Politics Desk

Thousands of middle-class Californians who depend on the state-run health insurance marketplace face premiums that are thousands of dollars higher than last year because enhanced federal subsidies that began during the COVID-19 pandemic have expired.

Despite fears that more people would go without coverage with the end of the extra benefits, the number enrolling in Covered California has held steady so far, according to state data.

But that may change.

Jessica Altman, executive director of Covered California, said that she believes the number of people dropping their coverage could increase as they receive bills with their new higher premiums in the mail this month. She said better data on enrollment will be available in the spring.

Altman said that even though the extra benefits ended Dec. 31, 92% of enrollees continue to receive government subsidies to help pay for their health insurance. Nearly half qualify for health insurance that costs $10 or less per month. And 17% of Californians renewing their Covered California policies will pay nothing for premiums if they keep their current plan.

The deadline to sign up for 2026 benefits is Saturday.

Here’s help in sorting out what the expiration of the enhanced subsidies for insurance provided under the Affordable Care Act, often called Obamacare, means in the Golden State.

What expired?

In 2021, Congress voted to temporarily to boost the amount of subsidies Americans could receive for an ACA plan. The law also expanded the program to families who had more money. Before the vote, only Americans with incomes below 400% of the federal poverty level — currently $62,600 a year for a single person or $128,600 for a family of four — were eligible for ACA subsidies. The 2021 vote eliminated the income cap and limited the cost of premiums for those higher-earning families to no more than 8.5% of their income.

How could costs change this year for those enrolled in Covered California?

Anyone with income above 400% of the federal poverty level no longer receives subsidies. And many below that level won’t receive as much assistance as they had been receiving since 2021. At the same time, fast-rising health costs boosted the average Covered California premium this year by more than 10.3%, deepening the burden on families.

How much would the net monthly premium for a Los Angeles couple with two children and a household income of $90,000 rise?

The family’s net premium for the benchmark Silver plan would jump to $699 a month this year from $414 a month last year, according to Covered California. That’s an increase of 69%, costing the family an additional $3,420 this year.

Who else could face substantially higher health bills?

People who retired before the Medicare-qualifying age of 65, believing that the enhanced subsidies were permanent, will be especially hit hard. Those with incomes above 400% of the federal poverty level could now be facing thousands of dollars in additional health insurance costs.

How did enrollment in Covered California change after the enhanced subsidies expired on Dec. 31?

As of Jan. 17, 1,906,033 Californians had enrolled for 2026 insurance. That’s less than 1% lower than the 1,921,840 who had enrolled by this time last year.

Who depends on Covered California?

Enrollees are mostly those who don’t have access to an employer’s health insurance plan and don’t qualify for Medi-Cal, the government-paid insurance for lower-income people and those who are disabled.

An analysis by KFF, a nonprofit that provides health policy information, found that nearly half the adults enrolled in an ACA plan are small-business owners or their employees, or are self-employed. Occupations using the health insurance exchanges where they can buy an ACA plan include realtors, farmers, chiropractors and musicians, the analysis found.

What is the underlying problem?

Healthcare spending has been increasing faster than overall inflation for years. The nation now spends more than $15,000 per person on healthcare each year. Medical spending today represents about 18% of the U.S. economy, which means that almost one out of every five dollars spent in the U.S. goes toward healthcare. In 1960, health spending was just 5% of the economy.

What has California done to help people who are paying more?

The state government allocated $190 million this year to provide subsidies for those earning up to 165% of the federal poverty level. This money will help keep monthly premiums consistent with 2025 levels for those with an annual income of up to $23,475 for an individual or $48,225 for a family of four, according to Covered California.

Where can I sign up?

People can find out whether they qualify for financial help and see their coverage options at the website CoveredCA.com.

What if I decide to go without health insurance?

People without insurance could face medical bills of tens of thousands of dollars if they become sick or get injured. And under California state law, those without coverage face an annual penalty of at least $900 for each adult and $450 for each child.

Reporting from New York, NY — Media outlets are reporting that federal prosecutors have granted immunity to the executive in charge of the National Enquirer amid an investigation into hush-money payments made on behalf of President Trump.

Vanity Fair and the Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources, were first to report Wednesday’s development involving David Pecker, CEO of the tabloid’s publisher, American Media Inc., and a longtime friend of the president.

Court papers connected to ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s guilty plea Tuesday say Pecker offered to help Trump squash negative stories during the 2016 campaign.

The Journal said Pecker shared details with prosecutors about payments Cohen says Trump directed to buy the silence of two women alleging affairs with him.

Trump’s account has shifted. He said recently he knew about payments “later on.”

MINNEAPOLIS — A man sprayed an unknown substance on U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and was tackled to the ground Tuesday during a town hall in Minneapolis, where tensions over federal immigration enforcement have come to a head after agents fatally shot an intensive care nurse and a mother of three this month.

The audience cheered as the man was pinned down and his arms were tied behind his back. In video of the incident, someone in the crowd can be heard saying, “Oh my God, he sprayed something on her.”

Just before that, Omar had called for the abolishment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to resign or face impeachment. Calls are mounting on Capitol Hill for Noem to step down after the shooting deaths in Minneapolis of two people who protested deportations. Few Republicans have risen to her defense.

“ICE cannot be reformed,” Omar said, seconds before the attack.

Minneapolis police said officers saw the man use a syringe to spray an unknown liquid at Omar. They immediately arrested him and booked him at the county jail for third-degree assault, spokesperson Trevor Folke said. Forensic scientists responded to the scene.

Police identified the man as 55-year-old Anthony Kazmierczak. It was not immediately clear if Kazmierczak had an attorney. The county public defenders’ office could not immediately be reached.

Omar continued the town hall for about 25 more minutes after the man was ushered out by security, saying she would not be intimidated.

There was a strong, vinegar-like smell after the man pushed on the syringe, according to an Associated Press journalist who was there. Photos of the device, which fell to the ground when he was tackled, showed what appeared to be a light brown liquid inside. There was no immediate word from officials on what it was.

Minneapolis City Council member LaTrisha Vetaw said some of the substance came into contact with her and State Sen. Bobby Joe Champion as well. She called it a deeply unsettling experience.

No one in the crowd of about 100 people had a noticeable physical reaction to the substance.

Omar says she is OK and ‘a survivor’

Walking out afterward, Omar said she felt a little flustered but was not hurt. She was going to be screened by a medical team.

She later posted on the social platform X: “I’m ok. I’m a survivor so this small agitator isn’t going to intimidate me from doing my work. I don’t let bullies win.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment Tuesday night.

President Trump has frequently criticized the congresswoman and has stepped up verbal attacks on her in recent months as he turned his focus on Minneapolis. During a Cabinet meeting in December, he called her “garbage.”

Hours earlier on Tuesday, the president criticized Omar as he spoke to a crowd in Iowa, saying his administration would only let in immigrants who “can show that they love our country.”

“They have to be proud, not like Ilhan Omar,” he said, drawing loud boos at the mention of her name.

He added: “She comes from a country that’s a disaster. So probably, it’s considered, I think — it’s not even a country.”

Omar is a U.S. citizen who fled her birthplace, Somalia, with her family at age 8 as a civil war tore apart the country.

The Minneapolis-St. Paul area is home to about 84,000 people of Somali descent — nearly a third of Somalis living in the U.S.

Officials condemn the attack

Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz expressed gratitude that Omar was safe, adding in a post on X: “Our state has been shattered by political violence in the last year. The cruel, inflammatory, dehumanizing rhetoric by our nation’s leaders needs to stop immediately.”

U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican, also denounced the assault.

“I am deeply disturbed to learn that Rep. Ilhan Omar was attacked at a town hall today” Mace said. “Regardless of how vehemently I disagree with her rhetoric — and I do — no elected official should face physical attacks. This is not who we are.”

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, called the attack “unacceptable.” He said he was relieved that Omar “is OK” and thanked police for their quick response, concluding: “This kind of behavior will not be tolerated in our city.”

The city has been reeling from the fatal shootings of two residents by federal immigration agents this month during Trump’s massive immigration enforcement surge. Intensive care unit nurse Alex Pretti was killed Saturday, less than three weeks after Renee Good was fatally shot behind the wheel of her vehicle.

Lawmakers face rising threats

The attack came days after a man was arrested in Utah for allegedly punching U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost, a Democrat from Florida, in the face during the Sundance Film Festival and saying Trump was going to deport him.

Threats against members of Congress have increased in recent years, peaking in 2021 in the aftermath of that year’s Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, before dipping slightly only to climb again, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Capitol Police.

Lawmakers have discussed the impact on their ability to hold town halls and public events, with some even citing the threat environment in their decisions not to seek reelection.

Omar has faced the most particular concern, long targeted with harsh language and personal attacks by Trump and other Republicans.

Following the assault on Omar, U.S. Capitol Police said in a statement that the agency was “working with our federal partners to see this man faces the most serious charges possible to deter this kind of violence in our society.”

It also released updated numbers detailing threats to members of Congress: 14,938 “concerning statements, behaviors, and communications directed against lawmakers, their families, staff and the Capitol Complex.”

That is a sharp increase from 2024, when the number of cases was 9,474, according to USCP. It is the third year in a row that the number of threats has increased.

Capitol Police have beefed up security measures across all fronts since Jan. 6, 2021, and the department has seen increased reporting after a new center was launched two years ago to process reports of threats.

Bargfeld and Schoenbaum write for the Associated Press. Schoenbaum reported from Salt Lake City. Associated Press writers Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu, Mike Balsamo, Lisa Mascaro and Michelle Price in Washington, and Farnoush Amiri in New York contributed.

WASHINGTON — When Rep. John D. Dingell was new to Congress, Buddy Holly ruled the charts, Rosa Parks refused to budge from her seat on a segregated bus and Dwight D. Eisenhower occupied the White House.

And on Capitol Hill, congressional committee chairmen ruled like feudal lords over federal policy, pursuing pet causes and waging vendettas with near impunity.

In time, Dingell became one of the most fearsome.

Now Dingell, the longest-serving member of the House, and other veteran Democrats are poised to take charge of the most powerful committees when Congress convenes in January.

In the four decades that Democrats were the dominant party, chairmen’s foibles, however egregious, did not threaten the party’s grip on power. But with narrower margins of control and an electorate willing to switch allegiances, there is no such assumption these days.

The question now is whether the “old bulls” like Dingell know it, and if they know it, whether they can adjust.

“This majority is not the kind of majority that we used to have, and it remains to be seen whether they understand that,” said one senior Democratic staffer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Building an empire

For 14 years, Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, presided over the Energy and Commerce Committee. Under his forceful and often uncompromising leadership, the panel expanded into an empire that famously claimed jurisdiction over “everything that moves, burns or is sold” in the United States.

It was in part because of the reputation of longtime chairmen like Dingell that former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who led the Republican insurgency that took control of Congress in 1995, imposed term limits for committee chairs, restricting them to three consecutive two-year terms.

But the Democrats have kept the tradition of assigning committee chairmanships by seniority. And that will elevate some of the most veteran — and oldest — members of Congress to committee leadership posts.

All but one of the new Senate chairmen are at least 60, and three are in their 80s. Three also have served for more than four decades.

The oldest is Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), who is 89 and is about to retake the helm of the Senate Appropriations Committee. He sometimes tires, aides say, but he still has full command of his senses and the respect of his peers.

It is in the House, however, where the phenomenon has attracted more attention. That’s partly because Democrats have been shut out of power for 12 years, while their Senate colleagues have been in the minority for just four. And it’s partly because of the irascible personalities of some of the incoming chairmen, known collectively as the “old bulls.”

The three best-known are Dingell, Rep. John Conyers Jr. from a neighboring district in Michigan, and Rep. Charles B. Rangel of New York. They are 80, 77, and 76 years old, respectively.

No green bananas

About two-thirds of the incoming House chairmen are older than 60.

“I don’t buy green bananas,” Rangel quipped recently, referring to his age.

Conyers, who served on the panels that considered the impeachment of Presidents Nixon and Clinton and who has mused about the possibility of impeaching the current president, is expected to take the helm of the Judiciary Committee.

Rangel, one of the most outspoken members of Congress, is set to lead the Ways and Means Committee, which sets tax policy.

On Capitol Hill, staffers trade stories about the old bulls and their infirmities, shaking their heads over Dingell’s hearing problems or Conyers’ “senior moments.” But the same staffers insist that the incoming chairmen are not only capable of taking the reins, but of handling them better than anyone else.

“There is a lot to the concept of seniority,” said Jeremy Mayer, who studies Congress at George Mason University in Virginia.

“Should the people who have been in Congress the longest have the most power? The simple answer is yes, because they have more experience and they can’t be steamrolled by the administration. Dingell, for instance, knows all the intricacies of the funding of at least seven federal agencies.”

Another argument in favor of seniority is that it limits intraparty fighting.

The party leadership elections this month illustrated how divisive competition for leadership posts can be. A rigid, impersonal system for naming chairmen is one way to keep the peace.

“Seniority has always been a way to prevent bloodshed,” Mayer said.

