WASHINGTON — Two and a half centuries after the American colonies declared independence from Britain under King George III, his descendant King Charles III lands in Washington on Monday with trans-Atlantic ties under strain and security in the spotlight.
A shooting at a Washington dinner attended by President Trump on Saturday sparked a last-minute security review of the four-day state visit, intended to celebrate the United States’ 250th anniversary, and the U.S.-U.K. “special relationship.”
Buckingham Palace said the king “is greatly relieved to hear that the president, first lady and all guests have been unharmed.” After a security review, the palace said the trip “will proceed as planned.”
Trump praises the king but derides Starmer
A rift between the U.K. government and Trump over issues including the Iran war had already raised the political stakes for the British monarch’s visit.
In recent weeks, Trump has lambasted Prime Minister Keir Starmer over his unwillingness to join U.S. military attacks on Iran, dismissing Britain’s leader as “not Winston Churchill,” the World War II prime minister who coined the phrase “special relationship” for the U.K.-U.S. bond.
It’s part of a wider rift between Trump and the United States’ NATO allies, whom he has called “cowards” and “useless” for not joining action against Iran. A leaked Pentagon email suggested the U.S. could reassess support for the U.K.’s sovereignty over the Falkland Islands in the south Atlantic. Britain and Argentina fought a 1982 war over the islands, also known as the Islas Malvinas.
The president insists the political chill won’t affect the royal visit. Charles “has nothing to do with that,” Trump said in March, meaning NATO.
The president has spoken in glowing terms about Charles, repeatedly referring to the monarch as his “friend” and a “great guy.”
He also continues to mention his “amazing” trip to the U.K. in September with first lady Melania Trump for an unprecedented second state visit. Starmer hand-delivered the invitation from the king in the Oval Office five weeks after Trump returned to office, in a very public attempt to woo the Republican president.
The U.K. royal family laid on pomp and pageantry for the Trumps, with scarlet-clad guardsmen, brass bands and a sumptuous banquet at Windsor Castle.
“President Trump has always had great respect for King Charles, and their relationship was further strengthened by the president’s historic visit to the United Kingdom last year,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told The Associated Press. “The president looks forward to a special visit by Their Majesties, which will include a beautiful state dinner and multiple events throughout the week.”
Trump, meanwhile, told the BBC that the king’s visit could “absolutely” help repair the trans-Atlantic relationship.
“He’s fantastic. He’s a fantastic man. Absolutely the answer is yes,” the president said.
Some have called for the trip to be canceled
Kristofer Allerfeldt, a University of Exeter professor specializing in American history, said the two governments have very different objectives for the trip.
He said that for Charles, the trip is about “reinforcing long-term ties, showcasing the monarchy’s soft power and reminding the world that Britain still carries diplomatic weight.”
For Trump, it’s more about “a media event,” with emphasis on the optics of a visit that resembles a meeting of “two gilded monarchs.”
Some U.K. politicians worry that the trip is fraught with opportunities for embarrassment. Trump’s recent broadsides at Pope Leo XIV have heightened those concerns.
Ed Davey, leader of the U.K. centrist opposition Liberal Democrats party, earlier this month called Trump “a dangerous and corrupt gangster” and implored the government to cancel the trip.
“I really fear for what Trump might say or do while our king is forced to stand by his side,” Davey said in the House of Commons. “We cannot put His Majesty in that position.”
Starmer defended the visit, saying “the monarchy, through the bonds that it builds, is often able to reach through the decades” and bolster important relationships.
Andrew and Epstein cast a shadow
Raising the stakes is the shadow of the king’s younger brother Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who has been stripped of his royal title of Prince Andrew, exiled from public life and put under police investigation over his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. He has denied committing any crimes.
Epstein victims have urged the king to meet with them and other sexual abuse survivors. It’s unlikely he will do so.
Charles has visited the U.S. 19 times, but this is his first state visit to the country since becoming king in 2022. His mother, Queen Elizabeth II, made four state visits to the U.S.
The king, who is 77 and was diagnosed in early 2024 with an undisclosed form of cancer, will spend four days in the U.S. accompanied by Queen Camilla.
In Washington, the king and queen will have a private tea with the Trumps and attend a garden party and a formal White House state dinner. The president and the king will also have a one-on-one meeting.
The royal couple will also visit the Sept. 11 memorial in New York and attend a 250th birthday block party in Virginia, where Charles will also meet Indigenous leaders involved in nature conservation — a favorite cause of the environmentalist king.
Three centuries after Britain’s kings and queens gave up any real political power, the royals remain symbols of soft power, deployed by elected governments to smooth international relationships and send messages about what the U.K. considers important.
A key moment will be the king’s speech to the U.S. Congress on Tuesday. It’s only the second time, after Queen Elizabeth II in 1991, that a U.K. monarch has addressed a joint meeting of both houses.
Elizabeth praised liberalism on that trip, spoke against the idea that “power grows from the barrel of a gun” and praised the “rich ethnic and cultural diversity of both our societies.”
The king’s treasured causes, including the environment and harmony among religious faiths, are in contrast to Trump’s. He’s unlikely to accentuate differences, but Allerfeldt said that, in the monarch’s subtle way, the king could use his speech to send a message.
“He does have an unorthodox way of looking at the world, and I think maybe he can actually have something valid to say when he addresses Congress,” Allerfeldt said.
Superville and Lawless write for the Associated Press. Jill Lawless reported from London.
Rhetoric dehumanizing immigrant and Latino communities may appear more open and in-your-face in the current political climate. But that has not been a barrier for Latinos seeking elective office or high-level roles in government.
Voters are choosing an increasing number of nonwhite Hispanic leaders to local elective office — and many of the leaders are the first Latinos to hold their seats. Some political science experts attribute the rise of Latino leadership to years of grassroots organizing, coupled with ongoing demonization of their communities by Trump administration officials and conservative activists.
“That’s the difference now, is that there’s this extra incentive of an unrelenting attack on Latinos across the country,” said Anna Sampaio, an ethnic studies professor at Santa Clara University who specializes in race and gender politics.
There are currently an estimated 7,700 Latino elected officials nationwide, according to data from the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. That’s up from 6,883 officials in 2020.
Estimated to number as many as 55 million people — 16% of the U.S. population — Latinos are the largest ethnic minority in the country, with politics, interests and priorities as diverse as the national origins represented within their population. But Latinos also are underrepresented as a demographic across elective offices.
Since the beginning of President Trump’s second term, Latino communities have been a target of his hard-line immigration tactics. The feeling of attack doesn’t stop there. From memes shared from the official White House page perpetuating Hispanic stereotypes, a federally led English-only initiative and an anti-diversity, equity and inclusion push have painted a target on Latinos across the country.
It’s all led to more Latinos seeking office to defend their communities and give voice to those who may be afraid to speak out in the current political climate. As a result, legislators have proposed measures that include providing community members with protections against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, halting the approval of ICE detention centers in their cities, and calling for a stop to ICE funding, among other actions.
Pennsylvania Latino mayor makes history
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with a roughly 40% Hispanic population, recently elected Jaime Arroyo their first Latino mayor. Arroyo took office in January, after being elected with 85% of the vote.
“I think being the first Latino to be in this role and the first person of color to be mayor of Lancaster City has been exciting,” Arroyo told The Associated Press, adding that he finds it “extremely exciting to lead and represent our community in this role.”
With rhetoric and national policies — such as heightened immigration enforcement — hurting the Latino communities, Arroyo said, diverse representation in government is more important than ever. He also believes that the rise of elected Latino officials over the last couple of years is the result of generations of Latinos being politically active fighting for civil rights.
“We’re starting to see a lot of the fruits of that labor come to fruition,” Arroyo said. “There’s never a perfect time to serve your community, there’s the right time. And I think right now is the right time for a lot of Latinos to step up into these roles, especially with everything that is going on.”
Latino representation expanding in city councils
Many more Latinos made history when they took office in earlier this year.
In Iowa, Rob Barron was sworn in Jan. 12 as the first Latino representative on the Des Moines City Council. Antonio Pacheco was sworn on Jan. 7 to be the first Latino member of the city council in Conyers, Georgia. In Ohio, Eileen Torres became the first Mexican American women to win a city council seat in Lorain. Sabrina Gonzalez also took office there as the first Puerto Rican women to serve.
And in Michigan, Clara Martinez and Deyanira Nevarez Martinez were sworn in Jan. 1 to the Lansing City Council, making the city the first in the U.S. to have a council with majority Latino representation.
Martinez said her election, and that of Nevarez Martinez, makes a bit statement about “what people are truly open to despite the national rhetoric.”
“I think because of the rhetoric that we are having to face and some of the backlash on the national stage, I think that’s just fueled the fire for so many people,” she said.
The Salt Lake City Council also has a Latino majority, with four of seven seats, after Erika Carlsen, the granddaughter of Mexican immigrants, was sworn in on Jan. 5. Carlsen said her success is possible because of current and previous generations that put in the work to create spaces where Latinas were encouraged to take leadership positions.
“I feel like I’m building on early generations of leadership,” Carlsen said. “That’s both an honor and responsibility to improve Salt Lake City for the people who live here.”
Carlsen said even if representation at the federal level is not high or visible she said having representation at the local level can have a huge impact.
“I think that it’s critically important that we continue to build on this momentum,” Carlsen said. “The majority of change that can happen starts locally, it doesn’t start in Washington but in City Hall, school boards and neighborhoods conversations. That’s the kind of momentum I’d love to see all across the United States.”
Carolina Welles, executive director of The First Ask, an organization that supports first-time female candidates at the state level, said the reason why Latino representation is more visible at the local level is because those leaders are able to built trust with their community much easier given their proximity.
“They actually know what people care about,” Welles said. “They have a stake because they are facing similar things.”
Local level Latino leadership builds on state and federal representation
It’s not just at the local level. Latinos are making inroads at the federal level too.
The 119th Congress has 56 Hispanic or Latino members. That shakes out to 10.35% of total membership, according to the Congressional Research Service.
For comparison, there were only 14 Hispanic or Latino members and all were male in the 99th Congress, 40 years ago.
At the start of 2025, there were seven Hispanic U.S. senators. That number decreased to six when then Sen. Marco Rubio resigned to become the Secretary of State, the first Latino to hold the position.
Last year also marked a record for Latinas at the state level. Latinas held 214, or 2.9%, of seats in state legislatures, according to the Center for American Women and Politics. That was up from 192 seats in 2024.
Currently, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is the only active Latina governor in the U.S. Only two Latinas have been elected governor in U.S. history, and both were in New Mexico.
In March, Gina Hinojosa won the Democratic nomination for governor, making her the second Latina to win a major party gubernatorial nomination in Texas.
Latinos saw the biggest rise in elected officials during the Trump administration in response to attacks on their fundamental rights, said Sampaio, the Santa Clara University professor. She said that trend is likely to continue as the administration continues its attacks on immigrant communities.
“We’re likely to see more Latinos run for office at the local level, at the state level and even at the national level in response to the attack on simply their existence,” Sampaio said. “It is unwittingly both terrorizing the Latino community as well as mobilizing communities.”
SACRAMENTO — Xavier Becerra seems like the type of steady, trustworthy fellow you’d like your daughter to marry. But she’s attracted to a charming party animal.
Then the flashy dude does something really stupid and repulsive. Daughter is jarred into her senses and decides to size up the unexciting but reliable guy.
That’s how I’m seeing the suddenly captivating contest to succeed termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom.
OK, it’s not a perfect analogy. Becerra is 68, been happily married for 37 years and the couple have three grown children. But the principle’s the same: He’s the safe choice. The hot other character merely fooled lots of people for a while.
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“People are looking for something stable,” Becerra answered when I asked. “Everybody likes pizzazz and glitter. Then all of a sudden their hero falls from grace. And they look for who they can trust.”
Dan Schnur, who teaches political communications at USC, UC Berkeley and Pepperdine, says: “Democrats had a near-death experience with Swalwell. They don’t seem to be in the mood to take more risks.”
