Politics Desk

CNN Chairman and Chief Executive Mark Thompson could remain in his role at the news network after Paramount completes its deal to acquire the news network’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.

Thompson, 69, is said to be in early stages of a discussions with Paramount Skydance Chief Executive David Ellison about continuing in the job he has held since April 2023, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report Thursday that Thompson has been approached by Ellison about staying with the network. A representative for Paramount declined to comment.

Retaining Thompson in his role would provide short-term relief to CNN staffers who are concerned about the change in ownership. As Paramount pursued its $111-million deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery — which is moving forward following a judge’s decision to settle an antitrust suit filed by state attorneys general who wanted to block the deal — the Ellison family have reportedly had discussions with President Trump about altering the network’s coverage, which he has often deemed as unfair.

As part of the settlement, Paramount agreed to the formation of an editorial oversight board that will monitor adherence to editorial independence from its owners and shareholders. The editorial board is part of an agreement to end the states’ antitrust fight that threatened to delay the completion of the deal for months.

Keeping Thompson at CNN raises questions of how CBS News Editor-in-chief Bari Weiss will be integrated into the new company.

Weiss, who joined the storied news division after Paramount acquired her contrarian digital news site the Free Press last year, has made major changes at “CBS Evening News” and the top rated newsmagazine “60 Minutes,” with no audience gains to show for it.

CNN insiders have been skeptical over how Weiss could take over the vastly larger and more profitable news organization based on her CBS track record so far.

CNN and CBS News are expected to consolidate some of their operations, such as its overseas bureaus. But there are obstacles to a rapid consolidation, as many CBS News employees work under union contracts. Most of CNN is not unionized.

But if Thompson remains, its likely he we will have the task of reducing costs, as the traditional TV audience that provides the bulk of revenues for both CNN and CBS News continues to shrink.

Thompson has been behind a major effort to generate more revenue from CNN’s digital operations, which now include a subscription streaming service that makes the channel available without a cable or satellite TV package. He oversaw the New York Times’ successful transformation into a dominant digital news product during his run as president and chief executive from 2012 to 2020.

The Paramount-Warner deal will close soon after a judge signed a settlement that ended the antitrust lawsuit brought by Calif. Atty. General Rob Bonta and 11 other attorneys general. The detente , however, has not cooled tensions between CNN and the White House.

CNN was scheduled to provide press pool coverage of Trump’s trip to Texas and Oklahoma on Thursday. But the White House removed the network from the pool, despite a judge’s order last week to block the administration’s attempt to ban access for some media outlets.

Last week, CNN, MS NOW and Politico were banned from White House grounds. Trump cited the outlets’ ongoing negative coverage of him as the reason for the ban. The administration later tried to argue in court that their coverage was a threat to national security.

Photo: Acting President Ramón J. Velásquez (1993–1994) and his cabinet on the last day of his term. Dr. Velásquez, both during his brief tenure and previously at the helm of a special commission, was a leading proponent of decentralization in the late 20th-century. | Source: Archivo Fotografía Urbana.

The next democratically elected president of Venezuela will inherit an office that is simultaneously too powerful and not powerful enough.

Too powerful because decades of centralization have placed extraordinary political, fiscal and administrative authority in Miraflores. Not powerful enough because whoever inherits it will also confront a damaged bureaucracy, weak public services, deteriorated infrastructure and institutions that may still be controlled by political adversaries.

That combination will make concentration tempting.

A new government will have an enormous reconstruction mandate and voters impatient for results. Every institutional restraint will risk looking like another obstacle left behind by chavismo. Decentralization can wait until the State is stabilized. Congressional procedures can wait because the crisis is urgent. Extraordinary executive authorities can be justified because ordinary government is too slow.

Many of those arguments will contain some truth.

That is what makes them dangerous.

Chávez inherited Venezuela’s presidentialist political culture and radicalized it.

If Venezuela wants this transition to be the last one it needs, the country cannot simply transfer the powers accumulated in the presidency to someone more democratic. But neither can it respond to authoritarianism by constructing an executive incapable of governing.

The question is not whether Venezuela needs a strong president or a weak one. It needs to decide what the president should actually be strong enough to do.

Miraflores was powerful before Chávez

Chavismo radically expanded executive power, but it did not invent Venezuelan presidentialism.

Long before Hugo Chávez, the presidency occupied an unusually commanding position over the political system. Oil reinforced that arrangement. Whoever controlled the national government controlled the principal source of public revenue, and the ability to distribute that revenue made Caracas not merely the political center of Venezuela but the financial center on which much of the rest of the government depended.

The result was a particular understanding of political effectiveness. Presidents were expected to not merely administer the executive branch but to solve national problems, distribute resources, arbitrate conflicts and impose direction on the State.

Chávez inherited that culture and radicalized it.

Carlos Rangel would have recognized something familiar in the phenomenon. His critique of Latin American political culture repeatedly returned to the attraction of the providential leader: the politician whose extraordinary personal mandate supposedly allows him to rise above institutions that appear slow, compromised or incapable of producing the transformation the country requires.

A new democracy has to be built for the political society Venezuela actually has.

Chavismo gave that tradition a twenty-first-century vocabulary. The leader possessed a direct relationship with the people. Institutions that resisted him therefore did not represent legitimate constraints on democratic power; they interfered with the popular mandate.

That logic did not begin with Chávez, and removing chavismo will not automatically remove it.

This is one reason institutional design matters more than hoping Venezuela will simply develop a different political culture. A new democracy has to be built for the political society Venezuela actually has, including its recurring attraction to presidents who promise to cut through institutions rather than patiently govern through them.

Decentralization was one answer

Venezuela has attempted to solve part of this problem before.

The decentralization reforms beginning in 1989 transformed Venezuelan politics by allowing voters to directly elect governors and mayors. They created alternative centers of democratic legitimacy, allowed regional leaders to build careers outside national party hierarchies and weakened the assumption that every important political decision had to originate in Caracas.

Those reforms were real democratic progress.

They also occurred during the accelerating crisis of the political system that had governed Venezuela since 1958. Carlos Andrés Pérez was attempting a profound economic transformation while confronting social unrest, two coup attempts, resistance within his own party and an increasingly fragmented political environment.

Enough independently powerful actors with absolute vetoes can also make coherent government extraordinarily difficult.

It would be wrong to claim that decentralization caused Pérez’s downfall. The crisis of his second government had far deeper causes. But the period should caution against the assumption that dispersing power automatically produces better government. A political system needs restraints. It also needs the capacity to reach decisions.

Juan Linz famously warned that presidential systems contain an inherent problem of competing legitimacy: both the president and the legislature can claim a direct mandate from voters. Venezuela could face that problem almost immediately in a transition. A newly elected president may claim a national mandate for reconstruction while legislators, governors, courts and other institutions exercise equally legitimate powers to resist particular policies.

Those conflicts are not defects but rather an essential part of democracy.

But enough independently powerful actors with absolute vetoes can also make coherent government extraordinarily difficult. The goal cannot therefore be to create as many obstacles to presidential action as possible.

Decentralization has to mean power, not administration

Chavismo subsequently demonstrated another weakness in Venezuela’s earlier decentralization: elected local government does not necessarily amount to decentralized power.

A governor who depends overwhelmingly on transfers determined in Caracas may be politically elected but remains fiscally vulnerable to the center. A municipality with responsibilities but inadequate revenue possesses decentralization on paper. A regional government whose police, infrastructure projects or public services can be bypassed by parallel national authorities is autonomous only until Miraflores decides otherwise.

Chávez and his successors became adept at exploiting these weaknesses. Political authority could be recentralized, resources redirected, parallel institutions created and opposition-controlled governments bypassed without formally abolishing governors or mayors.

A president who negotiates every administrative action with multiple institutions would not protect democracy for very long. It could instead discredit it.

A serious decentralization therefore has to involve more than another constitutional declaration that Venezuela is a federal State.

It must ask where revenue is collected, who controls it, which responsibilities genuinely belong to states and municipalities and which functions require national coordination. Regional governments need enough authority and predictable resources to govern without requesting political permission from the president. But the national government must retain enough capacity to maintain common standards, respond to national emergencies, redistribute among regions and preserve the Venezuelan State as a functioning whole.

That balance is much harder than simply transferring competencies from one level of government to another.

The State must still be able to act

An executive constrained by law is not the same thing as an impotent executive. The Venezuelan president should be capable of executing a legally approved budget, directing the national administration, coordinating responses to disasters, conducting foreign policy and implementing the program on which voters elected the government. Rebuilding infrastructure, stabilizing public finances and restoring basic services will require a national government capable of making decisions and making those decisions stick.

A presidency that must negotiate every administrative action with multiple institutions would not protect democracy for very long. It could instead discredit it. Citizens judge democratic government partly by whether it governs. If elections repeatedly produce leaders incapable of responding to crime, blackouts, inflation or deteriorating public services because every decision disappears into institutional paralysis, frustration with democratic restraint will eventually become politically valuable. The politician promising to eliminate the obstacles will always be waiting.

Institutional design has to emerge from Venezuela’s own history and needs.

Machiavelli understood the underlying problem centuries before modern constitutionalism gave it different terminology: a political order that cannot preserve itself will not remain a political order for long. Democracies require enough power to respond to genuine threats.

The danger lies in what happens next.

Emergency authorities created to save the State can outlive the emergency. Executive discretion justified by reconstruction can become normal government. A president given extraordinary authority because democratic institutions are initially weak acquires the ability to ensure that those institutions remain weak.

Venezuela has already lived that cycle.

Miraflores should matter less

The difficult conclusion is that democratic reconstruction will require whoever next controls the presidency to surrender powers at precisely the moment when there will be compelling reasons to retain them. That is a much harder political proposition than replacing chavista officials.

