WASHINGTON — First lady Melania Trump is denying ties to Jeffrey Epstein and knowledge of his crimes, saying Thursday that the “stories are completely false” and calling online accusations that she was somehow involved “smears about me.”
“The lies linking me with the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end today. The individuals lying about me are devoid of ethical standards, humility and respect. I do not object to their ignorance, but rather I reject their mean-spirited attempts to defame my reputation,” she said.
Reading an extraordinary statement at the White House, she denied any association with Epstein and said, “My attorneys and I have fought these unfounded and baseless lies with success.”
The first lady also called on Congress to hold a public hearing centered on survivors of Epstein’s crimes, with a chance to testify before lawmakers and have their stories entered into the congressional record.
“Each and every woman should have her day to tell her story in public if she wishes,” she said. “Then, and only then, we will have the truth.”
Her out-of-the-blue message came just as her husband, President Donald Trump, and his administration had finally appeared successful in moving beyond the Epstein controversy, which had sent shockwaves through the nation’s politics for months.
The case had begun to be overshadowed by the war in Iran and other major issues — but the first lady’s comments might push it back into the political spotlight.
The first lady said she was not friends with Epstein or Maxwell but was in overlapping social circles in New York and Florida. She described an email reply she sent to Maxwell as “casual correspondence” without elaborating.
“My polite reply to her email doesn’t amount to anything more than a trifle,” she said.
Reporting from Sacramento — There are more voters in favor of a ballot measure that would repeal the death penalty in California than one that attempts to speed up executions, but neither proposition has attracted the majority of votes it needs to pass come Tuesday, a new poll finds.
Partly, it’s because some voters seemed confused about what each measure promises, pollsters and strategists said. Mainly, it’s because voters remain strongly divided on the issue of capital punishment, with a strong core of beliefs driving their decisions.
National debate over criminal justice reform and racial disparity in sentencing has not swayed those attitudes, they said, as it has with other crime and punishment measures on the ballot.
“The death penalty is much more controversial, in a sense,” said pollster Anna Greenberg of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, the Democratic half of the bipartisan team of polling firms that conducted the latest USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll. “People have strong religious or moral opposition on both sides of the issue. They have core values.”
Proposition 62, which would replace capital punishment with life in prison without parole, received 44% support and 45% opposition among the 1,382 likely voters polled in October across the state through telephone interviews. Ten percent said they did not know how they would vote or refused to answer.
The more clearly written measure of the two, pollsters said, it garnered a predictable demographic on both sides: 59% of Democratic voters were in support and 65% of Republican voters were in opposition.
The results also reflected national trends, which show public support for the death penalty has declined, though an almost even split of voters still favor the punishment. The latest Pew Research survey, released in September, found 49% of Americans favored the death penalty, the lowest in more than four decades.
More confusing to interpret, pollsters said, were the results of Proposition 66, which seeks to speed up the death penalty system through changes and limits on how and how often death row inmates can challenge their convictions and sentences.
Thirty-five percent of voters said they would support Proposition 66, 42% said they would oppose it, and 21% said they did not know how they would vote or refused to answer.
But only 45% of Democratic voters opposed the measure, while 31% said they would support it. Of Republican voters, 40% were in favor and 36% were against.
Interviews with poll participants illustrated the opposing values among California voters.
Alan Cheah, 67, a retired technology specialist in the Central Valley, said he strongly opposed the death penalty on moral grounds.
“A lot of people have been wrongly put to death,” he said. “The whole justice system is skewed toward disadvantaged people and people of color, and a lot of them have been accused of murder or wrongdoing but have been acquitted – some have not been acquitted in time.”
To Steven Lang, a 56-year-old self-described fine artist, it’s a sensitive, personal issue. His sister was killed in 1994. The killer was not sentenced to death.
“This guy has robbed me of memories of my sister,” Lang said. “You can’t take life and whitewash it in gray. Every life has a value, and I believe people who take that life, lose theirs.”
Yet even as the two death penalty propositions “are trying to achieve competing aims, opponents of one don’t necessarily support the other, mostly due to confusion about 66,” said pollster Ben Winston of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research.
Voters who supported repealing the death penalty and opposed the competing measure were 21% of the electorate, a mostly Democratic group which also supported Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Voters who opposed repealing the death penalty and favored the measure intended to speed up the process formed 18% of the electorate, a group that leaned Republican and toward Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
Another 15% of voters, mostly younger Democrats and Clinton supporters, said they would give their “Yes” vote to both propositions, while 21% of the electorate said they would oppose both measures.
The survey was conducted for USC Dornsife and the Los Angeles Times by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and American Viewpoint.
MADISON, Wis. — The bluntest assessment of Republican failures during this week’s elections in Wisconsin came from one of their own.
“We got our butts kicked,” said U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is running for governor.
He was referring to Democratic victories in campaigns for the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the mayor’s office in Waukesha, a conservative suburb outside Milwaukee. But some Republicans were also rattled by a special election in Georgia, where their candidate to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene in Congress won by a much slimmer margin than the party enjoyed in the past.
Taken together, the swings from red to blue added more data points to an increasingly clear picture of Democratic momentum heading into the November midterms, when control of the U.S. House, the U.S. Senate and state governments around the country are up for grabs.
“In rural, urban, red, blue, Democrats have overperformed everywhere,” said Jared Leopold, a Democratic consultant whose clients include Keisha Lance Bottoms, a candidate for Georgia governor. “That is a significant canary in the coal mine about what November of ’26 is going to look like.”
Some Republicans insisted there was no need to panic, and their fundraising remains stronger than Democrats’. Stephen Lawson, a Georgia strategist, said “the sky is not falling.”
But he also said his party is running behind where it has been in the past, and Republicans need to be “looking at these results carefully.”
‘A red alarm for Republicans’
Special elections can be notoriously unreliable as political benchmarks, but Democrats have consistently demonstrated surprising strength. They flipped a Texas state Senate district. They won a Florida state House seat in a district that includes President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.
Then they gained ground on Tuesday in the race to replace Greene, who resigned from Congress in January after a falling out with Trump.
Clay Fuller, the Republican candidate, prevailed by 12 percentage points. Two years ago, Greene won by 29 percentage points and Trump carried the district by almost 37 percentage points.
“That’s a red alarm for Republicans,” said Democratic strategist Meredith Brasher.
Fuller defeated Shawn Harris, who plans to challenge him again in November.
Jackie Harling, the district’s Republican chairwoman, said she believed that Greene’s resignation energized Democrats while her party is suffering from “election fatigue.”
“Marjorie Taylor Greene was like a freight train that you couldn’t stop, and when she pulled out, it gave Democrats hope and it gave them a shot at winning something they believed was unwinnable,” Harling said.
‘Slightly bluer side of purple’
Georgia has key races this year, including an open contest for the governor’s office. Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, is trying to defend his seat as well.
There’s reason to think that simmering discontent could boomerang on Republicans just two years after Trump harnessed voters’ anger with his comeback presidential campaign.
In November, Democrats defeated two Republican incumbents in statewide races for seats on the Public Service Commission, which regulates utilities. Rising electricity rates have been a fault line in recent campaigns, especially as enormous data centers are built to power artificial intelligence.
But Georgia Democratic Party Chair Charlie Bailey is trying to maintain modest expectations.
“We could cement ourselves, put ourselves, on the slightly bluer side of purple,” he said. ”We’re not going to overnight turn into Colorado.”
‘A very clear sign of momentum’
Wisconsin holds statewide elections for Supreme Court seats, and liberals expanded their majority with a 20-percentage-point blowout victory on Tuesday.
Democrats saw gains in red, blue and purple counties when compared with another judicial race last year, which was also won by the liberal candidate.
“This to me was a very clear sign of momentum and enthusiasm for Democrats in the fall,” said Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Devin Remiker.
The state has its own open race for governor this year, and Democrats are hoping to take control of the state Legislature and oust Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden.
“It’s time for us to put this thing in overdrive,” said Mandela Barnes, a Democratic former lieutenant governor who is running for governor.
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, another Democratic candidate for governor, said it’s clear that “people are really upset with the Republican Party and their brand right now.”
“But that doesn’t mean that they’re automatically going to come over to the Democrats,” Crowley said. “And that’s why we have to continue to focus on the issues and speak to the values of all the voters here in the state of Wisconsin.”
‘A lot of anxiety’
Tiffany, the Republican candidate for governor in Wisconsin, cautioned against reading too much into Tuesday’s results.
He said “every election is unique,” and he wasn’t making any changes to his campaign. He said the key to winning will be to “paint that clear contrast of how we are going to help everyday Wisconsinites.”
But Democrats seemed to be making inroads, including in Waukesha. The city is located outside of Milwaukee in the Republican stronghold of Waukesha County.
Democrat Alicia Halvensleben, president of the city’s Common Council, defeated Republican Scott Allen, one of the most conservative members of the state Assembly.
She said Trump came up “a lot” when she was campaigning, although she thinks her victory came down to local issues and how the state legislature wasn’t addressing them.
“There’s so much uncertainty at the national level,” Halvensleben said. “I think that level of uncertainty is causing people a lot of anxiety, all the way down to the local level.”
Bauer, Amy and Cooper write for the Associated Press. Amy reported from Atlanta, and Cooper from Phoenix.
Survivors of the devastating Eaton fire called on state lawmakers on Wednesday to pass a bill requiring audits of spending by Southern California Edison and the state’s two other big for-profit electric companies on wildfire prevention.
The survivors pointed to an investigation by The Times that found that Edison had not spent hundreds of millions of dollars that it told regulators before the fire was needed to keep its transmission system safe. Edison had begun charging customers for the costs.
“Californians funded the wildfire prevention,” Joy Chen, executive director of Every Fire Survivor’s Network, told members of the Assembly Utilities and Energy Commission on Wednesday. ”And we survivors paid the price when that work was not done.”
While the government’s investigation into the fire has not yet been released, Edison has said it believes that a century-old transmission line, which had not carried power since 1971, may have briefly re-energized on the night of Jan. 7, 2025, to ignite the fire. The inferno killed 19 people and destroyed thousands of homes and other structures in Altadena.
Chen’s wildfire survivors group and Consumer Watchdog sponsored the bill, known as Assembly Bill 1744. It would require the wildfire safety spending by Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric to be audited by an independent accounting firm.
The state Public Utilities Commission would have to consider the audits’ findings before agreeing to raise customer rates to cover even more wildfire spending.
“Had Edison known it would be accountable for those funds, that wildfire may not have started,” Jamie Court of Consumer Watchdog told the committee, referring to the Eaton fire.
All three utilities said at the hearing they opposed the bill.
A lobbyist for San Diego Gas & Electric said he believed the audits were unnecessary because the commission was already reviewing the spending.
“We think it creates a duplicative process,” he said.
At the committee hearing, Edison’s lobbyist did not say why the company was opposed to the bill.
The company has previously said that safety is its top priority and that it does not believe maintenance on its transmission lines suffered before the Eaton fire.
Also voicing support for the bill at the hearing were survivors of other deadly wildfires in the state, including the 2018 Camp fire, which killed 85 people and destroyed much of the town of Paradise. Investigators found that the fire was ignited when equipment failed on a decades-old PG&E transmission line.
The bill’s author, Assemblywoman Tasha Boerner, an Encinitas Democrat, pointed to how independent audits of the three companies’ wildfire spending from 2019 to 2020 found that $2.5 billion could not be accounted for.
Those were the last independent audits of the three companies’ wildfire spending.
