Politics Desk

Right-wing pundits and politicos recently attacked the gargantuan wildlife crossing being constructed over the 101 Freeway in Agoura Hills over ballooning costs and delays.

A March 18 post in an outlet published by a conservative think tank set the outrage in motion, calling the now $114-million project a “bridge to nowhere” and “jobs program for environmentalists.” The Murdoch-owned California Post republished it and social media lit up. In an X post, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy compared it with the state’s long-delayed, budget-busting high-speed train.

In short, they painted it as a boondoggle. One that might never get done.

But now the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing has a completion date: Dec. 2, announced at an Earth Day news conference held on the structure rising over a 10-lane stretch of the freeway. Cars whizzed by below.

That’s when the ribbon will be cut and mountain lions suffering from a lack of genetic diversity are expected to get their ticket out of the freeway-locked Santa Monica Mountains to seek mates elsewhere. Lions there have already shown alarming signs of inbreeding, including kinked tails and deformed testicles. The population could go extinct without intervention, and state wildlife officials listed the pumas as threatened earlier this year.

“This is a visionary project that was the impossible dream,” said Beth Pratt, California regional executive director with the National Wildlife Federation and the public face of the crossing. “This is something that’s captured the imagination of Angelenos, captured the imagination of the world.”

Driving under the crossing feels unremarkable; just another concrete behemoth. But it’s another world on top. Under a blue sky and puffy clouds, a gentle wind blew through a sea of about 6,000 native plants — Santa Barbara milk vetch, golden yarrow and purple sage.

It melts into the surroundings — and that’s the point. Soil that was hauled in was inoculated with the same microbes and mycorrhizal fungi that thrive in the nearby hills. The plants were grown just for the crossing, with another 40,000 on the way.

Miguel Ordeñana, senior manager of community science at L.A. County’s Natural History Museum, who discovered the late, great mountain lion P-22 in Griffith Park, saw the whole thing unfold.

Standing atop the suspended habitat, he envisioned bobcats hiding behind the bushes and ambushing ground squirrels: “I can see it now as this thing is coming to life.”

The event drew representatives from Caltrans, National Park Service, Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, Agoura Hills City Council and other partners.

The plight of P-22, a celebrity mountain lion that once inhabited Griffith Park, helped inspire the wildlife crossing being built over the 101 Freeway in Agoura Hills

(Miguel Ordeñana)

There’s still significant work to be done before bobcats can come aboard.

Crews are currently building a second overpass over Agoura Road.

Once that’s completed over the summer, they’ll haul in 3 million cubic feet of soil — enough to fill half of SoFi Stadium — to bridge the gap between the two structures. Berms will be constructed to block out noise and light.

Like many dreams in California, the project didn’t come cheap. When it broke ground in 2022, it was expected to cost nearly $93 million. That held until last spring, when bids for the second stage of the project went out and “came back through-the-roof high,” Pratt told The Times earlier this year. The current estimate is $114 million but could potentially top out several million higher.

The surge came amid inflation and tariff-driven price increases. The National Highway Construction Cost Index, a figure calculated by the Federal Highway Administration, has increased by 67% since 2021. Torrential rains in 2022 and 2023 delayed the completion by a year.

There’s also the scale: It’s the largest wildlife crossing in the world, with two structures that together span roughly 320 by 175 feet.

The effort appears to be paying off. Driving down to L.A. earlier this month, Pratt was distressed because she was hitting painted lady butterflies in the midst of their long-distance migration. When she ascended the crossing the following day, she saw the dainty orange, black and white insects fluttering about. It moved her to tears.

They weren’t the only lepidoptera. American lady butterflies were laying eggs and white-lined sphinx moth caterpillars were inching along plants.

Then there’s Bob, a western fence lizard that’s taken up residence at the top of stairs that lead to the crossing. A rattlesnake has claimed the bottom. Birds like yellow-rumped warblers and California scrub jays round out the initial cast.

“I can say with some certainty that this is going to be the most popular reality show that L.A. produces,” Pratt said. Cameras will capture the action, though it won’t be broadcast live because “this is L.A. and someone will go try to pet the mountain lions.”

L.A. deserves a good show. The region is reeling from devastating wildfires, immigration raids and the upending of the state governor’s race. County residents reported record-low quality of life in a UCLA survey this year, with the high cost of living looming large.

Much is uncertain, uneasy. The soon-to-open crossing offers one non-abstract finish line.

More recent wildlife news

California lawmakers are considering a bill to create a statewide program to promote coexistence between people and wildlife, an issue reinvigorated by the euthanization of a beloved black bear with two cubs in Monrovia, writes Times reporter Katie King. The state’s wildlife agency operated a similar program until two years ago, when funding ran dry.

Blondie the bear wanders across a porch in Monrovia. The mama bear was euthanized by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife following two incidents where she swiped at residents.

(Brian Gordon)

The Golden State expanded the area in which boats are asked to slow down in an effort to avoid hitting and killing whales, reports the San Francisco Chronicle’s Brooke Park. Ship strikes are a leading cause of death for several whale species off California, where some of the world’s largest cargo ships pass through key feeding and migration routes.

Nutria, a hefty rodent with the tail of a rat, reappeared in California in 2017 — close to 40 years after it was deemed eradicated. As my colleague Samantha Lee explains, California wildlife officials recently published a study indicating the animal — considered a pest — was deliberately brought back to the state.

A few last things in climate news

California is in the midst of a powerful late-season storm, bringing significant rain to northern regions of the state. However, as fellow Times writer Ian James broke down, the state experienced the hottest March on record — a phenomenon that prematurely melted snow in the Sierra Nevada. The heat and early melt is expected to dry out forests earlier than normal, increasing the risk of wildfires.

After years of debate between fire officials arguing for the removal of anything that can burn within the first five feet of homes and ecologists backing selective landscaping, California proposed a compromise, reports my colleague Noah Haggerty. New regulations create a strict one-foot “Safety Zone” around homes where nothing burnable is allowed, while permitting some spaced-out plants beyond it.

Some who lost their homes in the Eaton and Palisades fires are rebuilding all-electric due to health and climate concerns. Per Times staffer Blanca Begert, burning gas and propane for cooking, as well as water and space heating, in California homes and businesses creates 10% of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions.

One last thing

BEY03F, the wolf pictured, briefly visited L.A. County before making her way to the Eastern Sierra.

(California Department of Fish and Wildlife)

Remember the wolf that stunned everyone by visiting Los Angeles County? She made history again by venturing into Inyo County earlier this month and remains in the Eastern Sierra. Experts believe she’s probably still looking for a mate.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

For more wildlife and outdoors news, follow Lila Seidman at @lila_seidman on X and @lilaseidman.bsky.social on Bluesky.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — Millions more Americans might qualify for dual Canadian citizenship under a recent change to Canada’s requirements that has led to a surge in applications from its southern neighbor.

For people like Zack Loud of Farmington, Minn., it was a surprise to learn that under a new law, Canada already considered him and his siblings citizens because their grandmother is Canadian.

“My wife and I were already talking about potentially looking at jobs outside the country, but citizenship pushed Canada way up on our list,” he said.

Since the new law took effect Dec. 15, immigration lawyers in the United States and Canada say they have been overwhelmed by clients seeking help submitting proof of citizenship applications. Driven by politics, family heritage, job opportunities and other factors, thousands of Americans are exploring whether the easier process makes now the right time to gain dual citizenship.

Nicholas Berning, an immigration attorney at Boundary Bay Law in Bellingham, Wash., said his practice is “pretty much flooded with this.”

“We’ve kind of shifted a lot of other work away in order to push these cases through,” he said.

Immigration attorney Amandeep Hayer said his Vancouver, British Columbia-area practice went from about 200 citizenship cases a year to more than 20 consultations per day.

How the new law works

Canada has been changing its citizenship laws for decades, whether to update historic interpretations of law or to address discrimination issues.

Previously, Canadian citizenship by descent could only be passed down to one generation, from a parent to a child. But the new law opened up citizenship to anyone born before that date who could prove they have a direct Canadian ancestor — a grandparent, great-grandparent or even more distant ancestor.

Those born on or after Dec. 15 need to show that their Canadian parent lived in Canada for 1,095 days.

Under the new law, descendants of Canadians are already considered citizens but must provide proof to obtain a certificate of citizenship. Hayer estimated that there are millions of Americans who are Canadian descendants.

“You are Canadian, and you’re considered to be one your whole life,” said Hayer, who advocated for the new law in parliament. “That’s really what you’re applying for, the recognition of a right you already have vested.”

“The best way I can put it is like, if a baby’s born tomorrow in Canada, the baby’s Canadian even though they don’t have the birth certificate,” he said.

Americans interested in dual citizenship

American applicants have different motivations, but many say President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and other topics have led them to seek dual citizenship.

Michelle Cunha, of Bedford, Mass., said she decided to move to Canada after reflecting on decades of political activism and deciding she had “nothing left to give.”

“I put in my best effort for 30 years. I have done everything that I possibly can to make the United States what it promises the world to be, a place of freedom, a place of equality,” Cunha said. “But clearly we’re not there and we’re not going to get there anytime soon.”

Troy Hicks, who had a great-grandfather born in Canada, said he was spurred by an international trip.

“I recently went to Australia and you know, first words out of the first person I talked to in Australia was basically an expletive about Trump and the U.S.,” said Hicks, of Pahrump, Nev. “It was just like, whoa, I walked off a 20-hour flight and literally the first words of somebody’s mouth to me were that. … So the idea of doing that with a Canadian passport just seemed easier, better, more palatable.”

Maureen Sullivan, of Naples, Fla., said she was motivated by the immigration crackdown in Minnesota, which hit home when her teenage nephew encountered federal officers near his high school in St. Paul. Sullivan, whose grandmother was Canadian, said she sees citizenship in Canada as an option in case things in the U.S. “really go south.”

“When I first heard about the bill, I couldn’t believe it. It was like this little gift that fell in my lap,” Sullivan said. “There was kind of this collective excitement amongst the (family) who just felt like, we wanted to feel like we were doing something to take care of our security in the future if needed.”

How much will Canadian citizenship cost?

For those with documentation ready at hand, the proof of citizenship application fee is a relatively inexpensive 75 Canadian dollars ($55).

But costs will climb for those seeking help from an attorney or genealogist to locate records like birth, death and marriage certificates that can establish the lineage to a Canadian ancestor.

Cunha said she used an attorney and estimates the cost will be about $6,500.

However, Mary Mangan, of Somerville, Mass., filed her application in January using advice from online forums.

“There are some situations where a lawyer might be the right thing, but for many people, I would guess 90% of people can probably do this on their own,” Mangan said.

The website for the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada office, which processes applications, says processing times for a certificate is around 10 months, with more 56,000 people awaiting a decision.

The agency said that from Dec. 15 to Jan. 31, it confirmed citizenship by descent for 1,480 people, though not all were Americans. Last year, 24,500 Americans gained dual U.S.-Canada citizenship.

What’s the reaction in Canada?

Fen Hampson, professor of international affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa, said Canadians are generally a “welcoming people.”

Hampson said some also worry a surge of interest from Americans could delay efforts by refugees and asylum-seekers fleeing vulnerable situations.

“I think where people start looking askance is someone who’s never been to Canada, who has very thin ties. They can get a passport, becoming Canadians of convenience. People don’t like that,” he said.

Raza writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s acting attorney general on Thursday signed an order reclassifying state-licensed medical marijuana as a less-dangerous drug, a major policy shift long sought by advocates who said cannabis should never have been treated like heroin by the federal government.

The order signed by Todd Blanche does not legalize marijuana for medical or recreational use under federal law. But it does change the way it’s regulated, shifting licensed medical marijuana from Schedule I — reserved for drugs without medical use and with high potential for abuse — to the less strictly regulated Schedule III. It also gives licensed medical marijuana operators a major tax break and eases some barriers to researching cannabis.