Schnur calls Becerra “this year’s version of Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign.” He’s the safe choice. “Sometimes being ‘none of the above’ is good enough.”
Since Swalwell’s collapse, the once-floundering Becerra has had a meteoric rise in the polls.
A survey conducted for the state Democratic Party showed Becerra rising by 10 points from single digits to tying Tom Steyer, a billionaire hedge fund founder turned climate warrior. Close behind was former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter.
Steyer and Porter are both liberals in their ideology and personalities. Neither are flamethrowers, but they‘re fiery. In contrast, Becerra also is an ideological liberal, but with a low-key demeanor that might cause one to mistake him for a political moderate.
San José Mayor Matt Mahan is clearly a Democratic centrist. But in this era of intense polarization, moderation may be a hard sale. At least, it has been so far for Mahan.
Among those six Democratic and Republican candidates, Becerra boasts by far the most outstanding political resume.
He was U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services under President Biden. Before that as state attorney general, California’s mild-mannered “top cop” showed his aggressiveness by suing the first Trump administration 123 times and winning the vast majority of cases. He also served 12 terms in Congress from Los Angeles and became part of the Democratic leadership. And he served one term in the state Assembly.
“He talked in very vague generalities,” the former political operative says, but adds: “In the middle of the other candidates’ drama and emotional outbursts, he seemed very calm and safe.”
Some pundits and pols have been calling on Becerra to show more fire. But that’s not him. He’s guarded and understated. It’s how he’s wired. If he attempted a personality change, it probably wouldn’t work. There’s a risk of it seeming contrived and phony.
But Becerra should be more specific on issues. Exactly how would he make life better for Californians?
His basic answer when asked how he’d solve a given problem pestering California is essentially: Trust me. I’ll meet with all sides and figure it out.
That’s not just a cop-out. It’s his pragmatic modus operandi.
That reserved style prompted this shot during the debate from Porter, who tends toward specificity:
“Mr. Becerra, you have all these lovely plans. But there are never any numbers, any revenue plan, any details. … The how, the why and how much, it’s all missing.”
Becerra responded with some rare emotion: “That’s very rich to hear from someone who’s never had to actually run a government.” The former Cabinet secretary said he’d balanced four federal HHS budgets that were larger than the California state budget.
I asked Becerra about some issues last week. Here’s partly what he said:
Housing costs: Expedite building by streamlining more regulations. “We’ll continue to have rules, but let’s make them smart rules.”
Gas prices: Keep more refineries from closing. “Let them know they can operate and produce and not lose money. That’s an easy one.”
High-speed rail: ”We’re going to build the bullet train, but not this bullet train. It’s too expensive. Sit everybody down and come out with a position.”
Banning new gas cars by 2035: Is Newsom’s goal realistic? “Seeing what I see, no. We can’t make it by ‘35, but we can make it.”
But let’s be honest. Elections usually turn more on likability than policy positions.
“Decency may be a quality that goes a long way” in the governor’s race, says longtime Democratic strategist Darry Sragow. “In part that’s because of the Swalwell revelations and also because of Trump, who’s not decent. Decency may be what people are looking for.”
But Democrats are riled up by Trump and they’re also demanding backbone and fight.
Many are eyeing Becerra as someone perhaps worth partnering up with. A bit more passion from him could help sustain their interest.
Hold everything. Hollywood’s Lexington Park will not be getting a new playground after all, and that’s both good news and bad news.
To explain, let me take you back to April 15, when I tagged along with Sabine Phillips on her weekly three-hour inspection of the neighborhood’s chronic trash problem. Phillips, a housekeeper by trade, was hired by one of her clients a few years ago to help clean up their streets.
So each Wednesday, Phillips went out on her yellow Huffy cruiser and routinely logged 50 or more illegally dumped items and reported them to the city’s 311 system for pickup. And each Saturday, she filled up to four or five big bags with smaller bits and scraps of debris.
Near the end of my three hours with Phillips, who got help that day from volunteer Keith Johnson, we visited the Lexington pocket park. There were no kids there, and there never are, Phillips said. That’s because of the glass and needles in the sand, drug activity, sporadic violence, gang tags on the slide and homeless camps.
A guy from the Recreation and Parks Department showed up and said the park was in line for a possible upgrade that could cost as much as $300,000. In my April 18 column, I questioned the wisdom of investing in a playground that would remain unsafe unless there was a plan to address all the aforementioned issues.
Nick Barnes-Batista, communications director for L.A. City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, wrote to tell me his office was unaware of any playground projects planned for that park.
A spokesperson for Recreation and Parks told me that despite what was said by the employee I met in the park, there is no “immediate playground replacement project on the books.” But the department is “working closely” with the councilman’s office “to identify funding sources and to work with the community on broader park improvements and/or uses.”
OK, so it’s good news that taxpayer funds won’t be plowed into a park that could well be lost to the neighborhood almost immediately, due to all the aforementioned problems.
But it’s bad news and sad commentary that a park in the densely populated heart of the city will remain unusable for the foreseeable future.
The more important consideration, though, is the question of what’s being done to prevent the illegal dumping of furniture, mattresses and other items that sit curbside and often end up as the building blocks of new homeless encampments.
There’s a concentration of social service agencies in the neighborhood, said Stefanie Keenan, a longtime neighborhood volunteer and activist. She’s the one who hired her housekeeper to help look after the neighborhood, and she insists there is not enough enforcement of existing laws to address problems that are both a nuisance and a public safety threat, given the crime and all-too-frequent fires.
A woman pushes her walker past debris in Council District 13 in Los Angeles on Friday.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Soto-Martínez agreed to talk to me about all of this on Friday morning, when he dropped by the Bresee Foundation, a nonprofit with a range of enrichment activities for youngsters and families in the largely low-income immigrant community, as well as homelessness prevention programs. Staff and volunteers, recruited with support from the council office, were about to head into nearby streets with shovels, brooms and trash bags.
Soto-Martínez acknowledged his district’s many challenges, told the gathering that the strength of a community is its people, and thanked them for their service.
The councilman, a former labor leader who joined the growing progressive wing of the L.A. City Council in 2022 with support from the local chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, has three challengers in the June 2 primary (Colter Carlisle, Dylan Kendall and Rich Sarian). He told me the city has to do a better job of educating people about illegal dumping and how to report it. A related challenge, he said, “is how quickly can we get to it. And that is a budget issue because we’ve cut so many positions on trash pickup.”
Soto-Martínez said his office used discretionary funds to hire two crews from the L.A. Conservation Corps for trash pickup. On homelessness, he said, he has a team strategizing to address the needs, and a medical team that works the streets, and a tiny home village is in the works.
But the housing shortage is a major challenge, he said, and when it comes to entrenched homelessness, “we’re now starting to deal with much more difficult cases.” Namely severe mental illness and serious addiction, both of which generally come under county jurisdiction.
“We created another team that goes out every single day. We door-knock, email and phone-bank people who are at risk of eviction,” Soto-Martínez said, adding that homelessness has declined by 25% during his three years in office.
So what is his message to constituents who say they don’t see enough progress?
“We ask them to give us patience and grace,” he said. “There’s a lot of examples like this, where we’re not just dealing with one thing. We’re dealing with four or five things.”
All of that is true, but the patience he asks for is wearing thin among some constituents.
“We need to find common ground and work together,” Soto-Martínez said. “You know, they see trash as an issue, and they’re doing it their way and we’re doing it our way. But how can we team up and do it together? You know, we’re happy to build those networks out, and under many of the issues they describe, I’m not disagreeing. … We all have the same goal.”
L.A. City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez gives a pep talk to volunteers before they leave to clean their neighborhood streets of garbage and debris.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
When Soto-Martínez departed for another appointment, the volunteers took to the streets, filling trash bags. They worked their way up Vermont, and a Bresee employee told me he works the same streets every day, trying to clear a path for “safe passage” as students walk to and from school.
As I said in the earlier column, it’s an inspiration to see people step up for their communities, whether out of pride or frustration. And it’s also reasonable to expect more from City Hall.
I drove over to Western and Sierra Vista, met up with Keenan, and told her about my conversation with Soto-Martínez. She said lax city policies and frequent non-response to citizen pleas for help have created the unsolved problems residents deal with daily. She said city officials have to do a better job of helping homeless people off the streets and preventing further deterioration of neighborhoods.
She was encouraged by a message she got from a representative of Mayor Karen Bass’ office who wants to tour the neighborhood with her.
We walked west on Sierra Vista and came upon a dumped sofa, some cabinets, mattresses, and a man who has been living in a curbside encampment for months. He sat near his belongings, which spilled into the street.
Why hasn’t this been addressed? Keenan wondered aloud. She has decided to stop paying her housekeeper to help address the neighborhood’s needs, and she predicted things will only get worse because of it.
I drove over to the Lexington pocket park, which Soto-Martínez called a priority, among many other priorities. Friday was a holiday — Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. With schools closed, the park would have been a great little neighborhood asset.
But the entrance was closed, with a lock on the gate, and two tarped dwellings were set up against the iron fencing of the empty park.
After winning his first race for Congress in 1992, 34-year-old Xavier Becerra credited a wave of community supporters in Los Angeles, many Latino, for backing his upstart campaign, saying he hoped his win was proof that grassroots politics was more valuable than “heavy dollars.”
More than 30 years later, Becerra, 68, is again an upstart candidate — this time for California governor. Again he is facing monied competition — including from chief Democratic rival Tom Steyer, a self-funded billionaire — and relying on Latino and other grassroots support.
California gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra speaks during a campaign event in Los Angeles on April 18.
(Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)
“You are the people power that it takes,” he told a crowd of supporters at a recent “Fighting for the California Dream” town hall in Los Angeles. “California wasn’t built by billionaires. It was built by your families. It was built by our families.”
That Becerra is still fighting in the race — and drawing new people to his events — reflects a remarkable and hard-to-explain turnaround for a campaign that appeared all but dead less than a month ago, then bounded back into contention after Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped from the race and resigned from Congress amid sexual assault allegations.
Before Swalwell’s collapse, Becerra’s biggest splash in the race came in March, when USC excluded him and other low-performing candidates from a planned debate. The criteria left every candidate of color out, and after Becerra and others complained, the forum was canceled.
A California Democratic Party tracking poll, released in early April before the Swalwell scandal broke, showed Becerra near the bottom of the field with 4% support among likely voters. In a party poll taken after it broke, Becerra’s support jumped to 13% — the biggest increase of any candidate.
Certainly some of Swalwell’s supporters shifted to Becerra, but political observers are still pondering why so many did — and not to Steyer, former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter or other Democrats with single-digit support, such as former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa or San José Mayor Matt Mahan.
Whatever the answer, Becerra’s surge has sparked fresh interest in his candidacy. It also has raised questions about his time as California attorney general, when he sued the first Trump administration more than 120 times, and U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, when he backed the Biden administration’s strict COVID-19 rules and oversaw the agency’s response to a massive influx of unaccompanied minors at the southern border.
It has also put a growing target on Becerra’s back — including at Wednesday night’s gubernatorial debate, when rivals criticized him as a “D.C. insider” with poorly detailed plans for the state — and sparked hope among many Latinos that California will elect one of them as governor for the first time in state history, sending a strong message of resistance to the intensely anti-immigrant Trump administration.
Of course, Becerra faces hurdles. Steyer, a hedge fund founder who has donated more than $130 million to his own campaign, has been ahead of him in polling, as have two Republicans: Silicon Valley entrepreneur and former Fox News host Steve Hilton, who has President Trump’s endorsement, and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco. Only the top two candidates in the June 2 primary advance to the November election.
Still, Becerra now has a path to victory, one that did not exist even a month ago, and new funding. Many Democratic voters remain undecided, and many — shocked by the Swalwell scandal — are looking for another Democratic front-runner to back.
In an interview with The Times, Becerra said he’s the man for the job, because “California needs a work horse, not a show horse.”
Xavier Becerra, left, gathers with other candidates for Los Angeles mayor in 2000.
(Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)
Rising wave of Latino political power
A Sacramento native and the son of a Mexican immigrant mother and a Mexican American father, Becerra graduated from Stanford Law School and served as a deputy to California Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp before being elected in 1990 to the California Assembly.
In 1993, Becerra entered Congress on a rising wave of Latino political power and the heels of a fractious presidential election in which former White House aide Pat Buchanan challenged President George H.W. Bush in the Republican primary on a stridently anti-immigrant, “America First” message — one Trump repurposed in both 2016 and 2024.
It was a defining political moment for Latinos across the country, and for Becerra personally, said Fernando Guerra, founding director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.
“He certainly has been and is part of the incorporation of Latinos into California history and California politics, and it really begins in the early ’90s,” Guerra said. “His rise and political career is really a reflection of the rise and political incorporation of Latinos.”
In 1994, Becerra helped oppose Proposition 187, a state initiative to deny undocumented immigrants access to public education and healthcare. In 1996, he sharply criticized the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which cut federal benefits for many legal immigrants. By 1997, Becerra — just 39 — was chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the first Latino member to serve on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee.
By 2016, Becerra, 58, was the highest-ranking Latino in Congress when then-Gov. Jerry Brown tapped him to replace a Senate-bound Kamala Harris as California attorney general. There, Becerra played a key role in defending the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, against Republican attacks.
Then-U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra arrives for a hearing to discuss reopening schools during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021.
(Greg Nash / Associated Press)
Criticism and praise
In a rush of endorsements in recent days, Becerra’s supporters have lauded his executive experience, calling him a “proven leader” who, amid constant threats from the Trump administration, is “ready to fight back on day one.”
Becerra’s critics also have pointed to his leadership record, but to highlight what they contend are glaring failures.
Steyer spokesman Kevin Liao alleged Becerra was “absent, ineffective, or too late” in responding to COVID-19 and other public health crises as health secretary, and that California “cannot afford incompetence, or someone who disappears when things get hard.”
The remarks echoed others made during the pandemic, including by Eric Topol, who is executive vice president of Scripps Research in La Jolla, a professor of translational medicine and a cardiologist. During the pandemic, Topol accused Becerra of being “invisible” in the fight to control it. In a recent interview, he said he still believes that.
Topol said the Biden administration’s COVID response was defined by poor data collection and “infighting” among agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, including on vital issues such as when Americans should receive booster shots and how long they should isolate after infection.
Becerra “basically took a very absent, low profile — didn’t show up, didn’t harmonize the remarkable infighting,” Topol said. “The buck stops with him.”
Dr. David A. Kessler, the Biden administration’s top science official on COVID-19 and now a professor of pediatrics and epidemiology at UC San Francisco, fiercely defended Becerra, crediting him with rolling out some 676 million vaccines and steering the nation out of a wildly unfamiliar health crisis with substantial success — what Kessler called a “historical achievement” that proved government “can do big things.”
Kessler said Becerra rightly assessed that the country needed to hear from medical experts, not politicians, and so deferred at times to the doctors, epidemiologists and vaccinologists he smartly surrounded himself with and trusted — but he was never absent. “He enabled us. He was there. Anything I needed, he helped deliver,” Kessler said.
Becerra said there were a lot of people involved with the COVID-19 fight, including a White House team launched before his confirmation as health secretary. Still, it was his agency that ultimately led the response, and helped bring the pandemic to an end, he said.
“At the end of four years, when we had put some 700 million COVID shots into the arms of Americans and pulled the country and our economy out of the COVID crisis, it was HHS — and I was the secretary of HHS,” he said.
Becerra’s rivals in the governor’s race also have attacked him for how he responded to an influx of unaccompanied immigrant minors during the pandemic. They allege Becerra rushed their release to relatives and other sponsors while ignoring concerns from career health staff that some of those placements weren’t safe — resulting in thousands of kids being lost to the system, forced into child labor or trafficked.
The criticism stems in part from a sweeping New York Times investigation that found the health department couldn’t find some 85,000 children it had released, that Becerra had relaxed screening processes for sponsors and that placement concerns from career health staff went ignored or were silenced.
The investigation by reporter Hannah Dreier found that thousands of the 250,000 or so migrant children who arrived in the U.S. between early 2021 and early 2023 had “ended up in punishing jobs across the country — working overnight in slaughterhouses, replacing roofs, operating machinery in factories — all in violation of child labor laws.”
Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra holds a news conference in Border Field State Park in San Diego in 2017.
(Francine Orr/ Los Angeles Times)
It found there were many signs of “the explosive growth of this labor force,” and that staff had repeatedly flagged concerns about it in reports that reached Becerra’s desk. It also reported that, during a staff meeting in the summer of 2022, Becerra had pressed staff to move children even more quickly through the process, comparing them to factory parts.
“If Henry Ford had seen this in his plants, he would have never become famous and rich. This is not the way you do an assembly line,” Becerra said, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by the newspaper.
Danni Wang, another Steyer spokesperson, said children “were handed to gang members, traffickers, and abusers because [Becerra] stripped the background checks that had protected them for years.”
Becerra said the controversy is one he has addressed publicly for years, including in multiple congressional hearings. He said his team worked diligently to properly vet sponsors and do right by the thousands of children in their care, despite Congress failing to provide the budget needed to restore a system of licensed care facilities that the first Trump administration had dismantled.
“It was a wreck. They had closed facilities, they had fired the licensed caregivers. And remember, this was during COVID, [when] you didn’t want anyone to be near each other,” he said. “How do you take care of thousands of kids in a center that could house maybe 50 kids?”
He said he led an aggressive push to stand up temporary facilities — including in places like the San Diego Convention Center — while rebuilding the licensed care facilities Trump had dismantled and working to place kids into the community as quickly and safely as possible.
Ron Klain, who served as Biden’s chief of staff for the first two years of the administration, said Becerra helped lead the administration out of the crisis by being “an outspoken advocate” for the children in its care.
“Xavier was very, very insistent in meetings and very outspoken on the risk that some of these people [the kids] were being placed with were not the proper people to place them with, and pushed hard for more rigor in the process,” Klain said.
Becerra also has faced criticism and questions related to the federal indictment of his former chief of staff Sean McCluskie, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud after authorities accused him of stealing some $225,000 from Becerra’s dormant state political campaign account.
Becerra was not implicated in the scandal — which he’s previously described as a “gut punch” — and said he did everything he could to ensure McCluskie and others were held accountable once it came to light, including by providing “testimony and documents” to the FBI and federal prosecutors.
Hilton has said the scandal, which also implicated a former aide to Gov. Gavin Newsom, showed that “corruption has become totally ingrained and systemic” under Democratic rule in California.
Looking ahead
Experts said Becerra’s long resume will help him stand out in a race with less experienced competitors and no household names — and that Californians electing a Latino for the first time, as the Trump administration conducts one of the largest ever deportation campaigns, dismantles immigrant rights and targets people on the street based largely on their looking and sounding Latino, would be a major political moment.
Becerra said his extensive experience should matter to voters, because such experience will be necessary in the pivotal and no doubt chaotic Trump years ahead, when “pizzazz and dazzle” will matter less than steady competence from “someone who’s actually been in the midst of that hurricane” before.
“It helps to have gone through these things. I’ve been there, I’ve done that, and I’ve done it successfully,” he said. “I’ve proven that, whether it was taking on Donald Trump toe to toe as the [attorney general], whether it was getting us out of COVID working closely with the White House to deploy the resources and get that done, we made it happen.”
Supporters of a billionaire tax said Sunday that they had gathered nearly twice as many signatures as necessary to qualify the controversial proposal for the November ballot.
Opponents of the proposal argue that it already has driven wealthy Californians — crucial to funding the state’s volatile budget — to other parts of the nation. Advocates, however, say the proposed tax is critical to compensate for federal healthcare funding cuts that will harm the state’s most vulnerable residents.
“Most Californians and most billionaires recognize how reasonable and necessary this proposal is — both to keep emergency rooms open and to save California businesses from closing,” said Suzanne Jimenez, the chief of staff of the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, the chief proponent of the effort. “A very small group of the most controversial billionaires on the planet tried to stop” this effort, she added, but when “our growing coalition files these signatures, David will have won the first round against Goliath.”
The union, which represents more than 120,000 healthcare workers, patients and consumers, launched the effort to counter massive healthcare funding cuts that President Trump signed last year. The California Budget & Policy Center estimated that as many as 3.4 million Californians could lose Medi-Cal coverage, rural hospitals could shutter, and other healthcare services would be slashed unless new funding was found.
The proposal would impose a one-time tax of up to 5% on taxpayers and trusts with assets valued at more than $1 billion, with some exclusions, such as property. The levy could be paid over five years. Ninety percent of the revenue would fund healthcare programs, and the remaining funds would be spent on food assistance and education programs. The proposal would cost the state’s richest residents about $100 billion if a majority of voters support it.
Supporters need to submit the signatures of nearly 875,000 registered voters to county elections officials by June 24. They say they have gathered nearly 1.6 million signatures.
Opponents of the measure, which has divided liberals — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) supports it while Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom opposes it — said the proposal would destroy California’s economy and budget, while doing nothing to address the state’s underlying financial issues.
“This wealth tax would have a devastating impact on our economy, state budget, and the cost of living for all Californians,” said Rob Lapsley, president of the bipartisan California Business Roundtable. “The measure doesn’t do anything to reduce the state’s $35-billion-plus budget deficit and does nothing to address the decade of overspending that led to the structural deficit. In fact, because the state relies so heavily on high-income-earner tax revenue, this measure could lead to reduced budget revenue in the long term as highly mobile wealthy individuals leave the state to avoid this new tax.”
He also argued that the proposal could result in higher taxes for all Californians.
“This is an everyone tax that is called a billionaire tax,” Lapsley said, “and we will ensure Californians understand the truth on the devastating consequences this initiative will have.”
WASHINGTON — A night devoted to celebrating the 1st Amendment and journalism turned into a breaking story of its own.
The attendees at the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner Saturday took cover under the tables in the Washington Hilton ballroom when they heard gunshots outside, which led to the evacuation of President Trump and many of his Cabinet officials at the gala.
But instinct kicked in swiftly, and many of the journalists in the crowd of 2,600 people were using their phones to capture video. Uploading pictures to social media was a challenge as the internet coverage in the ballroom was poor, but they would eventually provide a detailed chronicle of the night.
“I reached for my phone as soon as I could and started shooting video to capture as much of the moment as I could,” said Sara Cook, a CBS News producer and press association board member seated on the dais near the president, First Lady Melania Trump and Vice President JD Vance, who were hustled out while a SWAT team swarmed the stage.
“I could hear Secret Service officers saying, ‘Where is it coming from?’” Cook said. “They seemed to be quite confused onstage about exactly what was happening, where the threat was coming from and if there still was a threat.”
Authorities identified the suspect as Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old teacher from Torrance. He was apprehended after rushing a security checkpoint one floor above the ballroom. Law enforcement officials said Allen was armed with a shotgun, a handgun and multiple knives.
After guests were told the evening program would not proceed, many of the TV anchors and correspondents in the crowd headed to their Washington studios. Many didn’t wait. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, who was returning from a restroom on the floor where the incident occurred, delivered an eyewitness account from the Hilton lobby using a Webex app on a smartphone.
There was at least one fog-of-war moment as well. CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins reported on air that the armed suspect was killed by the Secret Service, attributing it to security for Education Secretary Linda McMahon. She had to correct the report after Fox News said Allen was alive and detained by agents.
“CBS Evening News” anchor Tony Doukopil and CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss walked several blocks from the Hilton to waiting vehicles that took them to the network’s offices and studios on M Street. (Weiss granted a reporter’s request to go behind the scenes to observe the news-gathering operation.)
Matt Gutman, Nancy Cordes, Tony Dokoupil and Bari Weiss at the CBS News Washington bureau on April 25, 2026.
When Doukopil and Weiss arrived at the bureau, CBS News national correspondent Matt Gutman and Nancy Cordes, chief White House correspondent, were already on the air with a special report, showing video shot by its journalists in the ballroom.
