Politics Desk

For Democrats or, for that matter, anyone who believes in checks and balances, things are starting to look up.

President Trump’s days of untrammeled war-making, law-breaking and generally doing whatever he damn well pleases may finally be drawing to a close. Public opinion, history and, especially, the surging price of gasoline and groceries, all point to a Democratic takeover of the House in November’s midterm election.

There’s a direct correlation between a president’s approval rating and the way his party performs at the midpoint of his term. Anything below 50% favorability portends political trouble; right now Trump’s positive standing in polls hovers around a dismal 40%.

Then there’s the history part. Since World War II, the party out of the White House has gained an average of more than two dozen House seats in midterm elections. Democrats need to pick up just three to take control beginning in January.

(While the Republican grip on the Senate seems weaker than just a few months ago, the GOP is still favored to hang onto the chamber in November.)

There is, however, a looming threat causing nervousness among Democrats and their allies as they contemplate a celebratory fall, a landmine of sorts buried deep in the congressional election process.

Let’s acquaint ourselves with Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution.

The pertinent language written by the Framers states, “Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members.” In other words, it’s up to the House and Senate to acknowledge and abide by the will of voters as expressed in the election returns.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, if you let your paranoia run wild, quite a lot. If the election outcome is close — and probably it would have to be very close — Republican lawmakers could theoretically seize on phony claims of fraud and effectively nullify the results of enough contests to deny Democrats control of the House.

There’s plenty of skepticism that would or could ever take place. But if it were to happen, hello, national crisis!

Normally, we could count on the occupant of the White House to humbly submit to the election returns, even if it’s a “shellacking” as President Obama called his walloping in the 2010 midterm election, or a “thumpin’ ” as President George W. Bush described his electoral spanking in 2006.

Not Trump.

This president has amply demonstrated the lengths to which he’ll go to overturn an honest election, siccing a violent mob on lawmakers certifying his 2020 defeat, telling endless lies and using the Justice Department to confiscate ballots and intimidate innocent election officials and others Trump deems his enemies.

He strong-armed Texas into a highly unusual, highly partisan redrawing of its congressional boundaries, an effort to net five seats and lengthen the odds against a Democratic takeover.

The move appears to have backfired, spurring voters in California and, last week, Virginia to redraw their state’s political maps to more than offset Texas and boost Democrats in November. (The Virginia results are being contested in court.)

Voters attend an Arlington Democrats redistricting vote watch party during a special election Tuesday in Virginia. A measure to redraw the state’s congressional map was narrowly approved.

(Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

That failure doesn’t take away Trump’s malign intent. And in the supine Speaker Mike Johnson, he has the perfect handmaiden to undermine the midterm vote.

In 2020, Johnson was the lead author of a Supreme Court brief seeking to overturn the results in four states that Joe Biden had indisputably won. That speaks to Johnson’s probity and integrity.

How would subversion of November’s election take place?

One theory goes like this: When the balloting is over, Johnson could appoint a House committee packed with Trump’s acolytes to investigate alleged voting irregularities. (And if you think Trump won’t be bellowing the words “rigged” and “fraud” in the face of defeat, you’ve either been in a coma or living on another planet for the last decade.)

Those hearings and the “evidence” they turn up could then be cited by election officials in key states — collaborators, if you will — as a reason to delay the certification of election results and block the seating of majority-making Democrats in the next Congress. In their place, the theory goes, Republicans could vote to fill those seats with GOP candidates who lost at the polls, keeping themselves in control.

Derek Muller, an election law expert, suggests that scenario is little more than a fever dream of doomsday devotees and overly nervous Nellies.

He said he’d be very surprised if all the election results weren’t certified by Jan. 3, when the new Congress convenes, given the legal remedies available to prevent stalling and undue delay. And, Muller said, there is no assurance Republicans would march in lockstep behind a plan to prevent the seating of Democrats.

Thwarting a duly elected Democratic majority “involves extraordinary coordination and precedents that have never occurred, with a unique convergence of factors,” said Muller, who teaches law at Notre Dame — though, he added, if control of the House came down to, say, a single seat “all bets are off.”

Far-fetched? Perhaps. Some of the spun-up theories surrounding November’s election do sound a bit like a product of political science fiction.

But what kind of president picks a fight with the pope? Plunges the world into crisis by unilaterally going to war with Iran with no exit plan? Demolishes the East Wing of the White House on an egotistical whim?

If Trump, an inveterate norm-buster, sees a way to keep his grip on unchecked power, don’t put anything past him.

After last year’s disastrous Eaton fire, Southern California Edison executives vowed to be transparent about what caused the inferno that killed at least 19 people and left thousands of families homeless in Altadena.

“As we better understand exactly what happened on Jan. 7, we do so with a commitment to remain transparent,” Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, the utility’s parent company, said in a published statement after the fire.

In court, however, Edison is keeping crucial documents of the cause of the Eaton fire secret, a legal strategy it has used to shield what happened in at least seven earlier wildfires it was blamed for igniting, according to a Times review.

Edison’s stance has caused mounting frustration with attorneys representing fire victims who are seeking compensation for their losses.

“The Eaton Fire cases should be decided on their merits, not on what information that SCE has been able to withhold,” lawyers for the victims wrote in a recent court filing.

State regulators have repeatedly criticized Edison for its secrecy in previous fires, saying it violated safety regulations and stopped officials from learning the root cause so that similar disasters could be prevented.

For more than a year, Edison employees have been gathering detailed information about what ignited the fire in an investigation the company is required to perform under state utility regulations.

But most of that information is being withheld by Edison’s claim of attorney-client privilege, as well as a protective order that it asked a judge to approve soon after the fire.

Protective orders are commonly used in civil lawsuits, but most cases do not have the broad ramifications to the public as the Eaton fire.

Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, at the Semafor World Economy Summit in Washington on April 14.

(Aaron Schwartz / Bloomberg)

Because of the secrecy, it’s not possible to know just what Edison has found, attorneys for Eaton fire victims said in a filing.

In past fires, regulators have requested from the company — and been denied — photographs, notes, text messages and other records generated by the Edison crew that was first to arrive at the site where the blaze ignited. The company has argued its attorney directed the crew, making the evidence privileged.

The victims’ lawyers say Edison shouldn’t be able to withhold from them most evidence from its investigation into the blaze by claiming that the findings and related documents are covered by attorney-client privilege and therefore confidential.

In a recent interview with The Times, Pizarro disagreed that the company was keeping information on the cause of the Eaton fire secret.

“We believe we’ve been transparent,” Pizarro said. “Facts are not privileged, and so we provided facts as we have known them.”

He said the company’s investigation was continuing. “We still, to this day, don’t fully understand what happened,” he said.

Pizarro said the protective order was needed to keep many things confidential, including some not related to the fire’s cause. For example, he said, it protects maps of the electrical system, which can’t be revealed because of terrorism concerns.

Signs blaming Southern California Edison for the Eaton fire are seen near cleared lots in the Altadena area of Los Angeles County on Jan. 5.

(Josh Edelson / AFP via Getty Images)

He pointed to several company disclosures, including two letters it sent to regulators soon after the Eaton fire that said it was evaluating whether a century-old transmission line, which hadn’t carried power since 1971, “could have become energized” and helped lead to the fire.

Pizarro said last year that the possible reenergization of that old line is a leading theory of the fire’s cause.

The company has said little else about the fire’s cause, other than it safely maintained and inspected the idle line, just like it did its energized lines.

Edison faces thousands of lawsuits from victims of the fire, which burned 14,021 acres and leveled a wide swath of Altadena. The lawsuits allege, in part, that the company was negligent for failing to safely maintain its transmission lines and for leaving the idle line in place when it knew it could become energized. Edison denies the claims of the lawsuits, which have been consolidated in L.A. County Superior Court.

Some documents that Edison says are not privileged and agreed to provide to the victims’ lawyers are sealed by a protective order that the company and the plaintiffs’ lawyers requested.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys often agree to such protective orders on the theory that doing so would allow the utility to more freely share information that could help their case.

Power lines hang from towers carrying power from the Southern California Edison Gould Station.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

Two months after the fire, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Laura Seigle signed the protective order — which covers documents that both sides provide in discovery — including business information deemed proprietary and personal customer data.

According to the protective order, if the case is settled, the lawyers will decide whether the sealed documents should be returned to Edison or destroyed.

If the case proceeds to trial, some of the evidence could become public.

Yet even with the protective order in place, plantiffs’ attorneys say Edison has refused to provide them with evidence from its investigation into the fire, saying it’s protected by attorney-client privilege.

The state-required investigations “are not private inquiries undertaken for SCE’s benefit and legal protection,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers wrote in a filing last year. “Those investigations are regulated activities that exist to protect the public and enhance public safety by preventing future fires.”

To begin those investigations, Edison’s crews often get to the ignition site before government officials. In the 2019 Saddleridge fire in Sylmar, an investigator from the Los Angeles Fire Department found the yellow police tape at the road leading to where the blaze started on the ground and an Edison truck leaving the site, according to his report.

California utility regulators have said the earliest observations at the scene are critical in determining what happened.

L.A. Fire Justice attorney Mikal Watts presents findings on the cause of the Eaton fire at transmission tower 3 at a January 2025 news conference in Pasadena.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Loretta Lynch, former president of the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates the electric companies, said she believed Edison was wrongly using attorney-client privilege and protective orders “as a sword to prevent justice.”

Lynch said the confidentiality could keep evidence of Edison’s possible negligence from being used at a future state hearing that will look at whether the company acted safely and prudently before the Eaton fire.

In that hearing, if the commission finds the company acted prudently, all damage costs will be covered by a state wildfire fund and Edison customers. The company and its shareholders would pay nothing.

“It’s time to stop this game of allowing utilities to be negligent and then walk away with their customers paying for it,” Lynch said.

Kathleen Dunleavy, an Edison spokeswoman, said the company’s “assertions of privilege in civil court have nothing to do” with the future state hearing on whether the company acted prudently.

Dunleavy added that the company has been cooperating with government fire investigators and the plaintiff lawyers, responding to their requests for data.

The government’s investigation into the cause of the fire has not yet been released.

Asked about the company’s withholding of documents in court, Pizarro pointed to a 2024 California Appeals Court decision that found that Edison’s assertion of attorney-client privilege to keep evidence sealed in litigation over the 2017 Creek fire was appropriate under the law. The court said that protecting the documents generated in the internal investigation from public disclosure allowed the company’s attorneys “to investigate not only the favorable but the unfavorable aspects” of their client’s situation.

Lawyers for victims of the Creek fire, which destroyed more than 100 homes and structures near Sylmar, say Edison failed to provide evidence that showed its line was a likely cause of the blaze, leading government investigators to initially wrongly blame electrical equipment owned by the L.A. Department of Water and Power. Edison continues to deny it caused the fire.