The downside is that it can foster autocratic behavior. In the past, Democratic leaders found the chairmen hard to control, in part because their positions did not depend on the party, and the chairmen tended to outlast the leadership.

Steven Smith, a social sciences professor who studies government and political parties at Washington University in St. Louis, says political parties have evolved since then.

“Before the 1980s, committee chairs pretty much went their own way. But since the 1980s, chairs are expected to look out for the party’s overall interest,” he said. “There will be some tension between committee chairs and party leaders on this.”

One potential point of tension is that many of today’s old bulls are old-fashioned liberals. Dingell introduces a proposal for nationalized healthcare in every session of Congress. Conyers has used his staff to pursue favorite concerns of left-wing bloggers, such as voting irregularities in the 2004 elections.

By contrast, the freshman class of Democrats includes a number of centrist or conservative Democrats, many of them uncomfortable with liberal positions on such issues as abortion, gun control and same-sex marriage.

Democratic leaders have already set their sights on 2008, with the goal of regaining the White House and expanding their margin of control in Congress.

“Democrats know that they won this election by appealing to the middle of the spectrum,” Smith said. “And they know that the first rule is to do no harm, to not alienate the folks who gave them the election.”

Doing that will require the incoming House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), herself a traditional liberal, to keep her chairmen focused on issues that promote the party’s broader agenda, not necessarily their own favorite issues.

“For some, it will take a little relearning,” said Smith. “They will have to make a choice: Do they want to start making a record for themselves and their party going into 2008? And what kind of record do they want it to be — a record of legislation, or a record of position-taking and rhetoric?”

Toeing the line

So far, the old bulls have stayed on message — mostly.

Conyers has stopped talking about impeaching President Bush.

Dingell has lauded the benefits of bipartisanship while promising tougher oversight of the administration.

And Rangel has remained coy about the fate of the tax cuts passed by Republicans in recent years, though he caused some heartburn when he brought up his desire to bring back the draft.

Democratic insiders say the old bulls won’t overreach. They say they know better than most what it’s like to gain and then lose a majority. And they haven’t been in a deep freeze for the last 12 years; rather, they’ve been strategizing with their colleagues about how to return to power.

Steve Elmendorf, who served as senior advisor to former Rep. Richard Gephardt, who led the Democrats in both the majority and the minority, says there are two big reasons why no one in the party even whispers about challenging the old bulls, no matter how old or intemperate.

“One, a lot of these chairman worked hard to help win. And when you win, the people who helped are going to move up,” Elmendorf said. “Two, they have a tremendous amount of institutional knowledge. They served in the majority, and they can hit the ground running.”

maura.reynolds@latimes.com

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Likely chairmen

Democratic veterans in line to run key House committees:

John Conyers Jr.

Committee: Judiciary

Age: 77

First elected: 1964

District: Detroit area

Highlights: Conyers is the only Judiciary Committee member to serve during the impeachment hearings of Presidents Nixon and Clinton. He recently dropped calls for an investigation into whether President Bush should be impeached.

Quote: “The American people sent a clear message that they do not want a rubber-stamp Congress that simply signs off the president’s agenda.”

—

John D. Dingell

Committee: Energy and Commerce

Age: 80

First elected: 1955

District: southeastern Michigan

Highlights: The longest-serving congressman, Dingell ran Energy and Commerce for 14 years, expanding its reach to include two-fifths of all House bills. He oversaw the breakup of AT&T; and cable deregulation.

Quote: “We’re not after anybody,” Dingell said of his new power to subpoena Bush administration officials, but added that they will be “invited to come forward.”

—

Charles B. Rangel

Committee: Ways and Means

Age: 76

First elected: 1970

District: northern Manhattan

Highlights: As a member of Ways and Means, Rangel has worked for targeted federal tax credits to benefit impoverished urban communities, including New York City’s Harlem, his political power base for four decades.

Quote: “Since it appeared there would be a Democratic majority, I can’t tell you the number of pharmaceutical companies and health plans that have come to me and said we can work together to put together a plan to cover the 47 million uninsured.”

TOKYO — There is in George Bush, as in many successful politicians, an element that is always on stage, an element of the eternal campaigner who responds with the instinctive gesture, sometimes incongruous and sometimes just right.

And so it was in Tokyo, notwithstanding the dreary mood of a rainy February afternoon, the solemnity of the state funeral of Emperor Hirohito and, on top of all that, the worrisome political problems posed by his troubled nomination of John Tower to be secretary of defense. Incongruity and the perfect touch, moments apart.

The funeral for the emperor who had reigned in wartime Japan was not a simple rite. It was a precisely staged ceremony of official mourning. The name of the man it memorialized brought back from fading memory the atrocities of World War II.

Arriving at the U.S. Embassy after this affair of state, the formally attired President flashed a thumbs-up sign–the simple gesture in incongruous contrast to the somber tenor of the occasion.

Moments later, he tossed aside a prepared address, delivered an off-the-cuff speech to a crowd of Americans at the embassy, and then spied a cluster of youngsters in the group. That gave him an idea.

Singling out the personal aide who accompanies him throughout his day, whether in Washington, Tokyo, or points in between, Bush said, “Tim McBride’s a good photographer.” With that, the President invited the children to hand McBride their cameras. They obliged, and he posed with each of them for pictures, McBride snapping away as the brief visit was stretched out by 15 minutes.

“It was like a campaign stop,” said the senior White House official who recounted the story, satisfied with his boss’ spontaneous, crowd-pleasing gesture.

Bush’s presidential campaign was marked in its final months by its careful control of each week’s agenda. No matter how Michael S. Dukakis would attack, Bush steadfastly kept to his script, making sure that the focus remained wherever he shined his light. Thus, Willie Horton and the American flag became the enduring symbols of the autumn.

In the opening days of the Bush Administration, however, the light has occasionally flickered. Its beam has been cast with less certainty, as outside events have distracted public attention from the President’s message. And nowhere has that become more evident than here in Tokyo.

Bush was invited to Japan to attend the Hirohito funeral. He took advantage of the ceremony to schedule individual meetings with nearly two dozen other leaders from countries large and small, squeezing 17 into a 30-hour period.

Much as Bush threw open the doors of the White House on the morning after his inauguration to a symbolic sampling of the American populace, he opened the Spanish-style residence of the U.S. ambassador to a representation of the world leadership–prime ministers and presidents and even a king (Baudouin I of Belgium).

One after another, they arrived in the same room in which Gen. Douglas MacArthur received Hirohito in September, 1945, a month after the end of World War II.

And with time running out, the President arranged a dinner Friday with one more visitor to Tokyo–meeting King Juan Carlos I of Spain, in a hotel restaurant.

But it was the Tower- mondai , as the Tower problem is called here, that riveted the attention of the White House staff and most of the 80 or so American reporters who accompanied Bush to Tokyo when they woke up Friday morning to the news that the Senate Armed Services Committee was about to reject the nomination.

Those who struggled to keep track of the funeral on large television screens in the White House press room at the Okura Hotel were swimming upstream: The tide Friday was swelled by a torrent of stories bearing Tokyo datelines and they were all about Tower.

And what about the President’s daylong effort to review the issues of the day with such foreign leaders as Presidents Richard von Weizsaecker of West Germany, Corazon Aquino of the Philippines and Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan?

What about evolving East-West relations, Afghanistan and Iran, U.S. support for President Aquino? All became afterthoughts.

The White House took particular pains not to offend Japanese sensitivities on a day of mourning.

Tokyo had instructed dignitaries on proper funeral attire, down to the black handkerchief in the pocket of the rented morning coat Bush brought from Washington.

Communications went back and forth between Tokyo and Washington, for example, on one particular point of concern: Barbara Bush’s request to wear her trademark triple string of fake pearls.

(Mrs. Bush’s identification with fake pearls has become so well known that it came as a surprise to some aides when she made a quick shopping stop after the funeral and purchased real Japanese pearls–a double-strand bracelet, with a silver clasp. Mrs. Bush herself was surprised when the jeweler refused to take a personal check. So she cashed her check–about $200–with U.S. Embassy personnel and paid in cash.)

The Japanese said pearls would not be suitable at the funeral. But after a time, this difficult decision was reversed. It seems that the pearls–artificial or otherwise–would be permissible, because pearls are, in the Japanese view, “the tears of the oyster.”

Times staff writer Betty Cuniberti contributed to this story.

SAY THIS MUCH for President Bush: He is not deaf to the inner whispers of his intuition.

“I know there’s no evidence that shows the death penalty has a deterrent effect,” he reportedly said as Texas governor, “but I just feel in my gut it must be true.”

Six years and two wars into his presidency, the president still relies on his gut instincts. His recent fly-in to Baghdad was, he explained to U.S. troops, “to look Prime Minister [Nouri] Maliki in the eyes — to determine whether or not he is as dedicated to a free Iraq as you are.” The president’s snap assessment? “I believe he is.” He told Larry King in an interview last month: “If you make decisions based upon what you believe in your heart of hearts, you stay resolved.”

In flying by the seat of his pants, Bush has much company.

“Buried deep within each and every one of us, there is an instinctive, heart-felt awareness that provides — if we allow it to — the most reliable guide,” offered Prince Charles, whose decisions also have been relentlessly second-guessed for much of his adult life.

For those disposed to follow their inner guide, today’s pop psychology offers books on “intuitive healing,” “intuitive learning,” “intuitive managing,” “intuitive trading” and much more.

So, when hiring and firing, fearing and risking, investing and gambling, should we follow Bush’s example and tune down that analytical, linear, left-brained mind? Should we stop obsessing over logic and data and trust the force within?

Today’s psychological science documents a vast intuitive mind. More than we realize, our thinking, memory and attitudes operate on two levels — conscious and unconscious — with the larger part operating automatically. We know more than we know we know.

Studies show that as we gain expertise, even reasoned judgments can become automatic. Rather than wend their way through a decision tree, experienced car mechanics and physicians will often, after a quick listen and look, diagnose problems. Chess masters intuitively know the right move. And Japanese chicken sexers use complex pattern recognition to separate newborn pullets and cockerels with near perfect accuracy.

Moreover, we’re all experts when it comes to reading people’s emotions. Psychologists Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal report that after viewing mere “thin slices” of college professors’ teaching — three two-second clips — observers’ ratings of them correlate well with students’ end-of-semester ratings. To gain a sense of someone’s energy and warmth, six seconds will often do.

So, is our president smart to harness the powers of his intuition? Or should he, and we, be subjecting our hunches to scrutiny?

Intuition is important, but we often underestimate its perils. My geographical intuition tells me that Reno is east of Los Angeles and that Rome is south of New York. But I am wrong. “The first principle,” said Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, “is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.” In hundreds of experiments, people have greatly overestimated their eyewitness recollections, their interviewee assessments and their stock-picking talents. It’s humbling to realize how often we misjudge and mispredict reality and then display “belief perseverance” when facing disconfirming information.

We fear things that claim lives in bunches. Smoking kills 400,000 Americans a year, and carbon dioxide looks to be the biggest weapon of mass destruction, but terrorists frighten us more. We are told, but are unmoved by, statistics showing that the most dangerous part of air travel is the drive to the airport.

Intuition — automatic, effortless, unreasoned thinking — guides our lives. But intuition also errs, and false intuitions may go before a fall.

After meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin, Bush felt that he had him sized up. “I looked the man in the eye,” Bush said. “I was able to get a sense of his soul.” But the president has since expressed frustration at Putin’s democracy-suffocating record. Bush also told Bob Woodward that intuition was a key to his decision to launch the Iraq war: “I’m a gut player. I rely on my instincts.” Bush still insists that he made the right decision, but most Americans now disagree.

The president, like all of us, should check his intuitions against the facts. He can welcome the creative whispers of the unseen mind, but only as the beginning of inquiry. Smart thinking often begins with hunches but continues as one examines assumptions, evaluates evidence, invites critique and tests conclusions. As Proverbs says: “He who trusts in his own heart is a fool.”

The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to approve a law aimed at boosting transparency at the Charter Reform Commission, by requiring that members of that panel disclose any private talks they have with the city’s elected officials.

The vote comes about two months before the commission, which began its work in July, is scheduled to finish its deliberations and deliver a list of recommendations to the council.

Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, who proposed the ordinance, said she has been trying since August to pass a measure requiring the disclosure of such private conversations, known as “ex parte” communications. That effort was greeted with “nearly six months of stonewalling,” she said.

“While this is an important victory for oversight and transparency, government accountability shouldn’t be this hard to secure,” she said.

The ordinance, which also applies to communications between commissioners and elected officials’ staff, is expected to go into effect in about a month. Meanwhile, the 13-member Charter Reform Commission approved its own policy a week ago requiring the disclosure of private conversations between its members and city elected officials.

Some government watchdogs say the disclosures are needed to prevent council members and other city elected officials from seeking to dictate the details of the recommendations that are ultimately issued by the commission. The volunteer citizens panel is currently looking at such ideas as increasing the size of the council and potentially changing the duties of citywide elected officials.