Doukopil joined his colleagues, all still dressed in formal wear, and took over the coverage. The newsroom soon filled with executives and producers arriving from the Hilton, several dressed in long gowns and carrying their high-heeled shoes.
CBS News President Tom Cibrowski stood over a large multiview screen, monitoring his network’s broadcast alongside the competition.
When Cibrowski was on the floor of the ballroom when the commotion began, he texted his family to let them know he was OK. He then called David Reiter, the executive producer of special events for CBS News, to alert him that they would be breaking into regular programming on the network, a rarity lately with so many 24-hour news sources available.
Reiter left his seat at a Broadway show and headed to the CBS News studios on the west side of Manhattan to get the feed on the air.
Weiss walked over to the Washington set and consulted with Doukopil, Cordes and Gutman during a break, providing a bipartisan list of government officials and activists who were subjected to politically motivated violence in recent years. She settled in at a workspace to turn out a memo to staff, acknowledging the rapid work of getting its images from inside the ballroom on the air.
“This is what we do,” wrote Weiss, a digital entrepreneur who has dealt with criticism over her lack of experience in TV news since taking on her high-profile role in October. “Most importantly, we are thankful that everyone is safe.”
Later, she led a lengthy meeting to plan further coverage, which included Norah O’Donnell interviewing Trump for Sunday’s edition of “60 Minutes.”
After Doukopil finished his special report, he was off to prepare a segment to air on “CBS Sunday Morning.”
“It’s very strange to go from drinking wine to drinking coffee,” Dokoupil said as he departed the set.
Every journalist in the ballroom left with a story.
Tom Llamas, anchor of “NBC Nightly News,” was seated next to Secretary of State Marco Rubio when Secret Service agents pulled Rubio and his wife away as White House officials were evacuated. Llamas had to alert the agents that another, less high-profile Cabinet member, Energy Secretary Christopher Wright, and his wife were at the table as well.
Llamas made his way from the hotel to the NBC News bureau with “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker and veteran Washington correspondent Andrea Mitchell. The anchor took over the network’s special report and felt compelled to explain his attire.
“NBC Nightly News” anchor Tom Llamas reports on the shooting at the dinner on April 25, 2026.
“It is unusual to come on the air in a tuxedo, but this is a very unusual night,” he told viewers.
Llamas praised the performance of his peers who have seen the image of their profession take a beating in recent years.
“There was a while there, we did not know what was going on,” he said. “For all the crap that is written about our industry, I saw people jump into action immediately, and it was incredible. I was proud of all my colleagues.”
The canceled dinner created a predicament for MS NOW and NBC News, which both planned lavish after-parties late Saturday evening. Many of the big-name on-air talent stars and executives expected to attend were working on the story.
After a half-hour of deliberations, both networks decided their parties would go on. But planned stunts for the MS NOW soiree at DuPont Underground — such as a performance by a university drum line — were scrapped.
NBC’s event at the home of the French ambassador was billed as “The After Party.” A text message told attendees to expect a more subdued affair described as “a gathering for people who wanted to convene, eat and drink and be with community.”
Privately, one network executive explained why the festivities moved forward. “Nobody died,” he said.
WASHINGTON — President Trump was preparing to take the stage at the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner Saturday night, eager — by his own account — to “let it rip” before a room of Washington’s elite and reporters he has spent years calling the enemy of the people.
Then shots were heard. Secret Service agents rushed him off the stage. And within hours, the president was at the White House calling for unity, offering overtures to a press corps that he had long clashed with.
“I just want to say you did a fantastic job, what a beautiful evening and we are going to reschedule,” Trump told Weijia Jiang, the president of the White House Correspondents’ Assn., at a news briefing after the shooting at the dinner.
His magnanimity did not last long. On Sunday night, sitting down for an interview with Norah O’Donnell of CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Trump reacted with fury to her reading of the suspected shooter’s manifesto, calling her a “disgrace.”
The manifesto characterized his targets as rapists and pedophiles.
“You’re horrible people. Horrible people,” Trump said. “He did write that. I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody.
“I’m not a pedophile. You read that crap from some sick person? I got associated with all — stuff that has nothing to do with me,” he added. “You should be ashamed of yourself reading that because I’m not any of those things.”
It marked a return to the familiar dynamic between the president and the press after a night of shared crisis and purpose — raising doubts about how long the goodwill would last.
Just hours before, at the briefing, Trump expressed dismay at the violent outburst at the Washington Hilton, where the black-tie event has been held for more than 50 years.
“I will tell you, I fought like hell to stay, but it was protocol,” the president said. On Sunday he repeated his desire to reschedule the event, telling Fox News that he is committed to attending it in the near future, even proposing to do it within 30 days.
Trump appeared to be enjoying himself moments before Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old tutor from Torrance, allegedly ran past a security checkpoint at the hotel and fired off two shots. Oz Pearlman, a mentalist and the entertainer for the night, seemed to be doing a trick for the president and the first lady when the shots were fired, videos show.
Trump was preparing to deliver remarks at the end of the night. His team was excited about it, and the president had been making tweaks to his speech on Air Force One up until Saturday morning.
“It will be funny. It will be entertaining,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a red carpet event ahead of the dinner.
The speech was going to mark Trump’s first at the White House correspondents’ dinner. He told Fox News on Sunday that he was “really going to let it rip,” and that he had considered the moment an “important event” until it came to a halt.
Trump said he would like to reschedule the event within the next month, adding that he will make an “entirely different speech” — one that he said will be focused on “love.”
It is unclear how long Trump’s media-friendly tone will last, but some Republicans continued to blame reporters for the violent act. Kari Lake, the senior advisor to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, said some reporters attending the event “have spent a decade spreading absolute lies” about Trump.
Trump, for his part, used the security breach at the event to make the case for his White House ballroom project, claiming that the Washington Hilton is “not a particularly secure building” and is a prime example of why legal challenges holding up its construction need to be dismissed.
“We need the ballroom,” Trump told reporters. “Today, we need levels of security that probably nobody’s ever seen before.”
However, the annual dinner’s venue is picked not by the White House, but by the White House Correspondents’ Assn., an independent organization of journalists who cover the president.
Trump has vowed to return to the event in the near future, and has called for it to take place within the next month to show that “bad people” cannot “change the course of the country.” But the ballroom project could not be ready that quickly.
It remains under construction and “ahead of schedule,” Trump has said. Earlier this month, a federal appeals court allowed construction on the project to continue through early June, as legal challenges remain ongoing.
The construction of the $400-million ballroom on the White House grounds has come under searing scrutiny. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, which sued last year to stop the project, has argued that Trump lacked authority to make architectural changes to the White House grounds.
Carol Quillen, president and chief executive of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, has argued the White House is “the most evocative building in our country” and any changes should go through a review process, including a public comment period. Trump on Sunday described the lawsuit as one brought by a “woman walking a dog.”
The attempted attack, which marks the third time in less than two years that Trump has faced the threat of a gunman, has reignited questions about the tense political environment besetting the United States.
Trump, for his part, called his job a “dangerous profession” and said he believed he has become the target of attacks because of his presidency’s own consequence.
“The people that do the most, the people that make the biggest impact, they are the people that they go after,” Trump told reporters at the White House after being rushed out of the hotel.
In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, he added: “If you’re a consequential president, you’re in much more danger than if you’re not a consequential president.”
As an example, Trump pointed to his war in Iran, a conflict that recent polling shows has contributed to his approval rating falling to around 40%. The president said the war “should’ve been done by previous presidents … but nobody did anything about it.”
At Saturday night’s dinner, people infiltrated the hotel to protest the Iran war and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Two demonstrators, wearing suits, crashed a red carpet photo shoot in the hotel lobby and called for Hegseth to be arrested for war crimes, underscoring how the foreign conflict is fueling the political rhetoric at home.
In the hours after the shooting, Trump remained defiant. In an interview, he said he was determined to show a unified front and not let “one nut” derail his agenda or events.
“I hate it when a sick, bad person,” he told Fox News on Sunday. “I hate someone like that changing the course of our country.”
WASHINGTON — Directly outside the Washington Hilton ballroom, as the yearly White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner got underway Saturday, a Times reporter had just entered the men’s room when he heard a handful of loud pops ring out.
Inside the ballroom, thousands of journalists and politicians began to duck for cover as the event devolved from a celebration of free speech to a scene of fear.
The Times had six reporters at the dinner, seated at a table near the right side of the stage.
The Times reporter in the restroom, Gavin Quinton, heard the gunfire around 8:30 p.m. He had left The Times’ table minutes earlier, moving past the TV cameras and up toward the raised terrace near the ballroom’s security entrance. He crossed paths with CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer.
Outside the restroom, Cole Tomas Allen, 31, had broken into a sprint through the metal detectors, security footage would later show, getting within feet of the ballroom entrance.
Five or six shots fired by Secret Service agents missed Allen before agents brought him down near a staircase leading to the main floor, where Trump sat prominently in view.
A federal agent was hit in the chest in the exchange of gunfire but was wearing a bullet-proof vest and not seriously injured.
Inside the restroom, Quinton crouched near a corner. Others rushed into the room, including three hotel security guards who flung themselves in so quickly their backs slammed against the tiled wall. Within moments, a Secret Service agent positioned himself at the bathroom entrance, his pistol drawn.
“Head count?” he asked.
“A dozen — no, 15!” someone shouted back.
People stayed locked in bathroom stalls. Some tried to overcome the poor cellphone service to call loved ones. Confused, the mix of tuxedo-clad attendees, uniformed hotel guards and waitstaff tried to piece together what had happened.
“He had a gun,” one of the hotel guards said.
Another witness told Quinton that he initially thought Blitzer had been the shooter’s target.
“I look around and I hear shots as I’m opening the door. And I turn and I see him,” the man said of the gunman. “I look again and I’m like, ‘Oh, they just shot someone.’ ”
Blitzer, who was tackled to the floor by officers during the incident, would later say that “the first thing that went through my mind was whether he was going to shoot me.”
As the group speculated over whether the shooter had died in the volley, one man wondered aloud whether the event would continue. Initially thinking the gunman must have been killed, Quinton replied no.
“Why not?” the man asked. “It’s a bad guy who’s dead. It was a good f— ending. Seriously.”
The Washington Hilton has hosted the annual correspondents’ dinner for decades. The event, referred to locally as “Nerd Prom,” now comes with a slate of pre-parties and after-parties.
This was the president’s first appearance at the dinner since 2015; he had skipped it during his entire first term.
Questions now surround the security protocols. Guests faced little screening to enter the hotel on Saturday — a quick flash of a paper ticket — before heading down escalators to the only area with magnetometers, where bags were also searched.
Trump had entered the ballroom at 8:15 p.m. as the Marine band played “Hail to the Chief.”
Twenty minutes later, videos show, Secret Service officers with ballistic vests and long guns barked instructions to clear a path as they rushed into the ballroom and onto the stage.
One agent pulled Vice President JD Vance away. Another escorted Trump, who appeared to trip, but later explained he had been urged to drop to the floor.
Other officials — Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, FBI Director Kash Patel, Homeland Security advisor Stephen Miller — were quickly whisked away too.
At The Times’ table in the ballroom, nothing appeared amiss at first.
Waiters had just begun to clear plates of spring pea and burrata salad. The reporters did not hear the gunshots, but watched as the room fell silent and others began to drop from their seats and duck under the floor-length white tablecloths.
One reporter lost a shoe in the process and then feared a gunman would spot it. She dragged it under the table.
They stayed in place for several minutes, texting loved ones and waiting for an all-clear, but none came.
From under the tablecloth, reporters heard someone yell out, “God bless America! USA!” They feared that was the shooter.
It turned out to be Dan Scavino, White House deputy chief of staff. The chant did not catch on.
Eventually, others could be heard speaking loudly and dishes clanking. Guests began to peek out from under their tables and warily stand up. Uneasy laughter flickered about the ballroom.