A fire truck makes its way past a portion of the Creek fire along Wheatland Avenue in Sylmar on Dec. 5, 2017.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

In the Eaton fire case, a few details of what’s in the confidential documents have been revealed in court, showing they could be significant when the first trial begins next year.

In February, plaintiff lawyers filed 13 sealed exhibits for only the judge to review, saying they showed how Edison had neglected inspections, maintenance and repair of the idle line. The records are subject to the protective order, shielding them from public view.

“There is ample evidence in this case that SCE performed more frequent and higher quality inspections and maintenance on its live equipment than it did on its inactive facilities,” they wrote.

“From all indications, SCE left Tower 208 virtually unattended for decades,” they added, referring to the pylon that held the idle line and was found to be the location of the fire’s first flames.

The plaintiff lawyers also said the protective order prevents them from disclosing photos to the public that show Edison left vegetation growing under the idle line while removing it from beneath the live wires running parallel to it, according to the court filing. Utility regulations require vegetation to be removed from under and around electric lines to reduce the risk of fire.

The lawyers added that the sealed documents showed that Edison was having problems with an outside contractor it had hired to inspect its transmission lines.

Asked about the filing, Pizarro said the claims were assertions by the plaintiff attorneys that would be debated in court.

Some legal experts have criticized the use of protective orders for keeping the public in the dark about dangerous corporate actions or products.

Lynch said protective orders and confidential settlements in wildfire litigation are preventing the public from learning information that could stop future deadly fires. She said California should consider legislation to ban the use of the secrecy tactics in wildfire lawsuits.

Firefighters work to contain the Saddleridge fire on Oct. 10, 2019, in the Sylmar neighborhood of Los Angeles.

(Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times)

The Times found protective orders in lawsuits against Edison for the 2017 Thomas fire and mudslides, which killed 23; the 2018 Woolsey fire, which killed three; the 2019 Saddleridge fire, which killed one; and the 2022 Fairview fire, which killed two. Those fires together caused billions of dollars in damages and destroyed thousands of homes.

Lawyers for the Eaton fire victims told the judge in February that the protective order, as well as similar secrecy orders in lawsuits over other fires, had kept them from speaking publicly about certain subjects in the courtroom, including what they knew about Edison’s line inspections.

“This is a significant case, against one of the world’s largest providers of electricity, which has, through the use of Confidentiality Protective Orders in other cases, impaired the Plaintiffs’ ability to fully inform the Court,” they wrote.

Late last month, Judge Seigle ordered Edison to give the victims’ lawyers more of the documents they had requested. The protective order limits the public’s access to them.

Q. Los Angeles has been selected as the site for how many Democratic National Conventions?

A. Three. Sorry, it’s a trick question. Besides the two real conventions now and in 1960, a reenactment of the 1924 convention was shot in the Shrine Auditorium for the movie “Sunrise at Campobello,” starring Ralph Bellamy as Franklin D. Roosevelt. The filming took place in 1960 just before the real convention convened.

Source: Los Angeles Times archives

At 21, he was the whiz-kid poll taker for George McGovern, an intense Harvard grad who went on to become an architect of Jimmy Carter’s come-from-nowhere victory in 1976. A pollster and strategist in five presidential campaigns, he became as well-known in Washington for his flamboyance and hair-trigger temper as for his skill at reading the political tea leaves.

These days, 41-year-old Patrick Caddell lives in self-exile from the nation’s capital. He works the phones from a lounge chair beside the pool at his Brentwood home. Almost every day, one of the many calls he takes comes from his friend and presidential candidate, Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr.

Caddell says he retired from professional politics in 1986, when he left Washington–a town he now says is “on the cutting edge of irrelevancy”–to take a job teaching political science at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Though his current role in the Brown campaign is unofficial, he has profoundly shaped the former governor’s election strategy. When Jerry Brown decries politicians’ addiction to money, or talks of the need to “take back our government,” he is playing a tune Caddell composed. The pollster wrote much of the speech Brown delivered last October when announcing his candidacy in Philadelphia, and Caddell is credited with helping Brown identify many of the themes he’s using to appeal to alienated, disaffected voters.

No one, it seems, is more alienated and disaffected than Caddell. He now finds the system he once so skillfully manipulated to be “corrupt to the core,” and he visibly bristles when discussing the “political, economic and media elite.” Caddell vents his spleen on a weekly political talk show aired on Century Cable, and says he is developing several film and television projects. As if to underline his transition to California, he drives a 1966 Mustang convertible and dresses in a casual style that might be considered slovenly in the nation’s capital.

But Caddell’s passion is still politics at the highest level. In addition to advising Brown, Caddell also reportedly prepared a memo for Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot, advising him on a strategy for developing a successful third-party presidential challenge. Over a bowl of Mongolian black-bean soup, Caddell seemed to revel in the role of insurgent, delivering his theories and pronouncements in the rapid fire, impatient style of a man who has plenty of ideas and too little time.

Question: What’s going on in the country? There’s obviously a tremendous amount of frustration with politics and politicians. What do you sense is happening in the minds of the electorate?

Answer: Politics is disconnected from the country. We were already seeing signs of protest in 1990–David Duke, Dianne Feinstein, Clayton Williams (of Texas) and Bernie Sanders (of Vermont) were all supping out of the same pot. And it wasn’t about ideology. For the last 25 years, the politicians in this country have presided over a decline, and it is impossible for them to acknowledge it. Because to change, to turn the country toward what has to be done, they would first have to tell the truth. And to do that would be to risk their own power, because, in a democracy, that means standing up and saying, “We have failed.” And the track record of people who do that is not very good. So the Democratic Party lives a lie, the Washington Establishment lives a lie: “Nothing’s really wrong, don’t worry about the $400-million deficit, just elect us.”

Q: This feeling of anti-incumbency has been building for a good while. Do you sense that it’s finally coming to a head?

A: There are three things that have brought us to what I think is a firestorm. First, an alienated public. Alienation is something I’ve been dealing with politically since the beginning of my career. But this is the worst I’ve ever seen it. In the 1960s, when you asked, “Do your leaders do what’s best for you and not for special interests?” people overwhelmingly agreed–60% or 70% of them. Now it’s totally reversed. People today simply believe the political and economic system is stacked against them.

The second thing is a sense of decline. This are people saying that America is not No. 1 anymore. Americans will rage against that idea, because all America is built on the notion that things will get better. Moving across that psychological divide is a major thing.

Q: So are you saying that you accept the notion that things won’t get better, that we are, in fact, in decline?

A: Absolutely! Get somebody up here to argue with me that, as individuals and as a society, we are better off now than we were in 1968. You don’t have to convince the American people of that–they now know it. Now the third thing, which I don’t think anyone has articulated yet, is that what we pass on should be greater than what we got. We leave our children a better America, and more opportunity. You kill that idea and you will kill this country. And that’s exactly what’s happening! That’s the overwhelming moral issue. When I look at the political leadership, the economic elite that has ripped off the country, the press that has been its propaganda mouthpiece, I tell you this: In their collective and individual pursuit of power, they have committed acts that are worse than treason. And that’s what the American people feel now. That is the third great force that is at work here, and we have not even seen the full fury of that yet.

Q: Is it your role to offer a prescription?

A: No. I want to be like Toto in “The Wizard of Oz.” I want to be the person who pulls back the curtain and shows them that there is no wizard, just an old man with a microphone. My job is to help people connect, and to see that they are not alone. I left politics, and I said I would never be in a venture where I couldn’t speak with my own voice. I don’t speak for Jerry Brown and he doesn’t speak for me.

Q: Still, are there mechanical things that can be done? For instance, term limits. Does that make any sense to you?

A: Yes. But it’s such a minor thing. In a functioning democracy, I think term limits are wrong. But at the moment, I think you need a hatchet. I believe that America faces a crisis that only rivals the Civil War and the Revolution which bore it. It’s not about term limits or campaign-financing reform, it’s about getting people in power. Tom Foley (the Speaker of the House) is not going to reform himself.

Q: Do you get rid of the legislature, do you get rid of the congressional staffs? Do you recreate the bureaucracy, do you move the government to Lincoln, Neb.?

A: I don’t know. First of all, nobody has a single answer. Maybe you should break up the government. You’ve got to cut the staffs down; they are out of control. But you don’t have to totally change the system. There’s nothing wrong with the Constitution. When I say this country needs a revolution, it needs a revolution of restoration. We must first get an agenda of consensus in this country–that the country is in crisis and that we are willing to come together to deal with it. It’s not about arguing if we like this health-care plan or that one. It’s about taking the big steps to save the country. That’s what the issue is, a commitment to change, to the restoration of American greatness. It’s that simple.

Q: If the system is corrupt, can’t one conclude that the political parties are corrupt as well?

A: Yes, and the Democratic corruption is much worse than the Republican corruption. I say that as a Democrat. My party is standing at the verge of following the Whigs into history, of disappearing overnight if they keep this up. The Republicans really do believe in what they say. When they say “Help the rich,” these people act in obedience to their principles. When people in my party do it, they do so in absolute treason of their principles. I’ve realized that my friends are more corrupt than my enemies . . . .

Q: What’s your relationship with Ross Perot? Do you meet with him, do you speak with him regularly?

A: I have had one meeting with Ross Perot, several months ago, and we talked and I encouraged him. Other than that I have nothing to say about my relationship with Ross Perot.

Q: Perot is apparently getting thousands of phone calls a day offering support. How come the public, which presumably knows next to nothing about Perot’s politics, is seemingly so eager to get behind him?

A: I don’t know if this is going to be real; he has a tough course ahead of him. But he is a genuine folk hero. When he goes on TV and talks, people listen. He’s said he will only run if his supporters pave the way for him, if they do the work. Instead of selling out to the Democrats or the Republicans, he says to the people, “I’ll sell out to you.” His message is the reverse of Jerry Brown’s. Jerry’s was, “If I build it, they will come.” Perot’s is, “If you build it, I will come.” His politics are much more complex than they seemed in the beginning. The man is pro-choice, pro-gun control. He’s a very eclectic guy.

Q: Tell me about Jerry Brown. How deep do you think his appeal can be?

A: I don’t know yet. He’s still growing, and they’re still responding. He has a transition to make from simply being the vehicle for discontent, to where people see him as an acceptable leader. You know, in all my life in politics, I am used to dealing with people who are basically finished men. Grown. One thing that struck me about Jerry Brown, in the last year or so, is that the guy is still growing. Can he pass the test of being a real leader in people’s minds? If so, he has many advantages that Ross Perot will never have. He can speak with knowledge about the government. He’s run it.