Someone who has spent years fighting to reach Miraflores may arrive there facing a devastated country and discover an arsenal of executive authority that could make reconstruction easier. It will be extraordinarily tempting to argue that institutional reform should come later, after the emergency has passed and the country has stabilized.

But democratic restraints are easiest to support when they constrain somebody else. Their real test comes when they constrain us.

The president should not determine whether an opposition governor receives the resources necessary to govern. The executive should not be able to transform regulatory authority into political discipline. Emergency powers should expire without depending on presidential generosity. Institutions capable of investigating the government should not owe their survival to that government’s continued support.

None of this necessarily requires turning Venezuela into a parliamentary republic, copying the United States or mechanically importing someone else’s federal model. Institutional design has to emerge from Venezuela’s own history and needs.

But one principle should survive whatever arrangement eventually emerges: winning the presidency should not mean winning the State. That principle protects more than the opposition, it also protects the president.

Winning should give politicians the authority to govern without giving them the tools to decide whether anybody else will ever govern again.

A system in which the loss of Miraflores does not mean losing access to every meaningful source of political authority makes electoral defeat less existential. Governors can govern. Legislators retain influence. Parties can preserve territorial organizations. Former incumbents can imagine returning through elections rather than manipulating the State to avoid leaving. Distributing power can therefore make alternation easier to accept.

The point is not to make political victory meaningless. Elections must have consequences. Governments need enough authority to implement different programs or democracy becomes little more than a ritual for changing administrators.

The objective is narrower: winning should give politicians the authority to govern without giving them the tools to decide whether anybody else will ever govern again.

That is the distinction Venezuela failed to maintain.

And it brings three problems of institutional reconstruction together. Venezuela needs institutions that remain democratic regardless of who occupies them. It needs a State capable of implementing rules while remaining bound by them. And it needs political power distributed widely enough that no single electoral victory becomes an ownership of the Republic.

For 25 years, Venezuela’s political system increasingly revolved around a simple question: who controls Miraflores?

A durable democracy will require making the answer matter considerably less. The next president of Venezuela should inherit enough power to govern the country, but considerably less power to define it.

WASHINGTON — A pro-Israel Democratic advocacy group on Thursday released a framework intended to help the party better articulate its vision for the U.S. relationship with Israel, an issue that has deeply fractured Democrats this year and could lead to further divisions heading into the next presidential campaign.

Democratic Majority for Israel is calling on the party to continue providing security and military assistance to the country while supporting a negotiated path to statehood for both Israelis and Palestinians and a future for Gaza that doesn’t include Hamas.

It notably does not insist on unyielding support for Israel, acknowledging that “Israel’s security does not require support for every decision made by an Israeli government.” The document also calls on Israel to “act decisively against settler threats, intimidation, and violence.”

The framework is being released at a sensitive moment for Democrats following a primary season in which voters from New York to Michigan embraced candidates who backed positions including ending military aid to Israel. If Democrats retake control of the U.S. House or Senate in next month’s elections, these candidates could play a significant role in shaping the debate over America’s posture toward Israel.

The issue could also play prominently in the early stages of the next presidential campaign, which could begin shortly after the midterms.

Democratic Majority for Israel’s chief executive, Brian Romick, said his goal is to provide a “helpful guide for our mainstream Democratic candidates on how to engage with a complicated issue.”

“It’s important to remind Democrats and Americans that there’s value in the U.S.-Israel relationship,” he said. “We thought it was important to kind of lay out a forward-looking vision.”

The question is whether such a framework will go very far in shaping the views of Democrats, who are increasingly skeptical of Israel.

About 58% of Democrats said the U.S. is “too supportive” of the Israelis, according to a June survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, up from 45% in January 2024. Roughly half of Democrats believe that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians during the war with Hamas, an accusation Israel rejects.

Former Obama administration chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who has argued Democrats need to return to the political center ahead of launching a potential presidential bid, went to Israel in July and delivered a blistering speech warning the country was at risk of becoming a “territorial pariah.” He specifically called out Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has closely aligned himself with President Trump, a Republican.

Emanuel, who’s also a former congressman, Chicago mayor and U.S. ambassador, blamed Netanyahu for driving Israel to a “dead end,” emboldened by poor decisions from American leaders.

The framework from Democratic Majority for Israel takes a less strident view on Netanyahu, who faces another election this month. “Support for Israel,” the group argued, “transcends any one Israeli government.”

The group took a similarly long view on military and security assistance for Israel, arguing it shouldn’t be stopped now even as it acknowledged the possibility of change in the future.

“Over time, and by mutual agreement, today’s partnership should be capable of evolving beyond the traditional assistance framework toward an increasingly reciprocal relationship centered on joint investment, innovation, and technological advantage,” the framework reads. “The objective should be to build the partnership both countries will need to confront the threats and seize the opportunities of the coming decades.”

Daniel Shapiro, the former U.S. ambassador to Israel under President Barack Obama, acknowledged “strong, passionate views” on the issue.

“Clearly, not everyone will agree with every aspect” of the framework, he said. “But I think there’s a lot there that many Democrats would find speaks to them.”

Sloan writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — A judge in the nation’s capital agreed on Thursday to permanently dismiss a criminal case charging a former Olympian with vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, a move that could prevent federal prosecutors from reviving the case under political pressure from President Trump.

D.C. Superior Court Judge Todd Edelman ordered the dismissal of David Hearn’s case with “prejudice,” which would block U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro’s office from refiling the felony charge against him. The judge ruled nearly a month after hearing attorneys’ arguments.

Hearn’s lawyers say Trump administration officials have continued to falsely accuse the Maryland resident of vandalizing the reflecting pool despite Pirro’s decision to drop the case on July 31. Trump responded by saying Pirro “choked” and “folded like an umbrella.”

In a court filing in July, Pirro said new evidence produced by the Interior Department showed Hearn wasn’t responsible for damage to the pool’s lining. Pirro’s office attributed the damage instead to a botched installation by a contractor as well as a rush to complete the project in time for this summer’s America 250 celebration in Washington.

Pirro’s admission was an embarrassing setback for the White House. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has backed Trump’s claims that vandals damaged the pool.

Hearn has said he was on a bike ride on June 19 when he reached in to examine the pool’s newly peeled coating and briefly touched a chunk attached to the side of the pool. But he said he obeyed a park worker’s command to let go of it.

Hearn was charged with one count of property destruction, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years. His lawyers questioned whether prosecutors properly presented the grand jury with adequate evidence to support the charge and the amount of damage alleged by the government.

Hearn, 67, of Bethesda, Maryland, competed in three Summer Olympics, earning his best finish, ninth, at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee says on its website.

Trump, a Republican, appointed Pirro, a former Fox News host, to serve as the top federal prosecutor for the District of Columbia. Edelman was nominated to the bench by Democratic President Barack Obama.

Hearn’s attorneys said the ruling is “a victory for the rule of law and for an innocent American seeking justice” and allows Hearn to “move forward with his life as he deserves.”

“This administration chose to pursue an unjust prosecution against Mr. Hearn. It should not get repeated chances to wield the power of criminal prosecution against someone who should never have been prosecuted,” the lawyers said in a statement.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.

McKinney has been endorsed by Hochman, the union that represents rank-and-file L.A. police officers and City Councilmembers Traci Park, John Lee, Tim McOsker and Monica Rodriguez. While McKinney has raised half a million dollars, independent expenditures have spent more than $3 million to support the veteran prosecutor.

More than $2 million of those funds have come from a political action committee run by Airbnb. The rental giant was sued by Feldstein Soto for price gouging after the destructive Palisades fire, but McKinney has dismissed criticism that he’s receiving massive financial support from a corporation that if elected, he’d be involved in litigation against.

“Airbnb is going to benefit from a safer L.A., because it’s going to boost tourism to the extent that they have properties and interests here,” he told The Times in May. “When they look at the current city attorney and they look at Marissa Roy, maybe they decided this guy is going to do a better job.”

Roy has the support of the L.A. County Democratic Party, the Democratic Socialists of America’s Los Angeles chapter, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), City Councilmembers Ysabel Jurado and Eunisses Hernandez, L.A. City Controller Kenneth Mejia, L.A. County Supervisors Hilda Solis and Lindsay Horvath, the city attorneys of San Francisco and San Diego, the L.A. County Federation of Labor and a host of other labor unions and Democratic groups.

Mayor Karen Bass endorsed Feldstein Soto in the primary. She has yet to weigh in on the runoff.

Former Long Beach Police chief Robert Luna came out of retirement to run for sheriff in 2022, promising to turn around a department that had veered off course.

As someone who didn’t have the wide name recognition or countywide political experience of some of his challengers, Luna’s second-place finish to Villanueva in the primary was far from guaranteed, but he ultimately cleared the rest of the field by a wide margin.

Fast-forward four years to June, and Luna received 44.2% of the vote in this primary — less than six points short of winning the race outright — versus Villanueva’s 21.7%. And Luna’s been a more effective fundraiser, bringing in $366,000 since Jan. 1, more than three times the nearly $109,000 Villanueva had raised by June 30, according to their most recent campaign filings. Luna had $352,000 in the war chest as of June 30, and Villanueva had about $56,000.

But Villanueva has wide name recognition in L.A. County. And he pulled off a historic political upset of his own in 2018 when he beat Sheriff Jim McDonnell, who is now the Los Angeles police chief. It was the first time an incumbent L.A. County sheriff lost a reelection campaign in more than a century. It was also the first time in 100 years that a Democrat had been elected to the nonpartisan sheriff’s job.

After running on a progressive platform and pitching himself as a criminal justice reformer, Villanueva tacked hard to the right. Within two years he was a favorite of conservative media, including Fox News, where he appeared repeatedly to vilify “woke” culture and criticize Democrats. He ultimately switched his party registration to Republican in a move that solidified a new base of law-and-order supporters while alienating many who supported him in 2018.