Cellphone service inside the ballroom was spotty. There was confusion at first about whether a shooting had occurred or whether plates dropping to the floor had been mistaken for gunshots.
“I thought it was a tray going down,” Trump said later.
Just before 9 p.m., Weijia Jiang, a senior White House correspondent for CBS News who is president of the White House Correspondents’ Assn., told guests the program would “resume momentarily.”
A half hour later, Jiang returned to the stage and announced that law enforcement had requested guests leave the premises. She said Trump had told her no one was hurt and that he, the first lady and members of the Cabinet were safe.
In closing remarks, Jiang said journalism is a public service “because when there is an emergency, we run to the crisis — not away from it.”
“And on a night when we are thinking about the freedoms of the 1st Amendment, we must also think about how fragile they are,” she said. “I saw all of you reporting, and that’s what we do.”
Law enforcement and media leaders offered conflicting guidance. Quinton was among the first to evacuate the building, though the vast majority of guests waited inside for longer.
On his way out, he noticed a metal detector had already partially been dismantled when the shooter ran through.
Quinton passed the grounded shooter, restrained on his stomach, near the staircase just 20 or so feet from the bathroom entrance. He lifted his phone and recorded a brief, shaky video of the scene before security forced him out of the hotel and onto the street.
The entire spectrum of emotion was on display when security finally ordered everyone to evacuate. Women in gowns ran in fear. One man sobbed into the sleeves of his evening jacket.
Photos on social media showed others stopping to take selfies. Some drank wine straight form the bottle.
Quinton spotted the presidential motorcade outside of the hotel lobby at about 8:45 p.m. Around the same time, an ambulance arrived as about 100 event attendees were escorted out of the secured event perimeter.
More law enforcement was inside the hotel as guests exited the building, including agents from the Secret Service, ATF, FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. National Guard soldiers replaced celebrities and politicians at the red carpet entrance.
Outside, Metropolitan police ushered people north on Columbia Road NW. Hungry guests in tuxedos filed into a nearby 7-Eleven. The dinner’s main course — prime beef and Maine lobster — had not been served.
At the White House afterward, Trump said the event would be rescheduled.
“We’re not going to let anybody take over our society,” he told reporters who had rushed to the news conference still dressed in gowns and black tie. “We’re not going to cancel things out because we can’t do that.”
Meanwhile, the night’s after-parties continued, though organizers attempted a more somber tone. MS NOW, for instance, told those who had RSVP’d that their “Democracy After Hours” party would be a “space for friends and colleagues to be together.”
“People were still partying, still hitting WHCD afterparties last night,” she wrote. “Epstein corruption, an escalating Iran conflict, and an active shooter— and Washington just… kept going. The cognitive dissonance is the system.”
On Sunday morning, the Washington Hilton appeared back to normal, except for the presence of journalists using the hotel as a backdrop for their live shots.
WASHINGTON — An attack on the White House correspondents’ dinner by a gunman who came within feet of the ballroom where President Trump sat raised immediate questions about the night’s security protocol — and the future of large, high-profile events in a country with easy access to firearms and increasingly high political tensions.
The man breached metal detectors in front of the Washington Hilton ballroom and sprinted dozens of feet ahead before exchanging fire with federal agents. Shots were fired in an anteroom that had not an hour before seen thousands of guests, including senior government officials, streaming through.
A manifesto allegedly written by the suspect described his targets as members of the Trump administration, ranking from the highest to the lowest — but said he was willing to “go through” any guest standing in his way in order to kill the president’s aides.
The attempted attack on a room full of dignitaries underscored domestic unrest in Trump’s second term and deepened questions about how to effectively create security in a modern era of lone actors, online radicalization and mass shootings. It was the third known time an attempted assassin has come close to Trump since his 2024 presidential campaign began.
Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche on Sunday called the U.S. Secret Service response a “massive security success story.” But within hours of the incident, bipartisan leaders of the House Oversight Committee demanded a hearing on the agency’s security plans for the dinner.
In the manifesto sent to his family, the alleged gunman, Cole Tomas Allen, of Torrance, marveled at a lack of security.
“No damn security. Not in transport. Not in the hotel. Not in the event,” he wrote. “I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat.”
The Hilton, in a ritzy Washington neighborhood, has long hosted the White House correspondents’ dinner. It is the same hotel where President Reagan and three others were shot in 1981.
The shooting caused terror among guests, some of whom noted they had expected more security to enter the event and Trump was whisked offstage within the first minute of shots being fired. While the event has traditionally hosted sitting presidents in the past, Trump’s decision this year to appear for the first time since taking office made the event particularly high profile.
His presence, alongside Vice President JD Vance and much of the Cabinet and line of succession, brought with it added security protocols and personnel — raising questions over whether the storied dinner and its guests of congressional members, diplomats and mid-level officials would have been even more susceptible to attack without Trump in attendance.
Trump on Sunday said it is “tough” to secure a hotel in the middle of a city with “buildings all around and hotel rooms on top,” but praised the Secret Service and law enforcement officers. One officer was shot, not fatally.
Talking to reporters after the incident Saturday night, Trump swiftly likened it to the attempt on his life by a gunman in Butler, Pa., during the 2024 presidential campaign, and suggested that it justified his controversial plans to construct a fortified ballroom on the White House grounds. He called the hotel “not a particularly secure building,” though he later said the room was “very, very secure.”
Plans to reschedule the dinner are under review. White House Correspondents’ Assn. President Wiejia Jiang of CBS News said the organization’s board would meet to assess what had happened.
Blanche said Sunday an investigation into what had happened was ongoing. He had attended a reception before the dinner on the first floor of the hotel hosted by CBS News, one of many that did not require any security check by law enforcement authorities.
“The first takeaway, or the takeaway that should be obvious, is that the system worked. And that we stopped the suspect, and we stopped him as soon as he tried to do what he was trying to do,” Blanche said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
But the attack raises a question about whether presidential security protocols are effective for modern tactics, or whether the country is “in a new domain” in which those procedures no longer meet the nature of the possible threats, said Neil Shortland, director of the Center for Terrorism and Security Studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
Federal investigators should examine what the security policies were, what type of attacks they were designed to prevent, and whether that protocol was out of date, Shortland said.
“Did you follow the policy is a great question,” he said. “Was the policy correct in this modern day and for this modern situation is a separate question.”
The country is facing “the most complex threat environment in our nation’s history,” particularly from lone actors who are often radicalized online, Sam Vinograd, a former official at the Department of Homeland Security, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
“It can be true that law enforcement and intelligence professionals prepared exhaustively for last night,” she said Sunday. “But it can also be true that in this moment, in this security environment, the paradigms of the past may not be sufficient to meet the moment.”
That raises the “need to rethink what it is going to take to actually secure these mass gatherings,” she said.
Trump appeared to voice the same idea Saturday evening, telling reporters, “Today, we need levels of security that probably nobody’s ever seen before.” He went on to say that “this is why we have to have” the East Wing ballroom, which he described as drone-proof and having bulletproof glass.
Kris Brown, president of the gun control organization Brady — which is named after Reagan’s press secretary, James Brady, who was shot in the 1981 attack — said lawmakers should instead consider passing legislation to help prevent gun violence.
“Not every public event can take place in the ballroom, in that kind of protection — nor can we afford to live in a society where our solution to gun violence is to barricade our public officials, our children, away in fortresses,” Brown said.
About 2,000 journalists, dignitaries and other guests attended the event, rushing through rain to enter using multiple hotel entrances. They were asked to show their tickets as they walked past security guards, but there was no check-in procedure or ID check. A Times reporter was waved toward the entrance without showing a ticket as she tried to get it out of her purse.
Inside, guests milled about on multiple levels where pre-dinner receptions were occurring. Hotel guests mingled with the crowd, granted full access to the hotel’s amenities, including its boutiques and restaurants.
Two protesters briefly took over a small red carpet where guests were lined up to take professional photos; Times reporters saw a third woman dressed in a formal gown and shouting protest slogans being escorted out by security guards after apparently having entered the event.
Guests were required to flash their tickets to go down an escalator to the ballroom level, then present the ticket before walking through metal detectors and having bags searched ahead of the ballroom entrance.
Allen, who had reserved a room as a hotel guest, said in his manifesto obtained by the New York Post that security was far less stringent than he had expected. Two U.S. officials told The Times that the contents of the manifesto are authentic.
“I expected security cameras at every bend, bugged hotel rooms, armed agents every 10 feet, metal detectors out the wazoo. What I got (who knows, maybe they’re pranking me!) is nothing,” he wrote.
He noted that security guards appeared to be focused on protesters and arrivals outside, writing, “apparently no one thought about what happens if someone checks in the day before.”
It is possible that steps to further restrict access to the ballroom level, keep guests away from the event location and check attendees’ identities outside could have provided additional security, said Erin Kearns, director of law enforcement partnerships at the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education Center.
“The lesson that can be taken away is just thinking about how to harden and strengthen security at future events when you have so many high-profile people,” she said.
The hotel was a “soft target” with a makeshift perimeter, and there were “almost zero intervention points” where the shooter could have been apprehended before arriving, Shortland said. That was partly because he traveled by train, which does not have security screenings.
Authorities should also examine whether Allen was known to authorities and, if so, whether intelligence operatives could have pieced together his train travel and arrival in the president’s orbit, Shortland said.
The attempted shooting added to a growing list of instances of political violence in the United States. Last year, one Minnesota state legislator and her spouse were killed by a gunman while another lawmaker and his wife survived; the conservative activist Charlie Kirk — whose wife, Erika, was in attendance Saturday — was shot and killed at a speaking event; an arsonist attacked the residence of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.
Some of that violence has been directed toward Trump, something he frequently talks about. He was injured in the Butler incident, but has used his survival to argue that God saved him so he could become president. Two months later, a Secret Service agent shot at a gunman pointing a rifle on Trump’s golf course as the president golfed.
On Feb. 22, an armed man was shot and killed after entering the secure perimeter around Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, when the president was in Washington.
“It’s always shocking when something like this happens. It’s happened to me a little bit,” Trump said Saturday.
LONDON — The challenge for King Charles III as he arrives in the United States this week is, as always, to live up to his mother’s example.
The late Queen Elizabeth II wowed Congress in 1991 with a speech that celebrated the shared democratic traditions of Britain and the United States, quoted Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and highlighted the deep bonds between the two nations.
Those themes will also be at the top of Charles’ agenda as he celebrates America’s 250th birthday and seeks to calm tensions surrounding Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s refusal to support President Trump’s war against Iran, said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University in Texas.
“We’ve got to always make the distinction that there’s a difference between the government of the U.K. and the kings and queens of Great Britain, who are really always coming to try to put [on] a good face,” Brinkley told the Associated Press. “Politics come and go; prime ministers, presidents, come and go; but there’s something deeper about the special relationship between the United States and the U.K.”
Charles and Queen Camilla begin a four-day trip on Monday, when they will have tea with the president and First Lady Melania Trump, then tour the White House beehive, in a nod to the king’s focus on the environment.
The formal arrival ceremony will take place Tuesday, with a 21-gun salute, brass bands playing the national anthems of both countries and a contingent of U.S. service members passing in review. The ceremonies will be followed by a meeting between Trump and Charles.
Behind the scenes
But beneath the pomp and pageantry will be a carefully choreographed diplomatic event staged, like all royal visits, at the request of the British government. Starmer resisted pressure to cancel it after Trump belittled the British military’s sacrifices in Afghanistan and criticized him personally for failing to back the U.S. in its war alongside Israel against Iran.
Despite those tensions, Trump has continued to speak warmly about Charles.
“History has shown that President Trump really tries to be impressive whenever he’s dealing with British royalty,” Brinkley said. “And I’m sure it’ll be the same this time around.”
Ever since 1939, when King George VI became the first British monarch to set foot on the soil of the country’s former colony, there’s been a special sort of excitement whenever the royals come to the United States.
Take that first visit, which took place as World War II loomed over Europe. The royals toured the East Coast and attended a picnic at President Roosevelt’s private home in Hyde Park, N.Y. “King tries hot dog and asks for more,’’ declared the New York Times.