Q: How optimistic are you about Brown’s chances of capturing the nomination?

A: Every day Jerry Brown is raising $80,000 to $100,000 on his 800 number. He has gone from being a joke to being able to raise $100,000 every day, from people contributing less than $100! Man, I want to tell you, it’s out there, the people are ready. As far as I am concerned, the campaign is just beginning. What happens if Brown sweeps his way through the primaries? He’s going to go to the convention and tell the delegates that he is running on a platform that indicts them as personally corrupt. That’s going to be very tough for those folks to swallow.

This is going to be as exciting as 1968 was politically. We don’t know now how it’s going to shape up. But there are great forces there, and great moments of possibility.

I remember hearing the Washington insiders view of Jerry Brown: “Great message, wrong messenger.” And I would bristle. If your problem is the messenger, if you agree with his analysis of the problems with the political system, then I must ask, “How come his is the only voice?” The answer is there is not another voice, because they are not allowed in. We have a self-perpetuating class of people who have designed the system to keep anyone who questions it on the outside. It’s a system designed to take democracy away from the people. So when Jerry Brown raises the banner of taking back the country, they must kill this message. It’s a message of death for all of them. It is Cromwell, “Out, you are not a Parliament.”

Q: Jerry Brown is running a campaign that has similarities to the race you helped run for Jimmy Carter. Carter also ran as an outsider and a reformer. Can you make a comparison between the two campaigns?

A: It’s gotten much worse. With Carter, we were battling with muskets. Now it’s thermonuclear war. In 1976, the (Democratic) party was still a good party. It had not become what it is today.

Q: If the system is indeed failing, can this leadership recharge the engine, get the growth back? Or do we just have to face the reality of decline?

A: This country cannot survive if the reality is that we continue to go downhill economically. That is not necessary. There’s no reason for it. We can get that engine moving. Jerry Brown’s idea about the flat tax is an idea about getting that machinery going. When he announced it, I didn’t know anything about it. I nearly fell on the floor. But I’ve gotten much more enthusiastic the more I look at it. The principle of it is to get something that’s fair. Even the New York Times said it’s the first interesting idea this year.

Q: Do you have any prediction for Tuesday’s primary in New York.

A: Yes I do, but I’m not going to share it with you, because I don’t believe in jinxing myself. Right this very minute, as I talk to you, I think Jerry Brown–I don’t even want to say this–but it could be a big moment. Let me say this. On Tuesday night, there is the possibility that American politics could be shaken to its foundations in a way that has not happened in our lifetime.

WASHINGTON — President Trump was evacuated from the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner on Saturday evening after an incident led to a security response and reports that gunshots were fired.

A Times reporter attending the dinner was forced to shelter in a restroom. He said he heard about four to five gunshots around 8:30 p.m. Eastern time. He said security told him that the person may have had a firearm. It was unclear whether the person was dead or wounded.

Guests at the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner mingle while awaiting updates about a shooting during the event at the Washington Hilton Hotel on Saturday.

(Andrea Castillo / Los Angeles Times)

A presidential motorcade was spotted outside the Washington Hilton hotel at about 8:45 p.m., though Trump’s location is yet unknown.

At about the same time, an ambulance arrived on scene as about 100 event attendees were escorted out of the secured event. The bulk of the attendees are still inside the hotel.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

A much-anticipated debate featuring leading candidates in the Los Angeles mayor’s race is set for Cinco de Mayo before the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn. But it won’t include all the leading candidates.

The influential homeowners group has invited just incumbent Karen Bass and City Councilmember Nithya Raman, and not the three other top contenders Spencer Pratt, Adam Miller and Rae Huang.

The group explained its decision by saying that big, crowded debates can often feel chaotic.

“Rather than hosting a stage filled with a long list of candidates, we have chosen to invite these two leaders specifically because they represent Sherman Oaks on two critical — and complementary — levels of government. This format allows for a deeper, more meaningful discussion about the issues that directly impact our neighborhood and our city,” the group wrote in its description of the debate.

Some of the other top candidates took issue with being excluded.

“If the SOHA wanted a real debate on topics like public housing, a public bank, free and fast transit, and the things that matter to Angelenos all over the city, they should call off their gate-keeping process that keeps the system and the establishment protected,” Huang spokesman Emel Shaikh said in a statement.

From the Miller camp, spokesperson Jaime Sarachit called it “a missed opportunity for these voters not to hear directly from a candidate offering a different approach to solving L.A.’s biggest issues, especially on housing, homelessness and public safety.”

Pratt didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Angelenos could have a chance to see more of the major candidates the next day, May 6, for a televised debate featuring Colleen Williams and Conan Nolan of NBC4 and Enrique Chiabra of Telemundo 52. KNBC hasn’t yet confirmed the lineup, but the station said to participate candidates must have received at least 5% support in two reliable 2026 polls.

Homeless camp skirmish

Raman scouted out a Harbor Freeway overpass in South L.A. last month after parents at nearby 61st Street Elementary voiced concerns about a homeless camp that students had to pass on their way to school. Raman documented her visit with a post on Instagram, saying “these parents have tried again and again to get someone to listen to their needs — and again and again their concerns have fallen on deaf ears.”

But when City Councilmember Curren Price on Tuesday proposed making the area an anti-encampment zone under the city’s municipal code 41.18, Raman voted against the motion, which passed anyway.

Raman routinely votes against 41.18 zones, saying that reducing homelessness requires connecting people to housing.

“This provision at best shifts encampments around a neighborhood.” Raman said in a statement. “Our working protocols are dependent on that. However, enforcement alone does not drive reductions in homelessness. What works is connecting people to shelter and housing.”

That explanation didn’t stop Bass and Curren, who represents the area in question, from throwing shade Raman’s way.

“It is frustrating when efforts to move forward are met with opposition from those who are not fielding these calls, not hearing from parents, and not seeing these conditions firsthand,” said Price spokesperson Angelina Valencia-Dumarot.

Bass campaign spokesman Alex Stack chimed in: “Raman went to this very school to make an Instagram post about how nobody was helping them, and then turned around three weeks later and voted to allow the encampments to return.”

It’s Miller Time!

Adam Miller has scooped up a couple of names from Bass’ past.

Bill Burton, Miller’s senior advisor, who was a deputy press secretary under then-President Barack Obama — also moonlighted for Bass’ 2022 mayoral campaign as a stand-in for Rick Caruso during Bass’ debate prep, though he didn’t work for the campaign in a formal role.

Burton said during that campaign that the race between Bass and Caruso was “essentially a Democrat versus a Republican.”

Now, Burton is running the campaign for Miller, who voted for Caruso in 2022, though he describes himself as a lifelong Democrat.

Separately, Sarah Sheehan, who worked as Bass’ communications director on her 2022 campaign, is working as a consultant for the Miller campaign.

Sheehan said in a statement that the city needs an outsider.

“That is why I decided to work with Adam Miller,” she said.

Lauren Perez-Rangel, who also worked on Bass’ 2022 campaign as a spokesperson, is also working for Miller.

State of play

— BUDGET: Mayor Bass released her $14.9-billion spending plan Monday, which included a proposal to hire 510 police officers — roughly enough to cover retirements and resignations. The budget must be approved by the City Council, and will be the subject of weeks of hearings.

— COVER UP: The Department of Water & Power has drained the Santa Ynez Reservoir in Pacific Palisades to replace the damaged floating cover, frustrating residents who fear there won’t be water to fight potential wildfires.

— EYE OF THE STORMWATER: Los Angeles officials announced a $40-million project at MacArthur Park this week that’s aimed at turning rainstorm runoff into lake water — and maybe improving the park’s tarnished reputation as well. The project will also include new landscaping, walking paths and other features to enhance the location’s appeal as a park.

— LAHSA LAYOFFS: The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority announced Monday it plans to lay off nearly 300 employees, citing the county’s decision to withdraw funding and set up its own homeless services department.

— INTO THE BREACH: After the massive leak of LAPD files due to a data breach in the L.A. city attorney’s office, officials are seeking explanations from the city’s top lawyer. City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado said she expected City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto to appear before a council committee this week about the data leak. “When did the city attorney’s office become aware, what actions were taken, and why were city officials not notified promptly?” Jurado said. “Right now, we’re still left to question and trying to assemble the information.”

— CULTURE OF FEAR: In the LAFD, firefighters rarely question orders because doing so could invite retribution from bosses. That culture was evident in firefighters’ testimony about the Lachman fire, which reignited into the Palisades fire days later.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program was in Echo Park and Venice this week, bringing inside more than 40 Angelenos and clearing eight RVs and trailers off the streets.
• On the docket next week: The City Council will continue to meet to speak about Bass’ proposed budget.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@latimes.com. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — As President Bush was out promoting his stalled plan to allow drilling in an Alaskan wildlife refuge, the leader of a Senate committee said Wednesday that he would try a new strategy to navigate the proposal through Congress.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) said he would add into a budget bill a measure to allow companies to drill for oil and gas in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Because Senate rules treat the budget measure differently from other legislation, successfully attaching the drilling provision to it means it could pass with support from 51 senators. That would end opponents’ chances to block the drilling measure with a filibuster. A filibuster would force supporters to find 60 votes.

In 2003, Senate Democrats and several Republicans blocked a proposal for drilling in the refuge by a vote of 52 to 48. The GOP has gained four seats in the Senate since then, giving them 55.

Traveling to Ohio, Bush toured a technology development institute and made his first major speech on energy in his second term, calling on Congress to adopt his energy policy.

“We have had four years of debate about a national energy bill,” Bush said. “Now is the time to get the job done.”

The president called for greater reliance on coal and nuclear power, as well as for greater efforts at conservation and the modernization of the energy infrastructure. He said the U.S. could achieve all of that while remaining a good steward of the environment.

The energy bill before Congress includes a number of politically popular features, such as requiring greater use of ethanol, an alternative fuel made from corn. It also has measures that supporters say would strengthen the nation’s electric grids and prevent fuel shortages and price spikes, such as those that occurred during California’s electricity crisis in 2000 and 2001.

Bush’s speech comes at a time when gas prices have been rising — to an average of nearly $2 per gallon nationwide as of Monday, according to Energy Department figures. Retail prices on average are 26 cents higher than at this time last year. Prices in California are nearly $2.23 on average.

The president said that “higher prices at the gas pump and rising home heating bills and the possibility of blackout are legitimate concerns for all Americans. And all these uncertainties about energy supply are a drag on our economy…. To meet America’s energy needs in the 21st century, we need a comprehensive national energy policy.”

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan told reporters that Bush remained opposed to tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as a way to increase supply and cut prices. Some Democrats have called for releasing oil from the reserve, which they say could be replaced after prices decline.

