POLITICS

WASHINGTON — Democratic Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida committed numerous violations of House rules and ethics standards, the House Ethics Committee found Friday in a ruling that could add weight to Republicans’ potential push to expel her from Congress.

After meeting into early Friday morning following a seven-hour hearing, the ethics panel of four Democrats and four Republicans found that Cherfilus-McCormick had committed 25 ethics violations, including breaking campaign finance laws. The panel said it would recommend a punishment in the coming weeks.

The allegations center around Cherfilus-McCormick’s receipt of millions of dollars from her family’s healthcare business after Florida made an overpayment of roughly $5 million in disaster relief funds. Cherfilus-McCormick is accused of using that money to fund her 2022 congressional campaign through a network of businesses and family members.

The congresswoman, who is running for a fourth term representing a southeastern Florida district, has denied wrongdoing, and her attorney stridently criticized Thursday’s public hearing — the first open proceeding in nearly 15 years. But the ruling from the Ethics Committee could fuel a potential vote on her expulsion and divide a Democratic caucus that is trying to make a comeback to power in the November midterm elections.

Cherfilus-McCormick also faces federal charges for allegedly stealing the $5 million in COVID-19 disaster relief funds and using it for purchases like a 3-carat yellow diamond ring. Her brother, former chief of staff and accountant were also charged. She has pleaded not guilty to those charges, and her attorney indicated Thursday that the trial is expected to start in the coming months.

What did the ethics panel find her guilty of?

The congresswoman declined to testify during Thursday’s ethics hearing, citing her 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination. Her attorney, William Barzee, sparred with some of the lawmakers on the ethics panel and argued that they should have allowed a thorough ethics trial, where he could present witnesses and evidence to counter the conclusions of House investigators.

Barzee accused the panel of giving further momentum to the effort to “throw a woman out of Congress who was duly elected by her constituents” based primarily on bank records.

Committee investigators laid out 27 violations of House ethics standards and rules in a 242-page report. The report accused Cherfilus-McCormick of winning a 2022 special election by portraying her campaign as self-financed when it was actually funded through the $5-million overpayment her family’s company received from Florida for coronavirus vaccination services.

Barzee had argued that “she was entitled to that money,” pointing to a document that broke down how her family would share the proceeds from the healthcare business. But lawmakers on the ethics panel were skeptical of that argument.

The panel found Cherfilus-McCormick guilty of all but two of the ethics violations proposed by investigators. Lawmakers declined to find her guilty of one allegation of receiving political help from an organization run by an advisor and her husband that received funding from the Haitian government. The panel also did not find her guilty of refusing to cooperate with the ethics investigation.

Will there be a push to expel Cherfilus-McCormick?

The full House Ethics Committee said it would meet after Congress returns from a two-week break in April and consider what punishment to recommend for a vote in the House.

Rep. Greg Steube, a Florida Republican, told reporters Thursday that once the committee makes a determination he “will move on the floor to expel.”

House Democratic leaders have declined to condemn Cherfilus-McCormick and said they wanted to see the ethics process play out. A couple of members of the Congressional Black Caucus, one of the most powerful groups of Democratic members, also showed up to the start of the ethics hearing Thursday in an apparent show of support for Cherfilus-McCormick.

But Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a moderate member from Washington state who often breaks with her caucus, posted on social media Friday morning that “since she was found guilty, she should resign or be removed.”

The last member to be expelled from Congress was Republican Rep. George Santos of New York in 2023. He argued at the time that the House would be “haunted” by the precedent of expelling a member before a criminal trial played out. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) voted against expulsion at the time, expressing the same concern.

It takes a two-thirds majority in the 435-member House to expel a member.

Groves and Kinnard write for the Associated Press. Kinnard reported from Columbia, S.C.

WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance on Friday held the inaugural meeting of a new anti-fraud task force he’s leading as the Trump administration seeks to show it’s cracking down on potential misuse of social programs.

Vance, speaking Friday before the task force held a closed-door meeting, said that the federal government for decades had not taken the issue of fraud seriously and that it needed to be tackled with “a whole-government approach.”

“This is not just the theft of the American people’s money,” Vance said. “It is also the theft of critical services that the American people rely on.”