But the big moment was when the royals traveled to Mount Vernon to lay a wreath at the tomb of George Washington. It showed respect at a time of isolationism.
“People could see the handwriting on the wall and know that it was going to be important for the United States and Britain to stay strong for fighting against Hitler,” said Barbara Perry, a presidential scholar at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.
But bonding over sausages had broader benefits, helping the royals build links to the general public as well as its leadership. After war broke out in September 1939, Queen Elizabeth, the wife of George VI and mother of the future Elizabeth II, wrote to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to say how moved she’d been by letters from Americans who enclosed small sums for British forces.
“Sometimes, during the last terrible months, we have felt rather lonely in our fight against evil things, but I can honestly say that our hearts have been lightened by the knowledge that friends in America understand what we are fighting for,’’ she wrote.
The queen’s connection
Queen Elizabeth II built on those relationships, making four state visits to the U.S. during her 70-year reign. She joined President Ford in celebrating America’s bicentennial in 1976 and met with President George W. Bush in 2007 as British and American forces fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Smoothing turbulent waters and reminding both sides about their common bonds were what those trips were all about.
Charles’ visit will be no different. It includes a commemoration of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a ceremony honoring fallen service members and an event to be attended by Queen Camilla to mark the 100th anniversary of Winnie the Pooh stories by British author A.A. Milne.
Certain events will be avoided.
The royals won’t meet with Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, despite calls for the king to address his accusations related to his brother Andrew’s links to the convicted sex offender. Nor are there plans for Charles to meet with his son Prince Harry, who has been a critic of the monarchy since giving up royal duties and moving to California.
Those issues aren’t the priority, said Robert Hardman, author of “Elizabeth II: In Private. In Public. The Inside Story.”
“He’s going because 250 years ago the Founding Fathers of the USA kicked out his great-times-five grandfather, and he’s going to say, `No hard feelings, it’s been a great divorce, we’ve had a lovely 250 years and let’s reflect on the high points,’’’ Hardman said. “I mean, there are going to be some very, very large elephants in the room during that visit … but, you know, there are plenty of other things for the king to focus on.”
History, not politics
Charles’ speech to a joint session of Congress offers the chance to deliver the message that long-term friendship is more important than transient disputes.
He is also likely to offer a bit of humor, as his mother did when she addressed lawmakers in 1991.
Wearing soft peach amid a sea of gray suits, the diminutive monarch began her remarks with a joke about an earlier blunder at the White House when her lectern was so tall it obscured the audience’s view of her.
“I do hope you can see me today from where you are,’’ she deadpanned.
The chamber erupted in laughter. A standing ovation followed. Then she launched into a speech about democratic values, the rule of law and the Atlantic Alliance — the foundation of NATO.
Those are values that critics of the current U.S. administration say it has retreated from in recent years. But Charles will offer his own take on those ideas, Brinkley said.
“The theme of the speech is going to be American exceptionalism, American history, the importance of U.S.-British alliance, and some memories from the past,” he said. “But also about the love affair the two countries share with each other, even though it goes over rocky rapids from time to time.”
The protracted uncertainty over control of Congress reverberated through both major political parties on Wednesday, as Democrats basked in the relief of the red wave that wasn’t and Republicans became increasingly clear-eyed that the lingering influence of former President Trump had hamstrung their party.
President Biden’s emphasis during the campaign season on the extremism of “MAGA Republicans” had been greeted skeptically by many. In the Democratic Party’s better-than-expected showing, though, he saw vindication of his appeals for civility and normalcy.
“This election season, American people made it clear: They don’t want every day going forward to be a constant political battle,” Biden said at a White House news conference. “The future of America is too promising to be trapped in endless political warfare.”
Amid high inflation and Biden’s lackluster approval numbers, Democrats’ hopes had hinged on voters being more put off by Trump’s imprint on the Republican Party — be it the divisive candidates he endorsed, the political violence that festered from his lies about election fraud, or the reversal of federal abortion protections made possible by justices he appointed to the Supreme Court.
“We knew going into the cycle that there was going to be an opportunity to rally a moral majority that is an anti-MAGA coalition,” said Tory Gavito, president of Way to Win, a progressive donor network. “When I say that, I include everyone from [GOP Rep.] Liz Cheney to [democratic socialist Sen.] Bernie Sanders. Think about that spectrum of the middle to the left coming together to say Republicans are just too damn extreme.”
If recent history is any guide, Trump’s not going anywhere. The once and likely future presidential candidate is unpopular, but he continues to exercise outsized sway over the Republican base, and could hobble the party for the next two years and beyond.
“While in certain ways yesterday’s election was somewhat disappointing, from my personal standpoint it was a very big victory,” Trump said on his conservative social media network, Truth Social, pointing to the record of candidates he endorsed. “219 WINS and 16 Losses in the General – Who has ever done better than that?”
The specter of the former president hampered the GOP’s ability to frame the midterm as a referendum on Biden, said Ken Spain, a GOP strategist and former spokesman for the party’s House campaign arm.
“Trump was always a looming shadow over this election, more than Republicans probably wanted to admit,” he said. “This essentially became a choice election between an unpopular president and an even more unpopular Trump.”
There were signs that patience was running thin among Republican power brokers. Notably, Trump’s much-beloved New York Post, the tabloid owned by conservative media magnate Rupert Murdoch, featured Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on its cover Wednesday with the headline “DeFuture.” DeSantis is widely considered Trump’s biggest threat for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
Republicans still had a chance of winning both chambers of Congress as vote-counting continued Wednesday. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) projected confidence that his party would win the five additional seats necessary to take the majority there, and announced his intention to run for speaker of the House.
Whether he secures a majority may come down to his home state. California’s 11 competitive races remained unsettled as of Wednesday evening, with results trickling in slowly, as is common with the state’s methodical ballot-counting procedures.
Republicans had targeted incumbent Democratic Reps. Katie Porter and Mike Levin in Orange County, as well as an open seat in the Central Valley, as possible pick-ups. But Democrats were also watching the returns for the potential to oust vulnerable GOP Reps. David Valadao of Hanford and Ken Calvert of Corona.
Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin notched a close win over Democratic challenger Mandela Barnes, giving Republicans a 49-48 advantage in the Senate, with races in Georgia, Arizona and Nevada yet to be decided.
With neither candidate in Georgia winning more than 50% of the vote, the race will go to a Dec. 6 runoff, like the one that decided Senate control in 2020. A 50-50 split in the Senate would let Democrats maintain control with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote.
Republicans made some successful pushes into blue territory; in New York, for example, they appeared likely to win four Democratic-held House seats. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, a New York Democrat who led his party’s efforts to keep the House, conceded his own race Wednesday morning to Mike Lawler, a Republican state assemblyman.
Still, the night was distinctly underwhelming for a party that contemplated a blowout win in the House and an assured majority in the Senate.
“Definitely not a Republican wave, that’s for darn sure,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Tuesday night on NBC as he predicted a narrow win for Republicans in the Senate.
Paradoxically, a small Republican majority in the House would likely give Trump more leverage there, as McCarthy would have to depend on continued support from acolytes of the former president, such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, to exercise the GOP’s majority power.
Biden, speaking at the White House on Wednesday, said he had not had much occasion to interact with McCarthy but planned to talk with him later in the day. The president promised to work with Republicans in Congress, but noted pointedly that the American people had also sent the message that they wanted the GOP to show similar cooperation.
The president was happy to point out that his party had defied expectations, noting that “while the press and the pundits [were] predicting a giant red wave, it didn’t happen.”
National exit polls gave a glimpse into why Republicans fizzled. The surveys showed inflation was a top concern among voters. But abortion ranked second. That, and the relative weakness of Trump-backed candidates, helped Democrats stay in the fight.
Many voters appeared willing to swallow their disappointment with Biden. An NBC exit poll showed Democrats narrowly winning — 49% to 45% — among voters who “somewhat disapprove” of Biden’s performance.
Results in Michigan underscored the extent of the Republican Party’s disappointments. Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, whom Trump had attacked relentlessly, defeated his endorsed candidate, Tudor Dixon, and Democratic incumbents held on to the state’s attorney general and secretary of state posts and gained control of the Legislature as well.
The GOP failed to oust Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a vulnerable Democrat in a Michigan swing district that barely backed Biden two years ago. Elsewhere in the state, a Trump-backed candidate — who in the primary beat Rep. Peter Meijer, a Republican who had voted to impeach the former president — lost in the general election, costing Republicans a seat in the surprisingly tight battle for control of the House.
Michigan voters also approved a ballot measure striking down a 1931 ban on abortion, and voters in Kentucky rejected an initiative that would have amended the state constitution to make clear it did not protect abortion rights.
The Republicans’ loss of a Senate seat in Pennsylvania could prove the most consequential if Democrats keep the chamber. Lt. Gov. John Fetterman defeated Mehmet Oz, a television doctor and first-time candidate backed by Trump. Fetterman, still recovering from a stroke, painted the untested Oz as an elite carpetbagger.
Many of the gubernatorial candidates Trump backed also lost or were in danger of losing as of Wednesday afternoon. DeSantis’ double-digit win in Florida, as well as his strong coattails for Republicans in the House, served as a stark contrast. But Trump has said he will run again even if party leaders prefer DeSantis. Opinion polls, at least for now, show the former president as the prohibitive favorite to capture the party’s nomination.
Jason Miller, an advisor to Trump, told the BBC on Wednesday morning that he was urging Trump to postpone an announcement that he will run again from next week — as he has been teasing — to December, to avoid distracting from a potential Senate runoff in Georgia. But Miller said he remained 100% certain that Trump would run.
“Many of the people who are championing Ron DeSantis for president are the same people who were skeptical of President Trump ever since he came down the escalator in 2015,” Miller said, recalling Trump’s improbable announcement for the 2016 race.
Miller predicted that Trump would “have his hands full” but would ultimately win the nomination again.
Mason reported from Los Angeles and Bierman from Washington. Times staff writer Erin B. Logan contributed to this report from Washington.
Cole Tomas Allen, the suspected gunman who rattled the nation’s top leaders by exchanging gunfire with federal authorities after racing through the secure perimeter of a press gala in Washington late Saturday, had made a long journey from Southern California and written a “manifesto” threatening Trump administration officials before the short-lived attack, officials said.
Allen, a 31-year-old Caltech graduate and high school tutor from Torrance, is believed to have taken a train first to Chicago and then on to D.C. before checking into the Washington Hilton with two guns he had previously purchased, authorities said.
The attacker managed to bypass several layers of security at the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner before being taken down by armed agents outside the ballroom where President Trump and an array of other top federal officials were seated.
Allen could not be reached for comment, nor could an attorney for him be identified as of Sunday.
According to Trump, Allen had also authored a “manifesto” prior to the attack, which he had shared with family and which his brother had flagged to local law enforcement in Connecticut. The New York Post reported that Allen described himself in the document as the “Friendly Federal Assassin” and revealed he intended to kill Trump administration officials.
New London (Conn.) Police Deputy Chief John Perry said that around 10:30 p.m. a man came into the lobby of the agency’s headquarters to report that he’d received a troubling email from Allen. The relative initially thought it was spam, but then saw the news of what unfolded in D.C. and felt he needed to report it.
Perry would not say what was in the email, and did not know exactly what time it was sent. But the relative said he only saw and opened it around 10 p.m. “I think he was watching what was going on and kind of put two and two together and said I need to go to my local PD,” Perry said.
Police officials provided the email to the Secret Service and FBI, he said. Trump said the document would be released, but it had not been as of Sunday. Officials said criminal charges against the suspect were pending, with an initial court appearance likely Monday.
Late Saturday, both local and federal law enforcement, including from the FBI, swarmed the Torrance neighborhood where Allen is believed to have lived in a home with his family, with Torrance police clearing the road and putting up police tape along part of the street. A man who responded to a knock on the front door said, “Not right now,” and declined to comment further.