Villanueva’s tenure was marked by controversy and scandal. He launched, then walked back a criminal leak investigation of a Los Angeles Times reporter and was ordered to testify after sheriff’s deputies took and shared pictures at the site of Kobe Bryant’s helicopter crash. Villanueva defied subpoenas over so-called deputy gangs.

Now, Luna is the one defending his record as sheriff over the last four years. He’s presided over declines in homicides and violent crime and established a period of relative calm after the stormy Villanueva years. But Luna’s department has come under scrutiny in the wake of a July 2025 incident in which a grenade exploded accidentally in a department parking lot, killing three deputies. The state has fined the department more than $350,000 after identifying a series of safety violations leading up to the blast.

And the Civilian Oversight Commission filed suit against the department in June for declining to provide certain records related to three cases of use of force the commission issued subpoenas for in February 2025. Luna has said the county’s attorneys maintain that the unredacted records can’t be released until it completes a “meet and confer” process with the Sheriff’s Department union, a claim that watchdogs have disputed.

Min said Trump’s attacks on voting by mail and his attempts to get the U.S. Postal Service to refuse to deliver mail-in ballots, combined with his attempts in 2020 to overturn the election, “should worry every American who cares about our country, our Constitution, and the values of our nation.”

Min added that all of this has happened despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

In 2024, Min authored a bill which passed that prohibits local governments from forcing voters to present identification before they cast a ballot at a polling place.

“I will continue to do all I can to stand up against these anti-democratic and un-American attacks on the sanctity of our elections,” Min said.

Le Roux told The Times she supports the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility or SAVE America Act, which would require voters to provide documents proving their citizenship at the time of registration and a photo ID at the time they vote.

In California, people are required to provide a driver’s license number or a portion of their social security number when they register to vote.

“Millions of ballots are mailed out in California with very few safeguards and at significant cost, leading to weeks of uncertainty as the rest of the country laughs and mocks us for our incompetence,” she said.

Le Roux also supports Proposition 39, which will appear on the November ballot in California, and would require voters to show government issued identification at the polls. Voters who submit mail-in ballots would need to provide the last four digits of a government ID to vote.

Proponents of the measure say Los Angeles is falling short in providing basic services, including street and sidewalk maintenance, upkeep of streetlights and trees and other services administered by the Department of Public Works.

The measure is intended to streamline public works decision-making to improve city services and add new sources of revenue by leveraging existing resources such as underutilized city land.

Measure LA’s perhaps most controversial element is the proposal to increase the power of the director of public works while reducing the sway of the Board of Public Works or potentially eliminating it.

The director would be able to manage public works projects, including construction, buying or leasing property, exercising eminent domain with City Council approval, granting street permits, regulating parking and recommending budgets for the department.

An opponent of the measure, Rodriguez said the Board of Public Works was established to provide independent review of city contracting, with commissioners’ decisions made in public meetings.

“Removing this important check and balance would reduce public scrutiny and weaken accountability over billions of taxpayer dollars for public projects,” Rodriguez said in her ballot argument against the measure.

Commissioners are appointed by the mayor. They work full-time on the board for five-year terms administering the Public Works Department while assisted by several bureau heads and the director of public works.

Proponents of the measure say the current system of overseeing public works is ineffective because responsibility is spread among multiple officials, commissions, agencies and bureaus.

“Angelenos see the results in crumbling streets, buckled sidewalks and streetlights that stay dark,” proponents said in their ballot argument.

Another key element of the measure is establishing a two-year budget cycle for the city, which currently adopts its budget annually. Under Measure LA, the mayor would be required to submit a proposed two-year budget to the City Council by April 1. A two-year budget would enhance planning for infrastructure improvements under another new requirement that the city adopt a Capital Infrastructure Plan.

Most major U.S. cities rely on multiyear capital improvement plans to schedule spending on roads, bridges, parks and buildings.

A long-term infrastructure plan administered with two-year budgeting “sets clear priorities, identifies the projects that need to get done, and plans how to fund them over time,” proponents said.

Currently, the charter prohibits the city from mortgaging city-owned property and prevents it from operating purely commercial or industrial businesses. The measure would remove these restrictions to raise new revenue.

Easing restrictions on operating a business also would allow the city to use its intellectual property to sell merchandise with city logos, as is done in other cities including New York, Yaroslavsky said.

Ugarte, who once collected signatures for Measure ULA, also known as the “mansion tax,” says it’s not working as intended and is keeping developers away from the city. The measure levies a tax on property sales above $5.3 million and funnels the money to affordable housing programs and homeless prevention.

“If developers are running away from the city of L.A., we gotta know why. We gotta go back to the drawing board. We gotta accept when we make mistakes, including myself,” Ugarte said.

He supports amending the measure to exempt affordable housing developers. He also wants to raise the threshold for properties subject to the tax to $10 million, to account for the increasing costs of construction.

Ugarte supports State Bill 79, a law mandating that cities increase housing density around public transportation hubs. But more transportation, Ugarte said, needs to come before more housing.

Making L.A. more transit-friendly will lower costs for housing, insurance and parking, Ugarte said, giving residents relief from the city’s high cost of living.

Mazariegos said homeless prevention starts with enforcing a “huge list” of the city’s tenant rights laws, including rent control and prohibitions against landlords harassing tenants.

Building affordable housing, along with enforcing those laws, will keep more people housed, he said.

Mazariegos wants to use public land to build social housing, which is publicly subsidized housing separate from the rental market.

He also would push to extend the travel industry’s upcoming $30 minimum wage to all workers and to tie the minimum wage to the consumer price index.

“A combination of those things will reduce and stop the bleeding of folks going into the street, going homeless, and will start giving us a chance as a city to work our way out of this crisis,” Mazariegos said.

A Black police officer asked whether a monkey was named “Tyrone,” to the laughter of a roomful of Latino and Asian colleagues.

A Latina cop described how to inflict maximum pain: “You hit Black people in the liver — I heard they got weak livers,” she said, according to an LAPD internal affairs report.

The report said their boss, an Asian sergeant, stood by as his employees used terms like “midnight” and “chocolate, chocolate” to describe people’s skin tones.

Those were among the comments that came to light last year after an LAPD whistleblower secretly recorded his colleagues in a unit that screens police recruits.

The scandal, which has seen new developments in recent weeks, is forcing department officials to reckon with a harsh reality: Years of efforts to make the LAPD more diverse have seemingly done little to stamp out prejudice in the ranks.

For much of its history, the LAPD was a white man’s department. Aggressive tactics in communities of color fueled racial uprisings in the 1960s and early 1990s, when the beating of motorist Rodney King led to the discovery of messages similar to those in the recruitment unit tapes, with officers referring to Black men as “Buckwheat” and bragging about “busting heads.”

Under pressure from lawsuits and consent decrees, police leaders pushed to recruit more Black, Latino and Asian officers, seeking to build up trust in minority communities.

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1. Los Angeles Police Department graduates a total of 22 recruits at the Los Angeles Police Academy in Elysian Park on Friday, September 18, 2026. 2. (Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

Latinos now make up more than half of the 8,500-officer department. Black officers constitute less than 9% of the force, coinciding with a decline in the city’s Black population.

The officer who made the recruitment unit recordings, Daniel Flores, is Latino.

He recorded dozens of conversations over a six-month span in 2024, eventually handing them over to the department’s inspector general for investigation.

Last week, Flores filed a new lawsuit against the city, adding to a previous claim that alleged he faced retaliation from his bosses for documenting the offensive comments he heard while on the job.

According to his latest claim, department officials recommended that he be suspended for 22 days without pay. After initially seeking to keep his job with the LAPD, the 13-year department veteran said in the lawsuit that he recently decided to retire rather than endure an increasingly hostile work environment.

Flores also alleged LAPD officials were responsible for pushing a criminal case against him for violating a state eavesdropping law that prohibits recording conversations without consent. Initially alleging 16 felonies, Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman has since reduced the charges to misdemeanors, likely allowing Flores to avoid jail time.

An LAPD spokesperson declined to answer questions about Flores’ case.

“The Department takes these allegations seriously,” Lt. Elpidio Orozco said in a statement. “Because the case and related personnel proceedings remain ongoing, we cannot discuss individual disciplinary actions or make comparisons to unrelated past incidents.”

The department’s defenders maintain that progress has been made toward rooting out bigotry.

Officers are required to undergo psychological screening and training aimed at teasing out unconscious biases. New recruits and seasoned officers alike take field trips to the Museum of Tolerance, where trainers extol the virtues of multiculturalism. The department has sent recruiters to historically Black colleges in the South and the East Coast.

But others, including civil rights attorney Connie Rice, say the latest scandal proves that the LAPD’s problems run deeper than the hateful actions of a few individuals.

The beating of Rodney King in 1991 forced a reckoning for the LAPD.

(George Holliday / Associated Press)

“Racism is like the herpes virus in the body of the LAPD: You can suppress it with a good chief, but as soon as they leave, it breaks out again,” Rice said.

A 2024 study by British researchers examined racial attitudes among members of the department’s vaunted Metropolitan Division.

The researchers found that LAPD officers were “shockingly defensive” when asked about systemic racism, taking a negative view of diversity hiring programs and insisting that left-leaning activists, elected officials and media outlets were stoking public outrage over racial profiling.

“The dismissive reactions … to a question on such an important issue highlight an unhealthy antagonism which prevents any organization from learning or developing its practice,” the researchers concluded. “It is a fundamental barrier that must be overcome.”

While hiring more officers from historically marginalized groups has long been pushed as a way to improve police practices and build trust in minority neighborhoods, studies have not necessarily borne that out, said Daniel Gascon, a sociology and criminology professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

“Just because there’s more numbers of a given sort in a department doesn’t mean it’s going to change automatically,” said Gascon, who has studied the LAPD’s relationship with Latino communities.