Despite the findings, the commission did not require the companies to return any of the questioned amounts to electric customers. Instead, the commission agreed the companies could spend billions of dollars more, Boerner said.
“This is frankly unacceptable,” she said.
Asked for a response to those audits, the lobbyist from San Diego Gas & Electric told the committee he wasn’t familiar with the findings.
California electric rates are the nation’s second highest after Hawaii.
In 2024, wildfire expenses amounted to 17% to 27% of the costs the three companies charge to consumers, according to a legislative analysis of Boerner’s bill. The average residential customer pays $250 to $490 a year for that spending.
BRUSSELS — NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has weathered a fresh ordeal with President Trump, this time over the U.S.-Israel war on Iran, a conflict that does not even involve the world’s biggest military alliance and one it was never consulted about.
Since launching the war, Trump has derided U.S. allies as “cowards,” slammed NATO as “a paper tiger” and compared U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer to Neville Chamberlain, who is probably best remembered for a policy of appeasement toward Nazi Germany.
That comes on top of Trump’s repeated threats to seize control of Greenland, which have deeply strained relations with U.S. allies in NATO and raised fears that doing by force could spell the end of the organization.
In recent days, the man who is as good as chairman of the NATO board suggested that the U.S. might leave the trans-Atlantic alliance. Trump already threatened to walk out in 2018 during his first term. His complaint now is that some allies ignored his call to help as Iran effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz, a vital trade waterway.
After talks with Rutte on Wednesday, the alliance’s most powerful leader took to social media to show his annoyance. “NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN,” Trump posted.
Peppered with questions later on CNN about whether Trump intended to take America out of NATO, Rutte said: “He is clearly disappointed with many NATO allies, and I can see his point.”
Keeping America in
Rutte has earned a reputation as a “Trump whisperer,” notably helping to draw up a plan that has seen European allies and Canada buy U.S. weapons for Ukraine, and keep the administration involved in Europe’s biggest war in decades.
Indeed, one of his most demanding tasks since taking office in 2024 has been to keep the mercurial U.S. leader engaged in NATO, particularly as America has set its sights on security challenges elsewhere, in the Indo-Pacific, Venezuela, and most recently Iran.
Rutte has used flattery, praising Trump for forcing allies to spend more on defense. He has congratulated the U.S. leader over the war and refrained from criticizing Trump’s warning that “a whole civilization will die” should Iran not reopen the strait.
“This was a very frank, very open discussion but also a discussion between two good friends,” Rutte told CNN. He declined to confirm reports that Trump is considering moving U.S. troops out of European countries that do not support the war.
Asked whether the world is safer thanks to the U.S.-Israel war, Rutte said: “Absolutely.”
War launched by a NATO member, not at one
The striking thing about the war on Iran is that NATO has no role to play there. As a defensive alliance it has protected ally Turkey when Iranian missiles were fired in retaliation at its territory, but the war was launched by a NATO member, not at one.
Rutte himself has said that NATO would not join the war, and there is no public confirmation that the U.S. had even raised the issue at the organization’s Brussels headquarters, although it cannot be ruled out that the administration made a request on Wednesday for that to happen.
NATO declined to say whether security for the strait has been officially discussed and referred questions to the United Kingdom, which is leading an effort outside the alliance to make the trade route safe for shipping once the ceasefire is working.
Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said Thursday that his country is always ready to consider providing support through NATO to partners who request it there.
“If the U.S. or any other NATO ally is asking (for) our support, we are always read to discuss it,” he told broadcaster CNBC. “But for that, we need of course the official ask to discuss then what is the mission, what is the goal?”
If allies “need our support, then we need to plan together,” he said.
NATO trying to stay out
Rutte himself insists that the alliance will only defend itself, and not become involved in another conflict outside of NATO territory, which is considered to be much of Europe and North America.
“This is Iran, this is the Gulf, this is outside NATO territory,” he said.
NATO has operated outside of the Euro-Atlantic area in the past, notably in Libya and Afghanistan. But there is no appetite to do so again given its chaotic U.S.-led exit from Afghanistan in 2021, which former NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg described as a “defeat.”
Trump’s ire seems most directed at Spain and France, rather than NATO itself. Spain has closed its airspace to U.S. planes involved in the Iran war and has refused U.S. forces the use of jointly operated military bases.
After the two-week ceasefire was announced, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez posted on X that his government “will not applaud those who set the world on fire just because they show up with a bucket.”
“What’s needed now: diplomacy, international legality, and PEACE,” he added.
France has been critical, insisting that the war was launched without respecting international law and that Paris was never consulted about it. No blanket restrictions were placed on the use of joint bases or its airspace, but French authorities have said they’re making such decisions on a case by case basis.
If conservative commentator Steve Hilton is elected California’s next governor, as President Trump wants, it would mark a “political revolution” for the liberal state, the candidate said.
The state’s Democrat-controlled Legislature, “after all their years of lecturing us about democracy,” would be forced to work with him “to enact the changes that Californians just voted for,” and he would be willing to work with them too, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur and former Fox News host said.
“You want to know how I’m gonna work with a Democrat Legislature? I’m not. I’m gonna get every single one of them unelected,” Bianco said. “Every single day, I’m gonna stand on the steps of the Capitol, and I’m gonna tell the California voting public about the idiots in Sacramento that are ruining their lives.”
For the first time in years, the state GOP is riding into its convention this weekend on a wave of optimism about the upcoming gubernatorial race.
According to recent polling, Hilton and Bianco both stand a chance of winning more votes in the June 2 primary than any of the many Democratic candidates, who have spread thin their party’s nearly 2-1 advantage in voter rolls. If the GOP candidates do that, they would advance to a head-to-head contest in November’s general election, and one would become the state’s first Republican governor since Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Much could change to prevent that scenario. More Democrats could drop out. Voters could coalesce around one or two of those left. Hilton, with Trump’s endorsement, could consolidate Republican support and push Bianco out of contention.
Still, the prospect of a Republican governing California, a stronghold of the anti-MAGA movement, has captivated political experts and spectators alike.
Gov. Gavin Newsom imposed a moratorium on the death penalty shortly after taking office, a policy the next governor could reverse. At San Quentin, an inmate is moved from his cell on death row.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Trump, in his recent endorsement, said he has “known and respected” Hilton for many years and would help him “turn it around” in California after an “absolutely horrendous job” by Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state Democrats.
“With Federal help, and a Great Governor, like Steve Hilton, California can be better than ever before!” Trump wrote.
Many Democrats predict the opposite: grandstanding and gridlock as either Hilton or Bianco’s MAGA-aligned agenda meets stiff resistance from powerful state Democrats repulsed by the president’s movement.
“If the new governor decided to go hard MAGA, they would face enormous pushback,” said state Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica), who considers it unlikely for both Republicans to advance.
“I don’t think there’s any question that the state would descend into chaos,” said Phil Angelides, a Democrat and former state treasurer who lost to Schwarzenegger in the 2006 gubernatorial race.
The limits of power
California governors hold substantial power.
They direct and appoint leaders to the state’s many executive agencies, boards and commissions, which oversee vast portfolios in vital areas, such as the environment, California’s university systems and the state parole board. They craft the state budget and have a line-item veto to eliminate legislative appropriations. They can make major unilateral decisions — such as welcoming federal troops into California cities — and command a bully pulpit to drive public opinion and policy, including through statewide ballot measures.
Demonstrators confront California National Guard troops and police outside a federal building during protests in Los Angeles in 2025 after the Trump administration sent in the National Guard. The Republican candidates for California governor said they would welcome similar orders by the Trump administration.
(David McNew / Getty Images)
California’s next governor would have the power to end Newsom’s moratorium on the death penalty, appoint state judges and grant state pardons. During emergencies the governor would be able to reshape state regulations, suspend laws and redirect funding, as Newsom did during the COVID-19 pandemic by banning price gouging, halting evictions and postponing the 2020 tax deadline.
But their power also has limits.
Many of the governor’s appointees are subject to state Senate confirmation. The Legislature can change and amend the governor’s proposed budget and pass a budget bill distinctly different from his proposal. Democrats, with their supermajority, can also override the governor’s vetoes.
The independently elected state attorney general can sue to defend state laws, regulations and residents, a power current officeholder Rob Bonta, a Democrat, has exercised more than 60 times to challenge the Trump administration. The California Supreme Court, which leans liberal, can rein in the executive branch if it determines it has violated the state Constitution or other statutes.
Trump has repeatedly pushed the limits of executive authority and benefited from having a Republican-controlled Congress and a conservative U.S. Supreme Court majority that holds an expansive view of executive power. Hilton or Bianco would face the opposite in California, where many legislators would refuse to acquiesce to a Republican governor, especially one almost certain to face a swift recall, political experts said.
Hilton or Bianco could “potentially build alliances” with Democrats on issues such as housing and affordability and drive change that way, said Kim Nalder, a political science professor and director of the Project for an Informed Electorate at Sacramento State. But “if the Democratic majority in the Legislature decides to dig in its heels, then they could oppose practically everything [the new governor] would do.”
Nalder said Hilton or Bianco could also “try to rule in a Trumpian way” by testing the boundaries of their authority. She expects Bianco would do so given his recent decision to “violate the norms of democracy” by seizing more than half a million 2025 ballots as part of an unusual local sheriff’s investigation into allegations of voter fraud that state and county officials say have no merit.
But he “wouldn’t have the public support or the hold on the other branches of government that Trump has,” she said, “so it would be much more difficult.”
Angelides said electing either Hilton or Bianco would put someone “deeply associated with the MAGA movement” atop a deeply blue state government in which many career employees hold opposing views, which would cause a cascade of disruptions.
“There’s no reason to believe it will be different than the chaos we’ve seen in the Trump administration: an evisceration of a number of state agencies, as well as the departure of a lot of talented people who will not stay and would not jeopardize their careers, their reputations, to work under a governor from the MAGA movement,” Angelides said.
State employees are protected by powerful unions with deep ties to Democratic leaders, which Hilton said he would sever.
A Bonta spokesperson said in a written statement that the attorney general “works in service of the people of California — not the Governor,” and would not hesitate to exercise his independent authority under the state Constitution.
“We hope to maintain a close working relationship with whomever California’s next Governor is, but our mission and our priorities will not change,” the spokesperson said. “Regardless of who is in that office, we will continue to enforce civil rights laws, investigate and prosecute complex crimes, protect public safety, stand up for consumers and the environment, and fulfill our duty to Californians.”
Senate President Pro Tempore Monique Limón (D-Goleta) also offered a diplomatic response, saying in a statement that “it is critical that whoever our next Governor may be helps advance the lives and goals of California and its communities.”
In their own words
Hilton and Bianco both said they would radically reshape state government, in part by dismantling regulations that are hampering development and making basic necessities — housing, food, gas, electricity — too expensive.
Hilton, a top advisor in British Prime Minister David Cameron’s coalition government more than a decade ago, would install agency leaders who would be hyper-focused on slashing costly regulations in order to “reduce the burden of cost and hassle on California families and businesses,” he said. “Elections have consequences, and so it would be irresponsible not to use maximum aggression to make the changes as quickly as possible.”
The top two Republican candidates running for California governor said they would have a much better relationship with President Trump than Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who challenged the president’s policies in court and mocked him on social media.
(Mark Schiefelbein / Associated Press)
Bianco said “every single regulation in this state is leaving” if he wins, with California becoming far more business friendly. “The environmental activism, the environmental activism terrorists who are controlling state government, are going to be put in their place, which is outside where nobody hears from them.”