President Trump, a Republican, has made a crackdown on fraud part of his chief domestic focus as voters have said they’re concerned about affordability ahead of November’s midterm elections. That effort comes after allegations of fraud involving day-care centers run by Somali residents in Minneapolis prompted a massive immigration crackdown in the Midwestern city, resulting in widespread protests.

Vance cited some of the Minnesota allegations on Friday. Last month, he held a news conference to announce a temporary halt of some Medicaid funding until the state took actions that federal officials said would address their concerns.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat who faced Vance as a vice presidential candidate in 2024, has called it a “campaign of retribution” and said the Trump administration was “weaponizing the entirety of the federal government to punish blue states like Minnesota.”

The task force is also the most visible assignment to date that Trump has given to Vance, who is seen as a potential 2028 presidential candidate.

Vance and the task force, which includes about half the president’s Cabinet, the leader of a new Justice Department division focused on prosecuting fraud and Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson, are set to meet regularly to look at rooting out potential fraud and waste in federal benefit programs.

Ferguson, who is vice chair of the task force, cast the issue of fraud as a dire crisis facing the country and said it “shreds the social trust on which these programs and our entire nation depend.”

“This fraud crisis is thus existential,” he said. “If we fail to address it, the fabric of our nation will swiftly unravel.”

Joining the task force was Colin McDonald, a top aide to the Justice Department’s second in command. He was recently confirmed as the assistant attorney general overseeing the new division at the department focused on prosecuting fraud.

The Justice Department has long prosecuted fraud nationally through its Criminal Division, but the Trump administration says the new division is needed to crack down on rampant fraud.

Price writes for the Associated Press.

STOWE, Vt. — Looking back, gubernatorial candidate Dean Roy says his political ambitions started in the eighth grade. And by that he means last year.

After working as a legislative page at the Vermont Statehouse, the 14-year-old freshman at Stowe High School now has his sights set on the corner office. In November, he’ll be the first candidate for governor under age 18 to appear on the state’s general election ballot.

“I don’t expect necessarily to win,” he said. “What I do expect is to start the movement, and get more young people to come in behind me and say, ‘Yeah, we also want to make change.’”

Another eighth-grader, Ethan Sonneborn, sought the Democratic nomination for governor in 2018 but finished last in a four-way primary. Roy secured his spot in the general election by creating his own third party, the Freedom and Unity party. Both were able to run because the state constitution sets no minimum age for gubernatorial candidates, requiring only that candidates have resided in the state for four years.

“I know it sounds crazy, a 14-year-old running for governor, but honestly, look at the people in charge right now,” Roy said in a post on his campaign’s Instagram page. “They’ve been doing this forever and things still aren’t working.”

Nearly all other states set minimum age requirements for governor, often 30 years old. In Kansas, lawmakers added a requirement that gubernatorial candidates be at least 25 years old in 2018 after six teenagers ran for office.

Peter Teachout, a professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School, has a different take than Roy on Vermont’s constitution. He points to a section in the document referring to what qualifies someone to be “entitled to the privileges of a voter,” and that is that they must be 18 years of age. Even under Roy’s interpretation, Teachout doesn’t predict a win for the teenager.

“In theory, a 4-year-old could run for governor. Should we be worried about it? No,” he said. “Vermonters can be a little cantankerous and provocative just for the fun of it, but it is not something they are likely to support in this context.”

But Roy’s former history teacher, James Carpenter, said he thinks it’s great that Roy is giving it his all. Though most 14-year-olds aren’t concerned with property taxes or healthcare, Carpenter describes Roy as an “old soul” with endless curiosity.

“It just really shows what type of kid Dean is. He’s very earnest in what he’s doing. There’s no gimmick behind this,” he said. “I think he blends that youthful optimism with some pragmatism that few kids have.”

Roy, who said he doesn’t identify with either major party, said housing is the most important issue facing the state. He’s also thought about how he’d juggle school with a full-time job as governor, saying he’d consider online classes and would do his homework at night after work.

The current governor, Republican Phil Scott, applauds Roy’s interest in politics and public service but questions whether someone so young is ready for the responsibilities that come with running a state.

“He believes it’s important for our youth to get involved,” said Press Secretary Amanda Wheeler. “But the governor also believes that a teenager may not be best suited to serve in that role given the lack of experience and lived perspectives youth have at that point in their lives.”

Roy disagrees that age has anything to do with whether a candidate is fit to run for office.