Since the start of the year, a review of recruit graduation announcements shows the department has hired just seven new Black officers. By contrast, roughly 80% of the 241 officers to graduate from the police academy over the last nine months have been Latino.

The growing Latino presence in the LAPD has been reflected in police use-of-force numbers.

A Times analysis of police shootings since 2016 found that of the roughly 150 people who have been shot dead by the LAPD across the city, at least 94 were Latino men. In 3 out of every 4 of those shootings, at least one of the officers who fired was also Latino, the analysis showed.

LAPD Officer Daniel Flores, left, listens as his attorney Alan Jackson speaks to reporters at the Superior Court building.

(Libor Jany / Los Angeles Times)

Despite the increased diversity, interviews with current and former LAPD members indicate deep divisions are reflected in the way that Black and Latino officers see the department’s racial issues. Most agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation.

Several Black officers told The Times they still experience workplace hostility and racial dog whistles, such as fretting about the lowering of police recruit standards. The comments, they said, came from Black and Latino colleagues alike.

Too often, the Black officers said, Latinos who wear the uniform see themselves only as victims of discrimination, and not perpetrators.

Some Black officers said they avoid conversations about race entirely for fear of upsetting conservative colleagues — who feel emboldened by the divisive rhetoric coming from the White House.

The Latino officers who spoke to The Times said the department has for too long prioritized the promotion of Black members of the force to leadership roles while the representation of Latinos in the highest ranks has slipped.

Others argue that because society tends to lump Latinos of different backgrounds together, workplace discrimination against and within the community is often missed.

Officers from both groups said their race has been used against them when it comes to promotions. But both sides also say racism is a problem in society writ large, and not limited to the LAPD.

In a recent interview with The Times, Mayor Karen Bass said that although she is pleased that the department has increased the number of Latino officers to reflect the city’s demographics, its percentage of Black officers continues to dwindle as older African Americans are on the brink of retirement with very few young Black officers coming onto the job.

Bass, who was a young community organizer in South L.A. when the King beating happened, said it was foolhardy to believe that merely because the LAPD is more diverse, old problems cannot be repeated.

“Just because this happened 30 years ago and there are new policies that were put in place, that’s not enough,” she said in an interview with The Times. “You’ve gotta make sure that those policies are constantly updated.”

Times staff writers Andrea Flores and Richard Winton contributed to this report.

The California I grew up in had its pluses and minuses, just like the state I’m living in now.

But consider this:

In 1974, I wrote a check for a semester of college.

The fee was $98.

That was the cost of registration, by the way. Tuition for in-state residents was free at San José State University and other public universities in California. The state’s leaders believed subsidized higher education would serve the greater good and seed economic growth.

Two years after graduating, I was working as a sportswriter for a small Bay Area newspaper. My spouse was a drug store clerk. Together we made less than $20,000 a year.

And we bought a brand-new house, 45 minutes east of Oakland, for just under $50,000.

In a thousand ways, we’re living in a different California today. Tuition and fees for a semester on a Cal State campus now run about $4,500, and the average mid-tier home costs about $775,000 in some places and far more in others, which is out of reach for nearly 80% of working people.

So as I watched the gubernatorial debate Wednesday night between the two men who want to lead us into the future, I was wondering which California is better in terms of hope, opportunity and livability?

The one I was born in during the postwar boom, or the one we’re living in now?

There’s no easy answer. The California of my youth was more affordable, but it was no utopian dreamscape. Housing discrimination and segregation were deep-seated, and the Los Angeles sky was the color of swamp water.

In the last half of the 20th century, California went on to become a global leader in technology, aerospace, the arts and healthcare, and its investment in public education helped build an economic superpower. Even the air got cleaned up, to a degree.

But for all of California’s riches and unrivaled natural beauty, it’s fair to say things are out of whack at the moment. How is it that the world’s fourth-largest economy also has the nation’s highest poverty rate?

There’s a flotilla of yachts, but millions of have-nots, and enough homeless people to fill stadiums. If we’re so progressive, and swimming in more venture capital than the rest of the nation combined, why are the masses crippled by a housing shortage and the high cost of living, and why did we build a soaring higher education model while letting our once exalted K-12 system sink in national rankings?

If California weren’t so lopsidedly blue, Republican candidate Steve Hilton might get a little more traction with a campaign built around the idea that there’s an easy explanation for the state’s misery of problems: Democrats have been in charge for years, they’ve mucked things up, and Xavier Becerra is yet another textbook California liberal who will stay the course.

“It’s impossible for regular working people to live in this state anymore,” Hilton charged during the debate, calling out over-regulation, the high cost of living, the housing shortage and a homelessness problem that “shames” our state. “And all you’re offering,” Hilton continued, “is more of the same, backed by the same corrupt machine in Sacramento.”

Becerra, meanwhile, kept handcuffing Hilton to President Trump, a good move, given that the president has helped launch an idiotic war, gummed up the economy, and seen his favorability plummet.

Hilton is not entirely off base, although there’s no evidence he has plausible solutions.

What he doesn’t tell you is that other states have their own problems, many of which have more to do with global economic forces — and President Trump’s war-mongering and tariff tirades — than with public policy decisions at the state level.

When I was a lad, my father drove a milk truck, and then a bread truck, and then he sold candy and tobacco for a wholesale distributor based in Oakland, near the Coliseum, where he’d take me to A’s games but save a few bucks by parking next to the railroad tracks a half-mile away from the parking lot.

His jobs were mostly unionized. Unions were plentiful in the private sector back then. My family saved up for a house while we lived in an apartment, and then I paid next to nothing for a college degree.

The boldness of that idea — a free education at an elite university, with a lofty if unfulfilled goal of equal access for all — is still a testament to California’s long-ago grand ambition, even if Gov. Ronald Reagan eventually ended free tuition.

In her new book, “California Dreams: The Making and Remaking of the University of California,” Miriam Pawel references a quote from UC Berkeley alum Joan Didion, who called the system “the most coherent expression of the California possibility.”

The staircase I climbed was the essence of what USC professor Natalia Molina called “the infrastructure” of upward mobility. In her immigrant family, her grandmother established an Echo Park restaurant that Molina wrote a book about — “A Place at the Nayarit” — and her mother ran the bar there after attending bartending school.

Molina went to UCLA, and is now both a MacArthur Foundation fellow (the “genius” grant) and a Guggenheim fellow.

“There’s not that same path for upward mobility,” Molina said. “But there sure seems to be a path for downward mobility.”

That brings me back to the economy, and lessons I learned in 2018, when I spent several weeks in and around Telfair Elementary School in Pacoima, looking into why nearly a quarter of the students were homeless.

The answer? Several once-bustling manufacturing and aerospace companies in the area had shut down. The new economy was fast food and big box stores. Pay dropped; housing prices spiked. It was a snapshot of a changing world — one we haven’t yet adapted to.

Modern politics is not built to foster long-term thinking about such challenges, said longtime political strategist Darry Sragow.

“What are the dreams, what are the aspirations, where do you want to go?” said Sragow, who doesn’t know the answers but would like to at least hear the questions. “I keep looking for somebody who will do that.”

Agoura Hills resident and attorney Dan Douglass, 80, who detests President Trump and isn’t a fan of Hilton, told me that as a moderate Republican, he feels like “a man without a party.” But he is not without an answer to California’s housing problem.

“They’ve made it too complicated to build anything,” Douglass said. “Too many permits. Too much time to build.”

He is not wrong.

Samuel Trachtman, a political scientist with the UC Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative, argues that despite recent legislative progress on the housing crisis, state policies are restricting growth and making California more unaffordable.

“California must reduce regulatory costs that fall disproportionately on low- and middle-income residents,” Trachtman wrote in a recent four-part analysis.

“The state has “long led the nation in regulations promoting safety, sustainability, and quality,” he went on. “These policies can produce strong benefits. But they can also drive up the cost of essentials — costs that hit the poor hardest. This amounts to regressively funded progressivism.”

California was, and is, a work in progress, richly endowed and deeply flawed. Fixing complicated problems isn’t easy, but what I’d like to see from the next governor is more of the striving, imagination and sense of collective purpose that made California great.

There’s no way and no reason to go back to the state of my youth, but Trachtman had a thought about where to go next.

“In some ways we can use the past as a model,” he told me. “But in other ways we need to be more innovative and think about charting a path forward.”

Toward the most coherent expression of the California possibility.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

The two candidates to become California’s next governor painted vastly different portraits of the state they want to lead during a televised CNN debate Wednesday night — though they both agreed the state faces tremendous challenges.

Democrat Xavier Becerra, leading in polls, cast the state as an economic engine and a critical bulwark against the disastrous economic policies and creeping authoritarianism of the Trump administration, but also a victim of Trump policies, including tariffs and the war in Iran, that have made life less affordable and the nation less safe.

Becerra said he would work hard to help struggling Californians — including by cutting red tape on housing and regulating AI to ensure it doesn’t destroy jobs — while his challenger, Republican Steve Hilton, would harm them further by backing President Trump’s agenda at every turn.

Hilton, endorsed by Trump, blamed the state’s most entrenched ills on years of Democratic governance, awash in unnecessary state bureaucracy and regulation that have made it wildly unaffordable, and wrongly obsessed with fighting the president instead of bringing down costs and fixing related local issues like homelessness.

Hilton said he would help struggling Californians by cutting taxes, cutting the cost of building new housing, eliminating fraud and bringing common sense back to state policy-making.

Both candidates came out of the gate on offense, and at times it got intensely personal, particularly on immigration — with Becerra accusing Hilton of welcoming white immigrants into the country while rejecting Latino immigrants, and Hilton accusing Becerra of handing migrant children over to sex and labor traffickers during his time as U.S. Health and Human Services secretary.

With ballots soon arriving in voters’ mailboxes and the Nov. 3 midterm election rapidly approaching, the hour-long debate — moderated by CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash in Burbank and aired live by the national news network — provided the public with its latest look at two candidates vastly different both in politics and campaign style.