Both Hilton and Bianco also sharply criticized California Democrats for challenging Trump at every turn, a practice they would end.
“I would be wanting to work with the administration to help Californians,” Hilton said.
“Why would you ever push back on a president unless they were seriously trying to destroy your state?” Bianco said. “California is failing because of its own policies.”
Hilton said he expects Bonta to lose to his Republican running mate for attorney general, Michael Gates. Bianco said that if Bonta remains in office, he would completely “defund” the state Justice Department.
Hilton and Bianco also shared similar thoughts on Trump’s immigration crackdown and deployment of the National Guard to Minneapolis and Los Angeles, the latter without Newsom’s approval.
Hilton said that he “certainly would never want to see, in California, the scenes that we saw in Minneapolis, nor would I want to see repeated the scenes that we saw in our state last summer,” but that those clashes were “provoked and instigated by Democrat sanctuary policy,” which he would end.
California’s sanctuary policies largely bar local police and corrections officials from conducting or assisting federal authorities in immigration enforcement, which state leaders say is not their responsibility and could undermine community trust in local police.
Bianco said that Trump sent in troops because Newsom “was derelict in his duties to protect the people of California,” and that it is more important to address “failed Democrat policies for the last 20 years.”
“President Trump has done not one single thing to harm California in the last year,” he said.
Matt Lesenyie, an assistant professor of political science at Cal State Long Beach, said that if Hilton or Bianco becomes governor, Sacramento will see “a lot of gridlock and grandstanding, and that’s from both parties.”
But he also said he does not expect that to happen, because undecided voters are going to “figure it out” and coalesce behind a Democrat — even if at the last moment.
“That last slice of the electorate,” he said, “doesn’t wake up until the last two weeks.”
Times staff writer Katie King contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — Morning broke in the Middle East on Wednesday with a wave of attacks by Iran. Air defenses in Kuwait were overwhelmed. Three dozen drones and 17 ballistic missiles were shot down over the United Arab Emirates. The most important oil pipeline in Saudi Arabia suffered a hit. Sirens flared in Tel Aviv, and a devastating drumbeat of Israeli strikes targeting Iran’s allies in Lebanon killed scores in Beirut.
A day after President Trump hailed a ceasefire in his war with the Islamic Republic, reversing course on his threat to escalate, the only country spared from attack appeared to be Iran itself.
The “fragile truce,” as Vice President JD Vance called it, began with a calculated show of force from an Iran militarily weakened by six weeks of U.S.-Israeli strikes, yet strategically positioned to press for sweeping concessions from an American president eager to end the war.
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Strait flush
A naval vessel sails on March 1 in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway through which much of the world’s oil and gas passes.
(Sahar al Attar / AFP/Getty Images)
The president’s main conditions for a truce were the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and, through negotiations, a definitive end to Iran’s nuclear work. But Tehran offered no sign of relenting on its enrichment program, and by Wednesday afternoon, had warned that tanker traffic would halt through the strait until Israel paused its attacks in Lebanon.
It was the clearest demonstration yet of Iran’s emboldened position to use the strait — treated for decades as a free and open international waterway — as a bargaining tool, threatening its closure over any number of demands, or else implementing a toll system as reparations for its war damage.
By Friday, U.S. negotiators flying to Islamabad for talks can expect Iran’s hold on the strait to weigh against all other priorities, including American demands that Iran relinquish its right to enrich uranium, the source of decades of tortured diplomatic efforts.
The White House said that traffic had increased through the strait on Wednesday. But it also described reports of its closure, briefed to a displeased president, as “completely unacceptable,” serving as a stark reminder in the West Wing of the new world its war had brought.
James Acton, co-director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, called the ceasefire framework “a foreign policy disaster” for the United States that revealed Iranian leverage long predicted by independent experts and intelligence analysts.
“Let’s assume the ceasefire actually takes hold — and as far as I can see, it hasn’t done so far,” Acton said. “Iran has the upper hand, and frankly, it’s not close.”
“The negotiations are likely to focus on opening the Strait of Hormuz, which is clearly Trump’s top goal, not Iran’s nuclear program,” he added. “Because Iran has demonstrated it can close the strait — and inflict large economic costs on the U.S. and large political costs on Trump — it now has plenty of leverage over the United States.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks during a news briefing in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room on Wednesday. Leavitt spoke to reporters on a range of topics including a two-week ceasefire deal between the U.S., Iran and Israel.
(Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)
Unclear terms
The Trump administration reportedly urged two allies of Tehran — China and Pakistan — to pressure the Iranians into a ceasefire ahead of a Tuesday evening deadline, self-imposed by Trump, to escalate the conflict. The resulting truce was described not in a shared statement among the warring parties, but in separate, differing social media posts that all but guaranteed misinterpretation between the two sides.
A statement from the Pakistanis, who have helped mediate the talks, said the ceasefire extended to hostilities in Lebanon. The Israeli statement said it did not; Trump’s post omitted any mention of Lebanon at all.
But the president’s statement did say that a 10-point plan from Iran could serve as the basis for negotiations over a long-term truce going forward. The White House was forced to walk that back Wednesday afternoon, claiming that Iran had presented its diplomats with another, secret 10-point plan substantially revised from those detailed in the press.
“They put forward a more reasonable and entirely different and condensed plan to the president and his team,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters. “The idea that President Trump would ever accept an Iranian wish list as a deal is completely absurd.”
In social media posts and interviews with select reporters on Wednesday, Trump appeared to suggest exactly that — floating sanctions relief for Tehran and proposing a plan to share revenue from a Strait of Hormuz toll system that could raise global oil prices while directly funding the Iranian government.
Limited achievements
Experts agree that the U.S.-Israeli campaign succeeded in significantly degrading Iran’s drone and ballistic missile infrastructure. But in a statement on Wednesday, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said any deal between Washington and Tehran had to include structural limits on those programs — suggesting concern in Israel that Iran could reconstitute its military within a matter of years.
Iran’s continued attacks on its neighbors Wednesday, its downing of American aircraft last week, and its retention of its nuclear material have raised doubts among U.S. allies about whether Washington’s military capabilities can deliver on its promises.
“There is less respect for what the United States — and Trump in particular — can accomplish, be it through military force or diplomacy, and for the strategic thinking that underlies U.S. policy,” said Patrick Clawson, director of the Iran program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “These attitudes are even stronger in Europe, Russia and China.”
Iran’s military weaknesses have been uncovered as well. Few of its missiles and drones inflicted physical damage throughout Israel and the Arab world.
Yet the psychological impact — on local populations, on the economy of metropolitan Dubai, on the commercial shipping sector and the oil market — has proven Iran is capable of exacting greater pain than its conventional military capabilities would suggest.
Whether the United States can return the Strait of Hormuz to its status before the war, as a free and open waterway, may depend on longstanding allies that Trump has ostracized over the course of the war.
“We launched a war that affected the rest of the world, with little consideration for its effects,” said Dennis Ross, a veteran diplomat on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict who served in the George H.W. Bush, Clinton and Obama administrations.
“When you berate allies and leave them out but expect them to be there when you need them, you discover that you don’t have them,” Ross added. “No one is going to assume that the U.S. is more reliable after this.”
For scientists, measuring the water in a river or a lake is relatively straightforward. It’s much more complicated to figure out how much water lies underground.
After years of research, a team of scientists has finally mapped what remains of these hidden waters across the United States, and they’ve produced the most extensive estimate of the country’s groundwater to date.
Researchers at Princeton University and the University of Arizona took data from about 800,000 wells and applied a machine-learning model to estimate the depth of the water table nationwide.
“Groundwater is out of sight and out of mind for most people,” said Reed Maxwell, a hydrologist at Princeton and co-author of the recent study in the journal Nature. “Knowing how much we have will be helpful in knowing how to use it wisely.”
They incorporated data on the geology of aquifers and estimated down to nearly 1,300 feet, far deeper than most wells.
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The scientists say their detailed map and data could help local decision-makers address overpumping from stressed aquifers, and help researchers estimate how much water has been depleted.
California has seriously depleted groundwater in the San Joaquin, Salinas and Cuyama valleys, Ventura County and other places, with some of the fastest rates of water decline in the world.
In parts of the Central Valley, where large farms draw heavily from wells, aquifer levels have plummeted. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates it has lost 128 million acre-feet, comparable to the volume of Lake Tahoe, since pumps started pulling it out in the early 20th century.
In the desert Southwest, the groundwater is largely considered “fossil water” because it took millennia to accumulate. So once it is pumped out, it’s in effect gone for good.
Even depleting small amounts of water can be a problem, said co-author Laura Condon, a University of Arizona hydrologist. “We see this in Arizona and in Southern California too, where long before you run out of water, you start disappearing wetlands, disappearing small tributaries.”
The total quantity of water underground is still immense. The scientists found nationwide there is roughly 250 billion acre-feet, or 13 times the volume of the Great Lakes.
Data compiled by lead author Yueling Ma show the Colorado River watershed has about as much groundwater as the volume of the Great Lakes, while California has about 70% of that.
Those are vast quantities, but the researchers said that definitely doesn’t mean there is plenty of water to recklessly use up. Declines in groundwater levels have in recent years caused household wells to sputter and run dry, streams and wetlands to dry up, and land to sink, damaging canals and levees. California’s database of dry wells shows about 6,000 have run dry since 2013, but in the last year, only 13 dry wells were reported. So that problem has slowed down for now. It could soon worsen again.
The new map shows groundwater varies widely across the country. In some places, you have to drill down 300 feet to reach it. In others, it’s just a few feet below the soil.
Jay Famiglietti, a hydrologist and professor at Arizona State University who wasn’t involved in the research, called the researchers’ map and estimates a “remarkable achievement for modeling and understanding groundwater” in the United States.
The scientists “convincingly show that it is now possible to simulate groundwater depths and availability at very high resolutions,” he said, and they have made their results “accessible and useful for water managers across the country.”
He said the research adds to satellite measurements that scientists now use to track shifts in water over time. What the country still needs, he said, is a “national-scale network of deep groundwater wells” to track the quantity and quality of water all the way down to bedrock.
More water news
Two years ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a strategy to save declining salmon. Now, as Rachel Becker reports for CalMatters, members of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe say the state is ending its support for an effort to reintroduce endangered winter-run Chinook to waters upstream of Shasta Lake reservoir, and they feel betrayed.
The Trump administration recently announced it will spend $40 million to begin a plan to raise the height of Shasta Dam, which would expand California’s largest reservoir. As Camille von Kaenel reported for E&E News by Politico, dozens of environmental, fishing and tribal groups sent a letter to Newsom urging him to oppose the Trump administration’s renewed effort to raise the dam.
I followed up to ask Newsom’s office about the idea of raising Shasta Dam. “We aren’t getting distracted by conceptual projects, years from viability,” Newsom spokesperson Tara Gallegos said. Instead, she said the governor is focusing on getting the planned Sites Reservoir built northwest of Sacramento, which “will benefit regions throughout California and is much farther along towards construction.” Gallegos added that the state already is “a significant investor in the project, and the federal government should join us in ensuring this project comes to fruition.”
In the San Joaquin Valley, the Delta-Mendota subbasin has become the fourth farming area to avoid being placed on groundwater probation by state regulators. The State Water Resources Control Board voted this week not to impose enforcement measures on the area, Monserrat Solis reported for SJV Water.