“If the public is going to trust the outcomes of our charter reform process, it has to be transparent and credible,” Commissioner Carla Fuentes, who pushed for the new disclosure policy at its Jan. 21 meeting.

The commission has not yet voted on a proposal to also require disclosure of communications with elected officials’ staff.

It is also looking at the idea of adopting ranked choice voting, where voters list all of the candidates in order of preference, and switching the city to a multi-year budget process.

Councilmember Bob Blumenfield raised warnings about the council’s vote on Tuesday, saying charter reform is substantively different from the 2021 redistricting process. Council members should be engaging in conversations with its volunteer commissioners, to help them better understand how the city is run, Blumenfield said.

Those communications will ensure the commissioners make an informed decision what to recommend for the ballot later this year.

“I don’t want this message to be that it’s somehow bad for council members and mayor and elected officials to be engaging in this process,” he said. “To the contrary, I think we need to double down our engagement. We need to speak to those commissioners. They need to learn a lot more about how this city really works for this thing to be effective.”

The commission is scheduled to take up the motion to disclose staffer conversations at its next meeting on Feb. 7.

Rob Quan, an organizer with the group Unrig LA, said he doesn’t want to see a repeat of 2021, when members of the citizens commission on redistricting were regularly contacted by council members’ aides. Those ex parte communications were not disclosed, he said.

“If it didn’t apply to staff, we would simply be reinforcing the power of the staff, which have from day one been the most problematic aspect of this commission,” said Quan, whose group focuses on government oversight.

He and a group of other transparency activists have proposed a total ban on ex parte communication, which hasn’t been considered by the current commission.

Before arriving at CBS News in October to become editor in chief, Bari Weiss had never been inside a television control room.

But on Tuesday, she presented her plan for taking the storied news division forward after a series of moves that has damaged its standing among viewers, failed to improve ratings, lowered internal morale and generated highly negative press coverage.

Weiss, addressing the staff gathered at the CBS Broadcast Center in Manhattan, reached out to those who have not been impressed with what they have seen so far. “I’m not going to stand up here today and ask for your trust,” she said, according to a transcript provided by CBS News. “I’m going to earn it, just like we have to do with our viewers.”

The statement was an acknowledgment that the early days of Weiss’ tenure have not been smooth. Weiss has dealt with her own lack of familiarity with TV news procedures, the entrenched culture of a legacy media institution and suspicion that partisan politics are driving changes. The town hall-style meeting was an attempt at a reset.

Weiss fought the claims that her mandate at CBS News is to provide friendlier coverage to the Trump administration as parent company Paramount pursues an acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. She said she has never discussed CBS News coverage of the White House with Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison, to whom she reports.

Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison attends the premiere of “Ghosted” at AMC Lincoln Square in New York in April 2023.

(Evan Agostini/Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

“I’m here to do one thing,” Weiss said. “It’s not to be a mouthpiece for anybody. It’s simply to be a mouthpiece for fairness and the pursuit of truth.”

She told employees her business goal for CBS News is to expand its reach on digital platforms.

“We are not doing enough to meet audiences where they are, so they are leaving us,” she said, adding that the network’s strategy until now has been “to cling to the audience that remains on broadcast television. If we stick to that strategy, we’re toast.”

Weiss said she wants to focus on expanding the most successful CBS News programs — “60 Minutes,” “CBS Sunday Morning” and true crime magazine “48 Hours” to other platforms, including podcasts, newsletters and live events. “We need to shift to a streaming mentality immediately,” she said, adding that “our competitors are not just the other broadcast networks.

The pronouncement — which could have been made five to 10 years ago — was welcomed by some CBS News employees who believe the operation has lagged in using its resources to expand beyond traditional TV. Overall, they were encouraged by Weiss’ remarks.

“She went a good way to bring people together,” said one attendee. “That was a good start.”

One question posed to Weiss, which is likely to loom over her tenure, is how much time does CBS News have to replace the substantial revenue still generated by traditional TV with digital enterprises. Ad rates for digital platforms are substantially lower than those for TV, which means greater dependence on subscriptions and other revenue sources.

Weiss did not provide any specifics on the level of investment for the new initiatives. “The emphasis going forward is going to be building things that people are ultimately willing to pay for,” she said.

Weiss said the network is recruiting “fresh young talent” that will focus on reporting first through social media, “but will appear everywhere else too.” She showed three recent hires based in London, Kyiv and New York who deliver their stories across different platforms using their iPhones.

Weiss also announced the hiring of 19 new contributors, several of whom have already appeared on the Free Press, the digital news site that CBS News parent Paramount acquired as part of the deal to bring her into the company.

The dependence on contributors, who are not employees but paid for their TV appearances, is commonly used on cable news networks that need to fill hours of programming.

Weiss has acknowledged to colleagues that she’s not familiar with the process of moving the assembly line of stories from the assignment stage, through the reporting and editing process and onto a schedule of programs, some of which run 365 days a year.

Her lack of experience was glaring in her handling of “60 Minutes,” the network’s most prestigious and profitable program. CBS News staffers were stunned when she decided to pull a segment on the abuses at an El Salvador prison used by the U.S. government to detain undocumented immigrants from Venezuela.

“CBS Evening News” anchor Tony Dokoupil and the network’s chief national correspondent Matt Gutman.

(CBS News)

The story had been researched and reported for months by correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi and fully vetted by the standards department when Weiss yanked it one day before its originally scheduled Dec. 21 air date. Alfonsi called the move political and the conflict added to the narrative that Weiss is trying to placate the White House.

Weiss insisted Alfonsi’s story needed more reporting including an interview with an administration official, even though the White House had already declined requests to participate. The segment ran a month later with only minor additions to the reporting which executives inside the news division say was not worth the public drama created by Weiss’ editorial decision.

At the meeting, Weiss acknowledged she would have approached the matter differently but defended her intent.

“It’s always gonna be my prerogative as editor of this newsroom to say that I want more information, and to push to get more information,” she said. “Now, am I ever going to hold something again after it has been put out there with promos? I don’t want to make that exact same decision again, no I do not.”

Weiss added that Paramount management had no influence on her decision to hold Alfonsi’s story. “I wanna just say this as plainly and clearly as possible,” she said. “I was not pressured by David Ellison or anyone else.”

She said the journalism standards at the network have not changed since she arrived, but believed the division has been more welcoming to a wider range of viewpoints.

“I don’t think a year ago CBS News would’ve had [former National Rifle Assn. spokesperson] Dana Loesch, let’s say, on the morning show,” Weiss said. “I think that’s something to be proud of.”

Weiss praised the revamped “CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil” — with a new anchor she handpicked, even though critics have been harsh and the ratings have slipped. All three of the major network evening newscasts are down in January compared to a year ago, but CBS is off the most at around 20%.

Segments on the program, such as Dokoupil’s frothy tribute to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and a brief item on the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington that had President Trump calling it the fault of the Capitol police, were widely panned. But the attention has died down as the program has settled into being a straight-ahead newscast.

While the fiascoes involving “60 Minutes” or the first week of the “CBS Evening News” have been demoralizing, some journalists in the division are still hopeful Weiss can be a catalyst for change and want her to succeed.

But her rocky start will be tough to turn around according to Tom Bettag, a former network news producer who is now a lecturer at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism.

“Weiss started off so miserably with ’60 Minutes’ and the Dokoupil launch, that you wonder if she can redeem herself,” Bettag said. “You only get one chance to make a first impression.”

Weiss isn’t the first executive to be put in charge of a TV news operation without any hands-on experience. It was not easy for the others, either.

Michael Gartner, a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper editor was appointed to oversee NBC News in the mid-1980s. During his turbulent five-year tenure, he struggled with talent egos as he tried to get costs under control. Walter Isaacson came from Time magazine to run CNN in 2001. He was gone after 18 months, expressing bewilderment over the public scrutiny of every network move.

Weiss’ previous management experience was running the Free Press, which has a staff of 60 compared to the sprawling CBS News operation with more than 1,200 employees around the world.

Weiss is also an anomaly as she comes to the job with an established point of view. Her journalism career was as an opinion writer before she launched the Free Press. The site gained a following for its criticism of the progressive left and purveyors of so-called “woke” policies.

Weiss has been vocal in telling CBS News employees that the public has less trust in legacy media, an assertion that is often pushed by Trump and his supporters. (She told the meeting that the network needs to target “independents … those who want to equip themselves with all the facts, who are curious to hear what’s going on, even if it offends their sensibilities.”)

Weiss carries that agenda while she tries to overcome the whispers of “she’s not one of us” at CBS News, which even loyal insiders believe leans too heavily on its storied history defined by 20th century journalism icons such as Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow.

“I think this place has allowed the ghosts of the past to walk these halls a little too much,” one CBS News journalist said. “They need to be acknowledged, but not obsessed over every day. The New York Yankees don’t sit around dwelling on Babe Ruth every day. They focus on winning.”

While “60 Minutes” and “CBS Evening News” are the editorial backbone of the division and are getting the bulk of Weiss’ attention, the division also has to chart a future course for “CBS Mornings,” a major revenue generator. Co-host Gayle King’s contract is up in May and last year there were leaks to an industry trade suggesting that Paramount wants her to return in another role and presumably a lower salary.

“CBS Mornings” is in third place behind ABC’s “Good Morning America” and NBC’s “Today,” but still has a following and King is the most recognizable star in the news division. Morning show viewing is habitual and a change in the host chair could lead King’s fans to abandon the program. Once viewers leave, it’s hard to get them back, especially in today’s fragmented media environment where consumers have a seemingly endless array of alternatives.

At the town hall, Weiss gave a positive shout-out to King, who is angry over the press reports. “I’ve had people come and pet me like a puppy and say, ‘I’m sorry that you’re leaving CBS, I won’t watch those guys anymore,’” King said.

“I just want everyone here to know that she’s absolutely beloved,” Weiss said. “And we see her long into the future here at CBS.”

People close to the morning program who were not authorized to comment publicly believe King would return for another contract. But the network is already preparing for the future if King does depart.

Adriana Diaz and Kelly O’Grady were named co-hosts of “CBS Saturday Morning” and will be the principal fill-ins for King on the weekday program, clearly an attempt to get them familiar with the audience. “It’s a very explicit attempt to start building a bench,” said one insider.

Before the town hall meeting on Tuesday, many CBS News veterans were frustrated that Weiss had not addressed the entire division during the first three months of her tenure. King, who told colleagues she was impressed overall with the presentation, told Weiss they needed to meet sooner.

“For many people — they’ve never even heard your freakin’ voice,” King said. “So it’s good to hear, to see you’re a real person and this is what you want.”

SACRAMENTO — Amid a national uproar over the recent killing of a Minnesota man by immigration agents, the California Senate on Tuesday approved proposed legislation that would make it easier to sue law enforcement officials suspected of violating an individual’s constitutional rights.

Senate Bill 747 by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) creates a pathway for residents to take legal action against federal agents for the excessive use of force, unlawful home searches, interfering with a right to protest and other violations.

The bill, which cleared a Senate committee earlier this year, passed 30-10, along Democrat and Republican party lines.

Other states, including New York and Connecticut, are weighing similar legislation following widespread anger over the actions during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdowns and raids.

Existing laws already allow lawsuits against state and local law enforcement officials. But it is much harder to bring claims against a federal officers. Wiener said his bill would rectify those impediments.

Several state law enforcement agencies oppose the legislation, arguing it will also be used to sue local officers.

Tuesday’s vote follows the killing of 37-year-old Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Saturday by federal officials, who tackled him to the ground, appeared to remove his holstered handgun and then shot Pretti several times in the back. During the debate on the state Senate floor Tuesday, several Democratic lawmakers called Pretti’s death an execution or murder.

Renee Good, a 37-year old mother of three, was also shot and killed by agents earlier this month in Minnesota in what federal officials have alleged was an act of self defense when she drove her vehicle toward an officer — an assertion under dispute.

The deaths, as well as the government’s insistence that immigration agents don’t require judicial warrants to enter homes, have outraged Democrats leaders, who accuse federal officers of flouting laws as they seek to deport thousands of undocumented immigrants.

Wiener, speaking to reporters before Tuesday’s vote, said that his legislation would reform the law to ensure that federal officials are held accountable for wrongdoing.

“Under current law, if a local or state officer shoots your mom…or publicly executes an ICU nurse, you can sue,” said Wiener. “That’s longstanding civil rights law, but in the current law, it’s almost impossible to file that same lawsuit against the federal agent who does the exact same thing.”

During Tuesday’s debate on the senate floor, Sen. Tony Strickland (R-Huntington Beach) acknowledged the “chaos” in Minnesota, but criticized the bill as being about immigration politics. He urged his colleagues to focus on the state’s affordability crisis, rather than challenges to the federal government.

“We need to start focusing on California-specific issues like gas, gas prices,” said Strickland.

Strickland’s comments drew a rebuke from Sen. Susan Rubio, (D-West Covina) who said the bill wasn’t about immigration, but “about the egregious violation of people’s rights. and the murders that we are witnessing.”

“This is about equal justice under the law,” said Rubio, a one-time undocumented citizen.