“What I’m aiming for is that these career politicians look at me and they say, ‘Oh my God, he actually has a chance to disrupt things,’” he said. “If I can get people to think that I am a threat to them, then I know that’s been a success. Because what I want is to show them that the youth have a voice. We’re gonna make change. The future is now.”

Swinhart writes for the Associated Press. AP reporter Holly Ramer contributed to this report from Concord, N.H.

ATLANTA — Attorneys for Georgia’s Fulton County and President Trump’s administration squared off in court Friday over the county’s demand that the FBI return seized ballots and other materials from the 2020 election.

Abbe Lowell, an attorney representing Fulton County, noted that the January raid was “unusual” because it involved an old election and allegations that have already been investigated in the years since Trump, a Republican, lost the county and the state to Joe Biden, a Democrat.

Lowell contended that the Trump administration seized the materials because it grew impatient with litigation the Justice Department filed to obtain them last year. “There’s abundant law that the left hand of the department needs to know what the right hand is doing,” Lowell told U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee.

Michael Weisbuch, representing the federal government, replied that the separate civil litigation wasn’t “relevant in any respect.” He said the administration has already provided Fulton County with digital copies of everything taken and needs to retain physical copies to carry out its own investigation.

Boulee wrote in a scheduling order that the hearing was needed after the two sides failed to reach an agreement in court-ordered mediation.

Trump’s actions alarm Democrats and election officials

The Jan. 28 seizure from a warehouse near Atlanta targeted the elections hub in Georgia’s most populous county, which is heavily Democratic and includes most of Atlanta. Fulton County has been at the center of unfounded claims by Trump and his allies that widespread election fraud cost him reelection.

The FBI’s move was among several actions by the Trump administration that have alarmed Democrats and many election officials who are concerned it’s using law enforcement to pursue the president’s personal grievances and is planning ways to interfere in this year’s midterm elections. The FBI also used a subpoena earlier this month to obtain records related to an audit of the 2020 presidential election in Maricopa County in Arizona, another battleground state Trump lost that year.

At the same time, the Justice Department is fighting numerous states in court for access to voter data that includes sensitive personal information. Election officials, including some Republicans, have said handing over the information would violate state and federal privacy laws.

Justice Department says it’s investigating 2020 ‘irregularities’

Lawyers for Fulton County argued in a court filing that the seizure of its documents was “improper and unjustified” and demonstrates “callous disregard” for the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure. The Justice Department seeks to “set a precedent that would grant the federal government unchecked power to interfere with the local administration of elections,” it wrote.

Justice Department attorneys argued that preparing a detailed affidavit and presenting it to a judge “is the exact opposite of ‘callous disregard’” for those constitutional rights. “Their goal to disrupt an ongoing federal criminal investigation is clear,” they wrote of Fulton County officials.

The Justice Department said it is investigating “irregularities that occurred during the 2020 presidential election in the County” and identified two laws that might have been violated. One requires election records to be maintained for 22 months, while the other prohibits procuring, casting or tabulating false, fictitious or fraudulent ballots.

The filing said the FBI is looking into whether Fulton County properly retained ballot images; whether some ballots were scanned and counted multiple times; whether unfolded, unmailed ballots were counted as mail-in absentee ballots; and potential irregularities concerning tabulator tapes from the scanners used to count ballots.

Fulton County’s lawyers wrote that the “deficiencies” or “defects” in the county’s handling of the 2020 election cited in the affidavit are the kinds of human errors that commonly occur without any intentional wrongdoing and cannot establish probable cause.

Election tech expert cites problems in the affidavit

To support their claims, Fulton County officials submitted a sworn declaration from Ryan Macias, an election technology and security expert who advised the county during the 2020 election. He said the affidavit contains “a multitude of false or misleading statements and omissions” and offered explanations for the alleged “deficiencies.”

Investigations by the Georgia secretary of state and independent reviews contradict the core allegations of the affidavit, which is “rife with statements from witnesses lacking credibility, with extraordinary and undisclosed biases,” Fulton’s lawyers argued.

Georgia’s votes in the 2020 presidential race were counted three times, including once by hand, and each count affirmed Biden’s win.

Federal government lawyers rejected the idea that the FBI agent who wrote the affidavit “intentionally or recklessly misled” the judge, writing that “the supposed misrepresentations and omissions flagged by Petitioners are illusory and/or immaterial.” They also asserted that a lapse of the statute of limitations on the potential crimes does not negate probable cause.