The thwarted attack marked the latest in a string of incidents in which gunmen have gotten dangerously close to Trump, renewing questions about the safety and security of the nation’s commander in chief at a time of intense political division at home and roiling conflicts abroad.
Trump was grazed on the ear by a bullet at one of his presidential campaign events in Butler, Pa., in 2024 — the first of two attempts on his life during that campaign cycle. The other involved a gunman targeting the president as he golfed in Florida, before federal agents intervened. Earlier this year, a gunman was killed at the president’s Mar-a-Lago club, after breaching a security perimeter.
On Sunday, questions swirled as to how such a security lapse could have happened again — and whether large, high-profile events are safe for top officials in a nation where firearms are easy to obtain and ubiquitous.
Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche, in an interview on “Meet the Press” Sunday morning, said federal authorities believe the suspect had set out alone “to target folks that work in the administration, likely including the president,” but that a motive was still being determined and evidence still being gathered — including from devices taken from Allen and in interviews with people who know him.
“As of now, we don’t have any connection to any particular policy directive of President Trump or Iran or anything else that we’re doing in this country, but we are looking into it,” he said.
Blanche also downplayed the threat posed to Trump, other officials in the room such as Vice President JD Vance and First Lady Melania Trump, and the hundreds of other attendees to the annual event — suggesting Allen had essentially been stopped in his tracks shortly after making his break through a checkpoint of metal detectors and federal agents, dramatic video of which Trump posted online.
“Let’s not forget that the suspect didn’t get very far. He barely broke the perimeter,” Blanche said. “And so while this was extraordinarily dangerous and put a lot of lives at risk and there’s no doubt that that’s something that we’re going to have to learn from over the next couple weeks, the system worked. We were safe, President Trump was safe. His Secret Service agents kept him safe. All of us were safe.”
Blanche’s assessment of the attacker’s breach past security — which he said was only “by a few feet” — was disputed by some.
According to other attendees, including Times journalists, event staff were checking tickets, though not very thoroughly, at multiple points prior to escalators that descended to the metal detectors where Allen allegedly dashed past armed security.
The detectors were right outside the event hall and where the bathrooms for the event were located, and the assailant was taken to the ground about 10 to 15 feet beyond them, attendees said. The shots — including two from the gunman, according to Blanche — were heard in the ballroom.
Allen, who graduated from Caltech in 2017 with a degree in mechanical engineering and is registered to vote with no party preference, made a $25 political contribution earmarked for then-Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign challenging Trump for the presidency in 2024.
While at Caltech, he was a teaching assistant and a member of the school’s Christian fellowship and the Nerf club, according to his LinkedIn profile. He later studied computer science as a post-graduate student at CSU-Dominguez Hills.
Allen was named teacher of the month in December 2024 at C2 Education, which specializes in college test preparation, tutoring and academic advising. A representative for C2 Education was not immediately available for comment.
According to the New York Post, Allen himself had derided the event security in his writings beforehand, describing finding far less security at the hotel than he had expected when he arrived, armed, to check in.
“I expected security cameras at every bend, bugged hotel rooms, armed agents every 10 feet, metal detectors out the wazoo. What I got (who knows, maybe they’re pranking me!) is nothing. No damn security. Not in transport. Not in the hotel. Not in the event,” he wrote, according to the Post. “I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat.”
Authorities did not detail Allen’s alleged travel route to D.C., other than to say it was by train. In response to questions about whether Allen had taken Amtrak to get to Washington and whether his luggage would have undergone any security screening, Amtrak said only that it is cooperating with federal authorities.
Trump also zeroed in on security at the hotel being inadequate, in addition to posting the video of the suspect rushing past security and multiple pictures of him detained on the floor of the hotel.
While praising the federal agents who took the attacker down, Trump suggested that events with top U.S. officials should be held in more secure facilities — such as the giant ballroom he is trying to build on the White House grounds after demolishing the former East Wing.
“What happened last night is exactly the reason that our great Military, Secret Service, Law Enforcement and, for different reasons, every President for the last 150 years, have been DEMANDING that a large, safe, and secure Ballroom be built ON THE GROUNDS OF THE WHITE HOUSE,” Trump wrote on social media Sunday. “This event would never have happened with the Militarily Top Secret Ballroom currently under construction at the White House. It cannot be built fast enough!”
Weijia Jiang, president of the correspondents’ association, said in a statement Sunday that the group’s board “will be meeting to assess what happened and determine how to proceed.” She also thanked the U.S. Secret Service and other law enforcement for keeping people safe, and praised journalists in the room for leaping to work to inform the public of what had occurred.
Times staff writers Richard Winton, Ben Wieder and Justine McDaniel contributed to this report.
The future of the National Science Foundation is in question after a slew of scientists who serve on the National Science Board, an independent body that promotes the progress of American science and provides advice to the U.S. president and Congress, were abruptly dismissed from their positions Friday by the White House.
All 22 current members of the board, which establishes policies for the National Science Foundation, were terminated, according to Yolanda Gil, a research professor of computer science and spatial sciences and principal scientist at USC Information Sciences Institute, who has served on the board since 2024.
Many of them received a curt email from President Trump’s presidential personnel office.
“On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I’m writing to inform you that your position as a member of the National Science Board is terminated, effective immediately,” read an email reviewed by the L.A. Times. “Thank you for your service.”
After receiving an email Friday afternoon, Keivan Stassun, a professor of physics and astronomy at Vanderbilt University and director of the Vanderbilt Initiative in Data-intensive Astrophysics, said he reached out to fellow board members. Every member he heard back from — about a third of the board — reported receiving the same termination notice.
For Stassun, a board member since 2022, the termination represented “a wholesale evisceration of American leadership in science and technology globally.”
The White House has not given any reason for dismissing the board members or provided any information on when, or even whether, they will be replaced. A media representative for the NSF directed all questions to the White House. The White House did not respond to questions from The Times.
The National Science Foundation was created more than 75 years ago as an independent federal agency when President Truman signed the National Science Foundation Act of 1950 to boost U.S. science for national security and international competition during the Cold War.
“The establishment of the National Science Foundation is a major landmark in the history of science in the United States,” Truman said back then. “We have come to know that our ability to survive and grow as a nation depends to a very large degree upon our scientific progress. Moreover, it is not enough simply to keep abreast of the rest of the world in scientific matters. We must maintain our leadership.”
The agency, which has a budget of over $9 billion, supports fundamental research and education across all non-medical fields of science and engineering.
“The genesis of it was to recognize that the world was increasingly being won or lost on the basis of scientific and technological capability,” Stassun said. “The National Science Foundation is the singular agency within our government that has as its focus making sure that we stay ahead in basic science, technological developments, training the next generation of scientists and engineers.“
After Trump’s dismissal of the board’s experts, Stassun said, the Trump administration could potentially run the agency directly through the Office of Management and Budget.
“What it means is that there won’t be any practical impediments to the administration essentially enacting their own budget and priorities and ignoring Congress’ directives or congressional law,” Stassun said.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren of San José, the ranking Democrat on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, dubbed the terminations just “the latest stupid move made by a president who continues to harm science and American innovation.”
The board, Lofgren noted in a statement, is apolitical and advises the president on the future of NSF.
“It unfortunately is no surprise a president who has attacked NSF from day one would seek to destroy the board that helps guide the foundation,” Lofgren added. “Will the president fill the NSB with MAGA loyalists who won’t stand up to him as he hands over our leadership in science to our adversaries? A real bozo the clown move.”
The National Science Board is typically made up of 25 scientists and engineers from universities and industry across the nation. Appointed by the U.S. president, they traditionally serve six-year terms.
Some of the board positions were vacant. The key position of NSF director has been unfilled ever since Sethuraman Panchanathan, a computer scientist and academic administrator, resigned in April 2025.
“Given that the NSF director position has been vacant for a year, and that the NSB’s main role is governing NSF, the agency is left in a very precarious position,” Gil told The Times in an email. “I think this is one more indication of the sweeping changes that the administration is planning for the National Science Foundation.”
Over the last two years, Gil said, the White House has proposed drastic reductions in the NSF budget — a troubling sign, she argued, that basic research in science and engineering and training students are not high priorities for the current administration.
In the last few months, Gil added, the agency had significant reductions of personnel, which she said “jeopardizes the peer review process that the agency is best known for and gives more decision power to program directors.”
In March, Trump nominated James O’Neill, a venture capitalist and biotech investor who served as former deputy secretary of Health and Human Services, to lead the foundation. O’Neill has yet to appear before Congress for a hearing, but Trump’s nomination received a storm of criticism from scientists.
“O’Neill would be the first head of NSF who wasn’t a scientist or engineer,” Dr. Julian Reyes, chief of staff of the Union of Concerned Scientists, wrote in a blog post. “If O’Neill is confirmed as NSF’s director, the Trump administration will further tighten its control over an agency created by Congress to be independent in its work to advance science.”
Traditionally, Gil said, NSF directors have had a solid research career and strong familiarity with NSF processes. O’Neill’s background in finance and investments, she suggested, “may be an indication that the administration has a different idea of how to run a science agency like NSF.”
Already, the Trump administration has purged a raft of scientific advisory boards that provided the federal government with expert guidance. Last year, dozens of experts who provided independent evaluations for biomedical research were dismissed from National Institute of Health science review boards. All 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which provides federal recommendation on vaccines, were also removed.
In that context, Stassun said he was not surprised when he got the termination letter Friday. “At some point,” he figured, “they would come for the National Science Board, too.”
Going forward, Stassun said he expected the Trump administration to pursue a narrower agenda, from investments in artificial intelligence to building a fleet of Antarctic vessels.
“What we’re likely to see is a collapse of what has historically been a broad investment in American science and technology capabilities,” he said. “The most transformative discoveries are transformative because you can’t predict them in advance, so we invest foundationally in scientists and engineers to do basic science and engineering research.”
One of the board’s chief priorities since he joined in 2022, Stassun said, had been the idea of “talent being the treasure” — developing the best and brightest future leaders and discoverers to ensure a future for American leadership in scientific and technological innovation.
For the board, that meant investing in early science education and strong training for scientists and engineers at all educational levels and in all sectors.
“Discoveries and inventions don’t make themselves, Stassun said. “People do those things. I think there’s a kind of attitude in the current administration that such a worldview is sort of too soft or meek.”
The Trump administration’s interests and priorities, Stassun said, seemed quite different.
“They see the future in, or at least their interest is in, big data centers … not in addition to, but in place of, training human minds to be leading the way,” Stassun said. “It’s a dead end or a bridge to nowhere.”
Even the pioneers of AI will tell you, Stassun said, in many cases, what AI does very well is rapidly synthesizing, consolidating or repackaging existing information. A large language model can only tell you, perhaps very quickly and effectively, what’s already been said.
“Discovery and invention remain the purview of the human mind and creative human genius,” Stassun said. “So, yeah, I think it really does say something pretty foundational to choose to invest only in the one and not the other.”
WASHINGTON — In the span of 10 days, the nation’s capital saw a cascade of ethical scandals that cut across party lines and branches of government, raising fresh doubts about whether Washington is capable of holding itself accountable.
Three members of Congress — two Democrats and a Republican — resigned within days of one another as they faced calls for their expulsion due to their alleged misconduct. A fourth lawmaker is facing the same pressure but has so far refused to step down.
A Cabinet secretary stepped down amid a months-long investigation into allegations that she pursued a romantic relationship with a member of her security detail, while her husband stood accused of sexually assaulting female staffers in her agency.
In a separate case, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed last week that it put a senior counterterrorism official on administrative leave as it investigates an ex-boyfriend’s allegations that she was seeking out wealthy men online to pay for luxury items.
The back-to-back resignations and investigations, spanning both parties and both the legislative and executive branches, have reignited a debate about whether Washington’s rules and institutions for self-oversight can keep pace with the misconduct unfolding within it. Even those charged with policing it say the system is failing.
“Clearly, we have an ethical problem,” Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord), the top Democrat on the House Ethics Committee, said in an interview.