Becerra, a former Congress member from Los Angeles, California attorney general and Health secretary under President Biden, surged past a slate of other Democrats to win the June primary after onetime front runner Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out of the race amid sexual assault allegations. Hilton placed second after Republican voters and others coalesced behind his message to shake up Sacramento — earning him the right to face off against Becerra in November.

Hilton, a former British political aide, former Fox News host and Silicon Valley entrepreneur, has been crisscrossing the state looking for votes anywhere he can find them — an uphill battle given registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, and opposition to Trump is widespread in the state and growing even among Republican voters.

A poll this month by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times found 58% of likely voters surveyed said they support Becerra, compared with 33% who back Hilton — a slight increase to Becerra’s lead compared with an August IGS poll. California voters identified the high cost of living as their top concern, but that was followed closely by opposition to the Trump administration.

The same poll found found that 76% of Republican voters in the state approve of the president’s performance, down from 83% last year.

Becerra has taken a less visible approach to campaigning, with critics accusing him of intentionally keeping a low profile in an effort to cruise to victory in a state that hasn’t elected a Republican to statewide office in two decades.

“I just want to say thank you to CNN for bringing Xavier out of hiding,” Hilton said at the beginning of Wednesday’s face-off. “He’s barely been seen in public since the primary four months ago; it’s very important we have this debate.”

During the debate, both candidates seemed prepared to focus on the lack of affordability — namely by blaming the other’s political party for it. But they also discussed artificial intelligence and data centers, immigration policy and, of course, Trump.

Tackling gas prices, high cost of living

California has some of the highest housing and energy costs in the nation, and affordability tops the list of concerns for likely voters. It also was the first issue the candidates debated.

Hilton has made the cost of living a central theme of his campaign, with a plan he calls “Califordable” to cut gas prices and end income taxes on earnings up to $150,000. He blamed California’s high costs on Democrats, who have controlled the Legislature and statewide offices for more than 15 years. Hilton says he can lower costs by slashing onerous state regulations on businesses.

Hilton said the “quickest way to get more money in people’s pockets is for the government to take less out” and to reduce regulations to allow more housing to be built — including in “10 new cities” he said he would help build in the state.

Becerra has blamed higher prices on Trump’s tariffs and the war against Iran. In response to attacks from the U.S. and Israel, Iran has for months choked off a major oil trade route, sending global gas prices soaring — to a national average of $4.48 per gallon this month.

Becerra said Hilton’s plan to end income taxes would amount to a massive tax cut for “billionaires and millionaires” that would take money from schools, healthcare and other critical services. “The math doesn’t add up to what he’s talking about. He’s going to have to take it out of somewhere. It will come out of our schools,” Becerra said.

Becerra said he would bring down costs for people by cutting red tape, including on housing, and fighting the Trump administration — which he said is the real driver of cost increases. He also said he has helped create millions of jobs during his career.

Agree but disagree on AI and data centers

Hilton and Becerra both support regulations for data centers and artificial intelligence companies, a sign of growing bipartisan pushback seen across the country.

Hilton said he wants California to take a leading role in regulating AI, given much of the industry is located in the state, and expressed concern about losing AI jobs to other states such as Texas and Arizona. Hilton questioned whether Becerra would have the political courage to rein in the industry, saying his campaign has received funding from it.

When Bash asked Hilton if those companies should be able to “self-police,” as Trump has suggested, Hilton said, “We’ll have to see.” He also said he appreciates the effort by Trump to get assurances from AI companies on safety during a recent summit, and he would work to make sure that those promises are upheld.

Becerra derided Trump’s deal as a meaningless “pinky promise” that does not guarantee a safe path forward. He said he would lead efforts to reach real and meaningful regulations but also work directly with local communities on what they want.

“If someone wants to come in and build a data center that creates more jobs in the community, adds more energy to our grid, and it actually protects and adds more water capacity, then let’s talk,” he said. “But it has to be good for the community.”

Sharp attacks on immigration

Becerra has faced bipartisan criticism of how Health and Human Services cared for the influx of unaccompanied immigrant children during the pandemic.

Hilton has hammered Becerra on it, and at the debate accused him of sending “thousands of young children directly into the clutches of child sex and labor traffickers.”

Becerra was attacked by Democratic rivals in the gubernatorial primary in the aftermath of a Pulitzer Prize-winning series in the New York Times, including an article that said thousands of migrant children who entered the United States between 2021 and 2023 worked in slaughterhouses, factories and other dangerous jobs that violated child labor laws. The investigation also alleged that tens of thousands of the children Becerra’s agency released couldn’t be found because he relaxed screening of relatives and sponsors.

Becerra repeatedly has said that despite a lack of congressional funding for licensed-care facilities dismantled by the Trump administration, his staff worked hard to vet the people who the children would be placed with.

At the debate, he called Hilton’s claims “Trump talking points.” He also said more needs to be done to ensure children aren’t separated from their immigrant parents.

Becerra also has slammed the Trump administration for its mass deportation program and immigration crackdown, which has sent immigration enforcement agents into cities across the country, including Los Angeles.

Hilton said he would work to “lower the temperature” in the immigration debate and “prioritize the removal of dangerous criminals,” which he said is not occurring in California because Democrats are playing “politics” with the Trump administration.

Becerra, the son of immigrants, said California welcomed Hilton as an immigrant, and Hilton “welcomed ICE mercenaries” into California in return. He also accused Hilton of welcoming immigrants that look like Hilton, who is white, while working to remove immigrants who look like Becerra, who is Latino.

“I have fought all my life to make life better for immigrants, to represent them well, to defend them, to let them grow and build like my parents. But here’s the problem I have with your policies: You seem to welcome immigrants who look like you, but deport immigrants who look like me,” Becerra said.

Hilton called that “disgraceful.”

Trump, Trump and more Trump

Hilton repeatedly has praised Trump and his policies and consolidated support among California Republicans after Trump endorsed him before the June primary. But Trump’s endorsement could be an albatross in the Nov. 3 election, given his low approval ratings — particularly in California.

Becerra repeatedly hammered Hilton as a Trump acolyte, so much so that Hilton said that it was Becerra’s only attack line, and that Becerra “takes no responsibility” for Democratic policies that have harmed California for years.

“All you ever say is Trump, Trump, Trump, and that’s nothing but an insult to every Californian who is desperate for something to change in this state, and all you’re offering is more of the same,” Hilton said.

Becerra countered that Hilton embraced Trump during the primary.

“Your words, Trump, Trump, Trump. Because he is your supporter,” Becerra said. “You chased his endorsement.”

Where they stand on billionaire’s tax, schools and other quick hits

• Proposition 40, the billionaires tax: Both Becerra and Hilton oppose the controversial wealth tax proposal on the ballot that would enact a one-time 5% levy on billionaires’ assets to largely replace $100 billion in federal healthcare funding cuts to California.
• Proposition 39, voter ID: Hilton expressed support for the ballot measure, which would require voters to present ID at the polls or write a special pin on their mail-in ballot. Becerra, who opposes the measure, claimed the initiative is part of an effort by Trump and his supporters to interfere in elections.
• Improving schools: Fewer than half of third-grade students read at grade level. Hilton said it’s a “catastrophe” that exemplifies Democratic failure in the state. Becerra conceded that the school system is not “well coordinated” but supports transitional kindergarten, a new pre-K grade created by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton debated for 60 minutes Wednesday night on a soundstage in Burbank. Times columnists Gustavo Arellano, Anita Chabria and Mark Z. Barabak watched the gubernatorial match-up and weigh in.

Arellano: Steve Hilton came in with next to no chance of becoming the next California governor, but maybe if he focused on touting the feel-good messages he’s been spouting since launching his campaign in front of the Huntington Beach Pier earlier this year — Make California Gold Again! Califordable! I’m a Legal Immigrant with a British Accent! — he might’ve convinced at least a few voters to go with him.

Instead, Hilton debated like someone already preparing to launch a podcast or beg for his old Fox News job back after he gets walloped. When your solution for solving California’s housing crisis is building 10 new cities, you’re not running for California governor — you’re angling for an influencer job with the Irvine Co.

He whined and grumbled and grinned and quoted someone calling Becerra a “bitch ass,” which would’ve been a funny dig if he wasn’t running to run the greatest state on Earth. Hilton is charming in person, in the way all British people inevitably, initially come off as to Americans, and he has traveled to every California county — and especially to Latino-majority cities. He should’ve shared some of the many stories of hardship that I’m assuming he’s heard over the last year.

Nope! Instead, Hilton attacked Becerra again and again — why? California is a super-blue state, Latino Trump supporters notwithstanding, so Hilton should’ve tried to at least offer a reason for voters to choose him instead of saying — not completely inaccurately — that the problems Californians deal with are the fault of Democrats.

But blaming the other side only gets you so far — just ask Democrats how it worked out with them in 2024.

“We’ve got to try something different,” Hilton said in his concluding remarks. Californians agree — and his name is Xavier Becerra, who last I heard isn’t Gavin Newsom, no matter how much the California GOP is trying to convince people otherwise.

Becerra, meanwhile, didn’t offer much in terms of vision, mostly because he played defense most of the evening. But he didn’t have a major flub, except maybe raising a CNN coffee cup a few too many times. Why, Becerra sometimes even smiled — proof that he’s not some Chicano automaton. He hasn’t agreed to any more debates with Hilton — but after this blowout, Becerra should take the both of them on the road to make Hilton the next John Cox.

Chabria: Becerra came out as more of a fighter than we’ve seen before, even in the earlier Democratic debates. He held his own against Hilton, who is a skilled orator and attacker with a pointed wit and slick accent. But please, for the love of God, Hilton, button that shirt. This is not a casino.