The Justice Department also noted that a federal magistrate judge reviewed the FBI affidavit and signed off on the search warrant. Fulton County sought to have the FBI agent who wrote the affidavit testify at Friday’s hearing, but the Justice Department objected and the judge sided with the federal government.

Brumback writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.

Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores appeared this Thursday at the US Southern District Court in lower Manhattan for the second hearing since their extraction in January, this time to argue that the US government’s refusal to let Venezuela foot their legal bill amounts to a constitutional violation. Judge Alvin Hellerstein said he wouldn’t dismiss the case, but no decision was taken over the issue of Maduro’s lawyer fees. 

Outside, in the street, New York was doing what New York does, moving fast and with indifference, while dozens of people brought twenty-five years worth of receipts to show to a multitude of pro-Maduro advocates and those leaving the courthouse. This is what I saw.

On the way to 500 Pearl Street, I passed two men wearing matching grey Nike tech sets, the now infamous outfit that Maduro was wearing in the first image after his extraction. They weren’t there for the protest, surprisingly, but your brain does what it does.

I got there around 10 am with a Venezuelan flag, a phone and a jacket that I quickly regretted bringing. Even the maracuchos were struggling with the heat after a while. By the time I arrived, the scene outside the courthouse had long organized itself into two blocs. On one side: baseball jerseys, suits, delivery backpacks, seven and eight-starred flags, and handmade signs. Hanging from a tree like a piñata that had made bad life choices, a Maduro life-size figure in a prison uniform courtesy of artist Jorge Torrealba. A Spanish man held up a sign with the faces of Maduro, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and Pedro Sánchez below the word Criminales. A woman from Catatumbo, Zulia held a sign that read Libertad para Fernando Loaiza, the democratically elected mayor of her local government who was detained last March by Maduro security forces and still remains in prison without trial.

On the other side of the barricade, mass produced laminated signs asking for the release of Maduro and Flores and chants delivered with little conviction. The early birds reported that the crowd arrived around 8 am. Although I found no public call from the expected culprits (The People’s Forum, Codepink, and other usual suspects) they assembled around 20 people from different socialist groups, holding our flag with the slightly uncertain grip of someone who had picked it up that morning. Their chants were about US imperialism, sovereignty, and international law. All real things. All also, somehow, beside the point.

The pro-Maduro crowd chanted back: “Free them all.” For a second I thought we were agreeing on the immediate and unconditional release of Venezuelan political prisoners.

When Venezuelan citizens addressed the crowd in Spanish, there was mostly no reaction. Some of them got out a word or two, with the confidence of a born-and-raised Venezuelan yet the persuasiveness of a no sabo kid. When we spoke their language, American English, they either ignored us, flipped us off, or played dumb.  

The Venezuelan ensemble erupted into “A mí no me pagaron, yo vine porque quise” (I didn’t get paid, I came because I wanted to) with the exasperated tone of a people who have been chanting this phrase for decades. In the background, a t-shirt with an all caps text stood out: I’M VENEZUELAN. NO PROPAGANDA.

Our Gloria al Bravo Pueblo was sung at least six times, drowning out the chants of the US protesters without fail every single time. Tambores weren’t lacking, either. The chant that carried the morning was ¿Quiénes somos? Venezuela. ¿Qué queremos? Libertad. ¿Qué queremos? Justicia. Over and over. 

Ironically, the pro-Maduro crowd chanted back: “Free them all.” For a second I thought we were agreeing on the immediate and unconditional release of the 503 political prisoners that Delcy Rodríguez and Diosdado Cabello still refuse to let out. There’s a particular kind of cognitive dissonance that works like a splinter. I started drifting toward the ones within hearing range.

There was a pride flag next to a Free Maduro sign. I asked about Yendri Velázquez, LGBTQ+ activist shot alongside Luis Peche in a targeted attack in Colombia, both of them driven into exile by the regime they exposed. They too await justice to be served. I asked them about the socialist Gran Polo Patriótico bloc that has spent years with the government’s full blessing refusing to address abortion rights or same-sex marriage in the National Assembly. By 2025, Pride in Caracas had been stripped of its activist organizations, and groups that chose to march did so “as discreetly as possible” because of Maduro & Co.’s post-28J crackdown. 