More climate and environment news
The Trump administration has a budget proposal that calls for increasing military spending while slashing funding for clean energy and federal science programs. My colleague Hayley Smith wrote about the proposed cuts, which are strongly opposed by Democrats and environmental groups.
A wolf that captured national attention when she ventured into L.A. County earlier this year continues to make history. As Lila Seidman reports for The Times, it’s the first time a wolf has ventured into Inyo County in the Eastern Sierra in more than a century.
Imperial County supervisors voted to combine several parcels of land to clear the way for construction of a massive data center, which has faced opposition from residents who worry about the complex’s environmental footprint, Kori Suzuki reports for KPBS.
California’s last remaining nuclear power plant has received federal approval to run through at least 2030. My L.A. Times colleague Blanca Begert reports that the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission has renewed Diablo Canyon Power Plant’s license to operate.
PBS SoCal’s new season of its locally produced environmental series Earth Focus premieres April 22, Earth Day, at 7:30 p.m., with an episode focusing on how L.A. stadiums are taking steps to be more environmentally friendly.
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.
Michael Gates is basing his run for California attorney general on his decade-long reign as Huntington Beach’s top lawman.
When we met at a Starbucks a block away from City Hall, he rattled off his hometown’s bona fides: A drop in crime and homelessness. Tourists from across the world. A thriving Main Street. A small-town feel “almost like the Midwest.”
His biggest obstacle in trying to convince voters that he should replace Rob Bonta, besides his Republican Party membership? Um, Huntington Beach.
Their antics made Huntington Beach a national laughingstock — but Gates and his pals so far have had the last giggle.
They ran as a slate in two elections that transformed the City Council from a narrow Democratic majority in 2022 to an all-Republican body in an era when Orange County is turning more and more purple. The takeover became a sensation among California conservatives looking for victories in a state where Democrats maintain a supermajority in both legislative chambers and have held every statewide office for 15 years.
“We’ve morphed into this epicenter of fighting back,” said Mayor Casey McKeon, a third-generation Huntington Beach resident who’s up for reelection this year. “We are the model every city can follow. If I were running for state office, I’d run it on that.”
That’s exactly what the architects of MAGA-by-the-Sea plan to do this November.
The Huntington Beach red revolution now includes conservative commentator Steve Hilton, who launched his campaign for governor last spring near the city’s world-famous pier — even though he lives in Silicon Valley.
Hilton told me he has long loved Huntington Beach because it reminds him of Brighton, the seaside British town where he grew up. His affection for Surf City deepened the more he talked to people like Gates and Strickland, who sold him on their vision to stick it to Sacramento.
“There’s such a joy about it — it’s a place where it’s well-run and clean and orderly,” said the candidate, who has consistently led in polls as his Democratic opponents cannibalize each other’s share of the vote. “When I was thinking where to launch my campaign, it made sense [in Huntington Beach], because it felt like home.”
Then-City Council candidates Tony Strickland, left, and Gracey Van Der Mark attend a “meet and greet” event in Huntington Beach in 2022.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Better not tell anyone in H.B. you’re an immigrant, Steve!
California Republican Party Chairwoman Corrin Rankin is confident the Huntington Beach crew can win.
“What happened there proves that conservative leadership works,” she said. “Currently, we have a former mayor of San Francisco who’s the governor. You look at the contrast of how each of those cities are.”
Strickland, who is Hilton’s campaign chair, swears that he and his former colleagues didn’t plan to take their crusade statewide, but “when you do a great job, other opportunities present themselves.”
“I think California is on the wrong track — most think that,” he added. If his team pulls off a November sweep — governor, attorney general, Assembly seat and the voter ID proposition — “it would be known as the major turnaround in the Golden State that made it golden again.”
Does drinking Surf City’s water grant you magical powers, too?
It’s easy to dismiss what Strickland, Gates and the others have created as a lucky local run that’s about to crash into the reality of running statewide as a Republican. Even in Huntington Beach, residents tired of perpetual culture wars rejected two ballot measures last year seeking to give the City Council more control over a municipal library system that Van Der Mark long claimed was essentially providing pornography to children.
But if there’s one thing I’ve learned while tracking H.B.’s ever-aggrieved conservatives for a quarter century, it’s to never underestimate them — the more you do, the more they fume, the more they scheme. They plan with the discipline of a Dodgers World Series team and brawl like hometown hero and mixed martial arts legend Tito Ortiz, who was on the council for a few months in 2021 before stepping down because he said the job “wasn’t working for me.”
Gates, 51, is so Huntington Beach that he looks it: Bull-necked. Blue-eyed. Bro-y. No-nonsense haircut. An aw-shucks countenance barely hiding a righteous anger that seeks to pile-drive progressive California into submission.
“I know what it looks like to be from a working-class family, a hardworking family, and find it very difficult to make ends meet,” said Gates, noting that his Irish American parents sometimes had to grab food and diapers for their children from the St. Bonaventure Catholic Church pantry. “So frankly, let’s take control away from the government and give control back to the working-class people.”
Fullerton College political science professor Jodi Balma teaches her students about Huntington Beach as an example of how “the power of a slate can really work” in an era of polarization. But when I asked if she thought the Surf City insurgents could upend California politics, the professor quickly said, “No.”
A majority of California voters think the state is heading in the wrong direction, and the number of undecided voters in elections ranging from California governor to the L.A. mayor’s race is putting the fear of God into Democratic leaders. But how deluded can Strickland and company be to think that aligning themselves more with President Trump — who just endorsed Hilton — is a winning strategy in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 2 to 1? And propping up Surf City — a wealthy beach town so full of itself that it makes Santa Monica seem as humble as Santa Ana — as the last, best hope to save California?
Hilton demurred when I asked if he agreed with everything his pals on the City Council have done over the years. “I’m not there, so I don’t see the day-to-day operation,” was his weak salsa reply.
Gates was more forthright.
“I think probably everybody in city leadership would admit the library thing got out of control,” he said. By then, Gates was working for the Department of Justice in Washington as a deputy assistant attorney general in the civil rights division, resigning after just 10 months because he said he missed home.
Sand art at Huntington City Beach in 2020.
(Raul Roa / Los Angeles Times)
Gates talked a good talk for most of our hourlong conversation. He and Hilton are pushing especially hard for Latino voters — they “can save California because they understand that new leadership can turn the state around.”
But for everything Gates said that might appeal to a frustrated Democrat like me, his Huntington Beach braggadocio continually won out.
He alternately hailed his own political astuteness (“You be patient, bide your time, be disciplined, keep your mouth shut. The long game will win.”), brought up transgender issues (“I want to protect our young girls. I want to stop all the mutilation surgeries happening in hospitals to our young people.”) and inveighed against out-of-control Democrats (“[Californians are] abused. And honestly, we’re pissed off. We’re getting really mad.”).
Most of all, Gates proclaimed time and time again just how darn special Huntington Beach is.
“We love our freedoms. We love flying our American flags,” he said. “We love our beach. I don’t know, it’s a different culture here.”
Amid all the alarming and unhinged comments of the president of the United States in recent days threatening Iran with genocide — remarks beyond even the usual cray-cray blather from Donald Trump — it was a statement from his spokesperson on Tuesday that really put the madness in the White House in perspective.
“Only the President knows where things stand and what he will do,” Karoline Leavitt said.
She issued those words just hours before Trump’s 8 p.m. Tuesday deadline for Iran to either reopen the Strait of Hormuz to international shipping or face Armageddon — that is, war crimes by the United States. The statement from the White House press secretary was as clear a description as Americans could get of governance under Trump these days: A mad king reigns, virtually unchecked.
And as a practical matter, there is nothing under the Constitution, neither impeachment nor removal under the 25th Amendment, that can be done about him. There’s only voters’ opportunity to eject the complicit Republican majorities in the House and Senate in November’s midterm elections, to install a Democratic — and democratic — check on Trump for the remaining two years of his term.
By now we know that, just before Trump’s deadline to Iran warning “a whole civilization will die tonight,” he announced a fragile two-week ceasefire for negotiations. The commander in chief declared victory, natch. But so did Iran. And it had the better of the argument: Iran continued to control and monetize passage through the strait, unlike before Trump’s war began Feb. 28, and already on Wednesday it flexed that power by closing the route in retaliation for Israeli strikes. The ceasefire also lets Iran retain possession of its enriched, nearly bomb-grade uranium, and the nation won Trump’s offer of possible tariff and sanctions relief.
So much for the “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” he demanded in a post a month ago.
I’m writing these words on Wednesday. Who knows where things will stand by the time you’re reading this? “Only the president knows.”
Trump has fluctuated, reversed and contradicted himself repeatedly — even within a single social-media screed or chest-thumping performance for the press — since he ordered war against Iran nearly six weeks ago, without notice to Congress, let alone its authorization. Since Sunday, he’s variously called Iran’s leaders “crazy bastards” and “animals” and taken credit for “Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail.”
Presidential rule by fiat and whim would be wrong in any case under the Constitution’s checks and balances of power, and specifically of war power. But in Trump’s case, America has a president who lately has piled on the evidence that he is mentally unstable, unfit for the office.
And spare us the cheerleaders’ claimson Fox News about how he’s playing multidimensional chess. When even Alex Jones likens Trump to “crazy King Lear” and calls for invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from power — echoing former Trump promoters including Marjorie Taylor Greene and Candace Owens, among others — you know he’s crossed a line by his unilateral war-making and profane threats (on Easter Sunday!) of genocidal apocalypse.
The evidence of Trump’s dangerous instability has been there from his political genesis. In his first term, he warned he’d unleash “fire and fury like the world has never seen” against nuclear-armed North Korea then declared that he “fell in love” with dictator Kim Jong-un (without achieving any diminution in Kim’s arsenal). He celebrates the deaths of political enemies and prosecutes those still living. He repeatedly interrupts himself on some policy question to bloviate about his ballroom plans.
He’s ordered armed agents into American neighborhoods on immigration raids, then expressed neither responsibility nor remorse when citizens died and legal residents got deported. The national security leaders of his first term let it be known that they’d prevented him from acting on his worst impulses, but there’s no chance of that from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Retired Gen. Mark Milley, former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in 2021 described first-term Trump as being in mental decline and “fascist to the core.”
You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who thinks Trump has gotten better in the intervening five years.
The country “can’t be a therapy session for … a troubled man like this,” Trump’s first-term attorney general, William P. Barr, told CBS in 2023 as Trump campaigned to return to office.
If only the presidency were therapy for Trump. Instead he’s like a power addict in the world’s most powerful job, mainlining its intoxicants, and no one will stop him. Only people with extraordinary egos seek the White House in the first place, but when an actual egomaniac inhabits that warping bubble of butter-uppers, there’s danger. I remain haunted by the words of retired Gen. John F. Kelly, Trump’s first-term Homeland Security secretary and then White House chief of staff, who in 2023 said of Trump’s potential reelection: “God help us.”
Having failed twice to convict and remove Trump in his first term, Democrats have shied from a third attempt, until now. Scores in Congress have called for impeachment or invocation of the 25th Amendment to oust him. There’s some value in sending a message. But Democrats are offering supporters false hope. A Republican-led Congress and a Cabinet of clownish sycophants will not exercise the powers they have, even against a mad king.
The authors of the Constitution, having thrown off a king, debated at length how to guard against a power-crazed president. But they didn’t anticipate political parties that put tribal loyalty over the country. That partisanship has rendered the high bars to a president’s removal — a vote of two-thirds of the Senate for conviction after impeachment, or, under the 25th Amendment, action by the vice president and a Cabinet majority — all but insurmountable.