The Trump administration also said it was jump-starting the process for reclassifying marijuana more broadly, setting a hearing to begin in late June.

Trump told his administration in December to work as quickly as possible to reclassify marijuana. On Saturday, as the Republican president signed an unrelated executive order about psychedelics, he seemed to express frustration that it was taking so long.

Blanche said Thursday that the Department of Justice was “delivering on President Trump’s promise” to expand Americans’ access to medical treatment options. “This rescheduling action allows for research on the safety and efficacy of this substance, ultimately providing patients with better care and doctors with more reliable information,” he said in a statement.

What the marijuana reclassification order does

Blanche’s action largely legitimizes medical marijuana programs in the 40 states that have adopted them. It sets up an expedited system for state-licensed medical marijuana producers and distributors to register with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

It makes clear that cannabis researchers won’t be penalized for obtaining state-licensed marijuana or marijuana-derived products for use in their work, and it grants state-licensed medical marijuana companies a windfall by allowing them, for the first time, to deduct business expenses on their federal taxes.

Any marijuana-derived medicine approved by the Food and Drug Administration is similarly listed in Schedule III, it said.

Since 2015, Congress has prohibited the Justice Department from using its resources to shut down state-licensed medical marijuana systems. But the order nevertheless represents a major policy shift for the U.S. government, which has continued its long-standing marijuana prohibition — dating to the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 — even as nearly all the states have approved cannabis use in some form.

Two dozen states plus Washington, D.C., have authorized adult recreational use of marijuana, 40 have medical marijuana systems, and eight others allow low-THC cannabis or CBD oil for medical use. Only Idaho and Kansas ban marijuana outright.

The regulation of medical marijuana has come a long way since California became the first state to adopt it in 1996, Blanche wrote.

“Today the vast majority of States maintain comprehensive licensing frameworks governing cultivation, processing, distribution, and dispensing of marijuana for medical purposes,” Blanche wrote. “Taken as a whole, they demonstrate a sustained capacity to achieve the public-interest objectives … including protecting public health and safety and preventing the diversion of controlled substances into illicit channels.”

The president of the American Trade Assn. for Cannabis and Hemp, Michael Bronstein, called it “the most significant federal advancement in cannabis policy in over 50 years.”

“This action recognizes what Americans have long known, cannabis is medicine,” he said in a written statement.

Critic calls the order ‘a tax break to Big Weed’

The Trump administration’s decision drew derision from marijuana legalization opponent Kevin Sabet, the chief executive of Smart Approaches to Marijuana. Sabet said that while marijuana research is necessary, “there are many ways to increase our knowledge without giving a tax break to Big Weed and sending a confusing message about marijuana’s harms to the American public.”

“With this move, we are now confronted with the most pro-drug administration in our history,” Sabet said in a text message. “Policy is now being dictated by marijuana CEOs, psychedelics investors, and podcasters in active addiction.”

Marijuana or marijuana-derived products that are not distributed through a state medical marijuana program will continue to be classified in Schedule I.

Schedule III drugs are defined as having moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence. Some critics of the industry have suggested that legalization in the states has led to stronger and stronger cannabis products, which need to be researched rather than categorized less strictly than before.

The efforts to reclassify marijuana

The Justice Department under President Biden had proposed to reclassify marijuana, eliciting nearly 43,000 formal public comments. The DEA was still in the review process when Trump succeeded Biden, and Trump ordered that process to move along as quickly as legally possible.

Blanche’s order sidestepped the review process by relying on a provision of federal law that allows the attorney general to determine the appropriate classification for drugs that the U.S. must regulate pursuant to an international treaty.

It was unclear how the order might affect operations in states where licensed recreational marijuana shops also sell to medical patients. In Washington state, which in 2012 became one of the first states to legalize the adult use of marijuana, 302 of 460 licensed stores have endorsements allowing them to sell tax-free cannabis products to registered patients.

Many Republicans oppose loosening marijuana restrictions. More than 20 Republican senators, several of them staunch Trump allies, signed a letter last year urging the president to keep the current standards.

Trump has made his crusade against other drugs, especially fentanyl, a feature of his second term, ordering U.S. military attacks on Venezuelan and other boats the administration insists are ferrying drugs. He signed another executive order declaring fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction.

Richer and Johnson write for the Associated Press. Johnson reported from Seattle.

WASHINGTON — The Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee said some of its members would support a presidential pardon for convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell in exchange for her assistance in the committee’s investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.

But good luck getting any of them to admit it.

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) told Politico Wednesday that “a lot of people” support the idea of Maxwell receiving a pardon from President Trump in exchange for her cooperation in the committee’s investigation.

Although Comer said he opposed a pardon himself — “other than Epstein, the worst person in this whole investigation is Maxwell” — he offered that his committee was “split” on the issue.

Rep. Robert Garcia of Long Beach, the top Democrat on his committee, condemned the idea of a Maxwell pardon and said Democrats on the committee uniformly oppose it.

“It’s outrageous that Republicans on the Oversight Committee are considering a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell,” Garcia said in a statement. “She is a sexual abuser who facilitated the rape of women and children.”

The Times reached out to all 26 Republicans on the committee to see who, if anyone, supported the idea of a pardon.

Although most didn’t respond, the few who did expressed outrage at the idea.

“I am absolutely not supporting a pardon for her nor have I heard that from anyone else,” said Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.).

“Never in a thousand years,” said Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.).

Maxwell declined to answer the committee’s questions during a video deposition in February from the Texas federal prison where she is serving her 20-year prison sentence.

She is still challenging her 2021 conviction on five counts related to the sex trafficking of minors for her role in recruiting and grooming girls for Epstein to abuse. She was accused at trial of also participating in the abuse of one victim.

At the time of her February deposition, Maxwell’s attorney David Oscar Markus said she would offer the “unfiltered truth” if granted clemency by Trump.

Attorneys who have represented victims abused by Epstein and Maxwell strongly opposed the idea of a pardon.

“This is a woman who belongs behind bars for the rest of her life for what she did to women,” said Spencer Kuvin, who has represented numerous Epstein victims.

Sigrid McCawley, a managing partner at Boies Schiller Flexner, questioned the value of information Maxwell could provide.

“Ghislaine Maxwell is a proven self-serving liar,” McCawley said in a statement. “There is nothing credible that she will offer the government, and the assertion that she would provide information is simply a smoke screen.”

Trump has not said he is considering a pardon but when asked by reporters he has declined to rule it out.

Epstein abused more than 1,000 girls and young women over the span of decades. He negotiated a lenient deal nearly two decades ago with federal prosecutors in south Florida that allowed him to serve 13 months in a Palm Beach County jail where he was allowed to come and go freely to settle claims that he had abused dozens of high school girls.

Following investigative reporting on that deal by the Miami Herald, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York brought new sex charges against Epstein in July 2019. He died in federal custody one month later.

Epstein and Maxwell counted members of the British royal family, multiple presidents and business titans among their friends.

They have been accused of forcing some of their victims to have sex with some of those men. But Maxwell is the only other person who has ever been charged in connection with Epstein’s crimes.

The committee has deposed numerous people who knew Epstein, including Ohio billionaire Les Wexner, who hired Epstein to manage his finances, and former President Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The committee has not, however, deposed Trump, who once famously called Epstein a “terrific guy” and said, “I just wish her well,” when told of Maxwell’s arrest in 2020.

The Department of Justice has also released millions of pages of documents from its investigations into the deceased sex offender in response to the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was signed into law last year.

The release of the files has led to criminal inquiries in the United Kingdom into Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former prince, and Peter Mandelson, the former British ambassador to the United States, over allegations that they provided secret government information to Epstein.

So far, the files have not led to any publicly known criminal investigations in the United States.

California’s trial attorneys and Uber — longtime courtroom foes — are officially bringing their fight to the November ballot.

A coalition of lawyers and advocates announced Thursday that it has gathered enough signatures to ask voters to support a “first in the nation” law that would make rideshare companies legally responsible for sexual assaults that happen to a driver or customer during a trip. Uber has argued it’s not liable for assaults committed by drivers, who are considered independent contractors.

“We must hold Uber accountable today,” said Danielle Tudahl, who recounted being sexually harassed and chased by an Uber driver after ordering a ride through the app, at a Sacramento news conference. “Californians are finally demanding action to try and close some of these gaps and put people’s safety over corporate profits.”

Uber has described the ballot measure, which is sponsored by the Consumer Attorneys of California, or CAOC, as retaliation for its own November ballot push to cap how much attorneys can earn in car crash cases in California.

“This ballot measure is a cynical ploy by billboard lawyers,” said Nathan Click, a spokesperson for A More Affordable California, an Uber-backed coalition. “CAOC didn’t spend millions to put this on the ballot to protect survivors — their goal is protecting billboard lawyer profits.”

The coalition that supports Uber announced last week it had gathered enough signatures for a measure that would cap attorney fees for car crash cases at 25%, among other changes.

Uber says its ballot measure will give victims a larger cut of their settlement money, rather than the payout getting siphoned off primarily to attorneys and doctors. Attorneys fire back that it will leave thousands of people with small or thorny cases without a lawyer because they won’t have financial incentive to sue.

Both sides are gearing up for an expensive fight. Uber has given more than $77 million. The Alliance Against Corporate Abuse, the CAOC-backed coalition pushing the sexual assault measure, has raised more than $68 million from law firms across the state, according to campaign finance records.

The money has helped pay for billboards that have sprouted across L.A. informing drivers that, according to the New York Times, Uber received a report of sexual assault or misconduct every eight minutes on average between 2017 and 2022. The company was the subject of a series of investigations by the paper into sexual assault by drivers. The company says it has invested billions in keeping riders safe and has “done more than any other company to confront” sexual violence.

The proposed sexual assault measure would require ride-share companies to let riders know if the person picking them up has a history of sexual misconduct and conduct yearly fingerprint and background checks for drivers.

The company is currently fighting more than 3,000 lawsuits from passengers who claim they were sexually assaulted or harassed by Uber drivers. Those cases are being coordinated by a federal judge in California.

The attorney coalition had also pushed an initiative aimed at nullifying Uber’s fee-capping measure if it passed. Alex Stack, a spokesperson for the campaign, said they were “pausing/withdrawing” the measure to “focus the fight on our sexual assault prevention measure and beating Uber’s initiative.”

Two of our esteemed gubernatorial candidates, the cowboy and the dilettante, apparently could not find ties for the first debate Wednesday night, showing up with dress shirts casually unbuttoned.

Mr. Middleground sported a scruffy sorta-beard, apparently unable to pay for a razor in the midst of California’s affordability crisis. It’s a trademark look that always makes me think if this doesn’t work out, he’ll opt to live on a boat in some not-too-expensive slip by the Bay.

The billionaire wore Nikes instead of dress shoes, a sartorial nod perhaps to his bid to be the outsider-fighter. Or maybe his feet just hurt.

The last two contenders were remarkably unremarkable.

Why start with fashion? Honestly, it might be the most interesting, and telling, bit of insight that came from this first (of three) chances for our next governor to let us know who they are and what they’re made of. If the debate showed us anything, it’s that none of these candidates are hiding follow-me charisma or an excitement-inducing political vision for our collective future.

Yes, there were a few decent jabs here and there about Tom Steyer’s money, Katie Porter’s temper, Matt Mahan’s tech ties and Chad Bianco’s far-right world view. But even those were predictable.

Still, in between the yawns, there were a couple of answers worth noting, ones that might actually give us insight into how the Democratic candidates differ (Despite all the hype, it seems increasingly unlikely that two Republicans will come out of the primary, and even more unlikely that in a Democratic vs. Republican race, the Democrat would lose in blue California.)