Wiener’s bill now heads to the state Assembly. The senator, who is running to fill the seat by outgoing Rep. Nancy Pelosi, told reporters that he didn’t know if Gov. Gavin Newsom supports his legislation or if he would sign it into law if it passes the full Legislature.

Wiener’s proposed law was put forth after George Retes Jr, a California security guard was detained following a July raid in Camarillo. Retes, a U.S. citizen and Army veteran, said he was held for three days without the ability to make a phone call or see an attorney.

Retes has accused Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin of spreading false information about him to justify his detention. The Homeland Security department said in a statement last year that Retes impeded its operation, which he denies.

Under U.S. Code Section 1983, a person can sue state and local officials who violate their constitutional rights. A state law also allows lawsuits against state and local officials for interfering with a person’s constitutional rights by force or threat.

When it comes to filing legal action against federal officials, lawsuits can be brought through the Bivens doctrine, which refers to the 1971 Supreme Court ruling in Bivens vs. Six Unknown Federal Agents that established that federal officials can be sued for monetary damages for constitutional violations.

But in recent decades, the Supreme Court has repeatedly restricted the ability to sue under Bivens. Some Supreme Court justices have also argued that it’s up to Congress to pass a statute that would allow federal officers to be sued when they violate the Constitution.

Those opposed to Wiener’s law include the Peace Officers Research Assn. of California, which represents more than 85,000 public safety members. The group argues it would result in more lawsuits against local and state officials, essentially creating multiple paths for litigation.

WASHINGTON — Families of two Trinidadian nationals killed in a Trump administration boat strike last October sued the federal government on Tuesday, calling the attack a war crime and part of an “unprecedented and manifestly unlawful U.S. military campaign.”

The lawsuit is thought to be the first wrongful death case arising from the three dozen strikes that the administration has launched since September on boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. The complaint will test the legal justification of the Trump administration attacks; government officials have defended them as necessary to stem the flow of drugs into the United States but many legal experts say they amount to a brazen violation of the laws of armed conflict.

The complaint echoes many of the frequently articulated concerns about the boat strikes, noting for instance that they have been carried out without congressional authorization and at a time when there is no military conflict between the United States and drug cartels that under the laws of war could justify the lethal attacks.

“These premeditated and intentional killings lack any plausible legal justification. Thus, they were simply murders, ordered by individuals at the highest levels of government and obeyed by military officers in the chain of command,” the lawsuit says.

The Defense Department said in an email that it does not comment on ongoing litigation.

The lawsuit was filed by the mother of Chad Joseph and the sister of Rishi Samaroo, two Trinidadian nationals who were among six people killed in an October 14 missile strike on a boat traveling from Venezuela to Trinidad. The men were not members of any drug cartel, the lawsuit says, but had instead been fishing in the waters off the Venezuelan coast and were returning to their homes in Trinidad and Tobago.

The two had caught a ride home to Las Cuervas, a fishing community where they were from, on a small boat targeted in a strike announced on Truth Social by President Trump. All six people aboard the boat were killed.

“These killings were wrongful because they took place outside of armed conflict and in circumstances in which Mr. Joseph and Mr. Samaroo were not engaged in activities that presented a concrete, specific, and imminent threat of death or serious physical injury, and where there were means other than lethal force that could have reasonably been employed to neutralize any such threat,” the lawsuit says.

The death toll from the boat strikes is now up to at least 126 people, with the inclusion of those presumed dead after being lost at sea, the U.S. military confirmed Monday. The figure includes 116 people who were killed immediately in at least 36 attacks carried out since early September, with 10 others believed dead because searchers did not locate them following a strike.

The lawsuit is the first to challenge the legality of the boat strikes in court, according to Jen Nessel, a spokesperson for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which filed the lawsuit in federal court in Massachusetts on behalf of the families, along with the ACLU and others.

Nessel said in an email that the center also has a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking the release of the legal justification for the strikes.

Tucker and Finley write for the Associated Press.

Prominent Republicans and gun rights advocates helped elicit a White House turnabout this week after bristling over the administration’s characterization of Alex Pretti, the second person killed this month by a federal officer in Minneapolis, as being responsible for his own death because he lawfully possessed a weapon.

The death produced no clear shifts in U.S. gun politics or policies, even as President Trump shuffles the lieutenants in charge of his militarized immigration crackdown. But important voices in Trump’s coalition have called for a thorough investigation of Pretti’s death while also criticizing inconsistencies in some Republicans’ 2nd Amendment stances.

If the dynamic persists, it could give Republicans problems as Trump heads into a midterm election year with voters already growing skeptical of his overall immigration approach. The concern is acute enough that Trump’s top spokeswoman sought Monday to reassert his brand as a staunch gun rights supporter.

“The president supports the 2nd Amendment rights of law-abiding American citizens, absolutely,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.

Leavitt qualified that “when you are bearing arms and confronted by law enforcement, you are raising … the risk of force being used against you.”

Videos contradict early statements from administration

That still marked a retreat from the administration’s previous messages about the shooting of Pretti. It came the same day the president dispatched border advisor Tom Homan to Minnesota, seemingly elevating him over Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino, who had been in charge in Minneapolis.

Within hours of Pretti’s death on Saturday, Bovino suggested Pretti “wanted to … massacre law enforcement,” and Noem said Pretti was “brandishing” a weapon and acted “violently” toward officers.

“I don’t know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign,” Noem said.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, an architect of Trump’s mass deportation effort, went further on X, declaring Pretti “an assassin.”

Bystander videos contradicted each claim, instead showing Pretti holding a cellphone and helping a woman who had been pepper-sprayed by a federal officer. Within seconds, Pretti was sprayed too and taken to the ground by multiple officers. No video disclosed thus far has shown him unholstering his concealed weapon, which he had a Minnesota permit to carry. It appeared that one officer took Pretti’s gun and walked away with it just before shots began.

As multiple videos went viral online and on television, Vice President JD Vance reposted Miller’s assessment, while Trump shared an alleged photo of “the gunman’s gun, loaded (with two additional full magazines!).”

On Tuesday, Trump was asked whether he agreed with Miller’s comment describing Pretti as an “assassin” and answered “no.” But he added that protesters “can’t have guns” and said he wants the death investigated.

“You can’t walk in with guns, you just can’t,” Trump told reporters on the White House lawn before departing for a trip to Iowa.

Swift reactions from gun rights advocates

The National Rifle Assn., which has backed Trump three times, released a statement that began by casting blame on Minnesota Democrats it accused of stoking protests. But the group lashed out after a federal prosecutor in California said on X, “If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.”

That analysis, the NRA said, is “dangerous and wrong.”

FBI Director Kash Patel magnified the blowback Sunday on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo.” No one, Patel said, can “bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It’s that simple.”

Erich Pratt, vice president of Gun Owners of America, was incredulous.

“I have attended protest rallies while armed, and no one got injured,” he said on CNN.

Conservative officials around the country made the same connection between the 1st and 2nd amendments.

“Showing up at a protest is very American. Showing up with a weapon is very American,” state Rep. Jeremy Faison, who leads the GOP caucus in Tennessee, said on X.

Trump’s first-term vice president, Mike Pence, called for a “full and transparent investigation of this officer involved shooting.”

A different response from the past

Liberals, conservatives and nonpartisan experts noted how the administration’s response differed from past conservative positions involving protests and weapons.

Multiple Trump supporters were found to have weapons during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Trump issued blanket pardons to all of them.

Republicans were critical in 2020 when Mark and Patricia McCloskey had to pay fines after pointing guns at protesters who marched through their St. Louis neighborhood after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. And then there’s Kyle Rittenhouse, a counterprotester acquitted after fatally shooting two men and injuring a third in Kenosha, Wis., during the post-Floyd protests.

“You remember Kyle Rittenhouse and how he was made a hero on the right,” Trey Gowdy, a Republican former congressman and attorney for Trump during one of his first-term impeachments. “Alex Pretti’s firearm was being lawfully carried. … He never brandished it.”

Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor who has studied the history of the gun debate, said the fallout “shows how tribal we’ve become.” Republicans spent years talking about the 2nd Amendment as a means to fight government tyranny, he said.

“The moment someone who’s thought to be from the left, they abandon that principled stance,” Winkler said.

Meanwhile, Democrats who have criticized open and concealed carry laws for years, Winkler added, are not amplifying that position after Pretti’s death.

Uncertain effects in an election year

The blowback against the administration from core Trump supporters comes as Republicans are trying to protect their threadbare majority in the U.S. House and face several competitive Senate races.

Perhaps reflecting the stakes, GOP staff and campaign aides were hesitant Monday to talk about the issue at all.

The House Republican campaign chairman, Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina, is sponsoring the GOP’s most significant gun legislation of this congressional term, a proposal to make state concealed-carry permits reciprocal across all states.

The bill cleared the House Judiciary Committee in the fall. Asked Monday whether Pretti’s death and the Minneapolis protests might affect debate, an aide to Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) did not offer any update on the bill’s prospects.

Gun rights advocates have notched many legislative victories in Republican-controlled statehouses in recent decades, including rolling back gun-free zones around schools and churches and expanding gun possession rights in schools, on university campuses and in other public spaces.

William Sack, legal director of the Second Amendment Foundation, said he was surprised and disappointed by the administration’s initial statements after the Pretti shooting. Trump’s vacillating, he said, is “very likely to cost them dearly with the core of a constituency they count on.”

Barrow and Riccardi write for the Associated Press. AP writers Josh Boak in Washington and Kimberlee Kruesi in Providence, R.I., contributed to this report.

The Trump administration has not shied away from sharing AI-generated imagery online, embracing cartoonlike visuals and memes and promoting them on official White House channels.

But an edited — and realistic — image of civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong in tears after being arrested is raising new alarms about how the administration is blurring the lines between what is real and what is fake.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s account posted the original image from Levy Armstrong’s arrest before the official White House account posted an altered image that showed her crying. The doctored picture is part of a deluge of AI-edited imagery that has been shared across the political spectrum since the fatal shootings of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti by U.S. Border Patrol officers in Minneapolis

However, the White House’s use of artificial intelligence has troubled misinformation experts who fear the spreading of AI-generated or AI-edited images erodes public perception of the truth and sows distrust.

In response to criticism of the edited image of Levy Armstrong, White House officials doubled down on the post, with Deputy Communications Director Kaelan Dorr writing on X that the “memes will continue.” White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson also shared a post mocking the criticism.

David Rand, a professor of information science at Cornell University, says calling the altered image a meme “certainly seems like an attempt to cast it as a joke or humorous post, like their prior cartoons. This presumably aims to shield them from criticism for posting manipulated media.” He said the purpose of sharing the altered arrest image seems “much more ambiguous” than the cartoonish images the administration has shared in the past.

Memes have always carried layered messages that are funny or informative to people who understand them, but indecipherable to outsiders. AI-enhanced or AI-edited imagery is just the latest tool the White House uses to engage the segment of Trump’s base that spends a lot of time online, said Zach Henry, a Republican communications consultant who founded Total Virality, an influencer marketing firm.

“People who are terminally online will see it and instantly recognize it as a meme,” he said. “Your grandparents may see it and not understand the meme, but because it looks real, it leads them to ask their kids or grandkids about it.”

All the better if it prompts a fierce reaction, which helps it go viral, said Henry, who generally praised the work of the White House’s social media team.

The creation and dissemination of altered images, especially when they are shared by credible sources, “crystallizes an idea of what’s happening, instead of showing what is actually happening,” said Michael A. Spikes, a professor at Northwestern University and news media literacy researcher.

“The government should be a place where you can trust the information, where you can say it’s accurate, because they have a responsibility to do so,” he said. “By sharing this kind of content, and creating this kind of content … it is eroding the trust — even though I’m always kind of skeptical of the term trust — but the trust we should have in our federal government to give us accurate, verified information. It’s a real loss, and it really worries me a lot.”

Spikes said he already sees the “institutional crises” around distrust in news organizations and higher education, and feels this behavior from official channels inflames those issues.

Ramesh Srinivasan, a professor at UCLA and the host of the “Utopias” podcast, said many people are now questioning where they can turn to for “trustable information.” “AI systems are only going to exacerbate, amplify and accelerate these problems of an absence of trust, an absence of even understanding what might be considered reality or truth or evidence,” he said.

Srinivasan said he feels the White House and other officials sharing AI-generated content not only invites everyday people to continue to post similar content but also grants permission to others who are in positions of credibility and power, such as policymakers, to share unlabeled synthetic content. He added that given that social media platforms tend to “algorithmically privilege” extreme and conspiratorial content — which AI generation tools can create with ease — “we’ve got a big, big set of challenges on our hands.”

An influx of AI-generated videos related to Immigration and Customs Enforcement action, protests and interactions with citizens has already been proliferating on social media. After Good was shot by an ICE officer while she was in her car, several AI-generated videos began circulating of women driving away from ICE officers who told them to stop. There are also many fabricated videos circulating of immigration raids and of people confronting ICE officers, often yelling at them or throwing food in their faces.