Speaking about plans to drill in the Arctic refuge, Bush said the Department of Energy believed the effort would yield 10 billion barrels from “a small corner” of the reserve — “just 2,000 acres,” or roughly the size of the airport here in Ohio’s capital. By using innovative techniques, he said, such development would have “almost no impact” on the land or local wildlife.

He noted that no nuclear power plant had been ordered since the 1970s, and declared: “It’s time to start building again,” adding that decades of experience and advances had proven the reliability and security of nuclear power.

Bush, whose environmental policies have been condemned by groups such as the Sierra Club, renewed his push for energy legislation just as Congress was preparing to take up one of his most controversial initiatives: opening a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration.

“The votes are extremely close,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said. He called Gregg’s maneuver to attach the drilling approval to the budget bill an aberration of the budget process.

By contrast, Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, welcomed Gregg’s approach. He told the Budget Committee, of which he is also a member, that “the cleanest energy development in the world” was proceeding in the North Slope, near the Arctic reserve.

Energy legislation has been one of Bush’s priorities virtually from the day he took office, during the California energy crisis. An energy bill that included measures to promote conservation and production passed the House in 2003, but fell two votes short of overcoming a filibuster in the Senate.

A significant hurdle to passage of an energy bill is a dispute over whether it should limit manufacturers’ liability in lawsuits over the controversial fuel additive MTBE, or methyl tertiary butyl ether.

Senators from states contaminated by the fuel additive — including California’s Democratic senators and New Hampshire’s Republican senators — have objected to the provision, complaining it could force their taxpayers to pick up the tab for cleaning up the contamination.

But House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, whose home state of Texas has been a big producer of the fuel additive, has insisted on the liability shield.

*

Chen reported from Columbus and Simon from Washington. Times staff writer Joel Havemann in Washington contributed to this report.

SACRAMENTO — In a rare action, a legislative staff member has filed a complaint charging Democratic Assemblyman Roderick Wright of Los Angeles with assaulting him and threatening to break his jaw in an alleged dispute over a gun bill.

Staffer Geoff Long filed the charge with the Assembly Rules Committee on Thursday night against Wright, a freshman legislator who represents a district in South-Central Los Angeles.

Capitol veterans said the formal complaint may be the first of its kind filed with the committee.

Long, chief consultant to the Assembly Appropriations Committee and a legislative employee for 15 years, said Wright pushed him by the shoulders against a wall Wednesday and then threatened three times to break his jaw.

The altercation occurred after a Wright bill on gun safety was defeated by the Appropriations Committee, which attached amendments to the measure. The amendments came from the committee’s staff and Wright was apparently angered by them, Long said.

In an interview several hours before the complaint was filed, Wright refused to say whether he and Long had a confrontation. “If Mr. Long has a grievance, he should file it,” Wright said.

Wright insisted he never “‘confronted” Long and said, “There is nothing that has occurred, that I am aware of, that I would call physical.”

Wright did not return calls Friday seeking comment.

Long said Wright “erupted” when he attempted to discuss the defeat of the bill, which dealt with safety standards for firearms.

“Shut up or I’ll break your [expletive] jaw. I will. I will do it,” Long said Wright told him.

Long said the incident occurred in a hallway near the Assembly chambers and was witnessed by Betty Yee, also a committee staffer, who filed a statement with the Rules Committee in support of Long’s complaint.

Jon Waldie, chief administrative officer of the Assembly Rules Committee, which governs internal affairs of the lower house, confirmed that Long had filed a complaint. But Waldie declined to make the document public, saying the dispute is a confidential personnel matter.

Waldie said he was uncertain how to proceed because no one could recall a similar case.

Seldom have black ministers been more popular. Historically wooed by liberal politicians as conduits to African American communities, they are now the darlings of conservatives as well.

In the last year, conservative groups have flown a delegation of ministers, including a dozen from Los Angeles, to Washington to chat about racial profiling with Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and hobnob with conservative scholars at the Heritage Foundation.

California Republican lawmakers have flown ministers of primarily black mega-churches and community chapels, storefronts and sanctuaries to Sacramento for “Pastors Days” and hosted hundreds of them at conservative community-renewal conferences.

A handful of Republican legislators trawl the length of the state, stopping in Berkeley, Los Angeles and San Diego, where they preach conservative remedies to poverty, unemployment and the spread of AIDS. African American pastors turn out by the hundreds to hear them.

“Not bad, when white Republicans can come to Los Angeles, host a meeting for 400 black pastors, and some Latinos too, without anyone really knowing about it,” boasts state Sen. Tim Leslie (R-Tahoe City). “In fact, just weeks ago I spent the night there–in the ‘hood” as the guest of one minister’s family.

Many African American ministers, whose congregants voted overwhelmingly Democratic in the 2000 presidential election, say they are not yet converted–but make it clear they are listening.

“Of course I know the Republican Party has an objective and an agenda–it’s trying to win favor with the black community through the pastors,” said Bishop Frank Stewart of Zoe Christian Center in Los Angeles. “But I don’t think that’s negative…. They’re saying some things that are interesting to me.”

There is deep desperation on both sides of this would-be relationship.

Stark demographic changes make it clear that if the state Republican Party does not diversify, it will go the way of the dinosaur. Latinos in California supported Democrat Al Gore in 2000 by a 2-to-1 margin. Nationally, 90% of blacks and a majority of Latinos and Asians voted for Gore, while white men voted 62% in favor of Bush and white women were split almost evenly.

Courting minorities “is our No. 1 priority,” said Pamela Mantis, deputy director of outreach for the Republican National Committee.

So the GOP goes on the road. Last year, the RNC held African American outreaches in Memphis, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Arkansas, and earlier this month hosted blacks and Latinos in Mississippi. In mid-April, the party will hold an event targeting Haitian Americans in Miami.

“The African American community has felt abandoned by our party for the last 40 or 50 years,” Mantis said, “and the other side, the Democrats, took advantage of that.”

The desperation on the black ministers’ side is the belief by some that they are taken for granted by the Democrats, and that liberal solutions to urban problems have done little to improve their communities.

Some are drawn to conservative notions like the privatization of Social Security, President Bush’s initiative to give faith-based organizations greater access to federal funding, school vouchers and opposition to abortion.

“My vote is now definitely up for grabs,” said the Rev. James Price of Long Beach Christian Center. Republicans “have definitely said things that make me listen.”

He said he decided he favored privatizing part of Social Security, which would allow individuals to make their own investment choices, during the pastors’ trip to the Heritage Foundation.

“My desire is to bring biblical truths to my congregation and we’re supposed to be good stewards of things that we have,” he said. “Timothy says, in Chapter 5.8, that he who does not provide for his own and those of his household is worse than an infidel and has denied the faith.”

Last month, African American pastors from around the country gathered at a hotel near Los Angeles International Airport for the conservative Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education’s annual convention.

The coalition is a nonprofit organization founded by black welfare mother-turned-conservative author Star Parker, best known for her book “Pimps, Whores and Welfare Brats.” It paints liberal Democrats as pimps who buy off black leaders in exchange for their support of a welfare culture. Published in 1997 with a forward by Rush Limbaugh, the book rocketed her to national prominence in conservative circles.

Parker, who now lives in San Clemente, says she enjoys the Republican Party’s praise but questions its support. “Republicans, as a party, are unwilling to acknowledge social problems regarding race,” Parker said. “When I do [conservative] radio shows, racial profiling will come up, they’ll ask me: ‘Well, racial profiling isn’t a big problem, is it?’ And when I say ‘Well, actually it is … ‘ there’s silence.”

Parker organized the black ministers’ visit to Washington last year. Using donations to her nonprofit, she paid for 47 ministers from Los Angeles, Houston, Philadelphia and Chicago to visit Capitol Hill. She also has organized conferences for pastors featuring conservative stars such as Jack Kemp, Dick Armey, Newt Gingrich and Alan Keyes.

“I start with pastors because they’re socially conservative,” Parker said. “I really don’t care about the politics of it all. I’m interested in seeing my community healed.”

The Rev. Eugene P. Pack, assistant pastor at the Praise and Worship Center in Houston, attended the coalition’s conference to learn more about Bush’s faith-based initiative, which the president hopes will allow churches with social service agencies to gain a greater share of federal dollars.

Pack, who with his wife runs a family assistance and crisis pregnancy center in Houston’s struggling 3rd ward, said he had long ago embraced a conservative message and the Republican Party.

“I tell folks, if you read the platform you’ll find out the majority of you are already Republicans,” Pack said. “You just don’t know it.”

Not the Rev. Johnny Hunter of North Carolina, another conference guest. Hunter, the national director of the Life Education and Resource Center, left the Democratic Party several years ago over its pro-choice stand but said he simply could not become a Republican.

“I just can’t do it,” he said. “There are some issues of social justice that really need to be addressed.”

Historically, the last time the Republican Party actively identified with African Americans was during Abraham Lincoln’s presidency. And winning over a pastor does not necessarily mean the flock will follow.

Most black people–63%–say pastors are the most important leaders in the African American community, according to the Barna Research Group Ltd., a Ventura company that tracks cultural trends and Christianity. Yet the African American vote is the only one in the nation that has no correlation between high church attendance and acceptance of the Republican Party, the research firm says.

Among California Republican legislators, the most enthusiastic envoys to black churches have been Leslie and Sen. Ray Haynes (R-Riverside).

Their efforts began about two years ago. Senate Republican Leader Jim Brulte (R-Rancho Cucamonga) hired consultant Tony Lowden, who had worked on recruiting ministers for the Democratic Party, to launch a similar fact-finding mission for Republicans. When Lowden returned, he told Brulte, Haynes and Leslie the time was ripe for them to step in.

Haynes and Leslie say they keep their black pastor events in Sacramento low-profile to avoid any hint of insincerity. Haynes goes so far as to say he is not recruiting blacks for the party, merely building relationships in minority communities and staying true to conservative problem-solving methods.

Haynes said he was surprised by the black churches’ industriousness. “Those pastors are doing more with the hundreds of dollars that they get than we’re doing with millions we dump into bureaucracies.”

Now, after their immersion in black neighborhoods, Haynes and Leslie are conversant in a litany of services of interest to many African Americans, from convict employment programs to mortgage lending opportunities.

None of this is enough to win the many ministers who continue to view the GOP as racially hostile.

“They’re the same people who didn’t want us to come to their schools and now they want to pray with us? I think for myself and I’m just not hearing that,” said the Rev. M. Andrew Robinson-Gaither of Faith United Methodist Church in South-Central.

Gaither went on pastors’ trips to Washington and Sacramento and says he is open to a conservative solutions. But, “I would not want Social Security privatized. I don’t think we should legislate abortion, and then their whole approach to the economy is that business can do no wrong. But business abuses us as much as the government does. As for welfare reform, what about the welfare we give to corporations?”