I’ll start with a surprising place where I agreed with Steve Hilton, the Republican endorsed by President Trump.

The candidates were asked if they would support a ban on social media for kids under age 16. This is a quickly accelerating idea not beloved by tech companies. Australia and Indonesia already have bans in place. Other countries, including France and Portugal, have them in the works. Florida banned children under 14 from opening social media accounts on their own last year.

And a Los Angeles jury last month dealt a blow to Meta and YouTube when it found the platforms had damaged the mental health of a young woman with their addictive features.

Hilton took the ban question a step further, saying it “misses the point.” He has long argued that it isn’t just social media that is the problem, but having kids staring at a digital device for hours a day instead of interacting in the real world. It was one of the most genuine answers of the night.

“We’ve got to get to the heart of the problem, and that’s the devices and the screens,” he said. “I think that every parent in their heart knows that it’s wrong.”

While Steyer and Xavier Becerra, the former California attorney general, both said they would support such a ban, the remaining three candidates hedged or said they would not. Porter said no to a ban under age 16, but said she “might consider a different ban,” without being specific.

Mahan, who is backed by significant tech money, and Bianco both said they believed requiring parental consent was the way to go (though Mahan said he would ban devices in schools).

As Becerra pointed out, “kids have died as a result of their use of social media,” so it’s a place where policy matters. And if a candidate doesn’t see government’s role in controlling the dangers of social media, what will happen with artificial intelligence?

The candidates also had differences in how they would handle homelessness and the related crisis of housing affordability, though the devil was often buried in the details.

At least for Democrats. For Bianco, the difference was stark.

“We are not dealing with homeless. So stop calling it homeless,” he snapped at the moderators. “It has nothing to do with homes. This is drug- and alcohol-induced psychosis, mental illness.”

Of course, this is wrong. Last year, the UC San Francisco Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative released the results of the state’s most comprehensive survey of homeless people. It found that for most people living on our streets, “the cost of housing had simply become unsustainable.” It also found an increasing percentage of those folks were older — almost half were over the age of 50 — and had become homeless after a hardship such as an illness or a job loss.

“It’s also families who are fleeing intimate partner and domestic violence,” Porter said. “It’s people who are double and tripled up. It’s people who are living in their cars on our college campuses. Homelessness comes in a lot of different forms.”

Most of the Democratic candidates seemed to understand this and embraced the increasingly popular idea of putting more money into helping people stay housed after a hardship, instead of trying to get them housed after they lose their place.

“How can I help you keep your home?” Becerra said. “Because it costs me so much more money to pick you off the streets, provide you with the assistance in the shelter, than it does to keep you in the home.”

But the issue of homelessness is also where daylight emerged between the candidates. Steyer said he and his wife had helped finance low-barrier homes, not just shelter spaces, where people do not need to be addiction-free and where they can bring pets — two issues that are common hindrances for moving folks off sidewalks voluntarily.

Mahan, the mayor of San José, who often touts his city’s success at moving people indoors, agreed that emergency and interim housing was critical, but also voiced support for forcing folks to accept help. Last year, San José passed an ordinance he backed that some say criminalizes homelessness — a person can be cited twice for refusing shelter, and a third refusal within 18 months can lead to an arrest.

“When shelter was available, we required that people come indoors,” Mahan said, adding, “We have to be able to mandate treatment.”

It’s a controversial position, but also one that is increasingly popular. Gov. Gavin Newsom has backed mandated treatment, in a lighter form, with his CARE Court (which is technically voluntarily). And the movement to require people to accept a shelter space or face arrest is growing on the right and even the Democratic-middle.

But there is a fine and dangerous line with mandated treatment and shelter requirements that is often pushed further and further to the side in favor of the clean, safe streets argument. Whenever we start locking folks up — whether it’s in mental wards or immigration detention centers or jails — we should be careful that expediency isn’t trumping ethics.

Of course, the debate would not be complete without the Democratic candidates’ position on our president, speaking of ethics.

Steyer was gleeful that Trump has come after him on social media, a point of pride that he is a relevant figure in the fight against MAGA. He also said he would abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement if he could, which he can’t.

Becerra highlighted his many lawsuits as California’s attorney general during Trump’s first term, and pledged to keep fighting. Porter leaned into her time in Congress and her efforts to help Democrats in other races win.

Mahan took a different route, pledging to fight when necessary, but adding, “We need a partnership, and we need to find common ground with this administration on certain issues.”

Newsom learned the hard way that common ground is what Trump says it is, and shifts without warning or reason.

So what’s the takeaway from all this?

Boring dad; feisty mom; rich do-gooder; striving newcomer; MAGA one; MAGA two.

None of them hit it out of the park, but no one struck out. Maybe next time.

Xavier Becerra needed to land a knockout punch, even more so than the five other candidates for California governor he was facing at Wednesday night’s debate.

Instead, he fired off some slaps.

He needed to roar about his many accomplishments in his 35-year career in Sacramento and Washington, to distinguish himself from the relative political neophytes around him.

Instead, Becerra recited his resume with the vigor of someone rattling off his LinkedIn page.

He needed to uplift Californians with a vision of hope, when many feel the state is going in the wrong direction.

Instead, he offered the oratory equivalent of a pat on the shoulder.

No candidate had more at stake that night than Becerra, who went from an afterthought to a contender after Eric Swalwell dropped out and resigned his congressional seat over sexual assault allegations.

Five weeks ago, Becerra and other candidates of color were protesting their exclusion from a USC debate because they were all polling so low. Now, the 68-year-old has a chance to become California’s first Latino governor.

This possibility seems to have uncorked California’s silent majority — the rancho libertarians turned off by hard-right politics but also the wokoso politics they feel have left them behind. The people who yearn for an unglamorous, competent leader after eight years of all-about-me Gavin Newsom and a decade of Donald Trump.

Becerra’s campaign, once as rudderless as a leaf in a river in a race so chaotic for Democrats that many feared two Republicans would win on June 2 and face each other in the general election, suddenly latched onto a palpable wave.

At the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books last weekend, I saw people sporting Becerra campaign buttons who had just come from a rally that was expected to draw a few hundred but instead had over 2,000 RSVPs. On social media, friends who had never especially cared for state politics suddenly declared they were for Becerra and fought off their more lefty pals who think he’s a Latino Ned Flanders not up for this fraught moment.

Unglamorous and competent are Becerra’s middle names, and they were on display at the debate — for better and mostly worse. This was his chance to show both his new followers and undecided voters that they could trust him as California’s next governor.

But where he needed to be limber like a prizefighter, the former California attorney general was as tightly wound as a Rolex.

While the other candidates pressed their palms against the podiums, ready to pounce on every question, Becerra clasped his hands like an altar boy. When he did gesture, his movements never went further than the span of his shoulders.

As the others grinned and grimaced at their rivals’ responses, Becerra was as stone-faced as Buster Keaton. He stumbled more than he should have — how could someone in his position mistake Iraq for Iran when criticizing Trump’s Middle East quagmire? — and rarely seemed at ease, as if the weight of the moment and the good luck of his surge had suddenly hit him at the worst possible time.

Candidates in California’s gubernatorial race, from left, Matt Mahan, Xavier Becerra, Chad Bianco, and Steve Hilton look on during a debate Wednesday, April 22, 2026, in San Francisco.

(Jason Henry / Associated Press)

Becerra’s supporters say a level-headed leader is what California needs. But voters almost never go for what they need — they pick what they want. And California wants someone who’s loud, or at least louder than Becerra. There’s a reason why strident partisans like Republicans Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton and progressives Tom Steyer and Katie Porter have consistently placed high in the polls, while moderates like Becerra, his frenemy Antonio Villaraigosa and San Jose mayor Matt Mahan have lagged.

The weird thing is that Becerra does know how to brawl. Wallflowers don’t go from a working class Mexican immigrant family to Stanford Law School. Wimps don’t survive the ruthlessness of Eastside politics as an outsider to become a congressmember at just 34. Cowards don’t file over 100 lawsuits against the Trump administration as California’s top prosecutor or tackle the coronavirus pandemic as President Biden’s health secretary.

I’ve only encountered the Sacramento native a few times but always came away impressed. In small crowds, he makes people laugh and tear up. He’s quick with ripostes, righteous in off-the-cuff remarks and has a do-gooder aura that never comes off as sanctimonious.

We saw hints of that Becerra at the debate. To Hilton, he quipped, “You can be a talking head and not worry about the consequences of what you do” after the former Fox News host babbled on about how one-party ruled had failed California.

After Porter accused him of not offering hard numbers for his economic plans, Becerra responded that he has balanced federal budgets larger than California’s. “It’s easy to say you haven’t done this; it’s easier to prove that you actually have,” he concluded.

But after Becerra described the evils of racial profiling by law enforcement and Bianco, the sheriff of Riverside County, ranted that California politicians need to stop thinking so much about race, it was Porter who responded with a verbal haymaker as Becerra silently looked on.

You don’t fight as a choirboy in a battle royale. Becerra wasn’t bad at the debate but he also wasn’t great — and that won’t win this race.

Voters want someone who’ll do the job, yes — especially if it comes with no drama. They also want to elect someone they think is a human, not a joyless bureaucrat. So how did Becerra respond to the debate’s last question about what was the last series you’ve streamed?

Becerra flashed his biggest smile of the night. It was such a softball query that even a kindergartener could have slammed it à la Shohei Ohtani.

“I wish I could tell you I had time to watch streaming shows,” he replied.

Dude. We’re all overworked, but everyone I know unwinds by watching mindless drivel (my current obsession is “Vanderpump Villa”). We all need to relax, even for a moment. As my dad says when he sees me filing one columna after another and urges me to take a break, “El trabajo nunca se acaba pero uno sí se acaba.”

Work never ends, but people do.

Xavier, you know you’re on the wrong side of California when the only other candidate with a similar answer was Bianco, who said he doesn’t watch television at all.

Being careful has served you well, but this is the greatest opportunity of your life. You don’t have to suddenly become a flamethrower, but some sparks would help. It’s six weeks until the primary, so time to throw down — channel your inner cholo and go get what should be yours.

Democrats on Wednesday celebrated an election win in Virginia that could put them slightly ahead in the national redistricting competition that President Trump triggered in an attempt to preserve his party’s House majority in this year’s midterms, but it will not be the final round.

Now that it’s been approved by voters, the new Virginia map will have to clear additional legal hurdles. On Wednesday, the state attorney general’s office said it would immediately appeal a ruling earlier in the day from a judge in rural southern Virginia who ordered that the results of Tuesday’s vote not be certified.

Ultimately, the Virginia Supreme Court will decide whether Democratic lawmakers violated procedural rules when they referred a constitutional amendment to the ballot authorizing the new U.S. House districts that could help Democrats win as many as four additional seats in the state. If so, that could invalidate the map voters narrowly approved Tuesday.

What happens next in Florida also will matter.

The state’s Republican-controlled Legislature is to meet in a special session next week that GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis called in part to draw a new map to expand the party’s congressional majority there. The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to issue an opinion by the end of June in a Louisiana case that could overturn a key provision of the Voting Rights Act and lead to redrawn political maps across the South, though almost all of those could not happen until 2028.

After voters passed the Virginia amendment, Democrats could tentatively claim that they netted 10 seats nationally from the mid-decade redistricting, compared with the nine that Republicans claim. Even if things swing again in the GOP’s favor, the net result of Trump’s campaign would be at best an incremental increase in the number of GOP-leaning House seats at a time when his approval rating is dropping and Republican anxiety over losing control of Congress in November is rising.

“We have successfully blunted Trump’s attempt to completely hijack the midterms,” said John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.

Many Republicans agreed.

