both announced their resignations Sunday.
Britain’s public broadcaster had been criticized for its editing of a speech Trump made on Jan. 6, 2021, before a mob of his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn his election defeat.
Critics said that the way the speech was edited for a BBC documentary was misleading in that it cut out a section in which Trump said that he expected his supporters would demonstrate peacefully.
“I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard,” Trump said in the speech, during which he also urged his supporters to “fight like hell.”
Trump was impeached and criminally indicted over his role in the ensuing Jan. 6 riot and insurrection. The felony charges were dropped after he won the 2024 election, as U.S. Justice Department policy holds that a sitting president may not be criminally prosecuted.
In a letter to staff, Davie said quitting the job after five years “is entirely my decision.”
“Overall the BBC is delivering well, but there have been some mistakes made and as director-general I have to take ultimate responsibility,” Davie said.
He said that he was “working through exact timings with the Board to allow for an orderly transition to a successor over the coming months.”
Turness said that the controversy about the Trump documentary “has reached a stage where it is causing damage to the BBC — an institution that I love. As the CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs, the buck stops with me.”
Pressure on the broadcaster’s top executives has been growing since the Daily Telegraph newspaper published parts of a dossier complied by Michael Prescott, who had been hired to advise the BBC on standards and guidelines.
As well as the Trump edit, it criticized the BBC’s coverage of transgender issues and raised concerns of alleged anti-Israel bias in the BBC’s Arabic service.
The Trump administration is demanding states “undo” full SNAP benefits paid out under judges’ orders last week, now that the Supreme Court has stayed those rulings, marking the latest swing in a seesawing legal battle over the anti-hunger program used by 42 million Americans.
The demand from the U.S. Department of Agriculture came as more than two dozen states warned of “catastrophic operational disruptions” if the administration does not reimburse them for those SNAP benefits they authorized before the Supreme Court’s stay.
Nonprofits and Democratic attorneys general sued to force the Trump administration to maintain the program this month. They won the favorable rulings last week, leading to the swift release of benefits to millions in several states.
But, even before it won a stay on those rulings through an appeal to the Supreme Court on Friday night, the Trump administration balked at reimbursing states for the initial round of SNAP payments. Wisconsin, for example, loaded benefits onto cards for 700,000 residents, but after the U.S. Treasury froze its reimbursements to the state, it anticipates running out of money by Monday, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ administration warned in a lengthy statement Sunday.
The lack of money could leave vendors unpaid and trigger escalating legal claims, the states warned. “States could face demands to return hundreds of millions of dollars in the aggregate,” the filing at the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals says.
That situation “would risk catastrophic operational disruptions for the States, with a consequent cascade of harms for their residents,” the filing concludes.
That filing arrived as the Department of Agriculture on Saturday told states it would now consider any payments made last week to be “unauthorized.”
“To the extent States sent full SNAP payment files for November 2025, this was unauthorized,” Patrick Penn, deputy undersecretary of Agriculture, wrote to state SNAP directors. “Accordingly, States must immediately undo any steps taken to issue full SNAP benefits for November 2025.”
Evers issued a quick response to the Trump administration’s demand. “No,” the governor said in a statement.
“Pursuant to and consistent with an active court order, Wisconsin legally loaded benefits to cards, ensuring nearly 700,000 Wisconsinites, including nearly 270,000 kids, had access to basic food and groceries,” Evers said. “After we did so, the Trump Administration assured Wisconsin and other states that they were actively working to implement full SNAP benefits for November and would ‘complete the processes necessary to make funds available.’ They have failed to do so to date.”
Bauer and Riccardi write for the Associated Press.
A week before California’s special election, Gavin Newsom made news by doing something practically unheard of. He told donors to stop sending money to pass Proposition 50.
It was a man-bites-piranha moment — a politician turning away campaign cash?!? — and amounted to a victory lap by California’s governor even as the balloting was still underway.
On Wednesday, less than 12 hours after the polls closed, Newsom sent another email. This one thanked backers for helping push the gerrymander measure to landslide approval — and asked them to open their wallets back up.
“Please make a contribution,” he pleaded, “to help us continue to go on the offense and take the fight to Trump.”
One campaign ended. Another seamlessly continued.
Though he’s been publicly coy, Newsom has been effectively running for president for the better part of a year, something even the most nearsighted observer can see. One envisions the restless governor, facing the end of his term, sitting in the Capitol and crossing days off his official calendar as he longingly gazes toward 2028.
He took a risk that an esoteric subject — congressional map-making — could be turned into a heartfelt issue. He gambled that voters would overlook the cost of a special election — close to $300 million — and agree to hand back the line-drawing powers they seized from Sacramento insiders and politicians who put their own interests first. In doing so, he further raised his national profile and bulked up an already formidable fundraising base.
None of which makes Newsom’s quest for the White House much more likely to succeed.
His biggest problem — and there’s no way to fix it — is that he comes from California, which, to many around the country, reads as far left, nutty and badly off track. Or, less harshly, a place that’s more secular, permissive and tax-happy than some middle-of-the-roaders are really comfortable with.
Take it from a Republican strategist.
“He’s obviously a talented politician,” said Q. Whitfield Ayres, a GOP pollster with extensive campaign experience in Georgia and other presidential swing states. “But if I were trying to paint a Democratic nominee as too liberal for the country, having the governor of California be the nominee would be an easy task … Too coastal. Too dismissive of ‘flyover’ country. Too much like the elites on both coasts that [President] Trump has run so successfully against for years now.”
That’s not just a partisan perspective.
The Democratic desire to win in 2028 “is very, very strong,” said Charlie Cook, a campaign handicapper who has spent decades impartially analyzing state and national politics. The presidential contest “will be determined by winning in purple states and purple counties and purple precincts,” Cook said, in places such as central Pennsylvania, rural Wisconsin and Georgia, where issues play differently than within California’s deeply blue borders.
For many primary voters, Cook suggested, ideology and purity testing will yield to a more cold-eyed and pragmatic calculation: a candidate’s perceived electability. He minimized Newsom’s smashing Proposition 50 victory. “He’s got to impress people on the road,” Cook said. “Not just a home game in a state that’s really tilted one way.”
As Democratic strategist David Axelrod noted, “the nature of presidential politics is the bar gets raised constantly.” Once the race truly begins, Newsom will be probed and prodded in ways he hasn’t experienced since his last physical exam, all in full public view.
“There is an army of opposition researchers, Republican and Democrat, who are going to scour every word he’s spoken as a public official in California since his days as San Francisco mayor and every official action he’s taken and not taken,” said Axelrod, who helped steer Barack Obama to the White House. “Who knows what they will yield and how he’ll respond to that.”
At the moment, Newsom is giving off a very strong Avenatti energy.
Newsom, of course, is vastly more qualified than the Los Angeles attorney ever was. But the political vibe — and especially the governor’s self-styled role as Trump-troller-in-chief — is very similar.
“If you’re talking about democracy over the dinner table, it’s because you don’t have to worry about the cost of food on the table,” Axelrod said. “If you have to worry about the cost of food on the table or your rent or your mortgage, insurance, electricity and all these things, you’re thinking about that.”
To stand any shot at winning his party’s nomination, much less the White House, Newsom will have to build support beyond his fan base with a message showing he understands voters’ day-to-day concerns and offers ways to improve their lives. Success will require more than passing a Democratic ballot measure in a Democratic state, or cracking wise on social media.
Because all those snarky memes and cheeky presidential put-downs won’t seem so funny if JD Vance is inaugurated in January 2029.