David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economics, an organization that researches public policy issues of concern to African Americans, said the GOP’s dilemma is how to woo black conservatives without alienating white ones .

Even where black conservatives agree with mainstream conservatives, they do so for different reasons, Bositis said.

Take school vouchers. Bositis’ research shows that the majority of African Americans want school vouchers, but do so out of “desperation,” he said. “Their children are going to schools that are broken.”

White conservatives, as often as not, would use vouchers to move their children away from other kinds of children–such as black ones, Bositis said. “And those are two entirely different things.”

Party officials recognize that an accommodation has to be reached, if only for practical reasons. In 2000, Gore won 71% of the big-city vote. An example was Michigan, where he narrowly won the state’s electoral votes even though Bush won most counties. The reason: Gore took heavily black Detroit, winning 94% of the African American vote.

The GOP does not need the majority of blacks to vote Republican, Bositis said, just a few more. Doubling its national share to 20% would dramatically change its fortunes.

Bositis recently sat down with party leaders, who sought his advice about winning greater black support.

“I believe they really want to do it, but I told them it was going to be a long process, hard to accomplish,” he said. “It’s not necessarily impossible, just extremely difficult.”

MOSCOW — President Reagan, standing within the fortress walls of the Kremlin with a smiling Mikhail S. Gorbachev at his side, said Tuesday that he no longer sees the Soviet Union as “the evil empire.”

“You are talking about another time, another era,” he said in an exchange with a handful of reporters clustered around a 39-ton cannon dating from 1586 that stands in a plaza in the center of the Kremlin.

Reagan was disavowing one of his most famous indictments of the Communist state–a description of the Soviet Union that seemed to symbolize his ultraconservative, anti-Communist views when he used it seven years ago in one of his first presidential speeches.

The change seems to reflect an evolution in his views on the Soviet Union. It has been noticeable in his statements and policy decisions for some time but has emerged with dramatic vividness here in the President’s face-to-face encounter with Moscow.

The question about the “evil empire” statement came near the end of a walking tour of the Kremlin grounds and fabled Red Square, with all its memories of celebrations of the Bolshevik Revolution and May Day parades of Soviet military power.

Explains His Position

Asked if he still considers Moscow to be the seat of evil, Reagan answered, “No.” Surprised, reporters asked why.

Reagan hesitated, leaned his head to one side and thought a bit. Soviet leader Gorbachev tried to prompt him. “Are you happy with that concept?” he asked in Russian. The President then responded by saying that the phrase belonged to an earlier time.

Reagan recanted even though Gorbachev had told a crowd of Russians that he did not mind Reagan’s criticisms over the years. “We are so critical of our own country that even the President’s criticisms are weak,” the Soviet leader said. “We know what our problems are.”

In some ways, the President’s walk across Red Square was just as symbolic as his rejection of the concept of “the evil empire.” It would have been hard at the outset of his presidency to conceive of Reagan taking in the sights of Red Square and enjoying them. But on Tuesday the President said:

“I have always heard of Red Square. Mr. Gorbachev was kind enough to show it to me. And now I have seen it and set foot on it. It was much more impressive than I had imagined.”

Reagan’s determination to show how his mood had changed in recent years was evident later in the day when he spoke with writers and artists at the House of Writers in Moscow. In a short but warm speech that described his philosophy of acting and how it had helped prepare him for the White House, Reagan described the importance in the theater of avoiding rigid, stereotyped thinking and instead understanding the unique character of each situation and individual.

No Straitjacket

“Pretty soon,” he said, “at least for me, it becomes harder and harder to force any member of humanity into a straitjacket, into some rigid form in which you all expect to fit.

“In acting . . . you become in an intimate way less taken with artificial pomp and circumstance, more attentive to the core of the soul–that part of each of us that God holds in the hollow of his hand and into which he breathes the breath of life.”

Whatever view he may once have had of Soviet leaders and citizens, he could not be accused now of keeping them in a straitjacket. There was little doubt about the President’s warm feelings for many of them now, and this could be seen on his morning walk.

After meeting for more than an hour in the Kremlin, Reagan followed the Soviet leader on a tour of the grounds and Red Square. As the two men walked slowly, Gorbachev, with sweeps of his hand, pointed out the turrets, churches, palaces and other buildings. A cluster of aides and a long line of limousines trailed behind.

Red Square, an enormous plaza alongside the northeast wall of the Kremlin, is known to the outside world as the site of the massive demonstrations of Soviet military power on the annual May 1 celebration of the Bolshevik Revolution. But it has existed for five centuries, and its name has nothing to do with communism.

‘Red’ Means ‘Beautiful’

The plaza has been known as Red Square for three centuries. When the square was first named, the present-day Russian word for “red” meant “beautiful.”

Gorbachev pointed out the sights of the square: St. Basil’s Cathedral with its famous onion domes, the huge GUM department store, the Historical Museum and the Lenin Mausoleum that contains the body of V. I. Lenin, the first Soviet leader.

“We are not going to change anything here,” Gorbachev said as the two leaders stood outside the tomb. “There is no perestroika needed.”

Reagan made no attempt to enter the mausoleum to honor a man who has become a god-like figure in the Communist world, and Gorbachev made no attempt to try to persuade him.

The exchanges of Reagan, Gorbachev and some of the Russians in the square left little time for true sightseeing, but they were consistent with both leaders’ efforts to surround the tough negotiations over arms control with an aura of better feeling.

Need for Dialogue

At one point, Reagan and Gorbachev, talking with some Soviet citizens, turned philosophical about the need for face-to-face dialogue.

“What we have decided to do,” the President said, “is to talk to each other and not about each other, and that’s working just fine.”

Gorbachev used a Russian proverb to make the point: “If arguments are at the boiling point, then truth evaporates. So we should have dialogue.”

During this conversation, Reagan put his arm around Gorbachev and said, “I’m glad we are standing here together like this.”

In talking with one group of Russians, the superpower leaders said they had discussed annual student exchanges. “I have a dream,” the President said, “that if all young people of the world could get to know each other, it would be a better world.”

‘Grandfather Reagan’

At another point, a woman holding a small child told the President, “We want our children to live in peace.” Gorbachev then took the child from the mother’s arms and told the child, “Shake hands with Grandfather Reagan.”

Reagan took the child’s hand in his.

After the walk in Red Square, Gorbachev led Reagan back within the Kremlin walls, directing him to a small group of journalists and camera crews waiting near the huge cannon, which had never been fired. Gorbachev evidently had an announcement for Soviet television.

“We have received several important telegrams to tell the Reagans that newly born boys and girls are being named Ronald and Nancy and Reagana,” the Soviet leader said.

But the foreign journalists were interested in other issues. “Do you still believe you are in the evil empire?” Reagan was asked. “No,” he replied, surely and quickly.

RALEIGH, N.C. — A U.S. special forces soldier who took part in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro will be released on bond on charges accusing him of using classified information about the operation to win more than $400,000 in an online prediction market, a federal magistrate said Friday.

The magistrate in North Carolina said he would allow Gannon Ken Van Dyke to be released and told him to report to a New York federal courthouse by Tuesday to continue his case there.

Bearded with arm tattoos, Van Dyke said little during the nearly hourlong hearing, during which he was appointed a federal public defender who declined to comment afterward. The $250,000 unsecured bond did not require Van Dyke to put up any money.

Federal prosecutors say Van Dyke used his access to classified information about the operation to capture Maduro in January to win money on the prediction market site Polymarket.

The sites allow people to trade on almost anything — from the Super Bowl to U.S. elections and even the winners of the TV reality shows.

Van Dyke, who is stationed at Fort Bragg near Fayetteville, N.C., was charged Thursday with the unlawful use of confidential government information for personal gain, theft of nonpublic government information, commodities fraud, wire fraud and making an unlawful monetary transaction.

He could face up to 10 years on four of the criminal counts, and up to 20 years on a fifth, the government said Friday. A publicly listed phone number listed for Van Dyke isn’t in service.

Van Dyke, 38, was involved for about a month in the planning and execution of capturing Maduro, according to the New York federal prosecutor’s office. He signed nondisclosure agreements promising to not divulge “any classified or sensitive information” related to the operations, but prosecutors say he used what he knew to make a series of bets related to Maduro being out of power by Jan. 31.

“This involved a U.S. soldier who allegedly took advantage of his position to profit off of a righteous military operation,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a social media post.

Polymarket, one of the largest prediction markets, said it found someone trading on classified government information, alerted the Justice Department and “cooperated with their investigation.”

Massive profits from well-timed bets aroused public attention days after the raid in Venezuela and brought bipartisan calls for stricter regulation of the markets.

The sudden rise of these markets has led to growing scrutiny by Congress and state governments. Some lawmakers alarmed by highly specific, well-timed trades on the U.S. and Israel’s war against Iran and wagers on President Trump’s next moves have pushed for guardrails against insider trading.

The Trump administration has been supportive of the industry’s expansion. The president’s eldest son is an advisor for both Polymarket and its main competitor, Kalshi,, and is a Polymarket investor. Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, is launching its own prediction market called Truth Predict.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency that regulates prediction markets, announced Thursday that it had filed a parallel complaint against Van Dyke.

That complaint alleges that Van Dyke moved $35,000 from his personal bank account into a cryptocurrency exchange account on Dec. 26 — a little over a week before U.S. forces flew into Caracas and seized Maduro.

Van Dyke made a series of bets on when Maduro might be removed from power, according to the complaint. He placed those bets between Dec. 30 and Jan. 2, with the vast majority occurring the night of Jan. 2 — just hours before the first missiles struck Caracas.

The bets resulted in “more than $404,000 of profits,” the complaint says.

“The defendant was entrusted with confidential information about U.S. operations and yet took action that endangered U.S. national security and put the lives of American service members in harm’s way,” said Michael Selig, the commission’s chairman.

Robertson writes for the Associated Press. AP reporters Allen G. Breed in Raleigh and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed to this report.

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Nearly a year after the assassination of a Minnesota legislative leader, lawmakers across the U.S. have worked to fortify security in state capitols and improve safeguards when officials are in their communities.

The changes have followed a rise in political violence nationwide that included the stunning assassination last June of Rep. Melissa Hortman, the top Democratic leader in the Minnesota House, and the September killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was speaking at a college in Utah.

In Minnesota, most doors at the state Capitol are now locked, and people entering must go through weapons detectors. People entering the visitors’ galleries to watch floor debates must go through a second set of detectors.

“It’s important for us to be able to not have our government fall apart if our legislators are under threat,” said Minnesota Rep. Julie Green, a Democrat who sits directly across the aisle from Hortman’s old desk, which remains empty except for fresh roses, her portrait and a speaker’s gavel. “It’s a complicated, complex, very emotional issue, as you can imagine.”