“The GOP will now lose net seats across the country. If you’re going to pick a fight, at least win it,” Ari Fleischer, who was a spokesman for President George W. Bush, posted on the social media site X after the Virginia vote. “All this was foreseeable and avoidable. We should not have started this fight.”

Adam Kincaid, executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, argued that it is too soon to declare one party a victor.

“It’s an ongoing process with many legal challenges pending, and it’s far too early for sweeping statements on the final outcome,” he said.

Trump on Wednesday tried to undermine the Virginia result by leveling groundless accusations of fraud similar to ones he made after losing the 2020 presidential election. He called the Virginia vote “RIGGED” and “Crooked” in a post on his social media site and added, “Let’s see if the Courts will fix this travesty of ‘Justice.’”

Redistricting spread from Texas to other states

Redistricting is typically done every 10 years after each census, unless ordered by a court. But last summer, Trump pushed a redrawing in Texas, prodding the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature to add up to five winnable House seats for his party. Trump then began pressuring other Republican-run states to follow. Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio have since created more GOP-leaning seats in addition to Texas.

Democrats began to fight back, even though they were more constrained because several Democratic-controlled states had maps drawn by independent commissions rather than lawmakers and governors.

To counter Texas, California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, pushed the Democratic-controlled Legislature to place a redistricting initiative on last fall’s ballot. After voters overwhelmingly approved it, the measure will replace a commission-approved map with one that could gain Democrats five seats.

Democrats reclaimed the Legislature and governor’s office in November in Virginia and swiftly moved to replicate California’s move with an even more aggressive redistricting plan. It replaces a congressional map imposed by a court after the last census that had resulted in a 6-5 edge for Democrats with one that could allow Democrats to win as many as 10 seats.

“We are not going to let anyone tilt the system without a response,” state Senate President L. Louise Lucas said at a news conference Wednesday.

Courts could still have a say on redistricting

In Washington, U.S. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York warned Florida Republicans, who have been openly nervous about redrawing their district boundaries and potentially spreading their core voters too thin before an election that appears to be trending against them.

“Our message to Florida Republicans right now is, ‘F around and find out,’” Jeffries said.

House Majority Forward, the nonprofit arm of the super political action committee aligned with House Democrats, has spent nearly $60 million to push back against Republicans’ redistricting efforts. Some $40 million of that was on the Virginia campaign.

Another obstacle in Florida is an anti-gerrymandering constitutional amendment that was approved by state voters in 2010. It is likely that any new Florida map would trigger significant litigation, although six of the state Supreme Court’s seven justices were appointed by Republicans.

Nicholas Stephanopolous, a Harvard law professor, said a challenge for DeSantis is that the Florida amendment forbids drawing lines for purely partisan purposes, so he has to find some other excuse for revising the map. “Even with that sort of acquiescent state supreme court, I don’t think it’s a done deal,” Stephanopolous said.

The Virginia move comes with its own legal issues. Republicans have challenged the process that Democrats used to place the measure on the ballot and the state Supreme Court opted to wait for the vote before even scheduling arguments in the case. It is unclear when a ruling could come.

Wednesday’s ruling stopping certification came from a separate case that Republicans filed with the same lower court judge, whose initial ruling against the initiative was put on hold by the state supreme court.

“The ballot box was never the final word here,” Terry Kilgore, the Virginia House Republican leader, said in a statement after Tuesday’s vote. “Serious legal questions remain about both the wording of this referendum and the process used to put it before voters.”

The biggest legal wild card is held by the U.S. Supreme Court. Its conservative majority could throw out a requirement under the Voting Rights Act that in areas with a large minority population, mapmakers draw districts that are more favorable to the election of minority candidates.

That provision has led to the creation of several majority-minority congressional seats, especially in the South. Without it, Republicans in conservative states could shrink the number of U.S. House seats winnable by Democrats even further.

But it’s unlikely that any state other than Louisiana, which brought the lawsuit the high court will rule on, would be able to adjust its congressional lines in time for November even if the court eliminates that provision, known as Section Two. That’s because the November election is already officially underway in most states and candidate filing deadlines — and, in some cases, primary elections — have already passed.

Riccardi and Lieb write for the Associated Press. AP writers Lisa Mascaro and Leah Askarinam in Washington contributed to this report.

Tarek William Saab, one of the key figures in the repressive apparatus that oppresses Venezuelan society, is dismissed as prosecutor general, but a family friend who has spent years denying Maduro’s atrocities on the international stage is appointed in his place. Vladimir Padrino, under investigation for systematic human rights violations, is replaced by Gustavo González López, also under investigation for systematic human rights violations. They pass an amnesty law, but primarily to grant amnesty to themselves. Over 700 political prisoners are released, but another 473 remain in prison, and those who are released do not always enjoy full freedom.

The institutional reforms of Delcy and Jorge Rodríguez generate headlines abroad that portray them, to those who don’t pay attention to the details, as the moderates The New York Times described them as shortly before the military incursion of January 3rd. The economic reforms, on the other hand, provide arguments, or rather content, for the Trump administration to claim on its social media accounts that it is succeeding in reshaping Venezuela, when on the ground the population observes their living conditions—the blackouts, the inflation, the widespread vulnerability—and concludes that they remain the same as when Maduro was dancing calmly over our dead.

Yes, there are some reasons for optimism, especially regarding the economic transition, but the transition to democracy doesn’t seem to be happening yet. The dictator was removed in a helicopter, but the dictatorship remains.

So far, all of this fits into a metaphor that has been cited countless times in decades of opinion pieces in Venezuela: the Rodríguezes are changing everything so that nothing changes. I grew up reading that cliché in the press, before chavismo burst onto the scene, guns blazing, in our history. “They’re like the Leopard, they change everything so that nothing changes.” In a country that has seen so many supposed reinventions, so many revolutions promising a clean slate to simply replace one set of power with another without solving any of the nation’s structural problems, that cliché has been uttered in relation to many governments and many leaders. But where does it come from, and what does it originally mean?

The cunning of the opportunist

Giuseppe Tomasi, Prince of Lampedusa, was a Sicilian aristocrat who seemed like a character from a novel: he failed as a soldier, he couldn’t prevent his family’s ruin, he saw his palace destroyed by Allies bombs during World War II, and in reality, he was only good for reading and learning languages. He published very little during his lifetime, and spent more than twenty years writing a novel that was published a year after his death in 1957. The book, which was a great success from the start, was titled Il Gattopardo (The Leopard in the English translations), after the cheetah that appears on the coat of arms of its protagonist: Don Fabrizio, the Prince of Salina.

The world is full of Tancredis like Jorge, Venezuela has never lacked them. Juan Vicente Gómez also promised change when he overthrew his crony Cipriano Castro, remaining in power for 27 years.

The character, like his creator, was the last of a line. He was a landowner whose noble titles and privileges depended on the existence of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, as the Spanish dominion of southern Italy was called in 1860. When, that year, Garibaldi’s troops invaded Sicily, in the process that would eventually produce the Italy we know today, Don Fabrizio found that everything he stood for was in danger. Sicily would cease to be Spanish and merge into the new Kingdom of Italy, and he would lose his place at the pinnacle of that feudal society, dominated by a few through the mere will of a foreign sovereign. Don Fabrizio, who had dedicated his life to preserving what he had inherited, saw no way to stop the transformations that were approaching like a tsunami at the gates of his palace, crowned by wrought-iron leopards. But his favorite nephew, Tancredi, an ambitious climber who married the daughter of an uneducated nouveau riche and joined Garibaldi’s Redshirt revolution without hesitation, showed him what had to be done: “If we want everything to stay the same, we have to change everything.”

The fate of the cynics

Il Gattopardo is an exquisite work, a great historical novel that brings together all the virtues of the genre: the ability to transport you to an era and dissect it; the pleasure of escaping to a beautiful palace in the golden hills of Sicily, beside a turquoise sea; details like the pasta timbale and granitas served at a fully set table. All of that is in Luchino Visconti’s magnificent 1963 film version, starring Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon, and in the superb miniseries—in which all the actors are Italian—on Netflix.

But what immortalized it was that line from Tancredi. Because of its power to synthesize what many people, in many different historical contexts, have done time and again: move from the old order to the new, disguised as reformers, to avoid losing their privileges by securing a place in the emerging elite. Changing everything so that nothing changes is the strategy of those who must pretend to be the future and not the past, because they would pay a heavy price if they didn’t. It’s the roadmap of those who, like Delcy and Jorge Rodríguez, have prepared themselves to take advantage of an external factor that destabilizes the order of their world—Garibaldi’s landing, the arrival of the Marines—and reorganize that world to their advantage.

Perhaps Jorge Rodríguez read Lampedusa back when he frequented bookstores and wrote fiction like the story that won the El Nacional literary contest. Perhaps he saw Visconti’s film. Perhaps he doesn’t even know this story: the world is full of Tancredis like him, and Venezuela has never lacked them. Juan Vicente Gómez also promised change when he overthrew his crony Cipriano Castro, remaining in power for 27 years at the head of a dictatorship that had a very good relationship with foreign oil companies.

In the novel, however, Tancredi meets a bad end: he loses an eye, fails in his ambition to seize power, pays for the mistake of underestimating the Mafia father-in-law with whom he became involved, and for overestimating his own talents. The prince, as expected, disappears along with the world he represented. Italy in the 1860s changed in many ways, and left other things as they were. When you truly read that immortal book left to us by that sad, solitary Sicilian prince, you understand how cynics work to appropriate historical changes, but you also realize that no one, not even those who seem most powerful, can control these.

WASHINGTON — Many of the groups that helped elect Donald Trump as president again are deeply unhappy with his performance, according to a new AP-NORC poll.

Trump’s return to the presidency was fueled by a wide-ranging coalition that built on his loyal base of supporters. Now that Trump has been in the White House for more than a year, the survey of more than 2,500 U.S. adults from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that many key groups — including Hispanic adults, younger adults and men — are increasingly dissatisfied with his presidency.

The poll was conducted from April 16 through Monday, as oil prices fluctuated and Americans spent more at the gas pump.

It’s a particularly bad moment for Trump, a Republican whose economic approval slumped over the past month as the Iran war drives prices higher. But AP-NORC polls show that discontent has been building among critical segments of the population over the past year.

Trump’s overall approval among Hispanic adults has fallen 16 percentage points since March 2025, and his support has declined by 9 percentage points among men.

And while Trump’s base is still largely behind him — most Republicans approve of his performance — there are signs that his second term may not be living up to their expectations.

Here’s what polling shows about Trump’s current status with four important groups:

Hispanic adults

Hispanic Americans have grown increasingly discontented with Trump over the past year.

About one-quarter of Hispanic adults approve of how he’s handling the presidency in the new poll, down from about 4 in 10 in March 2025.

That decline has been visible since late last year — suggesting that it’s not just the war in Iran or recent spikes in gas prices that are leaving this group unhappy.

Trump’s restrictive immigration approach may be playing a role. Only about one-quarter of Hispanics approve of his handling of immigration, down from 36% at the beginning of his term.

His immigration tactics appear to be particularly unpopular among younger Hispanics — a group with which he made gains in 2024. Only 18% of younger Hispanic adults approve of his performance on immigration, compared with 40% of Americans overall.

There is also broad discontent about the state of the U.S. economy among Hispanics. Only about one-quarter of Hispanic adults approve of how Trump is handling that issue, and about 2 in 10 say they approve of his approach to the cost of living. Few Hispanic adults, about 2 in 10, describe the nation’s economy as “good.”

Young adults

Trump’s overall approval with Americans under age 45 has slid over the past year, falling from 39% in March 2025 to 28% in the latest poll.

Younger women have a particularly dim view of Trump’s handling of the economy.