Jeremy Carrasco, a content creator who specializes in media literacy and debunking viral AI videos, said the bulk of these videos are likely coming from accounts that are “engagement farming,” or looking to capitalize on clicks by generating content with popular keywords and search terms such as ICE. But he also said the videos are getting views from people who oppose ICE and DHS and could be watching them as “fan fiction,” or engaging in “wishful thinking,” hoping that they’re seeing real pushback against the organizations and their officers.

Still, Carrasco also believes that most viewers can’t tell if what they’re watching is fake, and questions whether they would know “what’s real or not when it actually matters, like when the stakes are a lot higher.”

Even when there are blatant signs of AI generation, like street signs with gibberish on them or other obvious errors, only in the “best-case scenario” would a viewer be savvy enough or be paying enough attention to register the use of AI.

This issue is, of course, not limited to news surrounding immigration enforcement and protests. Fabricated and misrepresented images following the capture of deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro exploded online earlier this month. Experts, including Carrasco, think the spread of AI-generated political content will only become more commonplace.

Carrasco believes that the widespread implementation of a watermarking system that embeds information about the origin of a piece of media into its metadata layer could be a step toward a solution. The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity has developed such a system, but Carrasco doesn’t think that will become extensively adopted for at least another year.

“It’s going to be an issue forever now,” he said. I don’t think people understand how bad this is.”

Huamani writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix and Barbara Ortutay in San Francisco contributed to this report.

DES MOINES, Iowa — President Trump is headed to Iowa on Tuesday as part of the White House’s midterm year pivot toward affordability, even as his administration remains mired in the fallout in Minneapolis over a second fatal shooting by federal immigration officers this month.

While in Iowa, the Republican president will make a stop at a local business and then deliver a speech on affordability, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. The remarks will be at the Horizon Events Center in Clive, a suburb of Des Moines.

The trip is expected to also highlight energy policy, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said last week. It’s part of the White House’s strategy to have Trump travel out of Washington once a week ahead of the midterm elections to focus on affordability issues facing everyday Americans — an effort that keeps getting diverted by crisis.

The latest comes as the Trump administration is grappling with the weekend shooting death of Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse killed by federal agents in the neighboring state of Minnesota. Pretti had participated in protests following the Jan. 7 killing of Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer. Even as some top administration officials moved quickly to malign Pretti, the White House said Monday that Trump was waiting until an investigation into the shooting was complete.

Trump calls Pretti killing ‘sad situation’

As Trump left the White House on Tuesday to head to Iowa, he was repeatedly questioned by reporters about Pretti’s killing. Trump disputed language used by his own deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, who on social media described Pretti as an “assassin” who “tried to murder federal agents.” Vice President JD Vance shared the post.

Trump, when asked Tuesday if he believed Pretti was an assassin, said, “No.”

When asked if he thought Pretti’s killing was justified, Trump called it “a very sad situation” and said a “big investigation” was underway.

“I’m going to be watching over it, and I want a very honorable and honest investigation. I have to see it myself,” he said.

He also said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who was quick to cast Pretti as a violent instigator, would not be resigning.

Republicans want to switch the subject to affordability

Trump was last in Iowa ahead of the July 4 holiday to kick off the United States’ upcoming 250th anniversary, which morphed largely into a celebration of his major spending and tax cut package hours after Congress had approved it.

Republicans are hoping that Trump’s visit to the state on Tuesday draws focus back to that tax bill, which will be a key part of their pitch as they ask voters to keep them in power in November.

“I invited President Trump back to Iowa to highlight the real progress we’ve made: delivering tax relief for working families, securing the border, and growing our economy,” Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Iowa, said in a statement in advance of his trip. “Now we’ve got to keep that momentum going and pass my affordable housing bill, deliver for Iowa’s energy producers, and bring down costs for working families.”

Trump’s affordability tour has taken him to Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina as the White House tries to marshal the president’s political power to appeal to voters in key swing states.

But Trump’s penchant for going off-script has sometimes taken the focus off cost-of-living issues and his administration’s plans for how to combat it. In Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, Trump insisted that inflation was no longer a problem and that Democrats were using the term affordability as a “hoax” to hurt him. At that event, Trump also griped that immigrants arriving to the U.S. from “filthy” countries got more attention than his pledges to fight inflation.

Competitive races in Iowa

Although it was a swing state just a little more than a decade ago, Iowa in recent years has been reliably Republican in national and statewide elections. Trump won Iowa by 13 percentage points in 2024 against Democrat Kamala Harris.

Still, two of Iowa’s four congressional districts have been among the most competitive in the country and are expected to be again in this year’s midterm elections. Trump already has endorsed Republican Reps. Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks. Democrats, who landed three of Iowa’s four House seats in the 2018 midterm elections during Trump’s first term, see a prime opportunity to unseat Iowa incumbents.

This election will be the first since 1968 with open seats for both governor and U.S. senator at the top of the ticket after Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds and Republican U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst opted out of reelection bids. The political shake-ups have rippled throughout the state, with Republican Reps. Randy Feenstra and Ashley Hinson seeking new offices for governor and for U.S. senator, respectively.

Democrats hope Rob Sand, the lone Democrat in statewide office who is running for governor, will make the entire state more competitive with his appeal to moderate and conservative voters and his $13 million in cash on hand.

Kim and Fingerhut write for the Associated Press. Kim reported from Washington. AP writer Michelle L. Price in Washington contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump has announced an executive order to allow victims of the Los Angeles wildfires to rebuild without dealing with “unnecessary, dupicative, or obstructive” permitting requirements.

The order, which is likely to be challenged by the city and state, claimed that local governments have failed to adequately process permits and were slowing down residents who are desperate to rebuild in the Palisades and Altadena.

“American families and small businesses affected by the wildfires have been forced to continue living in a nightmare of delay, uncertainty, and bureaucratic malaise as they remain displaced from their homes, often without a source of income, while state and local governments delay or prevent reconstruction by approving only a fraction of the permits needed to rebuild,” Trump wrote in the executive order, which he signed Friday.

The order called on the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to “preempt” state and local permitting authorities.

Instead of going through the usual approval process, residents using federal emergency funds to rebuild would need to self-certify to federal authorities that they have complied with local health and safety standards.

The order comes as the city and county approach 3,000 permits issued for rebuilding. A December review by The Times found that the permitting process in Altadena and Pacific Palisades was moving at a moderate rate compared to other major fires in California. As of Dec. 14, the county had issued rebuilding permits for about 16% of the homes destroyed in the Eaton fire and the city had issued just under 14% for those destroyed in the Palisades fire.

While Mayor Karen Bass did not immediately provide comment, the executive order drew intense pushback from Gov. Gavin Newsom.

A spokesperson for Newsom, Tara Gallegos, called Trump a “clueless idiot” for believing the federal government could issue local rebuilding permits.

“With 1625+ home permits issued, hundreds of homes under construction, and permitting timelines at least 2x faster than before the fires, an executive order to rebuild Mars would do just as useful,” Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote in a post on X, citing the number of permits issued solely by the city of Los Angeles.

Newsom said that the federal government needed to release funding, not take over control of the permitting process. The governor said that what communities really lack is money, not permits.

“Please actually help us. We are begging you,” Newsom wrote.

Instead of descending into the permitting process, Newsom called on the president to send a recovery package to congress to help families rebuild, citing a letter from a bipartisan delegation of California legislators that called for federal funding.

“As the recovery process continues, additional federal support is needed, and our entire delegation looks forward to working cooperatively with your administration to ensure the communities of Southern California receive their fair share of federal disaster assistance,” wrote the California legislators on Jan 7.

Some in the Palisades agreed that money was a bigger issue than permitting.

“When I talk to people it seems to have more to do with their insurance payout or whether they have enough money to complete construction,” said Maryam Zar, a Palisades resident who runs the Palisades Recovery Coalition.

Zar called the executive order “interesting” and said that it was fair of the president to call the recovery pace slow and unacceptable.

MINNEAPOLIS — The chief federal judge in Minnesota says the Trump administration has failed to comply with orders to hold hearings for detained immigrants and ordered the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to appear before him Friday to explain why he should not be held in contempt.

In an order dated Monday, Chief Judge Patrick J. Schiltz said Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, must appear personally in court. Schiltz took the administration to task over its handling of bond hearings for immigrants it has detained.

“This Court has been extremely patient with respondents, even though respondents decided to send thousands of agents to Minnesota to detain aliens without making any provision for dealing with the hundreds of habeas petitions and other lawsuits that were sure to result,” the judge wrote.

The order comes a day after President Trump ordered border advisor Tom Homan to take over his administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota following the second death this month of a person at the hands of an immigration law enforcement officer.

Trump said in an interview broadcast Tuesday that he had “great calls” with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey on Monday, mirroring comments he made immediately after the calls.

The White House had tried to blame Democratic leaders for the protests of federal officers conducting immigration raids. But after the killing of Alex Pretti on Saturday and videos suggesting he was not an active threat, the administration tapped Homan to take charge of the Minnesota operation from Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino.

Schiltz’s order also follows a federal court hearing Monday on a request by the state and the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul for a judge to order a halt to the immigration law enforcement surge. The judge said she would prioritize the ruling but did not give a timeline for a decision.

Schiltz wrote that he recognizes ordering the head of a federal agency to appear personally is extraordinary. “But the extent of ICE’s violation of court orders is likewise extraordinary, and lesser measures have been tried and failed,” he said.

“Respondents have continually assured the Court that they recognize their obligation to comply with Court orders, and that they have taken steps to ensure that those orders will be honored going forward,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, though, the violations continue.”

The Associated Press left messages Tuesday with ICE and a DHS Department of Homeland Security spokesperson seeking a response.

The order lists the petitioner by first name and last initials: Juan T.R. It says the court granted a petition on Jan. 14 to provide him with a bond hearing within seven days. On Jan. 23, his lawyers told the court the petitioner was still detained. Court documents show the petitioner is a citizen of Ecuador who came to the United States around 1999.

The order says Schiltz will cancel Lyons’ appearance if the petitioner is released from custody.

Catalini and Karnowski write for the Associated Press. Catalini reported from Trenton, N.J.

ORLANDO, Fla. — President Trump’s crackdown on immigration contributed to a year-to-year drop in the nation’s growth rate as the U.S. population reached nealry 342 million people in 2025, according to population estimates released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The 0.5% growth rate for 2025 was a sharp drop from 2024’s almost 1% growth rate, which was the highest since 2001 and was fueled by immigration. The 2024 estimates put the U.S. population at 340 million people.

Immigration increased by 1.3 million people last year, compared with 2024’s increase of 2.8 million people. The census report did not distinguish between legal and illegal immigration.

In the past 125 years, the lowest growth rate was in 2021, during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, when the U.S. population grew by just 0.16%, or 522,000 people, and immigration increased by just 376,000 people because of travel restrictions into the U.S. Before that, the lowest growth rate was just under 0.5% in 1919 at the height of the Spanish flu.

Tuesday’s data release comes as researchers have been trying to determine the effects of the second Trump administration’s immigration crackdown after the Republican president returned to the White House in January 2025. Trump made the surge of migrants at the southern border a central issue in his winning 2024 presidential campaign.

The numbers made public Tuesday reflect change from July 2024 to July 2025, covering the end of President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration and the first half of Trump’s first year back in office.

The figures capture a period that reflects the beginning of enforcement surges in Los Angeles and Portland, Ore., but do not capture the impact on immigration after the Trump administration’s crackdowns began in Chicago; New Orleans; Memphis, Tenn.; and Minneapolis, Minn..

The 2025 numbers were a jarring divergence from 2024, when net international migration accounted for 84% of the nation’s 3.3 million-person increase from the year before. The jump in immigration two years ago was partly because of a new method of counting that added people who were admitted for humanitarian reasons.

“They do reflect recent trends we have seen in out-migration, where the numbers of people coming in is down and the numbers going out is up,” Eric Jensen, a senior research scientist at the Census Bureau, said last week.

Unlike the once-a-decade census, which determines how many congressional seats and Electoral College votes each state gets, as well as the distribution of $2.8 trillion in annual government funding, the population estimates are calculated from government records and internal Census Bureau data.

The release of the 2025 population estimates was delayed by the federal government shutdown last fall and comes at a challenging time for the Census Bureau and other U.S. statistical agencies. The bureau, which is the largest statistical agency in the U.S., lost about 15% of its workforce last year due to buyouts and layoffs that were part of cost-cutting efforts by the White House and its Department of Government Efficiency.

Other recent actions by the Trump administration, such as the firing of Erika McEntarfer as Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, have raised concerns about political meddling at U.S. statistical agencies. But Brookings demographer William Frey said the bureau’s staffers appear to have been “doing this work as usual without interference.”

“So I have no reason to doubt the numbers that come out,” Frey said.

Schneider writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — When Republican Rep. Bill Posey of Florida ended an Oct. 21 House floor speech with a fist pump and the phrase “Let’s go, Brandon!” it may have seemed cryptic and weird to many who were listening. But the phrase was already growing in right-wing circles, and now the seemingly upbeat sentiment — actually a stand-in for swearing at Joe Biden — is everywhere.

Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) wore a “Let’s Go Brandon” face mask at the Capitol last week. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) posed with a “Let’s Go Brandon” sign at the World Series. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s press secretary retweeted a photo of the phrase on a construction sign in Virginia.

The line has become conservative code for something far more vulgar: “F— Joe Biden.” It’s all the rage among Republicans wanting to prove their conservative credentials, a not-so-secret handshake that signals they’re in sync with the party’s base.

Americans are accustomed to their leaders being publicly jeered, and former President Trump’s often-coarse language seemed to expand the boundaries of what counts as normal political speech.

But how did Republicans settle on the Brandon phrase as a G-rated substitute for its more vulgar three-word cousin?

It started at an Oct. 2 NASCAR race at the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama. Brandon Brown, a 28-year-old driver, had won his first Xfinity Series and was being interviewed by an NBC Sports reporter. The crowd behind him was chanting something at first difficult to make out. The reporter suggested they were chanting “Let’s go Brandon” to cheer the driver. But it became increasingly clear they were saying: “F— Joe Biden.”

NASCAR and NBC have since taken steps to limit “ambient crowd noise” during interviews, but it was too late — the phrase already had taken off.

When the president visited a construction site in suburban Chicago a few weeks ago to promote his vaccinate-or-test mandate, protesters deployed both three-word phrases. This past week, Biden’s motorcade was driving past a “Let’s Go Brandon” banner as the president passed through Plainfield, N.J.

And a group chanted “Let’s go Brandon” outside a Virginia park Monday when Biden made an appearance on behalf of the Democratic candidate for governor, Terry McAuliffe. Two protesters dropped the euphemism entirely, holding up hand-drawn signs with the profanity.

Friday morning on a Southwest flight from Houston to Albuquerque, the pilot signed off his greeting over the public address system with the phrase, to audible gasps from some passengers.

Veteran GOP ad maker Jim Innocenzi had no qualms about the coded crudity, calling it “hilarious.”

“Unless you are living in a cave, you know what it means,” he said. “But it’s done with a little bit of a class. And if you object and are taking it too seriously, go away.”

America’s presidents have endured meanness for centuries; Grover Cleveland faced chants of “Ma, Ma Where’s my Pa?” in the 1880s over rumors he’d fathered an illegitimate child. Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson were the subject of poems that leaned into racist tropes and allegations of bigamy.

“We have a sense of the dignity of the office of president that has consistently been violated to our horror over the course of American history,” said Cal Jillson, a politics expert and professor in the political science department at Southern Methodist University. “We never fail to be horrified by some new outrage.”

There were plenty of old outrages.

“F— Trump” graffiti still marks many an overpass in Washington, D.C. George W. Bush had a shoe thrown at his face. Bill Clinton was criticized with such fervor that his most vocal critics were labeled the “Clinton crazies.”

The biggest difference, though, between the sentiments hurled at the Grover Clevelands of yore and modern politicians is the amplification they get on social media.

“Before the expansion of social media a few years ago, there wasn’t an easily accessible public forum to shout your nastiest and darkest public opinions,” said Matthew Delmont, a history professor at Dartmouth College.

Even the racism and vitriol to which former President Obama was subjected was tempered in part because Twitter was relatively new. There was no TikTok. As for Facebook, leaked company documents have recently revealed how the platform increasingly ignored hate speech and misinformation and allowed it to proliferate.

A portion of the U.S. was already angry before the Brandon moment, believing the 2020 presidential election was rigged despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, which has stood the test of recounts and court cases. But now it’s more than that to die-hard Trump supporters, said Stanley Renshon, a political scientist and psychoanalyst at the City University of New York.

He cited the Afghanistan withdrawal, the Southern border situation and rancorous school board debates as situations in which Biden critics feel that “how American institutions are telling the American public what they clearly see and understand to be true, is in fact not true.”

Trump hasn’t missed the moment. His Save America PAC now sells a $45 T-shirt featuring “Let’s go Brandon” above an American flag. One message to supporters reads, “#FJB or LET’S GO BRANDON? Either way, President Trump wants YOU to have our ICONIC new shirt.”

Separately, T-shirts are popping up in storefronts with the slogan and the NASCAR logo.

And as for the real Brandon, thing haven’t been so great. He drives for a short-staffed, underfunded team owned by his father. And while that win — his first career victory — was huge for him, the team has long struggled for sponsorship and existing partners have not been marketing the driver since the slogan.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recently proposed 2026-27 state budget included a pleasant surprise: a deficit of about $3 billion — significantly less than analysts had estimated. But when it comes to California state budgets, good news rarely lasts. Newsom’s own estimates warn that the deficit may reach $22 billion in the following fiscal year.

It is all too common for California’s budget to careen from year to year. Between 2022 and 2024 the state experienced a $175-billion swing from surplus to deficit. This time the crunch came because spending fueled by the post-pandemic economic recovery was not sustainable when revenue plummeted just a few years later — but the state budget has long gone through similar boom-and-bust cycles.

Although California’s leaders deserve their fair share of the blame for putting the state on this budgetary roller coaster, there are three underlying factors that make effective fiscal management in California uniquely challenging: an overreliance on the state’s personal income tax; mandatory spending commitments that limit policymakers’ discretion to address challenges; and a lack of accountability for the taxpayer money that is spent.

First, California has an outdated tax system. In the 2025-26 budget, for example, the personal income tax made up nearly 70% of general fund revenue. By comparison, personal income taxes account for 38% of total state tax collections nationally. The Golden State’s extreme reliance on the personal income tax means that when incomes are high in California, revenue collections are strong, but when the economy slows and incomes fall, state revenue weakens drastically too.

The outsize role that capital gains — income from certain investments — play in revenue makes the volatility worse. High earners tend to earn a larger share of their total income this way. In fact, the unexpectedly narrow deficit in Newsom’s 2026 budget was due to what California’s Legislative Analyst Office identified as a $42-billion tailwind created by a robust stock market, which led more Californians to earn more capital gains and pay more taxes on those earnings. But when equity markets aren’t performing well, collections take a major hit. Consider this contrast: In 2021, capital gains accounted for almost a quarter of the personal income tax liability in the state, compared with just 10% in 2023.

The reliance on personal income taxes means that as the highest earners leave, so does California’s revenue. In the 20 years leading up to 2023, the top 1% of income earners in the state were responsible for an average of 45% of total personal income tax liability. That’s why policies like the recently discussed “billionaires tax” could lead to capital flight from California, jeopardizing the state’s ability to fund basic services.

The second complicating factor in California’s budget process is the amount of money tied up in spending commitments over which policymakers have little discretion. Many of these restrictions have been imposed by voters over the last several decades in ballot initiatives that have passed with significant margins. Together, these provisions — while well-meaning and politically popular in many cases — create limitations that make budgeting a challenge in California.

For example, funding for the state’s public schools is largely guaranteed by Proposition 98, a state constitutional amendment approved by voters in 1988 that establishes an annual minimum funding amount for public K-12 schools and community colleges. About 40% of the general fund budget in California, or nearly $90 billion in 2026, is committed without exception to K-14 schools through Proposition 98.

California voters have also approved tens of billions of dollars in borrowing over the last 20 years that the state’s constitution requires be paid back from the general fund. These bond authorizations create obligations to repay borrowing for priorities as wide-ranging as health facilities, water infrastructure and wildfire prevention. Repaying these “IOUs” requires policymakers to trim spending in other areas. Also, the state’s rainy-day fund, which is designed to insulate the budget from economic downturns, requires an annual set-aside of 1.5% of estimated general fund revenue.

Finally, California has no systematic way of providing accountability for and assessing whether any of its spending is producing promised outcomes. Governments at every level struggle with the concept of detailing what the “return on investment” is for public spending. But the situation in California is particularly dire. Thus, taxpayers are often stuck financing underperforming government programs riddled with waste and outright fraud, as was the case in the recent $30-billion scandal that afflicted the state’s unemployment insurance program.

In the mid-2000s, California commissioned a unified financial accounting and transparency system known as Fi$Cal that was supposed to replace several outdated systems. Over a billion dollars and several blown deadlines later, the platform still isn’t complete and won’t be fully operational until July 1, 2032. While the state auditor, an official appointed by the governor, does a credible job of analyzing state spending, recommendations for improvements are often not implemented. And the state controller — the elected chief fiscal officer who is responsible to voters for financial oversight of state spending — hasn’t produced California’s annual financial audit on time since 2017.

It’s hard for a state to properly manage its finances when there’s confusion over how much it’s really spending, or whether that money is achieving its intended purpose. But that’s become business as usual here.

Policymakers will have a tough time addressing California’s budget and fiscal challenges unless each of these three underlying factors is addressed. Our antiquated tax code should be reformed to reduce reliance on the personal income tax and raise revenue in a more predictable way. Californians must understand that there are long-term implications of borrowing to address challenges and warily approach future bond measures and other initiatives that tie the hands of policymakers today. And voters should elect politicians willing to provide them with the oversight that’s needed for the taxpayer money that Sacramento spends.

Without these changes, Californians are probably headed for more fiscal follies in the years ahead.

Lanhee J. Chen is a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and was a candidate for California state controller in 2022.

Here are a couple of points about the business community of Minnesota you may not have known.

First, it’s home to a surprisingly large cadre of 17 major corporations, members of Fortune’s roster of the 500 largest U.S. companies.

Some of America’s best-known consumer companies, including UnitedHealth Group, Target, Best Buy, 3M and General Mills have chosen the windy, cold and snowy — but heretofore tranquil — state for their headquarters.

Second, this collection of elite businesses largely has been silent about the federal government’s assault on the people of Minneapolis, which has been going on since the beginning of December. The silence ended Sunday, when 60 Minnesota businesses issued a joint statement through the state Chamber of Commerce calling for “an immediate deescalation of tensions.”

That so many businesses came together for the statement was an achievement, given the customary reluctance of corporate leaders to address incendiary political issues. But in terms of its actual content, the statement was pretty thin gruel, bristling with public relations-style circumlocution and vagueness.

If anything, the Minnesota statement underscores the quandary facing American corporations in the Age of Trump, when the president viciously and publicly attacks anyone he deems to be a personal adversary. For a business, that can translate into a threat to the top and bottom lines.

Business leaders faced with a choice between going along with Trump, or poking him with a stick, almost invariably have chosen the first path.

That Minnesota’s businesses even went as far as they did does suggests the tide may have turned on challenges to Trump’s policies. Even so, we’re still standing only on the edge of the water.

The refusal of the American business community to take a strong stand against Trump’s policies has been a long-lasting scandal.

“This shows the greatest cowardice in the history of the Business Roundtable,” says Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, the Yale School of Management’s expert in corporate leadership, referring to the organization of corporate chief executives that should carry the flag of backlash against Trump’s actions.

I asked the Roundtable to comment on the chaos in Minneapolis. It replied with a statement from CEO Joshua Bolten, a former White House aide to George W. Bush, endorsing the Minnesota Chamber’s call for “cooperation between state, local, and federal authorities to immediately de-escalate the situation in Minneapolis.”

Is that sufficient?

What’s needed is for leaders to name names and demand concrete steps, at least as long as our political leaders remain missing in action. In Minnesota — indeed, wherever Trump policies trample norms and values — the situation has become a moral crisis for all American society, including the commercial.

That said, it isn’t surprising that Minnesota’s big corporations, like almost all American corporations, have been gun-shy about confronting a political issue like this head-on. They can properly feel that they’ve been burned before.

Target, the second-largest public corporation headquartered in the state (after UnitedHealth), experienced a front-page blowback from political controversies twice in recent years.

In 2023, as I reported then, the company capitulated when a braying mob of anti-LGBTQ+ reactionaries targeted it for displaying Pride-themed merchandise in its stores during June’s Pride Month observances.

Target, which had proudly displayed such merchandise in previous years, told personnel in many stores to shrink or even eliminate their Pride-themed merchandise displays or move them to less conspicuous sections of the stores. Some LGBTQ+ designers discovered that their products had been taken off the shelves.

Last year, only days after Trump launched his second term with a flurry of antidiversity executive orders, Target announced it was “concluding our three-year diversity, equity and inclusion goals.” The company also withdrew from “all external diversity-focused surveys,” including a widely followed Corporate Equality index sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign, which tracks corporate policies on LGBTQ+ rights and inclusion.

The backtracking backfired. Target’s sales cratered, in part because consumers were angry about its DEI reversals. During a conference call with Wall Street analysts following its first-quarter earnings report, CEO Brian Cornell attributed the company’s ugly performance to factors including “the reaction to the updates we shared … in January,” an allusion to its ending of DEI initiatives.

The escalating crisis in Minneapolis seems to have been the trigger for the state’s business leaders to issue their joint statement. “To get all 60 of the major CEOs to sign onto a statement was a remarkable feat,” says Bill George, a former CEO of Minneapolis-based medical device maker Medtronic and a former Target board member.