That leaves the voters, who in special and off-year elections as recently as Tuesday have shown their zeal to punish Trump’s party. We can hope that a new Congress will check him come January.
SACRAMENTO — Sharon Sharp, the embattled director of the California Lottery criticized for her handling of major contracts, resigned Monday, saying that months of controversy had made her “tired and angry.”
Insisting the resignation was her idea and not that of Gov. Pete Wilson, Sharp said she was stepping down so she could spend more time with her husband, who lives in Illinois. However, a source in the Administration said she was urged to resign.
“It’s just time for me to go home,” said Sharp, who is credited with adding several lottery games, including Keno, and of helping to turn around the agency’s downward revenue slide.
“I’m grateful to the governor . . . who I’m sure wished many times that the lottery would stay out of the news and most especially that I would stay out of the news.”
Sharp’s resignation came several weeks after it was disclosed that the former lobbyist for a company that received lucrative lottery contracts described Sharp in a secretly tape-recorded conversation as “our gal.” The conversation was played during a federal court trial of lobbyist Clayton R. Jackson, who has been charged with racketeering and money laundering.
On Monday, Sharp dismissed Jackson’s comments as the idle boasting of a lobbyist who wanted to impress others with his ability to gain access to public officials. Calling Jackson’s statement “ridiculous,” she maintained that her relationship with his former client, GTECH Corp. of Rhode Island, had always been professional and that there was no conflict of interest.
“I’m Don Sharp’s gal,” she quipped, referring to her husband of 34 years.
In a short statement, Wilson praised Sharp for “innovative leadership” at the lottery, especially improvements in customer services and the addition of new games–Keno, Fantasy 5, Daily 3 and multiple Scratchers, which helped boost sales. A spokesman for the governor said Wilson’s staff would conduct a nationwide search for her replacement.
“Her job is completed,” Wilson said. “She will give her successor a more efficient and more effective lottery to support education for California’s children.”
But the tense news conference announcing Sharp’s resignation contrasted starkly with the one two years ago in which the governor proudly announced her appointment.
At the time, Wilson said Sharp was his handpicked choice to revitalize a demoralized lottery and reverse a decline in sales that had caused deep reductions in the agency’s contributions to public schools.
Sharp, 53, left office Monday having accomplished the sales turnaround but also having created so much controversy over her handling of contracts that she became a political liability for the Wilson Administration.
Sharp was director of the Illinois lottery before coming to California. She commuted to her home in Chicago throughout her tenure and said Monday that she has no job lined up after leaving.
Although the governor’s office Monday had nothing but public praise for her work, staff members privately have been expressing concern about the appearance of favoritism in the awarding of lottery contracts.
Just days before Sharp’s resignation, Wilson’s chief of staff, Bob White, spoke generally of worries about the lottery’s contracting process.
“You want to make sure that the process and every contract let, on something as major as this, is above suspicion,” he said. “Our main goal was to make the things not sole sources; to make it as competitive as could be in a not very competitive world.”
White denied that Sharp was pressured to resign, but a source familiar with the lottery said an Administration official sent to review the lottery’s operation came away “concerned at the way they conducted business.” The source said the governor’s office urged Sharp to resign.
“I think it’s a welcome step,” said Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), one of Sharp’s most vocal critics. “I think it has just become a tainted and unmanageable mess over there. She would have nothing to look forward to but grief.”
Hayden said he will ask the governor and attorney general to investigate the lottery’s relationship to GTECH and to work with other states where the company’s contracts are being criticized.
As one of her final acts in office, Sharp said she had asked for a state audit of the lottery’s handling of a $400-million, five-year contract awarded GTECH to operate its computerized games. “For the sake of the future of the California Lottery, this issue must be put to rest,” she said.
During Sharp’s tenure, GTECH was awarded three lottery contracts totaling nearly $500 million and was recommended for a fourth–all without competitive bids.
Sharp had been in office only a few months in 1991 when she proposed a one-year extension of GTECH’s contract to operate the computerized games.
Her recommendation came just days after former state Sen. Alan Robbins pleaded guilty to a series of charges including accepting a $13,500 bribe allegedly from Jackson, to influence legislation of interest to GTECH.
Although the company was never implicated in the charges, an embarrassed governor’s staff asked the agency to delay awarding the contract for at least a month. Before the contract extension expired, Sharp again recommended–and the Lottery Commission approved–a $25-million amendment for the purchase of 2,000 additional terminals and upgrades to the computer system. Several staff members complained internally that the purchase should have been handled by competitive bids.
A year later, she did seek competitive bids, this time for a new computer contract, but GTECH was the only company to submit a proposal.
Rival companies complained that the specifications for the contract so favored GTECH that it was useless for them to bid. Sharp insisted that the specifications were standard for the industry and again recommended that GTECH get the contract. The commission agreed.
In September, she proposed that GTECH receive another contract without competitive bid to provide an automated system that would make it easier to cash lower-prize Scratchers. She later withdrew her recommendation after the governor’s office expressed displeasure at the lack of competition. That contract is still pending.
Asked at the conclusion of proceedings Monday in his corruption trial for his opinion on Sharp’s resignation, Jackson said: “That’s too bad. . . . If this (the trial) was all over, I’d say something.”
Times staff writer Mark Gladstone contributed to this story.
Out of the Game
California State Lottery Director Sharon Sharp announced her resignation Monday, two years after she was appointed to the job by Gov. Pete Wilson. Here is a snapshot of the performance of the lottery under her tenure.
NUMBER OF PLAYERS: 8 million a month
GAMES INTRODUCED
* Dec. 1991: SuperLotto
* Feb. 1992: Fantasy 5
* April, 1992: Daily 3
* Nov. 1992: Keno
ANNUAL LOTTERY REVENUE (In billions of dollars) ‘85-’86: $1.8 ‘86-’87: $1.4 ‘87-’88: $2.1 ‘88-’89: $2.6 ‘89-’90: $2.5 ‘90-’91: $2.1 Sharp’s term: (Sept. 1991 to Nov. 1993) ‘91-’92: $1.4 ‘92-’93: $1.8
A trove of sensitive Los Angeles police records, including officer personnel files and documents from Internal Affairs investigations, are among the materials seized by hackers in a breach last month involving the L.A. city attorney’s office.
The leak involves 337,000 files, including some of the LAPD’s most closely guarded records. The documents posted online include the disciplinary histories of officers and investigations into complaints against them, materials that are typically sealed from public view under state law.
The massive hack sent shudders through the department. Officials have sought to downplay the extent of the disclosure, but activists who have long pushed for more transparency around acts of officer misconduct quickly put a spotlight on sensitive files they were able to access.
After The Times published a story Tuesday about the hack, the Los Angeles Police Department issued a statement that said “unauthorized individuals had gained access to a digital storage system,” enabling them to obtain “discovery documents from previously adjudicated or settled LAPD civil litigation cases.”
The department noted that it was a compromise of the Los Angeles city attorney’s office computers and that the “breach does not involve any LAPD systems or networks.”
“We take this incident very seriously and are working with the L.A. City Attorney’s Office to gain access to the impacted files to understand the full scope of the data breach,” the department’s statement said.
Ivor Pine, a spokesperson for the city attorney’s office, said in a statement that the office first became aware March 20 of “unauthorized access to a third-party tool used by the City Attorney’s Office to transfer discovery to opposing counsel and litigants.”
Pine said the office “took immediate steps to secure the tool and investigate what information was accessed,” including contacting law enforcement.
“The City Attorney’s Office has confirmed that no other City applications or systems were involved in this incident,” Pine said. “The information was self contained in this application without any links or access to any department records or systems. Our investigation is continuing to determine what information was present in the tool and we will take appropriate action to notify any affected parties based on the results of this review.”
The Los Angeles Police Protective League — the union that represents the department’s rank-and-file officers — issued a statement Wednesday afternoon that criticized the city attorney’s office for its handling of the breach.
The union’s board of directors said City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto “should have picked up the phone and informed us about this egregious data breach when she claims she learned of it several weeks ago.”
“We first learned of the breach by reading the Times and the City Attorney has still not provided the union with an honest assessment of the breach’s magnitude, who was impacted, what was disclosed and how this could have happened,” the union’s statement said. “To say we are disappointed by the lack of urgency and forthrightness from the City Attorney’s office is an understatement. We will keep asking the tough questions and once we receive answers we will take appropriate action.”
Within the Police Department, there has been virtually no acknowledgment from senior leaders about the breach or its implications, according to LAPD sources who requested anonymity in order to discuss the confidential matter.
According to one of the department sources, there was a vague reference to LAPD employees needing to change their passwords more frequently at a regular meeting Monday of command staff — but no mention of the breach itself or what files had become public.
The data were obtained by a well-known hacking group known for conducting ransomware attacks on large entities and demanding payment, threatening to make the confidential data public on the web. City and LAPD officials did not comment on whether the hackers requested a ransom in return for not releasing the information and whether the city paid one.
A spokesperson for the FBI’s office in Los Angeles said the agency “is aware of the incident, is actively assisting the City’s Attorney’s Office, and is coordinating with partners.”
At least one hacking group on March 20 claimed to have access to the city of Los Angeles files. Cybercrime investigators from both the federal government and the LAPD have been pursuing the hack since last month, according to police sources who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the open case.
Some of the records have surfaced on social media platforms, including X. Among the first to share a file from the hack was the account @WhosThatCop, which regularly posts about information related to police accountability.
The account’s administrator said a security researcher first disclosed the breach. A link to the files apparently had been taken down by Tuesday afternoon.
The disclosure represents a stunning breach of police data. Some files circulating from the hack included personal health information of officers, witness interviews from criminal investigations and internal probes conducted by the department. Only rarely do Internal Affairs documents surface in civil lawsuits and criminal cases, and even then they are often heavily redacted.
In all, according to posts about the data breach, 7.7 terabytes of information was available for download.
The disclosure of confidential LAPD records could unleash a new round of costly lawsuits by officers. About 900 officers are currently suing the department related to a 2023 release of mugshot-style images — along with names, races and other demographic details of police officers — in response to a public records request.
The LAPD statement described the files in the recent hack as coming from closed cases. But the X account @WhosThatCop published a redacted internal affairs report from an apparently ongoing case. The case involves a lawsuit by a woman who alleges that she was sexually assaulted by an LAPD officer days after the officer took her into custody in 2022.
In a statement to The Times, the account’s anonymous operator applauded the hack.
“Sadly, having the public resort to transparency by relying on 340,000 City Attorney files being published at the hands of criminals is emblematic of the stonewalling and incompetence by City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto, Mayor Bass, and LAPD Chief McDonnell,” the operator said.
According to court filings, the city reached a conditional settlement with the woman on March 20 — the same day the data theft was revealed by hackers. The matter had been set to go to trial next week.
The lawsuit alleged that the officer, Gabriel Anthony Espadas, detained the woman on a mental health hold after responding to a call for service in the San Fernando Valley. The woman’s lawsuit contends that the officer “engaged in nonconsensual sexual activity” with her after her release.
The city defended itself in the lawsuit, saying the “two sexual encounters” involved an “off-duty, probationary officer” who was “not acting within the course and scope of his employment.”
The disclosure is the latest of several cybersecurity incursions targeting public agencies in Los Angeles. Last month, the city’s metro system shut down parts of its network after its security team detected hacking activity. Law enforcement and cybersecurity specialists are continuing to investigate who was behind the attack, authorities said.