Only about 2 in 10 women under age 45 approve of how Trump is handling the economy, including only 7% of younger Hispanic women who approve of his economic approach. More young men, about 3 in 10, approve of him on this issue.

Trump’s struggles among young adults extend to other groups, too. Only about one-third of white adults under age 45 approve of his overall performance, compared with 45% of white adults age 45 or older.

A downtick among men

Trump made broad appeals to men throughout his 2024 campaign, and most male voters backed Trump in the presidential election over Democrat Kamala Harris. In particular, he made slight but significant gains with Black and Hispanic men, who were drawn by his vows to revitalize the economy.

Since he reentered office, though, American men have become slightly less likely to approve of his performance, declining from 47% at the start of his second term to 38% in the most recent poll.

There are signs that Black men, in particular, aren’t seeing Trump’s economic promises pan out. Black men are more likely than white or Hispanic men to disapprove of Trump’s approach to the presidency, as well as his approach to the economy, the cost of living and Iran. Only about 1 in 10 Black men say they approve of how Trump is handling the cost of living, and roughly 2 in 10 approve of how he’s handling the economy.

Hispanic men, too, have a relatively dim view of Trump’s overall performance. About 3 in 10 approve of how Trump is handling the presidency, regardless of their age. That support is stronger among white men, with about half approving of Trump.

While young Republicans are frustrated, MAGA still backs Trump

Trump has benefited from Republicans’ loyalty for years, but there are recent signs of frustration even within his base.

Roughly two-thirds of Republicans approve of Trump’s job performance. That is down slightly from 82% near the start of his second term and is generally in line with the GOP low point from his first term.

But only about half of Republicans overall approve of Trump’s approach to the cost of living, and a majority of Republicans under age 45 disapprove of him on that issue.

Trump is still buoyed by the support of his MAGA base, even as he faces backlash from conservative media figures on some of his recent actions in Iran.

About 9 in 10 MAGA Republicans — those who consider themselves supporters of the “Make America Great Again” movement — approve of Trump’s job performance, and a similar share approve of his handling of Iran.

It’s a good sign for Trump that his most robust supporters are still in his corner, but not all Republicans identify with MAGA. About half of Republicans, 54%, say they consider themselves MAGA supporters.

Among non-MAGA Republicans, Trump’s approval is much lower, at 44%.

Sanders and Thomson-Deveaux write for the Associated Press. The AP-NORC poll of 2,596 adults was conducted April 16-20 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.

Paramount Skydance’s proposed takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery cleared a major hurdle Thursday as Warner stockholders overwhelmingly embraced the $111-billion deal.

Approval was expected. Paramount Chairman David Ellison’s proposal would pay Warner investors $31 a share — four times the price of the company’s stock a year ago. Warner Bros. officials did not disclose the precise vote count during the nine-minute special shareholder meeting beyond saying the merger “received sufficient votes and has overwhelmingly passed.”

Paramount offered the generous premium to compete with, and ultimately triumph over, Netflix, which withdrew from the auction in late February after Ellison’s father, Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison, agreed to guarantee the financing of his son’s deal.

The merger would create a new Hollywood behemoth by giving Paramount, which owns CBS and the Melrose Avenue film studio, such valuable assets as HBO, HBO Max, CNN, TBS, Food Network and Warner Bros.’ film and television studios in Burbank. Warner controls beloved TV shows, franchises and movies, including “Casablanca,” Harry Potter, D.C. Comics, “Game of Thrones,” “Euphoria,” “The Pitt,” and “Rooster.”

“Shareholder approval marks another important milestone towards completing our acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, building on our successful equity and debt syndications and progress across regulatory approvals,” Paramount said Thursday in a statement. “We look forward to closing the transaction in the coming months and realizing the creation of a next-generation media and entertainment company that better serves both the creative community and consumers.”

Paramount now must secure regulatory approvals in the U.S. and abroad. Ellison, who is poised to honor President Trump with a dinner Thursday evening in Washington, hopes to complete the deal by late summer.

Shareholders, however, made known their disdain for Warner Chief Executive David Zaslav’s proposed golden parachute, which could swell to $887 million, depending on when the transaction closes. His cash, stock and options would be valued at more than $550 million. Warner board members also agreed to pay his tax bill, which could approach $330 million, should the merger be completed by year’s end.

Shareholders, in a non-binding vote, voted against Zaslav’s package.

Paramount’s deal has encountered significant opposition in Hollywood and beyond.

More than 4,000 filmmakers, actors and industry workers, including Ben Stiller, Bryan Cranston, Ted Danson, J.J. Abrams and Kristen Stewart have signed an open letter asking California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and other regulators to block the deal.

Opponents fear the consolidation would be lead to massive layoffs and diminish the quality of programming that Warner Bros., CNN and HBO are known for. Hollywood has sustained thousands of layoffs over the last six years; the film production economy hasn’t recovered from shutdowns during the 2023 labor strikes.

“This is already an incredibly consolidated industry where writers have seen merger after merger leave fewer and fewer companies in control of what our members can get paid to write,” Michele Mulroney, president of the Writers Guild of America West, said Wednesday during a press briefing organized by Free Press and other progressive groups that oppose the merger.

“A combined Warner Bros. and Paramount would create a media behemoth with tremendous leverage to reduce content, to raise prices, to increase control of production, to suppress member compensation, worsen working conditions and silence the voices of our members,” Mulroney said.

Trump has long agitated for changes at CNN, and few expect his Justice Department to block the transaction. Defense Department Secretary Pete Hegseth echoed the sentiment. “The sooner David Ellison takes over that network the better,” Hegseth told reporters in March.

It’s unclear whether Bonta or other state attorney generals will file a lawsuit to try to stop the deal. Bonta previously told The Times that his office is reviewing the consolidation.

“This deal can get blocked. I personally think it will get blocked — or undone,” Alvaro Bedoya, former Federal Trade Commission member who now serves as a senior adviser to the American Economic Liberties Project, told reporters Wednesday. He pointed to other proposed mergers that unraveled due to fierce opposition, including the proposed combinations of grocery giants Kroger and Albertson’s.

David Ellison has promised to keep HBO entact and the Paramount and Warner Bros. movie studios humming. He promised cinema owners last week that a combined Paramount-Warner Bros. would release 30 movies into theaters each year.

“This transaction uniquely brings together complementary strengths to create a company that can greenlight more projects, back bold ideas, support talent across multiple stages of their careers,” Paramount said in a statement to push back on the opposition. The company would have the power to “bring stories to audiences at a truly global scale — while strengthening competition by ensuring multiple scaled players are investing in creative talent.”

To finance the Warner takeover, Ellison’s billionaire father, Larry Ellison, has agreed to guarantee the $45.7 billion in equity needed. Bank of America, Citibank and Apollo Global have agreed to provide Paramount with more than $54 billion in debt financing.

Paramount has enlisted a former Trump administration official, lawyer Makan Delrahim, who served as Trump’s antitrust chief during the president’s first term.

In a confident move, Delrahim filed to win the Justice Department’s blessing in December — even though Paramount didn’t have an agreement with Warner Bros. Discovery’s board at the time. In February, a key deadline for the Justice Department to raise issues with Paramount’s proposed Warner takeover passed without comment from the Trump regulators.

Ninety-five years ago next month, Aurelio Manrique Jr. landed a job as a mild-mannered L.A. Times columnist. But the resume this native of the central Mexico state of San Luis Potosí brought to the paper was that of a firebrand.

Medical student turned political prisoner. Fought in the Mexican Revolution. Governor of his home state. Trusted advisor of general-turned-president Álvaro Obregón. Founder of a left-wing political party. Mexican legislator. He even took to the floor of Mexico’s congress to denounce former president Plutarco Elías Calles as a farsante — a phony — and then pull a gun on a rival who took issue with his vitriol.

Tall, with round wire glasses and a shock of black hair that was the inverse of his Moses-like beard, Manrique cut an exciting figure in Latino L.A. when he arrived as a political exile in 1929 after the so-called Escobar rebellion, which was an attempt to overthrow the Mexican government. A Oct. 28, 1929 Times dispatch noted that “it is not uncommon to find among the shabby, shuffling street venders [sic] of Sonoratown” former Mexican bigwigs “offering sweetmeats and trinkets from trays” in an effort to survive.

Finding a home in L.A.

They, like so many other political refugees before and since, made L.A. a home but also a place to fight for the freedom of their homeland.

Manrique, on the other hand, was hailed as the “intellectual head” of his fellow Mexican refugee politicos and an “accomplished linguist” who spoke Spanish, English, French and German.

“He stands in my memory as a pillar of fire because, at all times, he has never been afraid to do or say what he considered to be right, regardless of his own personal or political fate,” an admirer would recall decades later in the Virginia Quarterly Review.

The revolutionary found welcome audiences across the Southland with lectures and Spanish-language radio show appearances to talk about what was going on in his home country. He participated in Mexican Independence Day and Cinco de Mayo festivities and even found work in Hollywood films as everything from a British lord to an Arab sheikh.

But reputation doesn’t pay the bills, so Manrique also offered translation and interpreter services from a small Bunker Hill office. He also held Spanish-language classes twice a week at the L.A. Central Library. Soon after, The Times — a paper that back then loathed leftists of all stripes — hired Manrique as a columnist in May 1931. He was to be in charge of its daily Spanish-language roundup of world and local events, which the paper had regularly published since 1922.

The revolutionary plays a more reserved role

I wish I could say that Manrique used his platform to inveigh against the mass roundups of Mexican Americans that kicked off that year and that would lead to the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Mexican Americans, citizens and not, during the 1930s. Or that Manrique taught his Times bosses that Latinos were more than domestic help or a societal scourge. Or that he deserves a spot in the pantheon of legendary Times metro columnists like Jack Smith, Ruben Salazar and Steve Lopez.

Alas, it was not to be.

The daily columna was just a roundup of wire stories published in Spanish, part of The Times’ effort to teach the language of Cervantes to those interested. Every Monday, the 40-year-old Manrique also wrote Platicas de Los Lunes [Monday Lessons], a place for the professor to teach new words to readers via translations, poems and sample sentences.

Manrique’s last byline was April 25, 1932. In the hundreds of columnas he wrote for us, I found nothing even remotely hinting at the progressive lion that Mexicans in Southern California knew him as. But in an era in which Latino visibility in Anglo Southern California was nonexistent when it wasn’t heavily stereotyped, Manriquez’s brief tenure at The Times was an important step for future Latino writers at the paper, all of us whom owe a debt to the man.

He returned to Mexico in early 1933 after President Abelardo L. Rodríguez announced amnesty for him and other exiles. The former revolutionary spent the rest of his life working for the Mexican government, most notably as ambassador to Scandinavian countries from 1946 to 1956.

In 1962, the retired Manrique returned to his old L.A. stomping grounds one final time five years before his death for a lecture at the Alexandria Hotel.

“He finds Los Angeles completely changed,” La Opinión reported, “and told us, with a tone of barely concealed sadness, that many of those who knew him had disappeared.”

The fate of all Angelenos, alas.

Today’s top stories

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton speaks at a March 7 town hall in Mentone.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

A Trump-endorsed Republican could become California’s next governor

A second ticket drop for the Olympics

• A second ticket drop is set to open in August and will offer refreshed inventory across all sports at a range of prices.
• Those who registered but did not receive a slot in the first ticket drop or did not buy all 12 of their tickets will be enrolled in a lottery for a spot in the second ticket drop.

Court strikes down California mask law

California is getting 3 new state parks

• California will establish the new parks in the Central Valley, marking the state’s largest park expansion in decades and bringing the statewide total to 283 parks.
• The parks will serve historically underserved communities with recreation and historic preservation.