“Maybe some people wanted it to be stronger,” George told me, “but I believe a statement signed by every Minnesota CEO of size represents a turning point in the whole discussion between the federal government and the state government.” He hoped that it would be enough to prompt Trump to simply “declare victory” in Minnesota and “move on to other challenges.”

Still, the text of the Minnesota chamber’s communique illustrates that corporate America still is reluctant to confront Trump directly.

The statement refers, vaguely, to “the recent challenges facing our state,” which “created widespread disruption and tragic loss of life.”

In other words, the statement alludes to something having happened, but doesn’t identify who did it or even what it was. A “tragic loss of life,” after all, can befall people slipping on the ice and cracking their head, as well as someone being shot 10 times in an unprovoked attack.

The statement asserts that “for the past several weeks, representatives of Minnesota’s business community have been working every day behind the scenes with federal, state and local officials to advance real solutions. These efforts have included close communication with the Governor, the White House, the Vice President and local mayors. There are ways for us to come together to foster progress.”

It calls for “an immediate deescalation [sic] of tensions and for state, local and federal officials to work together to find real solutions.”

Lacking are specifics. What “real solutions” are on the table in these “close communications” with public officials? Who is in on these behind-the-scenes conversations? What actions would bring about “an immediate deescalation of tensions”?

I asked the Chamber of Commerce to answer those questions, but a spokesman told me the statement would have to stand by itself.

The statement doesn’t even mention Renee Good and Alex Pretti, whose killing finally provoked the Chamber’s members to speak out. Nor does it address the unmistakable discrepancies between how the Trump administration described the killings and their victims, and what millions of people can see in videos.

What’s infuriating is that for many Americans — including, notably, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey — the solution to this crisis is crystal clear: Get ICE and the Border Patrol out of Minneapolis neighborhoods. That even occurred to the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, which on Sunday advised Trump to “pause ICE enforcement in the Twin Cities to ease tensions and consider a less provocative strategy.”

One might have thought that Minnesota companies would be among the leaders pushing back against Trump policies, especially those unfolding in their front yards.

“Minnesota in general has been the hotbed of traditional progressive politics,” Sonnenfeld says. “The Minnesota business community was always the paragon of social investment — very philanthropic and socially responsible — and had soaring performance to show for it. Minneapolis was always the model showing that doing good is not antithetical to doing well.”

Minnesota business leaders clearly were becoming concerned that Trump’s anti-immigrant surge threatened their ability to do well.

“This situation is very harmful to their businesses,” George says. “It’s extremely important that their employees feel that they are safe and secure in their place of work, and that their corporate leaders have their back.”

Some Minnesota companies feared Trump’s immigration crackdown could make it harder to recruit executives.

“If this drags on, it will have a devastating effect on Minnesota companies’ ability to attract people from around the world,” George told me. “They depend upon bringing executives in from New York and L.A., but also from China, Japan and Europe. This situation is really a deterrent to that.”

Whether Minnesota’s corporate pushback will move the needle on Trump’s policy isn’t clear, though there are faint signs that he recognizes he isn’t winning fans on the issue.

On Monday he assigned his border czar, Tom Homan, to take charge of the Minnesota surge — not that Homan has the reputation of a peacemaker on immigration issues.

According to Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino, up to now the face of the surge, the agents involved in Saturday’s killing, including the two known to have fired gunshots at Pretti, are still on the job, though he said they were transferred out of Minneapolis “for their safety.” (There were reports Monday that Bovino is being sent out of Minnesota and back to his prior post in California.)

Nor are there signs that the surge is over. ICE and the Border Patrol are still on the streets of Minneapolis, so further mayhem is possible.

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s promises on affordability in 2024 helped propel him to a second term in the White House.

Since then, Trump says, the problem has been solved: He now calls affordability a hoax perpetrated by Democrats. Yet the high cost of living, especially housing, continues to weigh heavily on voters, and has dragged down the president’s approval ratings.

In a poll conducted this month by the New York Times and Siena University, 58% of respondents said they disapprove of the way the president is handling the economy.

How the economy fares in the coming months will play an outsize role in determining whether the Democrats can build on their electoral success in 2025 and seize control of one or both chambers of Congress.

With housing costs so central to voters’ perceptions about the economy, both parties have put forward proposals in recent weeks targeting affordability. Here is a closer look at their competing plans for expanding housing and reining in costs:

How bad is the affordability crisis?

Nationwide, wages have barely crept up over the last decade — rising by 21.24% between 2014 and 2024, according to the Federal Reserve. Over the same period, rent and home sale prices more than doubled, and healthcare and grocery costs rose 71.5% and 37.35%, respectively, according to the Fed.

National home price-to-income ratios are at an all-time high, and coastal states like California and Hawaii are the most extreme examples.

Housing costs in California are about twice the national average, according to the state Legislative Analyst‘s Office, which said prices have increased at “historically rapid rates” in recent years. The median California home sold for $877,285 in 2024, according to the California Assn. of Realtors, compared with about $420,000 nationwide, per Federal Reserve economic data.

California needs to add 180,000 housing units annually to keep up with demand, according to the state Department of Housing. So far, California has fallen short of those goals and has just begun to see success in reducing its homeless population, which sat at 116,000 unsheltered people in 2025.

What do the polls say?

More than two-thirds of Americans surveyed in a Gallup poll last month said they felt the economy was getting worse, and 36% expressed approval for the president — the lowest total since his second term began.

The poll found that 47% of U.S. adults now describe current economic conditions as “poor,” up from 40% just a month prior and the highest since Trump took office. Just 21% said economic conditions were either “excellent” or “good,” while 31% described them as “only fair.”

An Associated Press poll found that only 16% of Republicans think Trump has helped “a lot” in fixing cost of living problems.

What have the Democrats proposed?

The party is pushing measures to expand the supply of housing, and cut down on what they call “restrictive” single-family zoning in favor of denser development.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Democrats plan to “supercharge” construction through bills like California Sen. Adam Schiff’s Housing BOOM Act, which he introduced in December.

Schiff said the bill would lower prices by stimulating the development of “millions of affordable homes.” The proposal would expand low-income housing tax credits, set aside funds for rental assistance and homelessness, and provide $10 billion in housing subsidies for “middle-income” workers such as teachers, police officers and firefighters.

The measure has not been heard in committee, and faces long odds in the Republican-controlled body, though Schiff said inaction on the proposal could be used against opponents.

And the Republicans?

A group of 190 House Republicans this month unveiled a successor proposal to the “Big Beautiful Bill,” the sprawling tax and spending plan approved and signed into law by Trump in July.

The Republican Study Committee described the proposal as an affordability package aimed at lowering down payments, enacting mortgage reforms and creating more tax breaks.

Leaders of the group said it would reduce the budget deficit by $1 trillion and could pass with a simple majority.

“This blueprint … locks in President Trump’s deregulatory agenda through the only process Democrats can’t block: reconciliation,” said Rep. August Pfluger (R-Tex.), who chairs the group. “We have 11 months of guaranteed majorities. We’re not wasting a single day.”

Though the proposal has not yet been introduced as legislation, Republicans said it would include a mechanism to revoke funding from blue states over rent control and immigration policy, which they calculated would save $48 billion.

President Trump has endorsed a $200-billion mortgage bond stimulus, which he said would drive down mortgage rates and monthly payments. And the White House, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — the two enterprises that back most U.S. mortgages — continues to push the idea of portable and assumable mortgages.

Trump said the move would allow buyers to keep their existing mortgage rate or enable new homeowners to assume a previous owner’s mortgage.

The Department of Justice, meanwhile, has launched a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell over the Fed’s renovation costs, as Trump bashed him over “his never ending quest to keep interest rates high.”

The president also vowed to revoke federal funding to states over a wealth of issues such as childcare and immigration policy.

“This is not about any particular policy that they think is harmful,” Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Burbank) said. “This is about Trump’s always trying to find a way to punish blue states.”

Is there any alignment?

The two parties are cooperating on companion measures in the House and Senate.

The bipartisan ROAD to Housing Act seeks to expand housing supply by easing regulatory barriers. It passed the Senate unanimously and has support from the White House, but House Republicans have balked, and it has yet to receive a floor vote.

A bipartisan proposal — the Housing in the 21st Century Act — was approved by the House Financial Services Committee by a 50-1 vote in December. It also has yet to receive a floor vote.

The bill is similar to its twin in the Senate, with Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.) working across the aisle with Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles). If approved, it would cut permitting times, support manufactured-housing development and expand financing tools for low-income housing developers.

There was also a recent moment of unusual alignment between the president and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who both promised to crack down on corporate home buying.

What do the experts say?

Housing experts recoiled at GOP proposals to bar housing dollars from sanctuary jurisdictions and cities that impose rent control.

“Any conditioning on HUD funding that sets up rules that explicitly carve out blue cities is going to be really catastrophic for California’s larger urban areas,” said David Garcia, deputy director of policy at UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation.

More than 35 cities in California have rent control policies, according to the California Apartment Assn. The state passed its own rent stabilization law in 2019, and lawmakers approved a California sanctuary law in 2017 that prohibits state resources from aiding federal immigration enforcement.

The agenda comes on the heels of a series of HUD spending cuts, including a 30% cap on permanent housing investments and the end of a federal emergency housing voucher program that local homelessness officials estimate would put 14,500 people on the streets.

In Los Angeles County, HUD dollars make up about 28% of homelessness funding.

“It would undermine a lot of the bipartisan efforts that are happening in the House and the Senate to move evidence-backed policy to increase housing supply and stabilize rents and home prices,” Garcia said.

The president’s mortgage directives also prompted skepticism from some experts.

“Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were pressed to get into the riskier parts of the mortgage market back in the housing bubble and that was a part of the problem,” said Eric McGhee, a researcher at the Public Policy Institute of California.

In late 2024, shortly after her husband, Donald Trump, was reelected as the 47th president of the United States, Melania Trump saw an opportunity: a documentary centered on her life.

The film, a follow-up to her eponymous memoir, would offer a window into the first lady’s private, sphinx-like world, in contrast to that of her bombastic, spotlight-seeking husband.

To direct the film, a fly-on-the-wall chronicle of the 20 days leading up to the inauguration, Melania turned to an unlikely choice: Brett Ratner, who only a few years earlier had been all but banished from Hollywood.

The controversial filmmaker had been recommended by her agent and “senior advisor” Marc Beckman, who had a long-standing relationship with Ratner.

“He’s one of the most talented directors of our lifetime,” said Beckman, who negotiated the unusually lucrative $40-million deal with Amazon MGM Studios to distribute the film.

“He actually accounts for like $2 billion in box-office receipts,” Beckman told The Times. “He really understands not just how to create something that’s gorgeous, but also how to reach the passions and emotions of his audience.”

The timing was fortuitous. Ratner was looking for a comeback vehicle from his heady days as one of the industry’s most successful filmmakers. And Beckman was among several prominent figures in Trump’s orbit who could help make that happen.

President-elect Donald Trump kisses his wife, Melania, before his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025.

(Saul Loeb / Associated Press)

Brash, rich and successful, Ratner, 56, was the director and producer of a string of blockbuster films, the “Rush Hour” franchise and “X-Men: The Last Stand” among them. He was a consummate Hollywood dealmaker and habitué of red carpets who held court at the legendary basement disco inside of his equally storied Beverly Hills estate.

Then, in the fall of 2017, The Times reported on sexual misconduct allegations against Ratner made by multiple women. At the time, Ratner strenuously denied the claims.

It was the height of the #MeToo movement and a range of sexual misconduct allegations toppled the careers of powerful men, from disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein to “Today Show” host Matt Lauer and CBS Chairman Les Moonves. Weinstein was later convicted of rape in Los Angeles and sentenced to 16 years in prison.

Almost immediately, Ratner’s reign as blockbuster king was over.

Beckman, however, viewed Ratner first and foremost as a director. They had a relationship that stretched back to 2007. Beckman’s agency hired Ratner to direct a sultry Jordache jeans campaign, inspired by the iconic photographer Helmut Newton, whose work was edgy, provocative and erotically charged. The campaign, shot at the Chateau Marmont, featured a mostly topless Heidi Klum — in one ad she is brandishing a riding whip.

Beckman declined to say whether he had talked to other potential directors, nor would he address any of the claims made against Ratner. He stressed that it was Ratner’s “massive talent” that put him in the director’s chair. “We focused on Ratner’s capabilities as being a superior director,” he said.

The documentary, “Melania,” is set to premiere at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington — which the president is trying to rename the Trump Kennedy Center — on Thursday, followed the next day by a global theatrical release.

In addition to the “Melania” documentary, a three-part docuseries also filmed during the inauguration run-up about the first lady that Ratner directed and is part of the same Amazon deal, is set to air on the streamer later this year, according to Beckman.

Brett Ratner, center, and the stars of “Rush Hour 3,” Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, at the film’s Los Angeles premiere party in 2007.

(Matt Sayles / Associated Press)

Then there is the much-buzzed-about fourth installment of “Rush Hour.” It has been widely reported that Ratner will direct the $100-million movie to be distributed by Paramount.