WASHINGTON — A day after the United States and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire, the truce showed signs of strain Wednesday as Iranian leaders accused Americans of violating the agreement and reports emerged that Tehran had moved to restrict traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.
The developments tested President Trump’s ability to parlay a fragile pause in fighting into a lasting peace deal with a country he has spent weeks threatening to destroy, and raised questions about whether the Trump administration had the diplomatic leverage to hold the deal together.
The White House sought to project confidence about the ceasefire, but the fragile deal grew shakier after Israel carried out its largest attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon since the conflict began. Iran said the strikes by the U.S. ally amounted to a breach of the ceasefire terms, even as Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benajmin Netanyahu maintained that Lebanon was not subject to the agreement.
“The big issue seems to be that the two sides can’t agree on what the agreement is,” said Michael Rubin, an expert on Iran at the American Enterprise Institute. At best, he said, the two sides had secured a “tactical pause.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the United States must choose between a ceasefire or “continued war via Israel.
“It cannot have both,” Araghchi wrote on X. “The world sees the massacres in Lebanon. The ball is in the U.S. court, and the world is watching whether it will act on its commitments.”
Whether Iran will draw a red line over Lebanon could become a key question. The Wednesday back-and-forth represented “threshold-testing” of Iran and whether it will be willing to reengage the United States in conflict over the issue, said Ross Harrison, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.
The parties’ prospects for reaching an agreement — and what Trump’s options become for declaring success — will depend on how the ceasefire goes in the coming days, Harrison said.
“There’s some room here … if [the Iranians] see that negotiations are real and not a pretext for further attacks,” he said. “A lot of what the United States can get depends on what the United States is willing to give — not just in terms of the points of their plan, but also in terms of the signaling that they too have an interest in de-escalating.”
Reports that Iran had moved to restrict traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway whose opening was central to the truce negotiations, further complicated the ceasefire.
“Any vessel trying to travel into the sea … will be targeted and destroyed,” the Iranian navy told shipping vessels, Fars News reported. The news agency is aligned with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
At a news briefing Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump was aware of reports that the Strait of Hormuz had been closed, a move she called both “completely unacceptable” and “false.” She added that the president expects the waterway will be “reopened immediately, quickly and safely” during the ceasefire.
Leavitt sidestepped questions about who currently controls the oil route.
Earlier in the day, at a Pentagon briefing, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters that “commerce will flow” through the strait, but did not say whether U.S. warships would be escorting vessels through the waterway. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, who stood next to Hegseth, was asked whether the strait was open. He said: “I believe so.”
Hegseth emphasized that Iran should keep its end of the bargain or face the consequences.
He said the U.S. military plans to maintain a presence in the region to ensure Iranian compliance, saying American troops are ready to “go on offense and restart operations at a moment’s notice” if the truce broke down.
“We’ll be hanging around,” Hegseth said. “We are going to make sure Iran complies with this ceasefire and then ultimately comes to the table and makes a deal.”
The warning came as several Persian Gulf nations reported Iranian missile and drone attacks on their territories despite the ceasefire. Kuwait said its air defenses intercepted drones, while Bahrain reported that an Iranian attack has sparked a fire at one of its facilities.
Hegseth downplayed the continued Iranian attacks in the region, saying that “it takes time sometimes” for ceasefires to take hold, but advised Iran to “find a way to get a carrier pigeon to their troops in remote locations” and ensure compliance moving forward.
Israel, meanwhile, carried out its largest strike against Hezbollah since the militant group began launching rockets in solidarity with Iran last month. Lebanese health authorities said hundreds were killed and wounded in the Israeli strikes.
Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have maintained that Lebanon is not subject to the ceasefire agreement. Leavitt reiterated that stance, telling reporters that “Lebanon was not part of the ceasefire” and that it had been relayed to all parties.
Asked whether Trump would want to add Lebanon to the agreement in the future, Leavitt said that the matter “will continue to be discussed but that “at this point in time they are not included.”
More than a dozen European heads of state called on “all sides” to cease fire, including in Lebanon. In a Wednesday statement, they urged the parties to move quickly in diplomatic talks.
“The goal must now be to negotiate a swift and lasting end to the war within the coming days,” they said in the statement, which was signed by French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, along with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi as well as other European leaders.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who helped broker the ceasefire, wrote on X that ceasefire violations had been reported at “a few places across the conflict zone” and urged all parties to exercise restraint. He did not detail the violations but said the attacks “undermine the spirit of the peace process.”
The situation in the Strait of Hormuz underscores how much remains uncertain about the agreement between the United States and Iran. The full terms of the ceasefire have not been publicly disclosed, and Trump wrote on his social media website that the “only group of meaningful ‘POINTS’ that are acceptable to the United States” will be discussed behind closed doors.
Trump also seemed to take issue with the 10-point peace plan that Iran publicly released Wednesday. He said that there are terms being floated by people who have “absolutely nothing to do” with the negotiations between the United States and Iran. He said that “in many cases, they are total Fraudsters, Charlatans, and WORSE.”
Leavitt declined to offer details about the working proposal being negotiated, saying the talks will take place privately. Both Leavitt and Hegseth, however, mentioned that the U.S. wants to ensure Iran does not have stockpiles of enriched uranium, the fissile material that is key in developing nuclear weapons.
“This is on the top of the priority list for the president and his negotiating team as they head into the next round of discussions,” Leavitt said.
Hegseth told reporters earlier in the day that Iran may “hand it over.” If they don’t, he said, “we will take it out, or if we have to do something else ourselves like we did [with] Midnight Hammer or something like that, we reserve that opportunity.” He was referring to the 12-day war against Iran in June.
Leavitt reiterated that administration officials “hope it will be through diplomacy,” but left open the possibility that the uranium could be retrieved through ground operations.
There is probably negotiating room over enrichment, said Harrison of the Middle East Institue, while Iran may be less flexible on the Strait of Hormuz. The United States needs a resolution more quickly than Iran, he added.
“Time is their friend, not a friend of Donald Trump’s,” Harrison said.
U.S. government attorneys on Tuesday told a federal judge the Department of Homeland Security still intends to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Liberia, despite a new agreement with Costa Rica to accept deportees who cannot legally be returned to their home countries.
The Salvadoran national’s case has become a focal point in the immigration debate after he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador last year. Since his return, he has been fighting a second deportation to a series of African countries proposed by Homeland Security officials.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, of Maryland, previously barred U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from deporting him or detaining him. She has written that the agency has no viable plan to actually deport Abrego Garcia, referring in February to “one empty threat after another to remove him to countries in Africa with no real chance of success.”
Abrego Garcia has argued that if he is going to be deported, it should be to Costa Rica, which previously agreed to accept him. But Todd Lyons, the acting head of U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement, said in a March memo that deporting Abrego Garcia to Costa Rica would be “prejudicial to the United States.” Abrego Garcia should be sent to Liberia because the U.S. has spent government resources and political capital negotiating with the West African nation to accept third-country nationals, Lyons wrote.
At a Tuesday hearing in Xinis’ court, Ernesto Molina, director of the Department of Justice’s Office of Immigration Litigation, suggested that Abrego Garcia could “remove himself” to Costa Rica.
Xinis pointed out that the Justice Department is prosecuting him in Tennessee on human smuggling charges. She called it a “fantasy” to say that he can remove himself anywhere while the criminal case is pending. Xinis set a schedule for a briefing on the matter and scheduled a new hearing for April 28.
Abrego Garcia, 30, has an American wife and child and has lived in Maryland for years, but he immigrated to the U.S. illegally as a teenager. In 2019, an immigration judge ruled that he could not be deported to El Salvador because he faced danger there from a gang that had threatened his family. By mistake, he was deported there anyway last year.
Facing public pressure and a court order, President Trump’s administration brought him back in June, but only after securing an indictment charging him with human smuggling in Tennessee. He has pleaded not guilty and asked the judge to dismiss that case.
NEW ORLEANS — The wife of a U.S. soldier was released Tuesday from a federal immigration detention facility where she had spent nearly a week after being taken into custody on a Louisiana military base.
The detention of 22-year-old Annie Ramos, the Honduran-born wife of a U.S. Army staff sergeant preparing to deploy, prompted public backlash from critics of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign who warned it demoralized troops during an ongoing war.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Ramos’ mother-in-law, Jen Rickling, confirmed her release to the Associated Press. The New York Times first reported Ramos’ release.
Ramos, who married Staff Sgt. Matthew Blank in March, had been detained by federal immigration agents while attempting to register at his base to receive military benefits and ultimately obtain a green card. She had lived in the country since she was less than 2 years old. Homeland Security said Ramos had been ordered removed by a federal immigration judge in 2005 after her family had failed to appear for a hearing.
Ramos and her husband say she has been attempting to gain legal status, including by applying for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in 2020 though her application remained stalled amid legal battles to eliminate the program.
“All I have ever wanted is to live with dignity in the country I have called home since I was a baby,” Ramos said in a statement to the Associated Press after her release. “I want to finish my degree, continue my education, and serve my community — just as my husband serves our country with honor.”
A spokeswoman for U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat from Arizona, said that Kelly had called Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin regarding Ramos’ detention. Blank has family in Arizona.
“I’m happy Annie is back with her husband and family where she belongs,” Kelly said in a statement. “They never should have gone through this painful process, but far too many families like theirs are because of this administration.”
Homeland Security told the Associated Press that Ramos had been released with a GPS monitor “while she undergoes further removal proceedings.”
“She will receive full due process,” Homeland Security said.
The Trump administration has scrapped policies of immigration enforcement leniency toward the family members of military personnel and veterans, even as the military has promoted the protection of U.S. soldiers’ family members from deportation as a recruiting incentive.
Ramos said she plans to continue studying biochemistry and focusing on enjoying married life with her husband.
“As Matthew continues preparing for his long career in the military, my focus now is on securing my status, continuing my studies, and building our life together,” Ramos said. “We want to create a home, a future, and a family. This experience has been incredibly difficult, but it has also reminded me of the power of faith, love, and community. I am hopeful for what comes next.”
Brook writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Juan Lozano contributed to this report from Houston.
WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice has indicated that former Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi will not appear for a scheduled deposition next week before a House committee investigating how the government handled its investigations into Jeffrey Epstein.
Jessica Collins, a spokeswoman for the House Oversight Committee, said Wednesday that the department signaled that Bondi, who was ousted by President Trump last week, will not appear for the deposition April 14 “since she is no longer attorney general and was subpoenaed in her capacity as attorney general.” The committee will contact Bondi’s personal counsel to discuss the next steps about scheduling the interview, she said.
Bondi has faced scrutiny for how the Justice Department handled what are known as the Epstein files, and the Republican-led committee subpoenaed her in a bipartisan vote last month. The department’s release of millions of case files on Epstein, the late financier who sexually abused underage girls, contained multiple errors and ran behind a deadline set by Congress.
After Trump announced Bondi’s ouster from his Cabinet on April 2, Bondi said on social media that over the next month she would be “working tirelessly to transition the office.” But Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche has been elevated to the top job, on at least an acting basis, and is performing the duties of the department’s top official. The Justice Department’s website on Wednesday still listed Bondi as attorney general.
Meanwhile, some Republicans who had joined Democrats to subpoena Bondi said they would insist on having her appear before the committee.