What else is going on

Commentary and opinions

This morning’s must-read

Other must-reads

For your downtime

The waffle with maple butter is the drive-across-town dish at celebrity-backed Max & Helen’s, the Larchmont diner opened by Phil Rosenthal and Nancy Silverton.

(Ron De Angelis / For The Times)

Going out

Staying in

A question for you: What’s your favorite California-themed book?

Marya says, “Hard Times in Paradise” by David and Micki Colfax.

Cristina says, “Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck.

Email us at essentialcalifornia@latimes.com, and your response might appear in the newsletter this week.

And finally … from our archives

On this day 21 years ago, “Me at the zoo” was the first video uploaded to YouTube, opening the door to a new medium of television.

For the 20th anniversary last year, The Times’ Wendy Lee wrote about the video sharing platform and how it changed TV as we know it.

Have a great day, from the Essential California team

Jim Rainey, staff reporter
Hugo Martín, assistant editor, fast break desk
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
Andrew Campa, weekend writer
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters

How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@latimes.com. Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on latimes.com.

If you were going to pick a single issue whose treatment exemplifies the forces at work in this midterm election, the best choice would be one over which there’s been relatively little contention — climate change.

That’s not because there is any broad agreement among the candidates on the severity of global warming or human activity’s contribution to it. To the contrary, the question seldom has been discussed in this campaign because views on it have become utterly politicized. Skepticism about human technology’s role in accelerating climate change, and doubt concerning the phenomenon’s very existence, have become, at least on the Republican side, a matter of lock-step partisan orthodoxy.

For example, 19 of the 20 GOP candidates who are in closely contested races and have expressed a position on the issue say they have doubts about the scientific evidence for global warming, despite the overwhelming consensus among scientists. That includes Arizona’s John McCain, who formerly supported legislation to reduce carbon emissions. Mark Kirk of Illinois, who voted for cap-and-trade as a congressman, is the lone Republican holdout. Some of the other senatorial candidates express ambivalence about the science but firmly reject any legislative or regulatory remedy; more agree with Louisiana’s David Vitter, who calls the evidence for climate change “pseudo-science garbage.”

Recent polls show just how deeply partisan the split over global warming has become, and how closely it conforms to the deep fissures that have reshaped this year’s electoral landscape. A survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, for instance, found that over the last four years, the percentage of Americans who believe there’s solid scientific evidence for climate change has declined from 79% to 59%. In 2006, half of us believed that global warming was caused by human activities; today, only 34% do. An Opinion Research Corp. survey found that while 82% of Democrats feel the United States should take a leading role in addressing global warming, only 39% of Republicans now do.

In part, public opinion researchers agree, the rise of the “tea party” movement accounts for both the growing skepticism and the demand, which we now can recognize as characteristic, for ideological conformity. In its survey, for example, Pew found that 70% of self-described tea party sympathizers don’t believe there’s convincing evidence that the Earth is warming. A New York Times/CBS poll found that only 14% of tea party supporters say that “global warming is an environmental problem that is having an effect now.” Opinion Research reported that only 27% of tea party adherents support the idea of America taking a leading role on the problem.

The New York Times also has documented among some tea party adherents a strong streak of religious objection to the reality of climate change. As Norman Dennison, one of the group’s Indiana founders, told the paper, global warming “is a flat-out lie…. I read my Bible. He made this Earth for us to utilize.” Another Indiana tea party member asserted that “being a strong Christian, I cannot help but believe the Lord placed a lot of minerals in our country, and it’s not there to destroy us.”

The fundamentalist delusion, whether about the Constitution or theology, and demands for a purified orthodoxy are defining characteristics of this campaign. When it comes to the politicization of a purely scientific question — climate change — so too is the role of money quietly or covertly dispensed by big business and the self-interested rich. Some of the tea party’s biggest funders, including Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, are creatures of the oil and coal companies. They’ve also supported virtually the entire network of fringe scientists, think tanks and publishers who over the past few years have raised a host of spurious questions and allegations concerning the consensus on climate change among reputable scientists.

They’re the same individuals and companies putting up big money to support Proposition 23, which would gut California’s attempts to reduce carbon emissions. Koch Industries and Murray Energy Corp. already are major givers to the U.S. Senate’s biggest deniers, including James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), who has called global warming “the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”

Think back to the billions Big Tobacco spent on the long guerrilla war to stave off regulation of its death-dealing products and you’ve pretty much got the picture here, though this time around, the corporate manipulators are hoping that they’ve co-opted the climate skeptics in order to fill the oil and coal companies’ coffers for years to come.

timothy.rutten@latimes.com

WASHINGTON — Reporters assigned to travel aboard Air Force Two were told to prepare for an early morning departure on Tuesday for Islamabad until an unexplained delay — followed by a detour by Vice President JD Vance to the White House — revealed clues that something was wrong.

Iranian diplomats had not yet responded to U.S. proposals intended to form the basis of a new round of talks. Some were questioning whether they would attend at all. Had he departed as planned, Vance risked a humiliation, spending hours flying to Pakistan only to be stood up on arrival.

A crisis meeting at the White House led President Trump to announce an indefinite extension to a ceasefire deadline that had been set as a pressure tactic. Now, unable to bring the Iranians to heel, that pressure was suddenly off.

It was an early lesson for Vance in the many ways high-stakes diplomacy can veer off-course.

“There are obvious risks for Vance,” said Chester Crocker, who served as an assistant secretary of State in the Reagan administration, “being associated with failure or with a dubious deal.”

Trump’s aides are clear on the stakes in negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program and an end to the war. Control of the Strait of Hormuz could determine global oil prices for years. Any final deal will shape whether Americans ultimately conclude the fight was worth it — and could sway the outcome of the midterm elections.

But for America’s lead negotiator, the stakes are also personal.

Vance, a diplomatic novice, has found himself at the helm of an effort rife with political risk that has stymied seasoned diplomats ahead of an anticipated run for president.

The potential payoff is substantial, placing Vance at the center of an international stage with the power to end a historically unpopular war.

But he also may be forced to attach his name to a nuclear deal that provides Tehran access to billions of dollars in sanctions relief, in exchange for limits on its nuclear work that will ultimately expire over time, under conditional monitoring access for international inspectors — an agreement with striking echoes to a 2015 nuclear deal negotiated by a Democratic administration that was disparaged by his party for over a decade.

Vance is negotiating not on his own terms, but on behalf of a mercurial president whose decisions will ultimately determine whether an agreement can be reached. And the Iranians know that Trump’s days in office are numbered, with Vance, a war skeptic, possibly in line to succeed him.

One U.S. official familiar with the negotiations said the vice president is “a pragmatist,” realistic about the prospects of a deal.

“What he has to gain is an image that he can operate effectively on the world stage on a fraught issue. Even if he will give credit to the president, he will be seen as capable of resolving really hard, security-related problems,” said Dennis Ross, a veteran diplomat on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict who served in the George H.W. Bush, Clinton and Obama administrations. “What he has to lose is that he was given the role and did not succeed.”

Failure could raise doubts about his statecraft. But even success at the negotiating table could result in an agreement that turns off Republican voters he may need in a 2028 presidential bid.

“Vance is put in an impossible position,” said Arne Westad, a professor of history at Yale.

“Any deal with the current Iranian regime will be seen as problematic by many Republicans,” Westad said. “If he fails to secure a deal, he will be attacked by those who want an end to the U.S. war — and be seen as ineffective by the president.”

Reputation ‘on the line’

Trump has publicly acknowledged that Vance, a Marine Corps veteran who has consistently opposed U.S. military engagements in the Middle East, had reservations over launching the Iran war in the first place. “He was, I would say, philosophically a little bit different than me,” the president told reporters in March. “I think he was maybe less enthusiastic.”

For that reason, according to Iranian state media reports, Vance was seen by Tehran as their preferred interlocutor in negotiations. Iranian officials expressed gratitude when, during fevered talks ahead of the initial announcement of a ceasefire, they learned that Steve Witkoff, the president’s roving negotiator, had recommended that the vice president be included in the delegation — an exceptional gesture that marked Washington’s highest-level engagement with the Islamic Republic in history.

Republican strategists said Vance’s participation is a demonstration that Trump trusts him, an essential trait for any future Republican presidential nominee and aspiring heir to the MAGA movement.

“It’s rare that a vice president has been put in the position of directly negotiating with a foreign adversary,” said Terry Nelson, a longtime Republican media strategist. “We are engaging a very senior political leader in negotiations with a country that has killed U.S. soldiers and sown chaos in the region. I do think it’s an indication of our resolution and seriousness.”

Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican pollster who has consulted Republican senators and governors for more than three decades, said the vice president’s appointment as lead negotiator “elevates Vance as Trump’s heir-apparent even more than before.”

“Whether that becomes a plus or a minus depends on the outcome of the negotiations,” Ayres added, “and Trump’s ultimate standing with the Republican electorate, both of which are unknowns.”

Talks are currently deadlocked over long-standing demands from Tehran that its leadership has held since the early 2000s, when previously undisclosed nuclear activities first triggered international alarm over Iran’s expanding program.

Iran has periodically accepted temporary limits on its nuclear work — pausing uranium enrichment during talks and, under the 2015 deal, committing to a prolonged cap on enrichment at levels beyond any clear civilian need. But it has always insisted on a “right to enrich” on its own soil, rejecting U.S. attempts to permanently end the program as a foreign attempt to thwart Iran’s scientific progress.

Returning from the first round of ceasefire negotiations, Vance dismissed that position, articulated to him in Islamabad by the speaker of Iran’s Parliament.

“He said, ‘We refuse to give up the right to enrichment,’” Vance said. “And I thought to myself, you know what, my wife has the right to skydive, but she doesn’t jump out of an airplane, because she and I have an agreement that she’s not going to do that, because I don’t want my wife jumping out of an airplane.”

Echoes of a broken deal

The 2015 deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — negotiated by veteran, nonpolitical U.S. diplomats and nuclear scientists over two years of near-constant negotiations — removed roughly 98% of Iran’s nuclear stockpile from the country, while keeping the country’s nuclear infrastructure largely in place, save for the decommissioning of a heavy-water plutonium reactor that could have provided Tehran with a second path to a nuclear bomb.

Under the agreement, Iran consented to limit its use of advanced centrifuges for 10 years, and to restrict uranium enrichment to below weapons-grade levels for 15 years. Inspectors from the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency were granted unprecedented access to monitor the program, though some of these enhanced inspection measures were set to expire after roughly two decades.

In exchange, Iran regained access to tens of billions of dollars of its frozen assets, and settled a long-standing legal dispute with Washington that led the Obama administration to transfer $400 million in cash to Tehran. The episode prompted scandal on the political right, which accused Democrats of fueling terrorism through the funding of Iran’s proxy militias.

Now, after just two weeks of negotiations, the Trump administration is already acknowledging that a final deal with Iran would rely on a familiar formula: temporary caps on Iran’s nuclear work in exchange for substantial sanctions relief. Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018.

Iran comes to the talks with added leverage today, able and willing to disrupt the flow of 20% of the world’s energy through the Strait of Hormuz. And the United States is negotiating alone, without its former partners in the “P5+1” — Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom and Germany — at its side.

Anna Kelly, principal deputy press secretary at the White House, told The Times that “after Democrats like Joe Biden and Barack Hussein Obama weakened our country on the world stage, President Trump has effectively restored American strength with the help of Vice President Vance, who is doing a great job leading the United States in negotiations with Iran.”

“The president and his entire national security team have an incredible track record in making good deals for our country, and the American people can rest assured that the United States will not enter any agreement that does not put our national security interests first,” Kelly said.

Matt Gorman, a longtime Republican strategist and chief communications officer at Targeted Victory, said the JCPOA was viewed particularly critically because it “was negotiated in peacetime.”