The long-stalled project came about after President Trump was said to have urged his friend Larry Ellison, who bankrolled his son David’s acquisition of Paramount, to revive the franchise.

Not everyone is happy about Ratner’s return.

“It speaks to the larger issue that these men who didn’t take responsibility for their actions are coming back into society as if nothing happened,” said Nancy Erika Smith, a partner at Smith Mullin in Montclair, N.J., who has litigated numerous harassment cases, including that of former Fox anchor Gretchen Carlson.

Reached by phone, Ratner declined to respond to questions, saying, “I don’t talk to or cooperate with the Los Angeles Times.”

He referred questions to his London-based publicist, who did not respond to a detailed list of questions.

An early love of movies

Growing up in Miami, Ratner once said that “I eat, sleep, breathe the movies.” He was raised by a single mother, Marsha, who had him at 16, and his grandparents Mario and Fanita Presman, Jewish Cubans who immigrated to Florida during the 1960s. (His paternal grandfather, Lee Ratner, founded d-Con, the rat poison company.) At 12, he was an extra, appearing as a boy on a raft, during a pool scene at the Fontainebleau Hotel in the 1983 Brian De Palma film “Scarface.”

Early on, Ratner garnered a reputation for his ambition, relentless drive and a preternatural ability to surround himself with famous friends and mentors.

While a student at New York University in the late 1980s, he befriended Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons, who made him his protégé, tapping Ratner to direct music videos.

At 28, he directed his first film, the 1997 buddy comedy “Money Talks,” starring Charlie Sheen and Chris Tucker. The movie grossed $48 million on a $25-million budget, cementing Ratner’s reputation as a highly bankable director.

In 2012, Ratner and Australian billionaire investor James Packer co-founded RatPac Entertainment. A year later, they merged with the film financing company Dune Entertainment, founded by Steven Mnuchin (Trump’s future Treasury secretary), that had bankrolled massive hits like “Avatar.”

The rebranded RatPac-Dune quickly entered into a $450-million slate financing deal with Warner Bros. to fund up to 75 movies, including Oscar winner “Gravity” and box-office hit “Wonder Woman.”

Ratner himself served as an executive producer on such acclaimed films as the epic western drama “The Revenant.”

“I was not the best student, but I was the hardest-working kid that I know, and it paid off,” said Ratner when the Friar’s Club honored him with a comedy achievement award in 2011.

A self-styled jet-setting playboy, Ratner dated actor Rebecca Gayheart and tennis star Serena Williams. He cocooned himself inside a circle of much older, famous cinema legends that he considered his mentors such as Robert Evans, Roman Polanski and Robert Towne.

The late movie producer Robert Evans was part of a clutch of cinema legends that Ratner considered his mentors.

(Getty Images)

Ratner’s Beverly Hills mansion, Hilhaven Lodge, the estate once owned by “Casablanca” actor Ingrid Bergman, was the scene of numerous raucous parties filled with celebrities and models.

After he made a series of vulgar and inappropriate comments while promoting his film “Tower Heist” in 2011, including saying that “rehearsal is for f—,” using an anti-gay slur, he dropped out of producing the Academy Awards broadcast.

Still, Ratner frequently groused that he was misunderstood.

“I don’t drink; I don’t do drugs. Do I like to have fun? Yeah. Do I like to enjoy myself, enjoy my life? Yeah. But I’m not a decadent person. … I’m just a nice Jewish kid from Miami Beach who loves movies and pretty girls,” he said in an interview with the Jewish Journal.

Over the years, Ratner sat on the boards of several charities such as Chrysalis, a group that helps homeless people; and the Ghetto Film School. In 2013, he donated $1 million to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and he actively supported the Simon Wiesenthal Center, where he was a trustee, and the Museum of Tolerance.

When Patty Jenkins presented him with the Tree of Life humanitarian award at a Jewish National Fund dinner in 2017, the director of “Wonder Woman” and “Monster” shared that he financed her thesis film.

In 2017, when Ratner received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, he was cheered on by actors Edward Norton, Dwayne Johnson and Eddie Murphy, producer Brian Grazer and Warner Bros. chief Kevin Tsujihara.

(Chris Delmas / AFP via Getty Images)

That year, RatPac-Dune’s co-financing deal with Warner Bros. delivered a series of hits, including “It,” “Wonder Woman” and “Dunkirk.” He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Fallout over allegations of misconduct

Then, in November, The Times published detailed allegations against Ratner made by six women who accused him of harassment, groping and forced oral sex. Actor Olivia Munn claimed that Ratner masturbated in front of her when she delivered a meal to his trailer on the set of the 2004 film “After the Sunset.”

At the time, Ratner’s attorney Martin Singer rejected the women’s claims, saying that his client “vehemently denies the outrageous derogatory allegations that have been reported about him.”

The Times published another report weeks later that included additional sexual misconduct allegations from several other women. The report also named Simmons, the Def Jam co-founder, as a witness and alleged perpetrator in several of the episodes.

Both Ratner and Simmons disputed the women’s accounts and denied their allegations. Simmons subsequently faced several rape accusations, which he has denied.

The professional repercussions were swift. Ratner’s agents at WME dropped him, as did his publicist, and projects were put on hold. Ratner parted ways with Warner Bros.

“I don’t want to have any possible negative impact to the studio until these personal issues are resolved,” he said in a statement.

In April 2018, Warner Bros. officially cut ties with Ratner, declining to renew its massive $450-million co-financing deal with RatPac-Dune.

Two years later, Ratner’s name surfaced amid the tangled Hollywood sex scandals involving British actor Charlotte Kirk, whose allegations brought down two studio chiefs: Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara and NBCUniversal Vice Chairman Ron Meyer, with whom she claimed to have had sexual affairs.

British actor Charlotte Kirk accused several Hollywood power players including Ratner of “victimizing her.”

(Paul Archuleta / FilmMagic)

In a sworn court declaration, Kirk said she was victimized by Tsujihara, Ratner, Packer and Millennium Films CEO Avi Lerner, stating that the men “coerced me into engaging in ‘commercial sex’ for them and their business associates.”

She further accused Packer, whom she had dated for a period, and Ratner of having “sexually exploited me,” with Ratner sending her “crude sexual text messages, and offering me as an inducement to his business partners,” according to her declaration.

Attorney Singer, who represented the men, “categorically and vehemently” denied any wrongdoing on the part of his clients.

Cast out of Hollywood, Ratner appeared to escape the piercing scrutiny by living large. He was spotted variously at the five-star Faena Hotel in Miami and sunning on a yacht off Saint-Barthélemy in the Caribbean.

Ratner’s initial attempts to get back behind the camera went nowhere. In 2021, he announced plans to direct a long-stalled Milli Vanilli biopic with Millennium Media, but soon after, Millennium Media stated that it was no longer involved with the film.

In Trump’s orbit

Despite the setbacks, the seeds for Ratner’s eventual comeback had been sown. Known as a world-class schmoozer, Ratner cultivated numerous ties to people affiliated with Trump.

For several years, he was partners with Mnuchin, who served as Treasury secretary during Trump’s first term, through their production and financing company RatPac-Dune.

Billionaire Len Blavatnik, owner of Warner Music Group, bought Packer’s stake in RatPac-Dune through his Access Entertainment in 2017, making him Ratner’s partner for a time. Blavatnik, through his company, contributed $1 million to Trump’s first inauguration.

Then there’s Arthur Sarkissian, the producer of the original “Rush Hour” movie. He also produced the 2024 Trump-friendly documentary, “The Man You Don’t Know.”

Steven Mnuchin, who was Treasury secretary during Trump’s first term, was a partner with Ratner through their company RatPac-Dune Entertainment.

(Alex Brandon / Associated Press)

Ratner also developed a friendship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has a long-standing relationship with Trump. Ratner was the prime minister’s guest at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2023. He posted a picture on his Instagram standing behind a seated Netanyahu and his wife, and next to attorney Alan Dershowitz, himself a longtime advisor and friend of Trump’s.

That year, several Israeli media outlets reported that Ratner had obtained Israeli citizenship after he posted the passbook Israel issues to new immigrants on his Instagram story with his name “Brett Shai Ratner” captioned in Hebrew.

“There’s a strong community in south Florida that is close to Trump,” said someone who worked with the family but was not authorized to speak publicly. “Brett has relationships with a bunch of them; it was just a matter of connecting the dots.”

Ratner no longer appears to live at his Hillhaven estate (which is currently listed for lease at $82,500 a month), while there have been sightings of him at Mar-a-Lago.

Not long after the presidential election, Ratner was given unprecedented entrée to Melania Trump and became a part of her trusted inner circle.

Beckman said Ratner was given “remarkable” access to her life. “There were behind-the-scenes meetings,” he said. “She’s a very private person and for the first time she was allowing the cameras to cover her, her family, her philanthropy and of course her business endeavors.”

Many of the women who came forward in 2017 to level their accusations against Ratner declined to speak about him now or to comment on his return to directing.

In the 2017 Times article, actor Jaime Ray Newman alleged that during a flight Ratner made sexually inappropriate comments and showed her nude photos of his then-girlfriend.

“I said my piece a couple of years ago and have moved on,” Newman, who stars in the Netflix hit “The Hunting Wives,” told The Times. “I feel really good and brave in what I did.”

The “Melania” trailer is in heavy rotation online and was shown during the NFL playoffs. Billboards loom over cities and on buses.

Talking to reporters on Air Force One earlier this month, the president praised the upcoming film.

“I’ve seen pieces of it, it’s incredible,” Trump said. “Everybody wants tickets to the premiere. I think it’s going to be great.”

WASHINGTON — Eleanor Holmes Norton, the 18-term delegate for the District of Columbia in Congress and a veteran of the Civil Rights Movement, has filed paperwork to end her campaign for reelection, likely closing out a decades-long career in public service.

Norton, 88, has been the sole representative of the residents of the nation’s capital in Congress since 1991, but she faced increasing questions about her effectiveness after the Trump administration began its sweeping intervention into the city last year.

Mayor Muriel Bowser congratulated Norton on her retirement.

“For 35 years, Congresswoman Norton has been our Warrior on the Hill,” Bowser wrote on social media. “Her work embodies the unwavering resolve of a city that refuses to yield in its fight for equal representation.”

Norton’s campaign filed a termination report with the Federal Election Commission on Sunday. Her office has not released an official statement about the delegate’s intentions.

The filing was first reported by NOTUS.

Her retirement opens up a likely competitive primary to succeed her in an overwhelmingly Democratic city. Several local lawmakers had already announced their intentions to run in the Democratic primary.

An institution in Washington politics for decades, Norton is the oldest member in the House. She was a personal friend to civil rights icons such as Medgar Evers and a contemporary of other activists turned congressional stalwarts, including Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) and the late Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and John Lewis (D-Ga.).

But Norton has faced calls to step aside in recent months as residents and local lawmakers questioned her ability to effectively advocate for the city in Congress amid the Republican administration’s aggressive moves toward the city.

The White House federalized Washington’s police force, deployed National Guard troops from six states and the federal district across the capital’s streets and surged federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security into neighborhoods. The moves prompted outcry and protests from residents and a lawsuit from the district’s attorney general.

Norton’s retirement comes as a historically high number of lawmakers announce they will either seek another public office or retire from official duties altogether. More than 1 in 10 members of the House are not seeking reelection this year.

Norton’s staunch advocacy for her city

As the district’s delegate, Norton does not have a formal vote in the House. But she has found other ways to advocate for the city’s interests. Called the “Warrior on the Hill” by her supporters, Norton was a staunch advocate for D.C. statehood and for the labor rights of the federal workers who called Washington and its surrounding region home.

She also secured bipartisan wins for district residents. Norton was the driving force behind the passage of a law that provides up to $10,000 per year for students who attend public colleges outside the district. It also provides up to $2,500 per year for students who attend select private historically Black colleges and universities across the country and nonprofit colleges in the D.C. metropolitan area.

In the 1990s, Norton played a key role in ending the city’s financial crisis by brokering a deal to transfer billions of dollars in unfunded pension liabilities to the federal government in exchange for changes to the district’s budget. She twice played a leading role in House passage of a D.C. statehood bill.

Steeped in the civil rights movement

Norton was born and raised in Washington, and her life spans the arc of the district’s trials and triumphs. She was educated at Dunbar High School as part of the school’s last segregated class.

“Growing up black in Washington gave a special advantage. This whole community of blacks was very race conscious, very civil rights conscious,” she said in her 2003 biography, “Fire in My Soul.”

She attended Antioch College in Ohio and in 1963 split her time between Yale Law School and Mississippi, where she worked as an organizer during the Freedom Summer of the Civil Rights Movement.

One day that summer, Evers picked her up at the airport. He was assassinated that night.

Norton also helped organize and attended the 1963 March on Washington.

In an interview with the Associated Press in 2023, Norton said the march was still “the single most extraordinary experience of my lifetime.”

She went on to become the first woman to lead the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which helps enforce anti-discrimination laws in the workplace. She ran for office when her predecessor retired to run for Washington mayor.

Brown writes for the Associated Press.