Becerra was the clear winner, and to be honest, Hilton — usually a nimble pugilist — came across flat too much of the time. Maybe he’s already signed his Fox contract, as Gustavo suggests.

But Becerra also failed to lay out any kind of vision for the future of California. He did a good job of fending off Hilton’s attacks, but never told us what a vote for him will bring to the average Californian. There was some talk about housing, about protecting health insurance, but no big picture of what the California Dream of the future is and how we deliver it for the next generation.

I walked away from this debate certain that Hilton hadn’t gained a single voter, and equally certain Becerra hadn’t lost one. But also certain that Californians are rightfully disenchanted with this political moment because it offers little for the people who are voting. Becerra is going to ghost-coast into leading the most powerful state in the nation, and none of us will know what that will mean or why we should care one way or another.

Yes, there is a strong Legislature that will certainly keep the next governor focused on Democratic priorities. But what Becerra stands for remains a mystery that only the next four years will reveal. Let’s hope it has to do with our collective well-being.

Barabak: Xavier Becerra walked onto Wednesday’s debate stage as the overwhelming favorite to become California’s next governor.

Becerra exited the stage a little over an hour later, still the overwhelming favorite to become California’s next governor.

As the Democratic nominee in a state where Democrats enjoy big numerical, structural and political advantages — and have for decades — Becerra needed only to show up at CNN’s Burbank studio, field some questions alongside Hilton and avoid a Bidenesque disaster. (Even that might not have mattered.)

It was an exceedingly low bar, and one Becerra easily surmounted.

He was authoritative, crisp and kept on the offense most of the night, which raises the question of why his campaign handlers have been sheltering him up to now. Yes, it did get a bit repetitive when the Democrat’s response to so many questions amounted to: Trump, Trump, Trump! But that’s hardly surprising in a state where the president is about as popular as $6-a-gallon gas and $10-a-pound hamburger.

What was surprising was Hilton’s failure to do more to unshackle himself from the ball-and-chain sitting in the White House.

He allowed a smidgen of daylight here and there, but not enough to doff the MAGA mantle Becerra has draped around him. If anything, Hilton yoked himself even closer to Trump, sounding at times like his wacky Health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr,. as he talked about vaccines — Hilton said he was for them, but also favored more parental discretion — and re-litigated masking and other pandemic policies from the Biden administration.

Hilton’s most effective moments came when he asked why unhappy California voters should expect anything different if they keep electing Democrats. Not an unreasonable question. Trump Lite, however, doesn’t seem like the remedy most are looking for.

Little to nothing seems likely to change as a result of Wednesday night’s encounter. Still, it was important to give California voters an opportunity to take the measure of the two gubernatorial hopefuls side by side and hear — in something more than a 30-second commercial — how they would lead the state.

It’s far more probable than not Becerra will be the candidate voters choose on Nov. 3. But for those who don’t like Becerra’s vision, his record, Democratic affiliation or, heck, his glasses or salt-and-pepper hair, Hilton offered an alternative — albeit more of a grouchy one than the happy warrior who’s appeared on the campaign trail.

Hilton gave it his best shot. Becerra ably deflected him.

California voters will decide whether to establish a $7.5-billion state scientific research arm — similar to the National Institutes of Health — after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that will put the proposal on the March 2028 ballot.

The new state fund would aim to blunt federal research cuts by the Trump administration and ensure state and private institutions — including the University of California and California State University — can continue to produce scientific breakthroughs.

If voters approve the measure, $7.5 billion in bonds would fund California scientific and medical research into diseases such as cancer, Parkinson’s and ALS. Other research areas include reducing wildfire risk and fighting pandemics and climate change.

“This is a research and science bond that does the opposite of what Donald Trump is doing that will allow us to double down on what makes this state great — what makes America great,” Newsom said Wednesday during a bill signing atop the Golden Gate Bridge. “We are the tentpole of the U.S. economy because we invest in the future so that we can all do well there.”

The legislation to establish the bond measure, state Senate Bill 895, was authored by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who in a statement called it a “bold step to protect science, improve lives, and continue California’s global leadership on innovation for many years to come.”

The bill was sponsored by the Union of American Physicians and the University of California, as well as the United Auto Workers Local 4811, which represents some 60,000 UC academic workers.

The bond measure represents a pullback from what Wiener and supporters first proposed.

Originally conceived as a $23-billion bond measure that the Legislature would approve to go before voters in November, it was whittled down to $12 billion. But lawmakers then did not approve it in time for the November ballot.

Wiener said legislative leaders and the governor’s office then worked out a compromise, deciding on a $7.5-billion bond measure for 2028.

The measure also calls for the new state fund to establish regulations that would allow it to recoup part of its investments while not damaging innovation.

“This is a major achievement, made possible by an extraordinary coalition of people who understand the importance of investing in scientific research,” UC President James B. Milliken said in a statement.

A federal judge in Oakland has approved a settlement that allows Paramount Skydance Chief Executive David Ellison to finalize his $111-billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.

U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín on Wednesday signed a settlement agreement, effectively ending an antitrust lawsuit brought by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and 11 other state attorneys general who initially fought the formation of a new Hollywood colossus.

The judge did not offer additional conditions to an agreement struck last week between Paramount and the states, instead allowing Paramount’s negotiated settlement terms to stand.

“The Court finds the proposed settlement agreement reflects a procedurally sound resolution,” Martínez-Olguín wrote in her order.

Ellison is aiming to finalize the merger early next week, capping his meteoric rise into one of the industry’s most influential figures. The Ellison family claimed Paramount and CBS last year, and will now add HBO, CNN, TBS, HGTV and the film and television studio with rights to Batman, Harry Potter, Fred Flintstone, “Friends” and “The Pitt” to its sprawling media and entertainment portfolio.

His father Larry Ellison, through his company Oracle Corp., also owns a substantial stake in the social media app TikTok and is among the tech giants supporting development of artificial intelligence.

The settlement agreement, which spans five years, requires the combined Paramount-Warner Bros. to release at least 30 films in theaters each year, commit an additional $1.5 billion to domestic film production and set aside $47.5 million for workers who may be adversely affected by the merger. It calls for the creation of a five-member panel to monitor editorial independence of CBS News and CNN, although critics note the Ellisons control board appointments, diminishing its independence.

The agreement, known as a consent decree, also stipulates that Paramount won’t sell or close its Melrose Avenue campus in Hollywood or the larger Warner Bros. lot in Burbank. The combined company must instead operate the historic facilities “in a manner consistent with past practices” for at least five years.

Paramount will also face restrictions on how it wields clout during negotiations for distribution of its basic cable TV channels. An independent monitor is expected to oversee implementation of the settlement terms.

The merger has been unpopular in Hollywood and critics denounced the settlement as weak. Opponents accused Bonta, who led the negotiations with Paramount, of caving into pressure from Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who publicly urged Bonta to abandon his court fight.

“Our settlement with Paramount resolves our antitrust concerns in every market we brought in our case, protects competition and consumer choice, and centers the needs, concerns, and futures of California workers,” Bonta’s office said in a statement.

Los Angeles County’s Department of Economic Opportunity has estimated that the merger will result in the loss of 4,500 local jobs as Ellison seeks to integrate the two entities and cut costs. Paramount has promised investors that it will shave $6 billion in spending within three years.

“Allowing the Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. Discovery merger to move forward with no meaningful structural remedies will cost jobs, mute creativity, weaken independent journalism, and damage our First Amendment rights,” the Block the Merger coalition said Wednesday in a statement.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) last week urged Martínez-Olguín to order an independent review to evaluate the strength of the proposed settlement terms and determine whether the pact adequately addresses alleged violations of the Clayton Antitrust Act.

During a Thursday hearing, Martínez-Olguín questioned key deal tenets, including the five-year length of the agreement and the value of the Miramax film studio, which Paramount agreed to divest should the company fall short of its film goals. She also asked why the state attorneys general dropped so many of their initial demands in pursuit of a settlement with Paramount.

“In years to come, we’ll be able to point to this failure to put consumers over the monied interests of corporate consolidation as the tipping-point moment for media in this country,” the Block the Merger coalition said in its statement.

The judge noted that she recognized the deep disappointment by merger opponents, and heard their concerns about news independence and a potential lack of diversity in storytelling when the two studios consolidate.

“But these hopes and desires for the proposed consent decree to reach farther — to achieve more — do not rise to the level of legal violations upon which the Court can reject the parties’ negotiated resolution,” Martínez-Olguín wrote.

The lawsuit resolution ends months of acrimony over Ellison’s deal for Warner Bros. Discovery, which was stalled for two months after Bonta and 11 other state attorneys general sued, arguing the combination would violate U.S. antitrust law and thwart competition. The Writers Guild of America lobbed its own antitrust lawsuit in an attempt to foil the merger.

But Paramount dug in, and its lobbying reached a crescendo by early September. A parade of state and local politicians, including Bass and others, urged a settlement due to fears that Paramount might follow through on its threat to leave California unless Bonta retreated.

Bonta and his coalition then worked behind the scenes to hammer out a settlement with Paramount, which was announced Sept. 21.

Paramount’s bankers have since been pricing bonds and lining up loans needed to finance the buyout of Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders at $31 a share. Ellison’s team had hoped to price the offering months ago, and interest rates have since climbed.

Paramount is selling about $44 billion of bonds and $7.5 billion in loans to finance the takeover, according to Bloomberg, which said the combined company will have more than $87 billion of investment-grade and high-yield debt.

Larry Ellison has promised to guarantee $47.5 billion in equity that his son needs to close the deal. Three Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, representing royal families in Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar have agreed to invest $24 billion in the merged company, giving them a substantial stake in the new Paramount-Warner Bros.

Paramount separately announced Wednesday that Mattel Chief Executive Ynon Kreiz would soon join the merged company as co-chief executive, running Paramount-Warner Bros. day-to-day operations. Friday will be Kreiz’s last day at Mattel.