“Vance would essentially be ending a war, if successful, and that allows him to make a very different argument,” Gorman said.

The vice president is currently polling as the front-runner for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, ahead of Marco Rubio, who — despite serving as Trump’s secretary of State and national security advisor — is not directly involved in the Iran talks.

Vance’s role at the negotiating table could help position him as a peacemaker, Crocker noted, distinguishing him from advocates of the war entering the presidential primaries.

But Vance “has been tasked by a president incapable of staying on message, with limited stores of credibility with adversaries as well as allies and a disregard for the complexities of the issues,” said Barbara Bodine, former U.S. ambassador to Yemen. “His task? A credible end to the war without clear objectives.”

“At best, this will be a faux-gilded JCPOA 2.0. Victory will be declared to no applause. On the line is not just Vance’s own reputation, but a demerit in his run for the 2028 presidency,” Bodine added. “The Iran portfolio was no gift.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: How a Trump-endorsed Republican could become California’s next governor
The deep dive: Palisades reservoir that was empty during fire is dry again. Residents aren’t happy about it
The L.A. Times Special: The Flores twins built a drug empire with El Chapo — then betrayed him

More to come,
Michael Wilner
—
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WASHINGTON — Polls show that record numbers of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. Anxious voters find no shortage of corroboration. Seeming proof of national decline is everywhere–the savings-and-loan bailout, an imperial Congress, overpaid executives at the top of underperforming companies, record murder rates in cities, declining school quality, an intractable drug epidemic, spiraling health-care costs and a flat economy riddled with deep pockets of regional recession. We haven’t felt good about ourselves, our country or our future since the Gulf War.

President George Bush’s decline in the polls mirrors this trend. As long as voters were concerned about foreign policy, his high standing compensated for lower ratings on domestic affairs. The Cold War’s end has changed the issue mix of presidential races forever.

The recession is an immediate problem, but that will decline in importance when the growth most economists predict resumes this spring. But the recession masks a deeper fear that our post-Cold War inheritance is a declining standard of living, with high-paying jobs and prosperity flowing overseas. That fear will not recede quickly.

With the recession ending by spring, campaign planners will be tempted to heave sighs of relief and run a status-quo candidacy against the uncertainties of a switch to the Democrats. That would be a serious mistake.

For Bush will never have more fertile ground to lay out a new GOP agenda that addresses the deep fear voters have about the future of America. He can capitalize on the public’s thirst for certainty by laying out a set of ambitious goals–in government, in jobs, in schools and in social progress.

He can start with government. A recent Gallup poll shows 20% blame Bush for the economy’s condition, but 54% blame Congress. Support for term limits and a Trumanesque campaign to fix what’s wrong with Congress will not only pay political dividends, but give him a governing coalition for a second term. Beginning with this week’s State of the Union, Bush should challenge Congress to pass his economic recovery program within 100 days and return it to him for signature. He should also push legislation on health-care reform, education and crime by similarly challenging Congress. To dramatize the push for excellence, he might consider national middle-class merit scholarships for college.

Nor should he give up on trade, despite the Japan trip. Presidential involvement in a few trade confrontations will make his claim to fight for American jobs more credible. Where unfair trading practices are found, executive action on import relief should be swift.

By establishing his vision for the post-Cold War future, contrasting his own activism with Democratic and congressional obstruction, showing that he thinks free trade should benefit us as well as our partners and fighting hard for the middle class–in essence charting a course the country thinks takes us in the right direction and gets us off the wrong track–he’ll win not only reelection but a mandate.

It’s also important to understand this is not the 1984 reelection. Compression of the primary calendar means there are fewer days between the first Iowa caucuses, Feb. 10, and Super Tuesday, March 10, and the Democratic winner-take-all rules could give a front-runner enough momentum to be the apparent nominee by April. There is little prospect for a protracted Democratic primary battle like 1984’s between Gary Hart and Walter F. Mondale.

Because the Democrats won’t be tearing each other apart as long, Bush should engage the Democrats early. But he needs to shore up his own vulnerabilities before he begins to contrast with the Democratic nominee. He needs to sharpen his middle-class message, starting with the economy and people’s fears about the future.

This should be done well before the summer Democratic convention, when the Democratic ticket will have a solid week of national television coverage to engage in Bush-bashing.

It’s also critical to understand this is not 1988. The Democratic nominee will also have learned a lesson from Michael S. Dukakis–define your candidacy before your opponent gets a chance to define it negatively for you. It’s highly unlikely the ’92 Democratic nominee will be kept on the defensive for months as was Dukakis.

This year’s presidential election takes place in politically uncharted territory. It is the first contest of the post-Cold War era, probably the last election with a World War II veteran running for President. World events, from Eastern Europe’s velvet revolutions of 1989 to last summer’s failed Soviet coup, have irrevocably reshaped America’s political landscape.

Foreign policy and defense no longer matter much to voters. Communism’s death also buried anti-communism as an issue. With few external threats, Americans see old relationships through a new prism. They supported the post-war alliance with Japan for mutual security; without the Cold War, that same relationship looks one-sided.

To win reelection, it’s critical to understand what this dramatic shift means. The old rules are gone–now is the time for a new political order in American campaigns. For four decades, we’ve elected presidents against a Cold War backdrop. Now that we’ve won the Cold War, we need a new presidential agenda that’s relevant for the ‘90s.

Reporting from Sacramento — Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday vetoed a bill that would have barred medical marijuana dispensaries within 600 feet of homes, saying it stepped on the powers of cities and counties that already have authority to regulate pot shops.

The governor also signed 28 measures into law, making it easier for California firms to sell wine over the Internet and allowing bars to infuse alcohol with fruits and vegetables for use in cocktails.

Brown has until Oct. 9 to act on nearly 600 bills sent to him by the Legislature this year and has already wielded his veto pen several times, complaining about the state imposing too many standards on communities and families.

On the medical marijuana issue, the governor noted that he had previously signed a measure giving cities and counties clearer authority to regulate the location and operation of dispensaries.

“Decisions of this kind are best made in cities and counties, not the State Capitol,” Brown wrote in his veto message.

The bill was SB 847, by state Sen. Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana), who said he wanted to allow cities to chose their own regulations and to protect children living near such facilities from second-hand smoke.

The governor signed a bill Wednesday allowing wine merchants without stores to obtain a special state license to sell to customers over the Internet or by telephone or direct mail. Assemblyman Das Williams (D-Santa Barbara) introduced AB 623 because current law provides for an alcohol wholesaler’s license but requires holders to periodically sell to other retailers, even if they only want to sell directly to customers on the Internet.

The governor also signed a measure eliminating a state prohibition against bars and restaurants providing infused alcoholic beverages, with fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices added to spirits for flavor.

Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), author of SB 32, said the restrictions were decades old and were intended to address health concerns about the infusion process. Modern methods make the practice safe, he said.

On another measure, Brown exercised his veto pen and took a swipe at its author in the process.

With budget cuts forcing many state parks to close or reduce operations, Sen. Tom Harman (R-Huntington Beach) proposed that the state post details of potential park closures on a website and respond to any efforts from the private sector to help keep them open.

Brown said the idea in Harman’s bill, SB 386, was good but didn’t require a state law.

“What parks do need is sufficient funding to stay open — something I feel compelled to note the author and his colleagues refused to let the people vote on,” Brown wrote in his veto message, referring to Republican opposition to putting tax extensions on the ballot.

patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon announced Wednesday that the Navy’s top civilian official, Secretary of the Navy John Phelan, is leaving his job.

In a statement posted to social media, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Phelan was “departing the administration, effective immediately.”

Navy Undersecretary Hung Cao will become acting secretary of the Navy, Parnell said.

The sudden departure comes just a day after Phelan addressed a large crowd of sailors and industry professionals at the Navy’s annual conference in Washington, and spoke with reporters about his agenda.

Phelan’s departure also comes just weeks after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired the Army’s top officer, Gen. Randy George, as well as two other top generals in the Army.

Phelan had not served in the military or had a civilian leadership role in the service before President Trump nominated him for secretary in late 2024.

Phelan was a major donor to Trump’s campaign and founded the private investment firm Rugger Management LLC. According to his biography, Phelan’s primary exposure to the military came from an advisory position he held on the Spirit of America, a nonprofit that supported the defense of Ukraine and the defense of Taiwan.

Toropin and Finley write for the Associated Press.

In the aftermath of a recent data breach that saw hackers make off with a vast trove of confidential police records, Los Angeles leaders have sought an explanation from the city’s top lawyer, whose office was targeted.

What they have gotten so far, according to Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, are answers that only leave more questions.

In an interview, Jurado said she had expected City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto to appear before the Government Operations committee this week, but instead had received an internal report offering a “high level view” of the breach that left many key details unaddressed.

“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.”

The Times reported the existence of the hack last week, prompting further scrutiny by public officials — some of whom, like Jurado, said they hadn’t previously been informed. Since then, The Times has reviewed an inventory of 337,000 files that were compromised.

The documents amount to millions of pages, and appear to mostly come from civil lawsuits against the city that have been resolved in court. They range in nature from trip-and-fall cases to police excessive force.

During a brief discussion at the council committee Tuesday morning, Jurado said she had received information that an internal link used by the city attorney’s office to access the files had been clicked at least 5,000 times on the first day of the breach, which is thought to have occurred sometime in March.

The files were not secured by a password, according to sources who spoke previously with The Times and requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation. A senior police official last week assured the department’s civilian bosses, the Police Commission, that none of the department’s own systems had been compromised.

Jurado said she wanted answers for why and how the city had managed to leave exposed sensitive records, such as medical reports, autopsy photos and witness names.

“It’s just horrific to think that that was out there,” Jurado said.

The city attorney’s office responded to questions from The Times by referring to a public report issued April 17, which said a preliminary investigation indicated that “the incident was contained to that third-party environment, and that no other City applications, systems, or department records were accessed or affected.”

The report noted that the hackers teased “small samples” of the data on its dark web site over a week starting March 20, before publishing the whole thing on March 27. The data were taken down after about eight hours, and then reappeared again twice in early April, the report said.

In a separate letter to the police union, the office said it would begin notifying people whose information was compromised “without unreasonable delay.”

The inventory reviewed by The Times shows personnel files for LAPD officers who were accused of using excessive force against a Black military veteran during a traffic stop in 2021. Another file included the identities of witnesses who saw a man die after LAPD officers knelt on him during an arrest, the records reviewed by The Times showed.

Thousands of hours of uncut body camera footage were released. There were also medical records from thousands of cases in which police and other city employees were accused of misconduct. At least 1,060 of the files are labeled as confidential, the inventory says.

The city attorney’s office has said that it alerted senior LAPD officials and the city’s IT department as soon as they discovered the leak, and has in the weeks since been in regular contact with other city departments to assess the scope of the leak. The FBI has begun investigating the matter.

The situation has already cost Feldstein Soto, who is up for reelection, the endorsement of the powerful union for the LAPD’s rank-and-file officers, which withdrew its support after accusing the city attorney of failing to disclose the full extent of the breach.

The leak follows Feldstein Soto’s efforts to weaken the state’s public records law after the release of many police officer photos and other materials, which she demanded be returned.

Several attorneys whose cases were included in the list of compromised files told The Times they have not yet heard from city officials. Some said they could foresee the records leaked being used as justification to reopen old cases — or initiate new ones.

“I’m curious to know what exactly it is that the city attorney’s office had that they may not have disclosed to us in discovery,” Arnoldo Casillas, an attorney for the family of Eric Rivera, a 20-year-old man whose family sued after he was killed by police in Wilmington in 2017 and whose files are among those included in the leak, according to the inventory reviewed by The Times.

The case was later dismissed, but the family has filed an appeal.

Other attorneys whose lawsuits against the city and LAPD were listed among the hacked materials said they wanted to know exactly what was included in the files.