Rep. Nancy Mace, who initiated the motion to compel her appearance, said on social media Wednesday that “Bondi cannot escape accountability simply because she no longer holds the office of Attorney General.”
Mace (R-S.C.) added that the motion was done “by name, not by title” and that “we expect her to appear as soon as a new date is set.”
The top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Robert Garcia of California, also said he would push to enforce the subpoena and threatened to press for contempt of Congress charges if she does not appear.
In a statement, he said, “Now that Pam Bondi has been fired, she’s trying to get out of her legal obligation to testify before the Oversight Committee about the Epstein files and the White House cover-up.”
The committee’s head, Republican Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, enforced subpoenas on Bill and Hillary Clinton this year, making the former president and former secretary of State, respectively, among the highest-ranking former government officials to be subpoenaed by Congress.
NEW YORK — Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is launching a new podcast that he says will begin “a new era of radical transparency in government,” according to a teaser video first obtained by the Associated Press.
The show, titled “The Secretary Kennedy Podcast,” will launch next week and feature Kennedy in conversation with doctors, scientists and agency staff, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials told the AP ahead of the launch. In the teaser video, in a slick Health and Human Services-branded studio with ominous music playing in the background, Kennedy bills it as a new way to expose corruption and lies that have made Americans sick.
“We’re going to name the names of the forces that obstruct the paths to public health,” Kennedy says in the 90-second clip.
The new communication effort from the Department of Health comes as the department has faced a bevy of recent setbacks, including widespread criticism of its vaccine policy changes, a federal ruling last month blocking several of those moves, and resistance from key Republican senators that has kept President Trump’s surgeon general pick from taking office. In that way, it could be seen as part of a broader rebranding strategy as the agency redirects away from vaccine efforts and toward a less contentious agenda on healthy food ahead of November’s midterm elections.
But the show, which has been in the works since early in the second Trump administration, also reflects Kennedy returning to a format where he has long felt at ease. An antivaccine crusader and attorney before he entered office, he previously hosted his own podcast and has appeared on dozens to share his perspectives in longform interviews, as recently as this week.
Tyler Burger, Health and Human Services digital communications manager and the producer of the new podcast, said while Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary has a podcast, officials believe Kennedy’s will be the first to be hosted by a sitting Cabinet secretary.
“We’re kind of bringing podcasting into the government as an official form and arm of our messaging,” Burger said. He said the set for the show was pieced together largely with items the agency already had, and has the capacity for a total of four people to sit in conversation together.
“This is part of our larger strategy to bring the Make America Healthy Again message to as wide an audience as we can,” said Liam Nahill, Health and Human Services digital director.
Because podcasts are now commonly made not only on audio but video, they are regularly clipped and shared across social media platforms, giving them “massive” reach, according to Melina Much, a postdoctoral fellow for NYU’s Center for Social Media and Politics.
Much said podcasts also tend to be more intimate, conversational and friendly than a traditional interview, allowing administration officials to promote themselves without facing as much pushback.
While Kennedy’s teaser focuses on uncovering lies, Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew Nixon said it will aim to cover affordability and other topics that polls show are salient for American voters ahead of the midterms.
“Americans are united on the need to urgently address chronic disease, improve nutrition, strengthen food quality, and lower health costs,” he said. “The Secretary Kennedy Podcast will cover all those issues.”
TORONTO — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has attracted another opposition Conservative lawmaker to the Liberal party, further assuring that he will soon have a majority government.
Ontario Member of Parliament Marilyn Gladu alluded to President Trump’s threats to Canada’s sovereignty and economy for her decision to defect to Carney’s governing Liberals. Trump has talked about making Canada the 51st state and has applied punishing tariffs on certain key sectors.
“The past year has been like no other Canada has ever faced,” Gladu said in a statement Wednesday. “I’ve heard from constituents that you want serious leadership and a real plan to build a stronger and more independent Canadian economy.”
Gladu is the fifth Member of Parliament to defect to Carney and the fourth Conservative.
“She is going to be a great member of our team,” Carney said outside his office. “This all comes at a time when the country as a whole is uniting.”
The floor crossing puts the Liberals closer to having a majority government and being able to pass any bill without opposition party support.
With another lawmaker decamping from the Conservatives, the Liberals would have 171 Members of Parliament in the House of Commons. They need 172 to secure a majority government, which would allow them to unilaterally pass any bill.
Carney has called special elections for three districts for Monday that would give the Liberals a majority government if his party wins one of them.
The prime minister announced March 8 that votes will be cast April 13 in the Toronto-area districts of Scarborough Southwest and University-Rosedale, which are considered safe seats for the Liberals, and in the Montreal-area riding of Terrebonne, which is considered a toss-up.
The three other Conservative Members of Parliament who defected from their party to join the Liberals in recent months were Chris d’Entremont, Michael Ma and Matt Jeneroux.
Jeneroux referenced Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos as helping his decision. In the speech, Carney condemned economic coercion by great powers against smaller countries and received widespread praise and attention for his remarks, upstaging Trump at the gathering.
Carney has moved the Liberals to the center since replacing Justin Trudeau as prime minister in 2025 and winning national elections
The defection is another blow to Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, who lost the last national election last year and even his own seat in Parliament. He has since rejoined the House of Commons.
Poilievre won a party leadership review earlier this year but continues to have problems controlling his lawmakers.
RINGGOLD, Ga. — Republican Clay Fuller on Tuesday won Marjorie Taylor Greene’s former U.S. House seat in Georgia, turning back a Democratic challenge with the help of President Trump’s endorsement despite uneasiness over the war in Iran.
In a deep red district that Greene won by 29 points and Trump carried by almost 37 points two years ago, Fuller was on track to prevail by about 12 points with almost all votes counted. The result added to a string of special elections where Democrats performed better than expected, a track record that the party hopes will create momentum toward November’s midterm elections when control of Congress hangs in the balance.
In another election held Tuesday, a Democratic-backed candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court won by double-digit margins, growing the liberal majority there.
Fuller insisted that his victory over Democratic candidate Shawn Harris in Georgia was a testimony to Trump’s staying power.
“They couldn’t beat Donald Trump and they never will,” he told supporters in Ringgold, near the border with Tennessee. “And I will be on Capitol Hill as a warrior to have his back each and every day.”
However, Trump’s escalating rhetoric had some Republicans concerned, even in this deep red district. The president had set a deadline for Tuesday at 8 p.m. — one hour after polls closed in Georgia — for Iran to reach a deal with the United States, saying that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” However, he later announced a two-week ceasefire to allow negotiations to continue.
Acworth resident Jason McGinty said he was worried Trump was “about to go too far” and “may be committing a war crime” if he followed through on threats to bomb power plants and other infrastructure in Iran. He voted for Fuller to “make sure the America First party is still in place.”
Retiree Judy McDonald agreed with the president’s decision to go to war but was “very anxiety-ridden” over the conflict.
“Eventually we will have peace and the Iranians will kind of come to a conclusion that they won’t have a country if they don’t stop the terrorism,” she said.
Some Democrats hoped the election would send a message to Trump
Fuller will serve out the remaining months of Greene’s term, bolstering the party’s slim majority in the House, where Republicans control 217 seats to Democrats’ 214, with one independent.
He’ll have to face another Republican primary on May 19 to win a full two-year term, and could face a June 16 party runoff. Harris is already the Democratic nominee for November.
Retiree Melinda Dorl supported Harris “so it sends a message to Trump and his cronies that people aren’t happy,” she said.
“This war was totally uncalled for. Trump is a liar. Everything he says is a lie,” Dorl said, adding that Trump was wrecking relationships with countries that have traditionally been American allies.
Harris, a cattle farmer and retired general who describes himself as a “dirt-road Democrat,” stirred enthusiasm even among supporters who expected him to lose.
“I voted for the Democrat even though this is a very red district and the Democrat has almost no chance of winning,” said Michael Robards, a software engineer from Kennesaw who calls himself a center-right independent. He said he wants to see Trump’s policies rolled back and the president again impeached.
Georgia’s 14th District stretches across 10 counties from suburban Atlanta to Tennessee. After losing to Greene two years ago, Harris said his strong showing this time would be a stepping stone to November.
“We’re going to beat him next time,” Harris said on Tuesday in Rome, Georgia.
Fuller said he had withstood Democrats’ best punch.
“The left did their best. They poured in millions upon millions of dollars,” Fuller told reporters. “And what you’re seeing is the best that they can accomplish.”
Fuller had presidential support
Trump endorsed Fuller, a district attorney who prosecuted crimes in four counties, to succeed Greene in February, boosting him over other Republican candidates in a crowded field.
Greene, once among Trump’s most ardent supporters, had split with the president by criticizing his foreign policy and his reluctance to release documents involving the Jeffrey Epstein case. The president eventually had enough, saying he would support a primary challenge against her. Greene announced a week later that she would resign.
Outside of Congress, Greene has continued to assail Trump.
“Trump was elected to go to war against America’s deep state and to end America’s involvement in foreign wars,” she wrote on social media on Tuesday. “Not to kill an entire civilization while waging a foreign war on behalf of Israel, another foreign country.”
However, Fuller has backed Trump to the hilt — including the war — and has identified no issue on which he disagreed with the president.
Trump reiterated his support for Fuller on Monday night and then again on Tuesday.
“To the Great Patriots in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District: GET OUT AND VOTE TODAY for a fantastic Candidate, Clay Fuller, who has my Complete and Total Endorsement!” the president wrote on social media.
INDIANOLA, Iowa — Before Michigan U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin spent Tuesday afternoon supporting Democratic congressional candidates in Iowa, she was picking the brains of a table of President Trump’s voters.
Slotkin, a potential Democratic 2028 presidential contender, peppered five Iowa voters with questions about divisiveness in U.S. politics and issues affecting their communities. She also wanted to know what the voters would look for if they could “build a candidate in a test tube” and why they chose Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024.
“What would have gotten you to actually consider a Democrat?” Slotkin asked as the discussion winded down.
She hadn’t told them yet she was one.
The conversation was one of many Slotkin is having ahead of this fall’s crucial midterm elections. They are a way for the Midwestern Democrat to hear what it might take for the party to win back parts of the country like Iowa, which swung from backing President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 to Trump in the last three elections.
Slotkin on Tuesday described a Democratic Party that has forgotten about the middle of the country, has spent too much time rehashing old fights and lacks coordination in delivering a strong counter to Trump.
“I’m pretty clear-eyed about the problems,” Slotkin told The Associated Press in an interview. “I’m interested in being a part of the next generation who’s going to rehab the Democratic brand.”
Slotkin’s sit down with Trump voters in Iowa Tuesday, and a town hall in Ohio Wednesday, was organized by a PAC dedicated to reshaping the party, Majority Democrats. But for Slotkin, the stops in red and purple states also are opportunities for the former CIA analyst to introduce herself to voters outside her home state, many of whom — like those gathered for Tuesday’s lunch — don’t know who she is or what she stands for.
Slotkin was elected to the Senate in 2024 after serving three terms in the U.S. House. She was among six Democrats in Congress with military or national security backgrounds who in a video last year urged U.S. military members to resist “illegal orders.” Trump accused the lawmakers of sedition punishable by death, and the video prompted a Justice Department investigation.
Slotkin said Tuesday that they made the video “for moments exactly like this,” shortly before Trump paused for two weeks his threat to take out Iran’s “whole civilization.”
Democrats want to flip House seats in Iowa
Later Tuesday, Slotkin’s schedule included headlining a fundraiser and a county party dinner. She also held a health care-focused town hall with Iowa state Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott, a Democrat looking to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Zach Nunn in one of the most competitive House seats in the country.