Xavier Becerra has made a campaign out of saying nothing. Steve Hilton will seemingly say anything to anyone as long as there’s a microphone.

Neither dynamic is promising for voters tuning into Wednesday night’s televised debate on CNN with the two candidates vying to replace Gavin Newsom as California’s new governor.

But don’t worry, Golden State voters — Times columnists Gustavo Arellano, Mark Z. Barabak and Anita Chabria are watching every minute, every second, really, to bring you the zingers, gaffes and hopefully maybe even some insights.

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Chabria: Let me start things off by saying my hope is that Hilton will push Becerra into specifics around issues including affordability, what we’re going to do about the coming Medicaid cliff, housing and education. California has been focused on raising up our most vulnerable and struggling residents for years — which is important.

But the middle class is suffering now, too, in all those areas. Hilton is right that the status quo isn’t working. That’s going to be a challenge for Becerra when he gets into office (and honestly, he could vacation in Hawaii until November and still get elected), so I’ll be looking for answers on how he plans to lift all boats.

Barabak: There will be much critiquing to come, so let me start by paying both gentleman a compliment.

Hilton has been campaigning hard, as though he has more than the merest speck of a chance of pulling an epic upset and somehow prevailing. Good for him!

And Becerra, who’s made himself exceedingly scarce, is stepping up and debating, as he should. And he’s not being cute about it, insisting on, say, a midnight appearance on local cable TV in Alturas. So props for that.

Arellano: I’m hoping that Becerra will once again channel his inner cholo, as I urged him to during the primary.

The Tío Xavier persona that Becerra supporters have trotted out — a kind, chuckling sage — isn’t what California needs right now. Becerra knows that the most loved uncles in Latino households aren’t the safe, boring ones but the ones who risked it all: the ones who came into this country without papers, who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps so that their kids could drive hybrids, and who proudly warble “El Rey” during the mariachi portion of the latest family wedding instead of sit quietly at the table.

We need the loco uncle, Xavier, not the fresa — uppity — one.

And I’m hoping Hilton will rebuke Donald Trump. I know, I know: there’s a better chance of England winning the FIFA World Cup than that ever happening.

But if there’s an iota of hope for the British expat to beat Becerra, it can only happen by him showing Californians that he’s willing to stand up to the loathed president instead of cozying up to him.

Otherwise, as a famous Brit once sang backed by sinuous xylophones, “Baby, baby, baby, you’re out of time.”

WASHINGTON — Dr. Nicole Saphier, President Trump ‘s third nominee for surgeon general, moved a step closer to confirmation after a Senate committee voted to advance her nomination on Wednesday.

Saphier, a radiologist and former Fox News Channel contributor, was advanced out of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on a 12 to 11 vote to serve as surgeon general after she was grilled at her confirmation hearing earlier this month about her stance on childhood vaccines.

She expressed support for vaccines and told lawmakers she didn’t believe they cause autism. The Trump administration has sought to revisit claims about a link between vaccines and autism, although widespread scientific consensus and decades of studies have firmly concluded there is none.

Timothy Westlake, who was nominated to serve as assistant secretary for mental health and substance use at the Department of Health and Human Services, was also advanced out of committee on the same en bloc vote.

It was not immediately clear when the officials would face a full Senate vote for their confirmation, but they are expected to be approved.

During her confirmation hearing, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy pressed Saphier to declare whether she believed there was a link between vaccines and autism. Saphier responded that she does “not believe childhood vaccines cause autism,” adding that “the MMR vaccine is our greatest tool for combating measles,” in response to a question by Cassidy over whether parents should give children that shot.

MMR stands for measles, mumps and rubella, and the president recently called for the shots to be spaced out, against the guidance of medical groups.

The surgeon general position carries limited policymaking power but serves as a loud megaphone as the nation’s top communicator to Americans on public health issues.

Cassidy, who led the inquiry into Saphier’s views on vaccines, ultimately voted in support of her nomination.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the ranking member of the Senate HELP committee, said ahead of Saphier’s vote that he would vote down her nomination because in part Saphier “has questioned the need for the hepatitis B vaccine at birth, when the data science has been clear.”

“We need a surgeon general who will tell the truth about vaccines, not someone who misleads the public,” Sanders said. At her confirmation hearing, Saphier said the universal birth dose of hepatitis B was safe and effective.

Chris Klomp, who was nominated to serve as deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, was advanced out of the Senate Finance Committee last week on a 15 to 12 vote. He was questioned during the same hearing as Saphier about his duties associated with the role as the current chief counselor of the Department of Health and Human Services under the leadership of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as well as about his vaccine stance.

In protesting Klomp’s nomination at the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Ron Wyden said Klomp “tried to create the impression that he will be the adult in the room on vaccines. Yet, as we sit here today, the vaccine chaos that we’ve come to expect from Robert Kennedy’s HHS continues.”

Hussein writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice filed a complaint Wednesday against federal judges in Minnesota over their remarks to the media related to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement surge.

The complaint escalates the department’s battle with the federal judiciary, which has halted administration priorities, dismissed high-profile prosecutions and accused government lawyers in some cases of failing to comply with court orders.

The department is demanding that the judges recuse themselves from all criminal or civil cases involving the Department of Homeland Security, Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche told reporters, because of what he described as “obvious bias they have shown” in recent remarks to the New York Times.

At issue is a September article in which seven federal judges in Minnesota — nominated by Democrats and Republican presidents — spoke on the record about their experience dealing with a flood of cases during last winter’s immigration crackdown that led to thousands of arrests.

The judge at the center of the story, Patrick Schiltz, accused the government in January of failing to comply with nearly 100 court orders. He said in a ruling that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a part of Homeland Security, “is not a law unto itself.”

Schiltz, who was nominated by Republican President George W. Bush and served as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, told the newspaper that what happened in Minnesota’s federal court last winter “created a grave threat to the rule of law.”

In a statement Wednesday, Schiltz said he was “acting well within the ethical rules that apply to federal judges in speaking to The New York Times.”

“Indeed, in February of this year, the Committee on Codes of Conduct issued an advisory opinion to emphasize that federal judges” may speak or write “on core judiciary matters such as advocacy for the rule of law and judicial independence,’” Schiltz said. “That is exactly what I did.”

The complaint was filed with the chief judge of the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees federal judges in Minnesota.

The Republican administration has railed against what it describes as “activist judges” who officials say are intent on thwarting Trump’s agenda. Yet some of the most critical and unfavorable court rulings have come from judges nominated by Trump and other Republican presidents.

Richer writes for the Associated Press.

Sept. 30, 2026 2:13 PM PT

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — Former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has filed for divorce from her husband of 34 years.

Noem, who was tasked with leading President Trump’s immigration crackdown from January 2025 to March 2026 and previously served as South Dakota’s governor, is seeking a divorce from Bryon Noem in their home state. The two married in May 1992 and have three children.

The filing, made in April but posted online Monday, comes after questions arose earlier this year about the nature of Kristi Noem’s relationship with a top advisor. The complaint, filed in Hamlin County, notes “irreconcilable differences” as grounds for the divorce.

In a statement, Kristi Noem’s attorney confirmed she has filed for divorce and said she will reserve further comments for the legal process. Lawyers for Bryon Noem did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A day before Noem was ousted from her post in Trump’s Cabinet, members of Congress questioned her about an alleged extramarital affair with Corey Lewandowski, a special government employee and one of the secretary’s lead advisors. He was Trump’s first campaign manager in 2016 and appeared to play an outsize role in Noem’s department, even though his position was supposed to have a limit on days worked.

Noem denied the allegations that they were having an affair, dismissing them as “tabloid garbage.”

Once a close ally to Trump, Noem became a liability for the Republican president as questions arose over her conduct following the shooting deaths of two protesters in Minneapolis at the hands of immigration officers. Noem characterized Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both U.S. citizens, as aggressors, contradicting videos from the scene and descriptions of their deaths from bystanders. She also faced criticism from fellow Republicans for her spending at her department.

Trump nominated Markwayne Mullin, then a U.S. senator from Oklahoma, in Noem’s place and made her a special envoy for the Shield of the Americas, a new security initiative focused on the Western Hemisphere.

Schoenbaum and Raza write for the Associated Press. Schoenbaum reported from Salt Lake City, Utah.

Sept. 30, 2026 1:27 PM PT

QUANTICO, Va. — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed Wednesday that the U.S. military will cut 20% of its generals and admirals as he delivered what he is calling his “State of the Force” address.

Hegseth was speaking to junior officers and enlisted leaders at the Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, the second year in a row that he has given such an address. This time, the U.S. military is seven months into a war with Iran with no clear end in sight, has captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and killed more than 200 people in strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats in Latin America, among other actions worldwide.

The speech is not a usual fixture among Pentagon leaders. While Hegseth’s predecessors regularly addressed troops and top officers, they traditionally have done so in small or private settings.

The Pentagon chief, however, again focused on how he has drastically retooled the U.S. military by targeting what he calls “woke” culture — through a rollback of diversity programs, a review of ground combat units with female troops and a new screening program for “testosterone deficiency” among male personnel.

Pentagon officials had previewed that Hegseth would announce more cuts to the number of generals and admirals. He directed all military services to double the 10% reduction he ordered last spring for roughly 800 flag and general officer positions, making it a total 20% decrease to be completed by Jan. 1.

“I call it accountability and long overdue,” he said.

Several senators viewed Hegseth’s move as nothing short of a “purge” of the military’s top ranks that will take years to rebuild.

“He’s got some kind of like deep-seated grievance about leadership in the military,” said Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., the former Navy combat pilot and NASA astronaut, who has been critical of Hegseth. “He’s purging a generation of great leaders of the military, and it’s going to take a generation to recover from it.”

Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he wanted to understand Hegseth’s reasoning behind the decision.