High-profile attacks have stoked lawmakers’ fears

In addition to the killings of Hortman and Kirk, violence targeting political figures in the U.S. in the last few years has included an arson attack last year at the home of Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro; an assassination attempt on then-candidate Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally in 2024; and a hammer attack on the husband of Democratic then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at their California home in 2022.

Twenty-five states, including Minnesota, now formally allow candidates to use campaign funds for personal security. Most made the change after the killings of Kirk and Hortman. Eleven states have laws permitting it, while others have approved it through rules or other mechanisms, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures and the VoteMama Foundation.

This year alone, Alabama, Oregon, Nebraska and Utah enacted laws allowing campaign funds for security. Bills to legalize it are pending in about a dozen other states.

It’s not just happening at the state level. Security spending for congressional and presidential campaigns has jumped fivefold over the past decade. Federal political committees spent more than $40 million on expenses labeled as security during the 2023-24 campaign cycle, according to an April report from the nonpartisan Public Service Alliance.

Weapons detectors are just one response

Metal detectors — one of the most visible signs of concerns about political violence — were installed at Alaska’s Capitol last year. Democratic Rep. Sara Hannan said the change was due to “increased risk of violence in our public institutions.” Lawmakers approved them before Hortman was killed.

But some states have balked at making it harder to access the halls of power. Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, a Republican who knew Hortman, resisted efforts to install metal detectors in his state, saying he didn’t want to “fortify” the Capitol. Wisconsin’s is one of 11 state capitols that don’t have metal detectors, a state audit found.

Minnesota lawmakers are also considering creating a special unit within the State Patrol, which oversees Capitol security, that would provide protection for legislators, the state attorney general, secretary of state, state auditor, and Supreme Court justices.

One lead author is Democratic Sen. John Hoffman, who survived being shot nine times the night Hortman was killed. Prosecutors say the gunman, disguised as a police officer, began his rampage by shooting Hoffman and his wife, then stopped at the residences of two other lawmakers who weren’t home. He then went to Hortman’s home, where he killed the representative and her husband, and wounded their dog so severely that he had to be euthanized.

At a hearing Tuesday, Hoffman called his measure “a necessary response” that would “keep elected officials and Supreme Court justices safe and dedicate the resources necessary and hopefully stop future tragedies from happening.”

Numerous states have also taken action to protect lawmakers’ personal information. North Dakota lawmakers on Wednesday discussed a bill draft for next year that would make confidential the home addresses of candidates and public officials upon request.

The NCSL in February created a $1.5-million fund to reimburse legislatures for expenses related to lawmakers’ personal safety and security while they’re away from their statehouses. More than 30 states have applied or are preparing to, NCSL spokesperson Katie Ziegler said.

Karnowski and Bauer write for the Associated Press. Bauer reported from Madison, Wis. AP writers Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska, and Jack Dura in Bismarck, N.D., contributed to this report.

The Trump administration’s historic move to reclassify state-licensed medical marijuana as a less-dangerous drug was cheered by some advocates but for others, it fell far short for the thousands still incarcerated on federal cannabis-related convictions.

The executive order, which acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche signed Thursday, does not address current penalties for possessing and selling marijuana or those jailed with yearslong sentences.

“While this is a victory, the fight is far from over,” said Jason Ortiz, director of strategic initiatives for the Last Prisoner Project, a nonprofit focused on cannabis criminal justice reform.

Proponents of legalizing marijuana as well as overhauling prison sentencing say this order, which does not completely decriminalize the drug, benefits only cannabis researchers, growers and others in Big Weed. Meanwhile, thousands — many of whom are people of color — are stuck serving harsh sentences for marijuana-related offenses. Or they have served their time but having a conviction on their record has made life difficult.

Now, advocates are calling on Congress and state lawmakers to take concrete steps to ensure those with marijuana-related convictions receive fair treatment or be forgiven altogether.

Prisoners and their families look for hope

Blanche’s order reclassifies state-licensed medical marijuana as a less-dangerous drug. The major policy shift, which both Presidents Obama and Joe Biden had considered, means cannabis won’t be grouped with drugs like heroin.

But it does not legalize marijuana for medical or recreational use. It shifts licensed medical marijuana from Schedule I — reserved for drugs without medical use and with high potential for abuse — to the less strictly regulated Schedule III. This will likely give licensed medical marijuana operators and cannabis researchers a major tax break and less stringent barriers to doing normal business.

Virtually no one imprisoned at the federal level is there solely for marijuana possession. But many are there for large-scale possession, trafficking offenses or both.

Hector Ruben McGurk, 66, has been serving life without the possibility of parole since 2007 for transporting thousands of pounds of marijuana and money laundering. He is currently imprisoned in Beaumont, Texas, over 800 miles from his son’s El Paso home. His incarceration has been hard on his son, said McGurk’s daughter-in-law, Ferna Anguiano. And the distance makes visits logistically difficult.

So it’s tempting to see this order as a glimmer of hope, given that the family believes McGurk’s punishment far outweighs his crimes. But Anguiano has no idea how to navigate lobbying for his release.

“His release date is death,” Anguiano said. “I mean, we see all this stuff on the news — bigger cases, fatal cases — and people are going in and out of prison and coming out to their families.”

They try to keep in touch through phone calls and a prison texting service. They’re concerned about McGurk’s health and his diabetes management. It would be a dream come true for him to come home.

“He deserves a second chance,” Anguiano said. “Yes, it was a poor decision he did in his lifetime. He was younger. But he is not a bad person. I think it’s fair to say he has served enough time for it.”

It’s not clear whether punishments would be different had marijuana always been scheduled differently, drug policy experts say.

“In addition to schedule-specific penalties, there are marijuana-specific penalties that have nothing to do with the schedule,” said Cat Packer, director of drug markets and legal regulation at the nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance. “Even if marijuana were to be moved to Schedule V, those criminal penalties would still exist and there are mandatory minimums for simple possession.”

Racial disparities exist in convictions and Big Weed

Destigmatizing marijuana has long been an issue for both political parties. Obama commuted the sentences of about 1,900 federal prisoners, almost all of whom were incarcerated for nonviolent drug crimes. Biden pardoned 6,500 people convicted of use and simple possession of marijuana on federal lands and in the District of Columbia. President Trump’s administration has taken far fewer drug clemency actions and does not have an overarching policy directing such actions.

“What many people on the right and the left would like is to move marijuana from this ‘just as bad as heroin’ category and to just sort of de-schedule it entirely,” said Marta Nelson, director of sentencing reform at the Vera Institute of Justice. “Regulate it like you do alcohol or tobacco.”

Studies show Black Americans are roughly 3.7 to 4 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white Americans, despite usage rates being roughly the same across racial groups. Federal-level marijuana cases are pretty small today, but those serving sentences for federal drug offenses are overwhelmingly Hispanic and Black, according to Justice Department and Bureau of Justice Statistics data.

The racial disparity with drug convictions is reminiscent of 2010 legislation Obama signed reducing the gap between mandatory sentences for crack cocaine versus powder cocaine. In 2018, Trump made it apply retroactively.

Because business owners with state medical marijuana licenses are predominantly white, the tax relief created by the rescheduling will also likely give a leg up to mostly white businesses, Packer said. A lot of equity programs won’t apply.

“This is going to, in my mind, widen the gap, the financial disparities, the business disparities that currently exist between Black and brown, Latino and white owners in the cannabis industry because licenses were not distributed equitably,” Packer said.

Possible next steps for marijuana convictions

In theory, Trump could issue a blanket pardon like he did for Jan. 6 rioters. But Nelson thinks that is highly doubtful.

“Having marijuana convictions on the record for things like mass immigration enforcement is helpful to the administration,” Nelson said.

An impactful next step would be for Congress to outline very comprehensive legislation addressing existing marijuana-related convictions, expungements and industry regulations, she added.

The Last Prisoner Project and other organizations are planning to renew a dialogue with federal lawmakers, including the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, which includes Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Republican Rep. David Joyce of Ohio. They will also continue to lobby for Trump to conduct a large-scale act of commutation and clemency.

Advocates are also hoping Trump’s order will prompt every state to rethink their marijuana classification and penalties.

“It is imperative that every state review their situation, as a lot of their controlled substances at the state level are tied to the federal government,” Ortiz said. “We’re gonna see other states that are going to need a little help from the public to remind them what the right thing to do is.”

Tang writes for the Associated Press.

SACRAMENTO — A ballot measure that would require Californians to show identification every time they vote in person, or use a special pin number when submitting mail-in ballots, has qualified for the November ballot, elections officials announced Friday.

The measure also would require election officials to verify registered voters are U.S. citizens, aligning with a Republican-led push for new restrictions on voters in the wake of President Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, and that undocumented immigrants are swaying elections by voting illegally.

Republican Assemblymember Carl DeMaio from San Diego has been pushing the measure for several years, while Trump and Republicans also are seeking a similar initiative at the federal level.

If passed, the California ballot measure would require a voter to present government-issued identification, such as a state driver’s license, every time they vote. Voters mailing ballots would be required to write a four-digit number, essentially a pin number, on their ballots matching the one generated when they registered to vote.

The pin would come from ID such as a driver’s license, or could be generated from the county. The vast majority of Californians mail in their ballots in elections.

Under the measure, election officials also must ensure that registered voters are U.S. citizens by using information from government records, which could include information in the federal Social Security Administration database, and maintain accurate voter registration lists.

DeMaio said the measure is different than a federal proposal, known as the SAVE Act, which stalled out in the U.S. Senate this week.

DeMaio said the state ballot measure “does not do away with mail in ballots, because voters of all political backgrounds like the convenience of mail in ballots. So we want to keep that convenience.”

The ballot measure needs a simple majority to pass.

Under current law, Californians are not required to show or provide identification when casting a ballot in person or by mail. They are required to provide identification when registering to vote, and must swear under penalty of perjury, a felony, that they are eligible to vote and a U.S. citizen.

Jenny Farrell, executive director of the League of Women Voters of California, told the Times that her group is committed to fighting the measure, arguing it would make it harder for people in the state to vote.

She said that people may forget to use a pin on their mail-in ballot, leading to their vote being disqualified. Similar changes in Texas, she said, led to a rise in rejected ballots due to technical errors.

“It doesn’t really weed out illegal voting,” which doesn’t actually exist, she said, “but it does cause more ballots to be incorrectly flagged and ultimately rejected.”

ACLU of Northern and Southern California, Common Cause, Disability Rights California also oppose the measure.

DeMaio filed for the ballot initiative in 2021 and 2023, but did not move forward with the signature collection process in order to fine-tune the ballot language.