DeSaulnier, who has served on the committee since 2023, said the panel is long overdue for an overhaul. He would like to see the committee speed up investigations and give it more authority to root out misconduct before lawmakers can resign to avoid accountability.
“It takes too long,” he said, drawing an analogy to law enforcement standards for officers facing misconduct allegations. “If you’re a law enforcement officer, there are standards for a suspension with pay or without pay. I think we need to take a look at things like that.”
The committee’s records show that since 1976, it has investigated 28 instances in which a House member was suspected of sexual misconduct. The outcome in 13 of those cases was a loss of jurisdiction, meaning the member resigned, retired or otherwise left the House before the committee could reach a conclusion on the allegations.
“Unfortunately, there likely exist matters never reported to the Committee,” the panel said in a rare statement last week. It added that its “greatest hurdle” in evaluating allegations of sexual misconduct is “convincing the most vulnerable witnesses to share their stories.”
Lonna Drewes, left, and her attorney, Lisa Bloom, arrive at a news conference in which Drewes accused U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) of sexual assault, on April 14 in Beverly Hills.
(Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
The two most recent cases in which the committee lost jurisdiction were the investigations into former California Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Democrat accused of sexual assault who denied the allegations, and Republican former Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales, who last month admitted to a sexual relationship with a staffer who later died by suicide.
The committee is currently investigating Rep. Cory Mills, a Florida Republican, on allegations of “sexual misconduct and/or dating violence.” Mills has denied wrongdoing and declined to step down, telling CNN that House Speaker Mike Johnson told him not to resign and let the process play out.
Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, has defended his stance on ensuring there is due process for House members, telling reporters last week that representatives should not be removed based only on allegations.
“There’s got to be an element of due process,” he said at a news conference, in which he also acknowledged that “sometimes it takes a long time” to achieve that and that he is open to suggestions on how to make the process better.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) has also expressed hesitance in ousting members before they receive due process. He said that much in relation to Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.), who eventually resigned as she faced an ethics investigation and federal criminal charges of stealing $5 million in disaster relief funds. She has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
House Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Guest (R-Miss.) and Ranking Member Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) speak to reporters after a hearing with the House Ethics Committee on Capitol Hill on Tuesday in Washington.
(Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)
The stance has drawn objections from 14 House Democrats in competitive swing districts, including California Reps. Mike Levin and Derek Tran.
In a letter addressed to Johnson and Jeffries, the lawmakers urged both House leaders to push the Ethics Committee to “expedite their investigation” with more transparency, including public hearings.
“We must demonstrate that no one is above the law and that serious misconduct will result in serious consequences,” the lawmakers wrote.
The calls for reform are not limited to the House.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said Congress as a whole needs to increase transparency around how ethics complaints are handled and create a system that better protects junior staffers rather than members and senior aides who oversee them.
“The House of Representatives has an office that provides legal advice and representation to staff, but the Senate doesn’t appear to have such a thing,” Schiff said. “So that is also something I’m looking into.”
Schiff is also looking beyond Capitol Hill. He is pushing to install an inspector general inside the executive office of the President, a watchdog position that has never existed there despite being standard across the rest of the federal government.
Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz, left, chair of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, and David Smith, assistant director, Office of Investigations U.S. Secret Service, arrive for the House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing titled Federal Pandemic Spending: A Prescription for Waste, Fraud and Abuse in Rayburn Building on Feb. 1, 2023.
(Tom Williams / CQ Roll Call via Associated Press)
President Trump has fired at least a dozen inspectors general during his second term, according to the New York Times. The dismissals of those independent watchdogs across the executive branch are likely to complicate Schiff’s efforts, which he said will need to “overcome the instinctual opposition of many in the president’s party who may view [the bill] as an indictment of the president’s actions.”
“But if we are ever going to ensure that a president and his administration are not above the law, an inspector general in the executive office is critical,” he said.
Richard Painter, a former White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, said he has long advocated for installing an independent watchdog in the White House but doubts that a Congress operating under its own cloud of scandal would take that step now.
“They are not complying with their own rules,” he said. “It is a big problem.”
Painter also argued that Trump’s own conduct is itself reshaping what members of his own administration and allies in Congress believe they can get away with.
The president’s past social ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have also received renewed scrutiny as his administration is criticized for the handling of the files. Trump has denied wrongdoing in all three matters.
“That sends a message to the entire administration and to Congress as to what is acceptable,” Painter said.
Trump, who is known for chiming in on myriad topics on social media, has not talked much about the sex scandals on Capitol Hill. But the president did call Swalwell a “sleazebag” in a recent interview with the Daily Mail.
“I don’t know anything about the charges, but he’s a bad guy,” Trump said. “He’s always been a bad guy, he’s a corrupt politician, and everyone knows it, so it’s happening to him, and we’ll see what happens. Right? Let him go defend himself.”
The president has not been as candid with his administration’s own controversies, but watchdogs in executive agencies have scrutinized some of his members.
Lori Chavez-DeRemer attends the world premiere of Amazon MGM’s “Melania” at The Trump-Kennedy Center on Jan. 29 in Washington.
(Taylor Hill / WireImage via Getty Images)
The White House declined to comment on the allegations against former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who stepped down last week after multiple allegations of abusing her position’s power, including having an affair with a subordinate and drinking alcohol on the job.
The New York Times reported that Chavez-DeRemer was under investigation by the agency’s inspector general, and that an imminent report was likely to be unfavorable toward her. The investigation had been ongoing for several months before her departure.
In a separate case, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed to the Los Angeles Times that Julia Varvaro, the agency’s deputy assistance secretary, was put on administrative leave amid an investigation into allegations that she was seeking out so-called sugar daddies online.
The scandals come as recent polling shows Americans are growing more dissatisfied with Trump and Congress.
Congress’ approval rating has plummeted to 10%, according to Gallup polling released last week. Public approval of Trump has dropped to 28%, according to a Marquette University Law School poll released earlier this month. The president’s approval ratings are tightly linked to concerns about the Iran war and the economy.
Some lawmakers, like DeSaulnier, worry the scandals will continue to erode Americans’ confidence in the government and the people who represent them.
“If they don’t have trust in these institutions and the people who are in these positions, that’s a real, serious problem for American democracy,” he said.
WASHINGTON — When families flocked to Yosemite National Park during their recent spring breaks, some met two-hour waits at the entrance gates. At a lakeside spot in the North Cascades in Washington state, there hasn’t been enough staff to open the visitors center. And in Death Valley, water was shut off at two campgrounds.
National parks staff and advocates fear that such issues could only worsen this summer, as the park system faces the busy season with a dramatically reduced staff. At Yosemite, concerns are compounded by the National Park Service’s recent elimination of the park’s timed-entry reservation system, which led to the long spring-break lines.
“We’re definitely really nervous and anxious about the upcoming season, especially with the staff shortage we already have,” said a National Federation of Federal Employees union member at Yosemite who requested anonymity to speak candidly.
The National Park Service has lost nearly a quarter of its staff to buyouts, early retirements and other departures since the Trump administration took office last year, according to an estimate by the National Parks Conservation Assn. This month, the administration proposed cutting nearly 3,000 more positions in its 2027 budget. It also offered a recent new round of buyouts.
The push to cut the park system even further — ahead not only of peak season but of America’s 250th birthday, which the Trump administration has promoted in relation to national parks — has underscored ongoing questions about how smoothly parks can operate as warm weather and summer vacations draw tourists.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum defended the budget proposal on Capitol Hill last week, telling senators that the visitor experience to parks can be improved even while spending and staff reductions are made.
He said the agency plans to hire 5,500 seasonal workers and asked Congress to approve funding for those employees to work for nine-month stints rather than six months.
“All of that’s going to help us get this thing in shape, even with an overall reduction,” Burgum said Wednesday.
He was met with skepticism by Democrats, who confronted him over the spending proposal.
“That is just a recipe for disaster,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) told Burgum.
Congress will have the final say on the proposed cuts, but in the meantime, the reductions that have already occurred presented challenges last season and appear likely to do so again, said Cheryl Schreier, a retired superintendent of Mount Rushmore National Memorial and chair of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks.
Whether the parks will get enough qualified candidates to hire the number of seasonal workers needed is also “a really big concern,” she said. “It’s really important to have all of those individuals to be able to operate a park in a good fashion.”
Campers prepare food in Yosemite Valley last December. 9, 2025 in Yosemite, CA.
(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)
The lower staffing has prompted worry about parks’ capacity for emergency response, protection of the natural landscape and custodial maintenance. Fewer rangers could mean, for instance, fewer people to reach dehydrated, stranded or lost hikers, said Chance Wilcox, California desert director for the National Parks Conservation Assn.
A park service spokesperson said Friday that staffing decisions are made based on local conditions at each park and that the agency is “focused on ensuring parks remain open, accessible, and safe for visitors.”
About 323 million people visit America’s national parks annually, according to the Interior Department. While the parks can expect heavy traffic, a drop in international tourism and the rise in gas prices has injected additional uncertainty into the tourism industry this year.
The number of Canadians visiting the United States has dropped since Trump took office, according to the Canadian government — with the number of Canadians making car trips to the United States this March declining by 35% compared with March 2024.
The Interior Department also instituted a new $100-per-person fee for non-Americans entering 11 of the most popular parks, a move to raise money for the parks but an extra squeeze for Canadians coming across the border and other international visitors.
At the Senate and House hearings on the Interior budget, Burgum presented a vision of the national parks system as one where most employees should be working at a park and interacting with visitors, and said he was more focused on filling those roles than jobs in regional offices.
“Our goal is to have more people actually working in the parks,” he told senators.
An Interior Department spokesperson said the agency was “advancing high-priority improvements” across the system.
“Secretary Burgum has been clear that resources should be prioritized toward visitor-facing services, public safety, maintenance, and projects that improve the experience for the American people,” an Interior Department spokesperson said in a statement Friday.
Critics say that strategy displays a misunderstanding of how the 109-year-old agency functions. Employees who work on contracts, human resources, IT, communications and other organizational and administrative jobs are essential to keeping the parks running, Wilcox said.
“If everything were visitor- or front-facing, the entire agency would collapse from behind,” said Wilcox, of the National Parks Conservation Assn.
The decision to discontinue the reservation system at Yosemite — as well as at Arches and Glacier national parks — is another part of Interior’s mission to bring more people into the parks. The concept was “designed to expand public access” this summer, the park service said in announcing the policy in February. It kept the timed-entry reservation system in Rocky Mountain National Park for the peak season.
Visitors take pictures while walking through Muir Woods National Monument on July 24, 2025 in Muir Woods National Monument, California.
(Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
In addition to causing long lines, cramming too many people into the parks at once could lead to environmental damage, particularly if people park cars in natural areas, said Don Neubacher, a retired Yosemite superintendent and member of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks.
“It’s going to be mass chaos,” he said.
On a Saturday at the end of March, Jon Christenson of Coarsegold, Calif., drove to the park with his 38-year-old son. They were surprised to encounter a two-hour wait to get into the park, plus at least a half-hour hunt for parking after they made it through the gates, he said.
“It was almost like Disneyland. It was really uncomfortable from the standpoint of just so many people,” said Christenson, 82. “It’s kind of troubling to see that they’ve opened up the floodgates and now it’s kind of ruining the experience for everybody.”
Rangers there are doing multiple jobs, and last summer they helped clean bathrooms in the absence of custodial staff, the Yosemite union member said. Now they, too, are concerned about the potential for gridlock.
The worker asked summer visitors to bring patience: “The folks at the National Park Service … they will be grateful for any compassion and empathy.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sealed Eaton fire documents
Lawyers for victims say that documents sealed by a protective order show evidence of where Southern California Edison’s safety measures fell short before the deadly fire.
Poor inspection and repair of the idle transmission line suspected of igniting the fire
Tower holding the idle line was “virtually unattended for decades”
Dried vegetation removed under electrified wires but not beneath the idle line
Problems with contractors inspecting the line
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.
Steve Proffitt is a contributing reporter to National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.” He interviewed Patrick Caddell at a Brentwood restaurant
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.
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.
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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.
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
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