“If it’s simply a matter of eliminating a very heavy top, there may be some validity to it, but I want to see it first,” Rounds said.

Hegseth and President Trump already have fired or pushed to retire more than two dozen military leaders since taking office, including the Army’s top uniformed officer, Gen. Randy George, a move that angered both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. The purge also has included a number of senior officers who are women or people of color.

Previous leaders who were ousted include Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. CQ Brown; Chief of Naval Operations Lisa Franchetti; and Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield, the U.S. military representative to the NATO Military Committee.

Although Hegseth never gave specific reasons for those firings, most were tied to the belief that they endorsed or spoke openly in support of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which have been targets of Hegseth and Trump.

As part of last year’s cuts, Hegseth also ordered the active duty military to shed 20% of its four-star general officers — the highest-level leaders — and the National Guard to shed 20% of its top positions, but it is unclear if all those cuts have been made. The new cuts could include any one-star general or above, or an officer of equivalent Navy rank.

When Hegseth first announced the effort to trim the highest levels of the military ranks, he argued it was intended to remove “redundant force structure to optimize and streamline leadership.” In a memo released in May 2025, he said the aim was to free the military from “unnecessary bureaucratic layers.”

The number of general officer positions in the military is set by law, but it is possible to let positions remain unfilled by not submitting replacements to Congress.

Hegseth’s efforts have extended well beyond personnel changes among the top ranks. He oversaw Trump’s ban on transgender troops while announcing new directives for “gender-neutral” or “male-level” standards for physical fitness.

Toropin and Finley write for the Associated Press. AP writers Lisa Mascaro and Meg Kinnard contributed to this report.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a landmark bill that would give a financial boost to California’s struggling newsrooms.

Assembly Bill 2222 will create refundable tax credits for California local news organizations based on the number of journalists they employ. It passed through both houses. It marks an innovative yet controversial attempt to slow the decline of local journalism.

The bill, called the Community Newsroom Employment and Workforce Sustainability Act, works by assigning a “job retention credit” of $20,000 per journalist for up to five positions, and after that $15,000 for every additional journalist. Part-time positions will be awarded half-credits. It also stacks an additional $15,000 credit for each new hire, to incentivize expanding journalist head counts.

Before signing the bill Wednesday morning, Newsom spoke about what he called the “assault on the free press and the First Amendment..coming from Washington D.C. and Donald Trump.”

“It’s journalists that need to report those stories and local journalists that need to uncover and sort of peel back the facade if democracy is going to survive, let alone thrive,” Newsom said.

The bill was supported by the California News Publishers Assn., of which the Los Angeles Times is a member and a wide range of other community news boosters. Backers said it could be a lifeline to local news organizations, many of which have struggled to maintain staffing levels over the past two decades.

California has lost more than 12,000 of its local journalists since 2002, according to nonprofit advocacy group Rebuild Local News. And almost 40% of all local U.S. newspapers have vanished, according to an annual report on the state of local news put out by Northwestern University’s Medill journalism school.

To pay for the credits, the bill would amend California’s tax code to align with a little-discussed component of President Trump’s “Big Beautiful” tax bill that expanded taxes on some companies by eliminating a deduction for executive salaries of over $1 million annually.

It is common practice for the state to consider aligning its tax code with the federal structure to make filing taxes easier and administering them more cheaply. But California has not yet sought to adopt this federal tax change, a move which would increase tax revenues to the state.

The California Taxpayers Assn. and groups representing business interests such as the California Chamber of Commerce oppose the bill because it raises taxes on employers that they argue already face billions of dollars in new taxes.

They contend that the higher costs will be passed along to consumers.

The governor’s finance office issued an analysis opposing the bill for not including a cap on the tax credits, thus creating “unlimited fiscal liability to the state,” and argued the bill mainly subsidizes existing activity rather than encouraging the creation of new jobs.

While speaking with reporters on Wednesday, Newsom acknowledged some of the concerns that have been raised about those who will receive benefits from the bill’s funds, specifically hedge funds and billionaire owners and outlets who he says spread propaganda.

“It does subsidize those that don’t need to be subsidized,” he said. “We have hedge funds in this space. We have billionaires in this space. We have people that are profiteering in this space by gutting the newsrooms and extracting value out of the space that also are the beneficiaries.”

Newsom said he chose not to veto the bill because he believes its benefits outweigh the liabilities. He added that he hopes the legislature and next governor can work to narrow down who benefits most from the legislation.

“We should not be subsidizing hedge funds,” he said. “We should be focused on where the need is the greatest, in my humble opinion, and I do think when you have no cap, the limitlessness of this…to some of the most well-heeled organizations, where now they simply could pull from this bill the benefits that they didn’t even ask for or need, is self-evident.”

Assemblymember Chris Ward (D-San Diego), who authored the bill, said the governor’s signature shows California’s commitment to the free press at a time when newsrooms are shrinking and misinformation is rampant.

“Local journalism is the backbone of an informed democracy, and today California made clear that the people doing this essential work are worth investing in,” Ward said in a statement. “This historic investment will help keep reporters in our communities, strengthen nonprofit and public media, and ensure Californians continue to have access to trusted, fact-based local news.”

In signing the bill, Newsom emphasized the role of journalism in uncovering scandal and wrongdoing.

“The L.A. Times to their credit did a big investigative piece on Bell, and people getting paid a million dollars in some cases, local government officials, a million damn dollars a year. No one would have known had it not been for local journalism. How many more Bells are out there, not just in this state, but all across the country?”

CHICAGO — The U.S. can deport the leader of Wisconsin’s largest mosque — an outspoken advocate of Palestinian rights — on the grounds that he is a threat to national security, an immigration judge ruled Wednesday.

Salah Sarsour was detained in Milwaukee in March by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. A federal judge ordered Sarsour’s release in June, saying he raised a “substantial” claim that the Trump administration was targeting him for speaking out against Israel and advocating for Palestinian rights.

Sarsour called the ruling “deeply disappointing,” but said he intends to appeal.

“I will continue fighting to defend the right to free speech and to stay in the country I have called home for more than three decades,” Sarsour said in a statement.

Government attorneys say Sarsour’s decades-old convictions in Israel make him a threat to national security and accuse him of lying on his green card application. Judge Jayme Salinardi, with the Chicago Immigration Court, found him removable on foreign-policy grounds but tossed out the government’s claim that Sarsour lied to immigration authorities.

Sarsour says he fears for his life if he is deported to the West Bank

Sarsour, who was born in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, was imprisoned in Israel in 1988 after confessing to throwing a Molotov cocktail and stones at Israeli military personnel. In 1995, he was convicted of attempting to possess weapons. Sarsour denies committing those crimes. His attorneys say he was tortured and coerced into confessing in both instances.

Sarsour, the president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, does not have a criminal record in the U.S., where he has lived since 1993. His attorneys say the U.S. government has known about Sarsour’s convictions in Israel since he arrived.

Deportation to the West Bank “means the end of my life,” Sarsour told the Associated Press on Tuesday.

One of his attorneys, Patrick Taurel, told the AP that Sarsour’s earlier treatment by Israeli authorities is “probably a good indicator of what awaits him” if he is deported.

At a status hearing Wednesday, Taurel pressed the judge to specify that Sarsour can only be deported to Israel or the Palestinian territories. Jordan, a country to which Sarsour has no connection, is listed as a possible destination on the order of removal.

Sarsour was instructed by immigration officers to list Jordan as his home country on an immigration form because his preferred entry — “Palestine” — is not a fully independent, unified state. But he “has no right to reside in Jordan,” Taurel said.

Salinardi declined, calling it an issue to be addressed on appeal.

Attorney says Sarsour will fight deportation

Taurel said Wednesday that Sarsour is being unfairly targeted.

“If Salah can be deported for his speech in support of Palestinian rights, anyone can face the same fate,” he said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a memo in June 2025 invoking a rarely used immigration provision saying Sarsour could be deported on the same grounds as Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, both advocates for Palestinian rights whom the Trump administration has tried to expel, according to court documents.

Before the judge’s ruling, Taurel said Sarsour would need to demonstrate on appeal that he could be tortured again if he were deported.

“It’s a very high bar, although I think we can meet it in this case, given what Salah has already experienced, and given the government of Israel’s treatment” of others like him, Taurel said.

A notice of appeal is due within 30 days. Salinardi did not schedule a new hearing and announced he is retiring and that Judge Craig Defoe will oversee the case going forward.

Sarsour says he was tortured and coerced into confessions

Jawad Boulos, who represented Sarsour when he was convicted in Israel, testified in August that Sarsour was coerced into confessing and that he wasn’t convicted of any charge tying him to a terrorist organization. He said Sarsour was tortured by Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency.

The Department of Homeland Security challenged Boulos about the torture allegations, questioning how he could know it was true.

Sarsour’s current defense team has asked why U.S. authorities waited until this year to detain him. Taurel said the government has known about Sarsour’s imprisonment in Israel for decades and that he has not concealed that from immigration authorities.

Experts on forced confessions and the treatment of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons also testified in Sarsour’s defense. Israeli military courts have faced repeated scrutiny over allegations of limited due process and the high conviction rate of Palestinians. Israel rejects the claims.

In June, U.S. District Judge James Patrick Hanlon ordered Sarsour released from ICE custody saying he could have a case arguing the U.S. government detained him in retaliation for protected speech. Further, Hanlon said, government attorneys had not explained why Sarsour was suddenly considered a threat after decades as a lawful permanent resident.

The Trump administration has appealed Hanlon’s ruling.

Sarsour, who has Type 2 diabetes, lost more than 30 pounds while detained by ICE, and his blood sugar levels were checked only once a month, putting him at risk of organ failure or death, his attorneys said.

An investigation by KFF Health News and the Associated Press found that hundreds of detainees in at least 33 states have filed federal lawsuits with similar allegations of medical neglect.

Mayes-Osterman writes for the Associated Press.