He said his ballot measure wasn’t focused primarily about making sure that undocumented people don’t vote.

“That’s one element of concern that we’ve heard from some groups, but it really is making sure that, number one, we properly maintain our voter rolls,” he said.

Los Angeles City Council member Traci Park has raised more than $1.2 million for her reelection campaign in the city’s June 2 primary, more than double the amount collected by challenger Faizah Malik, according to finance reports filed this week.

Malik, a civil rights attorney, reported raising roughly $454,000 in her bid for the District 11 seat that skirts along the Westside, including Mar Vista, Pacific Palisades, Venice and Westchester, the reports show.

At nearly $1.7 million, the money raised in the race is the highest for the eight council seats, out of 15 total, on the ballot in the June 2 primary. Any candidate who wins a majority in the election will win the seat outright, otherwise the top two vote-getters will compete in the Nov. 3 general election.

Two of the eight races are open seats to replace termed-out incumbents, and in five other races, incumbents Eunisses Hernandez, Park, Hugo Soto-Martínez, Tim McOsker and Katy Yaroslavsky posted large fundraising leads against their challengers. One incumbent, Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, is running unopposed.

In the west San Fernando Valley’s 3rd District, three candidates are seeking to replace termed-out Councilmember Bob Blumenfield.

Insurance company founder Tim Gaspar was leading the pack in fundraising, reporting nearly $430,000. Barri Worth Girvan, an aide to Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsay Horvath, has raised about $235,000. Tech entrepreneur Christopher Robert “CR” Celona was far behind with about $12,300.

In Council District 1, which includes Highland Park and Pico-Union, incumbent Hernandez topped the field with about $319,000 in contributions. Challenger Maria Lou Calanche, a former Los Angeles police commissioner, reported raising about $182,000.

Among other challengers in the race, Sylvia Robledo, a small-business owner and longtime City Council aide, reported about $75,000 in contributions. Raul Claros, founder of a nonprofit called California Rising, listed $70,500 in contributions and entrepreneur Nelson Grande reported raising about $55,000.

There are six candidates vying to replace incumbent Curren Price in the 9th District, which includes USC and communities along the Harbor Freeway corridor.

Jose Ugarte, a former deputy chief of staff for Price, led the field in reported financial contributions, amassing $477,000.

Estuardo Mazariegos, head of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Los Angeles, reported roughly $200,000 in contributions and Elmer Roldan, director of a nonprofit, has raised about $114,000.

Entrepreneur Jorge Nuño and therapist Martha Sanchez trailed with about $25,000 and $13,000, respectively. Educator Jorge Hernandez Rosas did not report any contributions.

In the other races:

• Yaroslavsky reported raising about $431,000 for her 5th District seat, which includes Westwood, Palms and Hancock Park. None of her opponents, Henry Mantel and Morgan Oyler, reported raising more than $35,000.
• McOsker reported raising 242,000 for his 15th District seat in San Pedro. Challenger Jordan Rivers, a community organizer, told The Times he did not raise any funds.
• Soto-Martínez reported raising more than $170,000. The three challengers in the race — Colter Carlisle, Dylan Kendall and Rich Sarian — reported a combined $152,000.

The outcome of the Park-Malik contest in District 11 will be determined in the June 2 primary because there are only two candidates in the race.

In a statement, Councilmember Park credited her fundraising lead to her efforts to clear homeless encampments.

“I raised an historic number of donations from local Westside residents because I’ve been on the ground since Day One solving our number one priority: getting people off the streets into housing and treatment and removing dangerous encampments from our neighborhoods,” Park said. “Residents, workers and visitors all see the difference.”

Kendall Mayhew, communications director for Malik’s campaign, said in a statement that Park and her supporters are spending unprecedented money because “we are winning and they simply don’t know what else to do.”

“What our campaign has demonstrated so far, and what we will demonstrate at the ballot box in just a few weeks, is that corporate money cannot defeat an honest, people-powered campaign,” Mayhew said.

The fundraising totals reported this week represent money given by individual donors, who are limited to contributions of no more than $1,000 in this election cycle. While the reports offer a glance at fundraising, money is also coming in through independent expenditures, which have no limit on how much can be given.

For example, in District 1, the L.A. County Federation of Labor has reportedly spent more than $226,000 in support of Hernandez. Calanche is also receiving supporting funds: the Fix Los Angeles PAC Supporting Calanche, Ugarte and Park for City Council 2026 has spent about $46,000 on her campaign to unseat Hernandez.

LOGAN, Utah — President Trump’s administration took the unusual step this week of sending a government plane to Cuba to return a 10-year-old from Utah who is at the center of a complicated and contentious custody fight involving the child’s gender identity.

The child’s parent, Rose Inessa-Ethington, a transgender woman, is accused of taking the child to Cuba without the permission of the biological mother. Federal and state authorities sought the return of the child after a family member expressed concern that Inessa-Ethington went to Havana to get the child gender transition surgery.

Inessa-Ethington, who had run a popular Utah political blog in the 2010s, was arrested along with her partner, Blue Inessa-Ethington, and charged in the U.S. with international parental kidnapping.

The couple traveled with the child to Canada ostensibly for a camping trip in late March with Blue’s 3-year-old child. However, the two adults turned off their phones after telling the older child’s mother they had arrived in Canada. They flew from Vancouver to Mexico and then to Cuba on April 1, according to a criminal complaint filed Monday in federal court in Utah.

The charges don’t say if the couple actually planned on getting the child gender-affirming surgery in Cuba or how they would get it because that surgery isn’t legal for children in Cuba.

The FBI said that Blue Inessa-Ethington withdrew $10,000 from her checking account before leaving. Agents also found at their home a note with instructions from a mental health therapist in Washington, D.C., “to send the therapist the $10,000.00 and instructions on gender affirming medical care for children.” That note didn’t mention Cuba.

The use of the Department of Justice plane in a parental kidnapping investigation comes after the Trump administration sought to block access to gender-affirming care for minors and pressured healthcare providers over the issue.

The Associated Press left telephone and email messages with the court-appointed attorneys who represented Blue and Rose Inessa-Ethington in Virginia. The defendants will be returned to Utah to face one count each of international parental kidnapping, according to court filings.

Search began after child wasn’t returned as scheduled

The search for the child began on April 3 when they were not returned to the mother in Utah as scheduled, court documents show.

The 10-year-old’s mother, who was divorced from Rose Inessa-Ethington and had shared custody of the child, filed a missing-person report with police in Logan, Utah, a college and dairy farming town about 70 miles north of Salt Lake City.

Logan City Police Chief Jeff Simmons said his department’s initial focus was on the custodial interference allegations in the case, and he said investigators did not learn until later about concerns over gender-affirming surgery.

Logan police spokesperson Sgt. Brandon Bevan said those concerns were raised by one family member. He declined to say who.

“They just had the concern about it, no actual physical evidence,” Bevan said.

A Utah state judge ordered the return of the 10-year-old to the child’s mother on April 13. Three days later, a federal magistrate judge issued an arrest warrant for the Inessa-Ethingtons. On the same day, Cuban law enforcement located the group. They were deported to the U.S. aboard the government plane Monday and arraigned in federal court in Richmond, Va.

The 10-year-old was returned to the child’s biological mother, First Assistant U.S. Atty. Melissa Holyoak in Utah indicated in a statement. Representatives of the FBI and U.S. attorneys office in Utah declined to say what happened to the 3-year-old child who had been with the group.

Parents engaged in custody dispute

The custody dispute between the parents does not appear to be a new development. An online fundraiser created five years go by Blue Inessa-Ethington titled “Help a Trans Mother Keep Custody of Her Child” raised $9,766.

“Last week, Rose’s ex relocated several counties away, negatively impacting Rose’s parent-time with the child,” she wrote on the fundraising page. She said the money would be used to seek a court order that would keep the child “safe and stable throughout this process.”

Anyone who has spent time with Rose knows “how much care and thought she puts into parenting her gender open child,” she wrote.

Family members said the child was assigned male at birth but identifies as a girl because of what they believed to be “manipulation” by Rose Inessa-Ethington, according to an April 16 affidavit from FBI Special Agent Jennifer Waterfield.

Gender-affirming care for minors has been limited

The Trump administration moved in December to cut off gender-affirming care for minors, prompting a third of states to sue.

It was the latest in a series of clashes between an administration that says transgender healthcare can be harmful to children and advocates who say it’s medically necessary.

Gender-affirming surgery is rare among U.S. children, research shows. Guidance from several major medical organizations calls for caution around surgery for minors and says decisions about treatments are case-by-case. Fewer than 1 in 1,000 U.S. adolescents receive gender-affirming medications, such as hormones or puberty blockers.

In Cuba, gender-affirming surgeries are banned for minors and performed only for adults through the public health system under strict supervision in designated public hospitals for Cuban citizens. They must be authorized by a medical commission after a comprehensive review of the patient’s file. That process often takes years because it requires a wide range of medical and psychological evaluations.

Brown, Boone and Schoenbaum write for the Associated Press. Brown reported from Billings, Mont., and Boone from Boise, Idaho. AP journalists Eric Tucker in Washington, Cristiana Mesquita in Havana and Devi Shastri in Milwaukee contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department will adopt firing squads as a permitted method of execution as the Trump administration moves to ramp up and expedite capital punishment cases, officials said Friday.

The Justice Department is also reauthorizing the use of single-drug lethal injections with pentobarbital that were used to carry out 13 executions during the first Trump administration — more than under any president in modern history. The Biden administration had removed pentobarbital from the federal protocol over concerns about the potential for unnecessary pain and suffering.

The moves were announced as part of a broader push to step up federal executions after a moratorium under the Biden administration. Only three defendants remain on federal death row after Democratic President Biden converted 37 sentences to life in prison, though the Trump administration has so far authorized seeking death sentences against 44 defendants.

“The prior administration failed in its duty to protect the American people by refusing to pursue and carry out the ultimate punishment against the most dangerous criminals, including terrorists, child murderers, and cop killers,” Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche said in a statement. “Under President Trump’s leadership, the Department of Justice is once again enforcing the law and standing with victims.”

The federal government has not previously included firing squad as a method of execution in its protocols, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Five states currently allow executions by firing squad: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah.

The pentobarbital protocol was adopted by William Barr, attorney general during Trump’s first term, to replace a three-drug mix used in the 2000s, the last time federal executions were carried out before Trump’s first term in office.

Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland in the final days of the Biden administration withdrew the pentobarbital lethal injection policy after a government review of scientific and medical research found there remains “significant uncertainty” about whether its use causes unnecessary pain and suffering.”