Robert Glassman, who successfully sued for $18 million last year on behalf of two elderly brothers who were badly injured when a speeding LAPD squad car broadsided their vehicle, said he also hadn’t heard from the city attorney’s office.

“You’d think that they would notify [the affected parties] and tell them that they’re working to get their information back,” he said.

Experts said similar cyberattacks on government offices across the country have shown it can take months or years for the dust to fully settle and the full scope of the damage to emerge.

James E. Lee, president of the Identity Theft Resource Center, a nonprofit organization that provides advice and assistance related to identity theft, said last year alone the center documented an all-time high of 3,322 hacks.

That’s almost certainly an undercount, given the number of cases that go undetected or unreported, Lee said. Of the recorded incidents, roughly 165 targeted government agencies — up from 47 in 2020, he said.

In the past, according to Lee, many attacks of government entities were carried out by state-sponsored actors, but the emergence of AI-powered hacking tools have allowed everyday people to carry off such incursions.

“They want data that they can repurpose: anything that’s going to have financial information, anything that’s going to have driver’s license information is going to be very valuable to them,” he said.

Matthew McNicholas, a lawyer who has represented many officers in their lawsuits against the city, said he has fielded numerous calls from clients worried their personnel and medical records were exposed.

The leaked records, the inventory shows, include a case in which McNicholas sued the city on behalf of a victim who said they’d been sexually molested as a minor by an employee at a city-run recreational center.

McNicholas said he is worried that the leak will expose the private information of police whistleblowers who came forward to reveal discrimination and other misconduct.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

ATLANTA — A man charged in a string of shootings near Atlanta that left three people dead, including a Department of Homeland Security employee who was walking her dog, died in jail Tuesday night, authorities said.

Olaolukitan Adon Abel, 26, was found unresponsive in his cell, according to a statement from the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office. Officials provided medical treatment to the U.S. Navy veteran, but he was later pronounced dead.

The official cause of death has not been determined, but officials don’t suspect foul play, according to the office. Officials are conducting an internal review.

Adon Abel was accused of killing Prianna Weathers, 31, and Homeland Security auditor Lauren Bullis, 40, in last week’s attack. Authorities also had been seeking an additional murder charge for Tony Mathews, 49, who was injured in the attack and died Sunday.

Authorities haven’t offered a potential motive for the shootings. It’s unclear if Adon Abel knew any of the victims. Police have said they believe at least one was targeted at random.

Adon Abel was represented by a public defender, and the state council overseeing defenders’ work said Wednesday in a statement that his death denies him “the opportunity to contest the charges in court.”

“We also regret that the families, friends, and colleagues of the victims may now be left without the fuller answers a public legal process might have provided about how these deaths occurred,” the statement said. “That is a painful and sobering reality for everyone affected.”

Adon Abel faced state malice murder, aggravated assault and gun charges over last week’s attacks, court records show. He also faced a federal charge of illegally possessing the gun as a person previously convicted of a felony, which was filed Friday.

His roommates told the Associated Press that shortly before the shootings, he got in an intense argument over the air conditioning in their home and stormed out. He lived with six others in separate units of the home.

The United Kingdom native was granted U.S. citizenship in 2022 while serving in the U.S. Navy and stationed in the San Diego area.

The attacks in Georgia quickly drew the Trump administration’s attention, with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin raising concern that Adon Abel was granted U.S. citizenship when Democrat Joe Biden was president. Mullin cataloged a litany of Adon Abel’s previous alleged crimes, but it is unclear whether any of them occurred before he became a citizen.

Military records show the Adon Abel enlisted in the Navy in 2020, last serving in the Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron in Coronado, Calif., and as a petty officer received a Navy “E” Ribbon for superior performance for battle readiness.

Adon Abel pleaded guilty in October 2024 to assaulting two police officers with a deadly weapon and attacking another person when he was stationed in Coronado, near San Diego, according to California court records.

The attorney who represented him in that case, Brandon Naidu, has described him as polite, calm and soft-spoken in their interactions. He said Wednesday that his obligation to protect the confidentiality of their conversations limits what he can say publicly but, “Mental health was absolutely at the center of his San Diego case.” ““t was fueled by suicidal ideation as a result of mental health that he was self-treating with substances,” he said.

He added: “Nobody wins in this. We’ll never know the motives, what could have been done beforehand or even afterward. Nobody gets proper closure on this.”

Hanna and Golden write for the Associated Press. Hanna reported from Topeka, Kan., and Golden, from Seattle.

WASHINGTON — A man who stole a purse from then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem while she dined at a restaurant under the protection of Secret Service agents was sentenced on Wednesday to three years in prison for a string of thefts in the nation’s capital.

Mario Bustamante Leiva did not recognize Noem when he grabbed her Gucci handbag from the floor of a restaurant where she was eating with her family in April 2025, according to the U.S. attorney’s office. Noem’s purse had credit cards and about $3,000 in cash. Police recovered it from Leiva’s motel room.

Bustamante Leiva, a 50-year-old native of Chile, is facing deportation after his sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden.

“Bustamante Leiva came to Washington illegally to prey on citizens of the district,” said Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, in a statement. “His pattern of theft ends here.”

Noem, who is identified only by her initials in court filings, acknowledged the incident in a statement last year that referred to Bustamante Leiva as a “a career criminal who has been in our country illegally for years.”

He pleaded guilty in November to three counts of wire fraud and one count of first-degree theft. He was charged and convicted of robbing two other people and charging fraudulent purchases to their credit cards.

Bustamante Leiva was charged along with a second suspect, Cristian Montecino-Sananza, who was sentenced in March to 13 months of incarceration for his role in one of the other thefts.

Investigators said they identified Bustamante Leiva as a suspect in the thefts after he used a stolen gift card to make a purchase.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger met privately with President Trump and administration officials Wednesday to press for federal support and yet-unpaid wildfire recovery funding as the region continues to rebuild from the 2025 fires.

“This afternoon we met with President Trump and Administration officials to advocate for families who lost everything,” Bass and Barger said in a statement. “We had a very positive discussion about FEMA and other rebuilding funds as well as the support of the President to continue joining us in pressuring the insurance companies to pay what they owe — and for the big banks to step up to ease the financial pressure on L.A. families.”

Barger said the two leaders had a “high-level discussion” with the president in the Oval Office, sharing stories about what fire survivors are experiencing day to day. She added that “we left details behind with the President,” but did not specify whether Trump made any funding or policy promises during the meeting.

“First and foremost, today’s meeting was to thank the President for his initial support of infusing federal resources to expedite debris removal, as well as his recent tweet about insurance companies, which have already proven fruitful,” she said in a statement provided to The Times.

Bass was similarly reserved about the discussions, telling reporters that “we will follow up with the details,” but signaled progress is being made on federal support.

“I think what’s important is that we certainly got the president’s support in terms of, you know, what is needed, and then the appropriate people were in the room for us to follow up. And that was Russ Vought, who is the head of the Office of Management and budget,” Bass told KNX on Wednesday.

The meeting comes on the heels of a yearlong standoff between California leaders and the Trump administration over wildfire recovery funding, disaster response and whether the federal government should have a say in local rebuilding permitting.

California leaders, led by Gov. Gavin Newsom, have accused the Trump administration of withholding billions in critical wildfire aid, prompting a lawsuit over stalled recovery funds. Officials allege political bias in the delay of billions of dollars from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Newsom visited Washington in December. When he made his rounds on Capitol Hill, he met with five lawmakers, including three who serve on the Senate and House appropriations committees, to renew calls for $33.9 billion in federal aid for Los Angeles County fire recovery.

But the governor said he was denied a meeting with FEMA and would not say whether he had attempted to meet with Trump to discuss the issue.

Bass, meanwhile, appears to have found a path to the president on a subject that has been paramount for her community.

The fruitful meeting comes after Trump lobbed insults at the mayor at a news conference earlier this year, where he called her “incompetent” for how she handled last year’s wildfire recovery efforts. He alleged that under Bass’ leadership, the city’s delay in issuing local building permits will take years when it should have taken “two or three days.”

California officials, including Newsom, have urged the Trump administration to send Congress a formal request for the $33.9 billion in recovery aid needed to rebuild homes, schools, utilities and other critical infrastructure destroyed or damaged when the fires tore through neighborhoods more than 15 months ago.

What Bass and Barger’s meeting with the president ultimately produces remains to be seen.

The billions in recovery aid have not yet materialized, but the meeting could potentially give those discussions new momentum.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment about the meeting.

Earlier this month, Trump criticized insurance provider State Farm on Truth Social for its handling of the devastating Los Angeles County wildfires. He accused the insurance giant of abandoning its policyholders when tragedy struck.

“It was brought to my attention that the Insurance Companies, in particular, State Farm, have been absolutely horrible to people that have been paying them large Premiums for years, only to find that when tragedy struck, these horrendous Companies were not there to help!” Trump wrote.

But the rebuke didn’t come out of the blue. It stemmed from a controversial February visit to Los Angeles by Trump administration officials.

Trump tapped Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin in an effort to strip California state and local governments of their authority to permit the rebuilding of homes destroyed in the Eaton and Palisades fires.

Within the week, Zeldin was in Los Angeles, bashing Newsom and Los Angeles officials at a roundtable with fire victims and reporters, saying that residents were suffering from “bureaucratic, red tape delays and incompetency” and that leadership was “denying them … the ability to rebuild their lives”.

During the trip, officials heard direct complaints from local leaders and fire victims about insurers being slow, restrictive and insufficient with their claim payouts.

After these meetings, Trump directed Zeldin to investigate the insurers’ responses. State Farm, facing roughly $7 billion in fire-related claims, is also under formal investigation by California’s insurance commissioner over its handling of the crisis.

Despite tensions with the administration, Bass and Barger appeared confident that progress was being made on the insurance and funding issues.

“Our job is to fight for our communities,” their joint statement concluded. “When it comes to this recovery, our federal partners are essential, and we are grateful for the support of the President.”

ORLANDO, Fla. — White men have been discriminated against through diversity, equity and inclusion programs, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday after signing legislation which prohibits counties and cities from funding or promoting DEI initiatives.

The Republican governor defined DEI at a news conference as “an ideological construct that is designed to promote a particular political agenda, particularly to the detriment of disfavored groups.”

“The disfavored groups, No. 1, obviously, would be white males, and I think they’ve been discriminated against,” DeSantis said in Jacksonville. “And it’s like a lot of people are, ‘Oh that’s fine. That’s fine.’ No, it’s not fine. It’s wrong.”

While the governor is entitled to his opinion, his views differ from “everyone else’s,” said Evelyn Foxx, president of the NAACP branch in Gainesville.

“If you talked to 100 white men, they wouldn’t feel the same way” as DeSantis, Foxx said when asked Wednesday about his comments. “The governor is out of touch with people, and that is the bottom line.”

Supporters say the purpose of DEI is to remedy the effects of long-term discrimination against certain groups. A nationwide push by conservatives to limit diversity programs has led many companies, schools and governments to pull back on those initiatives, particularly during the current Trump administration, and DEI has been a frequent target for the governor.

DeSantis also said Wednesday that Asian Americans had faced discrimination in university admissions and that people should be judged on their merits. During his two terms in office, DeSantis’ administration has championed legislation which prohibits public colleges and universities from spending money on DEI programs and promoted the “Stop WOKE Act,” which restricts how race and sex are taught in schools.

Democratic lawmakers have warned that the legislation was overbroad and potentially unconstitutional.

Under the legislation, residents can sue local governments for violations. If local officials are found to have funded DEI initiatives in violation of the law, they can be removed from office.

“When people know there is accountability, they are much more apt to toe the line,” DeSantis said.

Schneider writes for the Associated Press.