She shared some of the same themes to the friendly faces in Des Moines as she did earlier with the Trump voters, lamenting that politics is so divisive and describing the bipartisan disappointment over the health care system that she hears across the country.
But she put a finer point on her own views to the Democratic audiences, saying that the U.S. needs a public health insurance option for people of any age and giving advice on how to convince voters that supporting a Democrat is in their best interest.
“I want to win in November,” Slotkin told an applauding audience. “That means being honest about where the Democratic Party needs to go.”
“The debate is not between progressive and moderate,” she said. “It’s fight or flight.”
Slotkin shies away from answer on 2028
Visiting Iowa used to hold more obvious significance for Democrats before the party shook up the early presidential nominating calendar last cycle, bumping Iowa from its place as the first state to weigh in on the nominations. The state party in 2024 did away with the traditional, quirky caucuses that have historically been the first contest for both parties.
Now Iowa Democrats are among those pitching their state should go first in 2028; Michigan is also vying for the first Midwest slot. But it’s still months before the Democratic National Committee will decide the order.
Slotkin is one of many prominent Democrats eyeing a potential 2028 run that have been visiting swing states and those that have traditionally been important in the nominating process.
“I’m not announcing anything,” Slotkin said Tuesday, and even joked about Iowa and Michigan’s “cage match” for the early position.
The ambition didn’t get past Ed Klavins, a Trump voter who participated in the focus group.
“She’s trying to figure out what she can do differently to have a better chance of getting reelected and maybe higher office,” said Klavins, a retiree from Urbandale, Iowa, who didn’t know Slotkin was the guest for Tuesday’s focus group lunch and said he was paid $200, plus lunch, to be there.
Klavins wants politicians on both sides of the aisle that challenge their party’s status quo. He told Slotkin that he wants a candidate who doesn’t pander to what they think voters want. He voted for Trump and thinks he’s succeeding in putting national security first, like closing the U.S.-Mexico border and eliminating the threat Iran poses to national security.
But Slotkin showing up to listen “makes her a little more genuine in my eyes,” he said. “I like her.”
When she ran for mayor four years ago, Karen Bass said she wanted to regrow the Los Angeles Police Department to the 9,500-officer force it was before the ranks began to shrink. Now up for reelection — and facing a budget crunch — Bass says her plan has shifted.
The aim going forward, she told The Times in a recent interview, is to simply stop the department from getting smaller.
“My goal changed, unfortunately,” Bass said. “I do hope that one day we get to the expansion, but we are not there now.”
A Bass spokesperson said after the interview that the mayor remains committed to reaching the 9,500-officer benchmark in the long run, but did not provide a timeline for getting there.
On April 20, Bass will release her spending plan for the upcoming fiscal year, which starts on July 1. She and the City Council will spend the coming months working out how to balance the city’s books in a way that avoids deep cuts to other services and the layoffs of city employees. A projection by the city administrative officer estimates the city’s budget deficit to be “several hundred million.”
Bass said she had spent years addressing a years-old administrative bottleneck within the city’s personnel department, which runs the background process for police hires.
The efforts were targeted “at every level: at the top, as well as internal to the department,” said Bass. “At least the impediments that kept us from retaining recruits, to get them in the academy, that has changed.”
The mayor called the old hiring process “archaic,” and said similar issues exist with other city departments. At the LAPD, she said, “We expanded recruitment and had a record number of recruits, and then we couldn’t get them hired, so we had to revamp the hiring process.”
Despite attrition at the LAPD in recent years, crime has plummeted, with homicides in the city falling to levels not seen since the 1950s. Yet public safety remains an issue in the mayor’s race, where Bass faces a challenge from City Councilmember Nithya Raman.
A recent survey co-sponsored by The Times found that more than half of voters view Bass unfavorably in the race. The same poll found that 39% of Angelenos think the LAPD needs to increase in size, with 29% saying the department should stay the same size and 19% saying it should shrink.
Raman came out ahead of Bass in a recent poll that only identified candidates in the mayoral race by their platforms, but not their names, though other surveys that identified them by name showed Bass in the lead.
Raman has said that she believes the police force is the right size at around 8,700 officers. Bass’ onetime ally has argued the mayor has thrown too much money at the LAPD, an approach Raman claims has come at the expense of other basic services such as park maintenance and street paving.
Raman has accused the mayor of signing off on raises for police officers with a contract that has done little to make a dent in the department’s recruitment struggles and only made worse the city’s financial picture. She and other critics say that with the dwindling number of cops, officials need to start investing more in community-led efforts that prioritize prevention over punishment in order to further reduce crime.
Bass said she had embraced a crime-fighting strategy that balances traditional policing with a more public health-oriented approach, pointing out that she had opened an Office of Community Safety to support gang interventionists who help defuse neighborhood conflicts before they explode into violence. Her administration also spearheaded sending mental health teams or other unarmed responders to emergency calls that were once fielded by police.
It’s no accident, she said, that killings in some of the most crime-impacted neighborhoods had fallen by 27%. So far this year, police say that most crime categories are down compared to where they were at this point in 2025.
LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell has said that without addressing police staffing the city’s progress on crime is at risk, especially as L.A. gets set to host large-scale sporting events like the World Cup and the 2028 Olympics.
During his briefing to the Police Commission on Tuesday, McDonnell said roughly 8% of the department’s employees are unavailable to work because they are on sick leave or other work restrictions. McDonnell and other police officials have said staffing shortages are limiting the department’s ability to respond quickly to low-level crimes, leading to high officer burnout rates, and driving up overtime expenses.
Asked to assess McDonnell’s first year-and-half as the city’s top lawman, Bass issued a written statement that said she considered McDonnell a strong partner “lowering crime, hiring more officers, and reversing longstanding trends.”
She added: “I will always keep pushing every City leader to do better by the people of Los Angeles.”
Bass said she would continue working with the chief to “identify measures” to reduce the number of police shootings, particularly those involving people in crisis.
Such changes would go hand in hand with an overhaul of the department’s much-maligned disciplinary system, which has faced criticism from some corners for not meting out harsh enough punishments when officers shoot unarmed people. The union that represents the department’s rank-and-file members has long complained of a double standard that lets well-connected officers and senior leaders off the hook.
Bass said that based on her conversations with officers, “the internal part of the disciplinary system has gotten a little better.”
Broader reforms have also been under discussion, with the council weighing new limits on so-called police pretextual stops, in which officers use a minor violation as justification to pull someone over and then investigate whether a more serious crime has occurred. Bass said she is in favor of further changes to tighten LAPD policies.
A recently published report by Catalyst California, a group that advocates for racial justice, found that such stops have continued to disproportionately affect Black and Latino drivers, even as the LAPD has scaled back their use over the past decade.
“Certainly, when I was younger, I experienced pretextual stops, and they are terrifying,” Bass said, adding that she believed the department’s culture was already changing. “I will tell you that as many roll calls as I’ve been to, a lot of officers already feel like they can’t do pretextual [stops] anymore — so I think there’s been progress there, but clearly more, more to go.”
Times staff writers David Zahniser and Noah Goldberg contributed to this report.
When the speaker of the Texas House recently outlined his priorities for the next legislative session, he mentioned tax relief, the development of data centers and a notion that sent many eyebrows skyward.
Dustin Burrows, a Republican from Lubbock, directed the chamber’s governmental oversight committee to study the legal and economic implications of Texas absorbing one or more counties in eastern New Mexico.
The “conversation,” Burrows told the Dallas Morning News, “is ultimately about culture, opportunity and the right to choose a path that reflects the shared values of the Permian and Delaware basins,” a vast desert expanse awash in oil and natural gas.
Apparently, Texas lawmakers have time and money to burn.
The notion of the swaggering state swallowing a chunk of its resistant neighbor is completely far-fetched. Just four states have been carved from the territory of others: Kentucky, Maine, Vermont and West Virginia. And it’s been quite a spell since the last time that happened. West Virginia split off from Confederate Virginia in 1863.
Realistically, there is no end of hurdles — legal, political, practical — that would have to be surmounted for a partial Texas-New Mexico merger to occur. Both states would need to agree — New Mexico is a hard no — and Congress would also have to approve.
But the impulse to bust up, break away and move on is as old as America itself and, at the same time, as fresh as the latest provocation to pass the lips of the nation’s frothing commander-in-chief.
The notion being if you don’t like it, then leave.
Or, at least, make noise about doing so.
Eastern New Mexico — dry, desolate — looks and feels very much like an appendage of West Texas. Its residents have long been estranged from the rest of their state and, especially, the Democratic leadership in Santa Fe, the state capital. That is not to say, however, the slightest inch of New Mexico territory will be going anywhere anytime soon.
Earlier this year, two Republican state lawmakers introduced a measure to give voters a say on whether they wanted their counties to break away — or, as one of the legislators put it, “Get the hell out of New Mexico.” The constitutional amendment died without a hearing.
When Burrows renewed talk of a takeover, Javier Martinez, speaker of the New Mexico House, responded without equivocation. “Over my dead body,” he said.
But the notion has garnered Burrows plenty of attention in the Lone Star State, a place with no lack of self-regard. And it certainly hasn’t hurt his standing with Texas’ arch-conservative Republican base, which has sometimes viewed Burrows with suspicion.
“People in Texas have a lot of fun with the idea that Texas … is entitled to secede and that maybe it can restore lost lands in New Mexico, Kansas, Colorado and beyond,” said Cal Jillson, a longtime student of Texas politics at Southern Methodist University. “It [appeals to] the conservative base, but also to everyone who loves to chuckle.”
Serious or not, secession — or independence, as some prefer to call it — has long been the dream of dissenters, of the discontented and those who feel put upon or politically unrepresented. America, after all, was birthed by divorcing itself from Britain and King George III.
For the longest time, residents in the ruddy north of blue California have agitated for a breakaway state called Jefferson. In recent years unhappy conservatives in eastern Oregon have spoken of splitting from their Democratic state and becoming a part of Republican Idaho. (Lawmakers in Boise passed a measure in 2023 inviting Oregon to the negotiating table; Oregon has so far declined to show.)
Since 2020, voters in 33 rural Illinois counties have voted to separate from their state and its Democratic leadership, a move welcomed in a measure passed by the Republican-run Indiana Legislature and signed by the state’s GOP governor, Mike Braun. (Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker dismissed the 2025 legislation as “a stunt.”)
Which, indeed, it appeared to be.
But Richard Kreitner said there is a certain logic behind secession movements, as governments from Washington to the statehouse are seen as increasingly unresponsive and dysfunctional.
“As people become more disenfranchised … more disillusioned from the political process, you’re going to start looking outside of the political process, the political structure, the constitutional structure, for a possible solution,” said Kreitner, who hosts a history podcast, “Think Back,” and has also written a book on secession. “If you’re going to do that in a country founded with a secessionist manifesto, the Declaration of Independence, at some point people are going to start thinking about that.”
Legitimate grievance grounded in serious concern is certainly worthy of attention. But exploiting that discontent to draw notice or score cheap political points — as Burrows seems to be doing in Texas — is something altogether different.
The chance of New Mexico ceding a part of itself to Texas is precisely zero, meaning the legislative study is less about “culture” and “opportunity” than the speaker and fellow Republicans evidently looking to troll their blue-state neighbor.
There are better, more productive ways for lawmakers to spend their time.