In 2020, under Barr’s leadership, the Justice Department published a rule in the Federal Register to allow the federal government to conduct executions by lethal injection or use “any other manner prescribed by the law of the state in which the sentence was imposed.”

A number of states allow other methods of execution, including electrocution and inhalation of nitrogen gas.

The Trump administration, in a report released Friday, said the Biden administration “got the standard and the science wrong.” The Biden administration’s findings, among other things, “failed to address the overwhelming evidence” that a person injected with pentobarbital “quickly loses consciousness — rendering him unable to experience pain,” the report said.

Currently on death row are are Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C.; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S history.

Richer writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — An appeals court on Friday blocked President Trump’s executive order suspending asylum access, a key pillar of the Republican president’s plan to crack down on migration at the southern border of the U.S.

A three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that immigration laws give people the right to apply for asylum at the border, and the president can’t circumvent that.

The panel concluded that the Immigration and Nationality Act doesn’t authorize the president to remove the plaintiffs under “procedures of his own making,” allow him to suspend plaintiffs’ right to apply for asylum or curtail procedures for adjudicating their anti-torture claims.

“The power by proclamation to temporarily suspend the entry of specified foreign individuals into the United States does not contain implicit authority to override the INA’s mandatory process to summarily remove foreign individuals,” wrote Judge J. Michelle Childs, who was nominated to the bench by Democratic President Biden.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said in a statement that the appellate ruling is “essential for those fleeing danger who have been denied even a hearing to present asylum claims under the Trump administration’s unlawful and inhumane executive order.”

Judge Justin Walker, a Trump nominee, wrote a partial dissent. He said the law gives immigrants protections against removal to countries where they would be persecuted, but the administration can issue broad denials of asylum applications.

Walker, however, agreed with the majority that the president cannot deport migrants to countries where they will be persecuted or strip them of mandatory procedures that protect against their removal.

Judge Cornelia Pillard, who was nominated by Democratic President Obama, also heard the case.

Amnesty International and dozens of U.S. civil and human rights groups issued a “ World Cup travel advisory” Thursday, warning tournament visitors of “rising authoritarianism and increasing violence” in the United States during President Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement.

The groups said the advisory was necessary “in light of the deteriorating human rights situation in the United States and in the absence of meaningful action and concrete guarantees from FIFA, host cities, or the U.S. government.”

The advisory says visitors may be arbitrarily denied entry to the country, detained in “inhumane” conditions or subjected to invasive phone and social media searches. It points to the aggressive immigration surges in cities including Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis that led to accusations of racial profiling and the violent suppression of protests.

The message was condemned by tourism officials, who said the groups were threatening the livelihoods of service industry workers in an attempt to achieve their political goals.

Geoff Freeman, president & CEO of the U.S. Travel Association, said there are legitimate concerns about U.S. entry policies but they’re being blown out of proportion. There were 67 million international travelers to the United States last year, he said in a statement.

“The notion that visiting America poses a meaningful safety risk is not a good-faith warning, it’s a political tactic designed to cause economic harm,” Freeman said.

A FIFA spokesperson pointed to several statements and policies, including the federation’s governing documents, which say, “FIFA is committed to respecting all internationally recognized human rights and shall strive to promote the protection of these rights.”

The U.S. has seen a decline in international travelers since Trump returned to the White House last year and offended U.S. allies with talk of making Canada a U.S. state, taking control of Greenland and questioning the value of NATO. The tourism industry is counting on a major boost from World Cup visitors, even as Trump’s travel ban for citizens of 19 countries has injected further uncertainty.

The administration is betting that its push to expedite visa processing for visitors and excitement about the tournament will outweigh concerns that Trump’s immigration messaging undercuts the theme of global unity that the World Cup is meant to represent.

The tournament kicks off June 11 with games spread across North America, including 11 stadiums in the U.S. along with two in Canada and three in Mexico.

Cooper writes for the Associated Press.

NICOSIA, Cyprus — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Friday refused to be drawn into a dispute with the United States over reports that the Pentagon is weighing whether to punish members of NATO that fail to support American operations in the Iran war.

Among those in the firing line is Spain, which has refused to allow U.S. forces involved in the war to use bases on its territory or airspace. Spain says that U.S.-Israeli actions in the Iran war contravenes international law.

France and the U.K. also refuse to give U.S. forces free rein to use their territory for the bombing campaign.

The Pentagon is reported to be mulling whether to suspend Spain from NATO, according to an unidentified U.S. official referring to a U.S. Defense Department email, and quoted by the Reuters news agency. The Associated Press hasn’t seen the email or had confirmation of its content. It has asked the Pentagon for comment, but received no immediate response.

“Well, we do not work with emails,” Sánchez told reporters at a European Union summit in Cyprus. “We work with official documents and positions taken, in this case, by the government of the United States.”

“The position of the government of Spain is clear: absolute collaboration with the allies, but always within the framework of international legality,” he said.

The Trump administration has routinely floated plans or ideas that are neither acted upon nor become policy.

The email also suggested reassessing U.S. support for the United Kingdom’s claim to the Falkland Islands, near Argentina, which are also known as Islas Malvinas.

Dave Pares, a spokesman for Prime Minister Keir Starmer, said the U.K. position on the islands is “longstanding and it’s unchanged: Sovereignty rests with the U.K., and the islanders’ right to self-determination is paramount.”

Pares noted “the Falkland Islands have previously voted overwhelmingly in favor of remaining a U.K. overseas territory.”

NATO staying out of the war

NATO operates by consensus, and all 32 member countries must agree for it to act.

The trans-Atlantic alliance’s founding treaty has no mechanism for suspending or ejecting any of the members, although nations may leave of their own accord one year after notifying the other allies. As an organization, NATO has no direct role in the Iran war except to defend its own territory.

Asked for comment, NATO headquarters said: “NATO’s Founding Treaty does not foresee any provision for suspension of NATO membership, or expulsion.”

President Trump has been angered by what he sees as the failure of some NATO members to back American actions in the Iran war and to help police the Strait of Hormuz, a major trade route. He has questioned the purpose of U.S. membership in the military organization.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas appeared perplexed by the U.S. criticism, given that the United Kingdom and France are leading an effort to help secure trade in the strait once the war is over.

“When we have had contacts with the American counterparts, then actually their asks for us have been exactly what we are able to offer after the cessation of hostilities,” she said. “Demining, escorting of ships, all of this that we have been discussing.”

But the United States has “long-standing arrangements and agreements with European allies on overflight, on basing” that should be respected, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has said, in implicit criticism of some allies like Spain, but also France.

While Spain restricted U.S. military activity related to the Iran war, U.S. warplanes have flown over other NATO allies’ airspace and used U.S. bases in other NATO countries for war-related operations.

Trump has even threatened to cut trade with Spain over its refusal to allow the use of its bases and airspace. More broadly, Spain has also disappointed its allies by failing to commit to spend as much as they plan to do on defense.

Security without the U.S.

As the reality sinks in that the U.S. commitment to NATO and Europe’s security under Trump has waned, the EU leaders debated how best to use European laws to come to each other’s aid should one of them come under attack.

Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides, whose country holds the bloc’s presidency until July, said that the leaders had tasked the European Commission to “prepare a blueprint on how we respond” should a member seek help under Article 42.7 of the EU treaties.

It’s only ever been used once, by France after the Paris terror attacks in 2015.

EU envoys and ministers are set next month to conduct “table-top exercises” to game out how the treaty article might be used, drawing on the bloc’s military capacities, but also other assets not available to NATO, like trade, border and visa policies.

Hadjicostis and Cook write for the Associated Press. Cook reported from Brussels. Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has ended its probe into Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, clearing a major roadblock to the confirmation of his successor, Kevin Warsh.

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeannine Pirro said on X that her office was ending its probe into the Fed’s extensive building renovations because the Fed’s Inspector General would scrutinize them instead.

The decision ends an investigation, one of several undertaken by the Justice Department into President Trump’s perceived adversaries, that for months had failed to gain traction as prosecutors struggled to articulate a basis to suspect criminal conduct.

A prosecutor handling the case conceded at a closed-door court hearing in March that the government hadn’t yet found any evidence of a crime, and a judge subsequently quashed subpoenas issued to the Federal Reserve. The judge, James Boasberg, said prosecutors had produced “essentially zero evidence” to suspect Powell of a crime. Boasberg prosecutors’ justification for the subpoenas as “thin and unsubstantiated.”

More recently, prosecutors made an unannounced visit to a construction site at the Fed’s headquarters but were turned away, drawing a rebuke from a defense attorney in the case who called the maneuver “not appropriate.”

The move could lead to a swift confirmation vote by the Senate for Warsh, a former top Fed official whom Trump, a Republican, nominated in January to replace Powell, whose term as chair ends May 15. Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, has said he would oppose Warsh until the investigation was resolved, effectively blocking his confirmation.

Warsh said Tuesday that he never promised the White House that he would cut interest rates, even as the president renewed his calls for the central bank to do so.

“The president never once asked me to commit to any particular interest rate decision, period,” Kevin Warsh, a former top Fed official, said under questioning by the Senate Banking Committee. “Nor would I ever agree to do so if he had. … I will be an independent actor if confirmed as chair of the Federal Reserve.”

Warsh’s comments came just hours after Trump, in an interview on CNBC, was asked if he would be disappointed if Warsh didn’t immediately cut rates and responded, “I would.”

Prominent Democratic governors, some considering 2028 presidential bids, gathered Thursday in Los Angeles for a high-dollar fundraiser.

Tickets to attend the event cost up to $100,000, according to an invitation. Closed to the press, it was expected to raise more than $1.5 million for the Democratic Governors Assn., among the largest amount the group has ever raised at a fundraiser in Los Angeles.

Gov. Gavin Newsom introduced fellow Democratic Govs. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Maura Healey of Massachusetts, Laura Kelly of Kansas, Katie Hobbs of Arizona, Wes Moore of Maryland, Josh Stein of North Carolina, Tim Walz of Minnesota and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.

Several attendees, including Newson, Beshear and Whitmore, are widely believed to be eyeing a presidential run in 2028. Walz was then-Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate in her unsuccessful 2024 bid for the presidency.

Beshear moderated the conversation among the state leaders at the Los Angeles-area home of liquor heiress Ellen Bronfman Hauptman and her husband, former Chicago Fire soccer club owner Andrew Hauptman. Attendees enjoyed cocktails and passed hors d’oeuvres
around the pool before settling in for a conversation in the house that focused on how governors must focus on results more than ideological disputes, and how that ought to be a model for federal elected officials.

About 45 donors attended, including Damon Lindelof, the creator of “Lost,” and Scott Budnick, the executive producer of “The Hangover” movie series. Others who supported the event included director J.J. Abrams and former Walt Disney Studios Chairman Alan Horn.