Almost everyone was wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh, which made the next question unavoidable. In 2017, then-Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez expressed Venezuela’s desire to restore full ties with Israel. The following year, Maduro welcomed Jerusalem’s Sephardic chief rabbi to Miraflores tweeting about it warmly and awarding him with the Libertadoras y Libertadores medal. Venezuela never stopped trading with Israel either, not even after Chávez cut diplomatic relations. Anti-Zionism is a costume worn for the cameras and removed at Miraflores. A useful one the international left has used to dismiss criticisms against Maduro in the name of anti-imperialism.

The man who spent decades making sure others couldn’t speak now needs a translator to follow the room.

The international left has a type when it comes to diasporas: the refugee, the grieving exile, the cautionary tale of imperialism. Step out of those lines and you become brainwashed, biased, or on somebody’s payroll. We’re victims or foe. Noble savages or CIA plants. The crowd outside the courthouse on Thursday didn’t fit any of those categories, and didn’t try to. They are the people who have spent years being told their grief is too close to be credible and their knowledge too lived-in to count as such.

Around noon, the pro-Maduro contingent quickly cleared out. Clocked out, if you will. The hearing ended at one, giving me just enough time to gather some impressions before heading uptown for my afternoon class.

Those who had been inside began filtering out into the streets and the gathering. Among them was Jorge Torrealba, wearing a colorful outfit and holding a stack of papers. A crowd formed around him immediately. He shuffled through his sketches of the hearing as questions came from every direction: What did he look like? ¿Cómo lo viste? When is the next hearing? Did he say anything?

He looked skinnier, Torrealba said. And quiet. That tracked. Unlike the January arraignment, when Maduro delivered a several-minutes-long speech professing his innocence from the defense table, he said nothing in court on Thursday. Neither did anyone in the audience. He sat in his grey prison uniform with headphones on, jotting notes, occasionally leaning over to whisper to his lawyer through an interpreter.

The man who spent decades making sure others couldn’t speak now needs a translator to follow the room. We didn’t need one to tell each other—and the world—what it costs to have been right for twenty-five years and to finally not have to whisper it.

During his first Cabinet meeting since launching the U.S. war on Iran, President Trump spent 10 minutes talking about the price of ceremonial White House pens — which he claimed to have brought down, from $1,000 to $5, by switching to his favored Sharpie brand.

Trump was trying to make the point during the Thursday meeting that he’s a great money saver. He seemed chipper, joking with the other leaders of his administration at the table.

Late Thursday, when asked on “The Five” on Fox News about whether Iranian people have access to basic necessities such as drinking water and food, Trump complimented the looks of Dana Perino, the Fox host who’d asked the question, compared to when he’d met her years before.

“Now I’m not allowed to say this, it’s the end of my political career, but you may be even better looking, OK?” Trump said. “You’re not allowed to say a woman’s beautiful anymore.”

He then talked about Iranian authorities killing protesters, but said he’d been pleased with them more recently because they had given him a “present” by allowing oil ships through the Strait of Hormuz.

Through both discussions, Trump maintained a flippant, casual tone — the same he has maintained since the war began a month ago, and a vast departure from that of past wartime presidents.

For weeks, Trump has batted away criticisms of the war campaign and questions about why it was justified and how long it will last. He has derided reporters for asking questions about tactics and whether he’ll deploy boots on the ground as inappropriate and foolish, and repeatedly met concerns about the human toll of the war by shrugging them off or changing the subject.

Meanwhile, his war has cost the U.S. billions of dollars and depleted its global reserves of critical weapons systems such as Tomahawk missiles, which cost millions of dollars each and are needed to maintain U.S. security around the world, according to the Washington Post.

Entering its fifth week, the war has badly disrupted markets, with U.S. stocks falling Friday as Wall Street approached the end of its fifth straight losing week — the longest such streak in nearly four years — and oil prices rising again.

Markets have fluctuated based on Trump’s changing messages on an end to the war, planned and then postponed strikes on Iran’s power plants, strikes on oil and gas infrastructure across the Middle East and Iran’s stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, through which a quarter of global oil usually passes.

Trump has talked in recent days about an impending deal to end the war, but so far it has not materialized, with Iran downplaying the seriousness of the negotiations. Iran instead appeared to be formalizing its hold on the strait, including by creating what amounts to a toll on ships seeking passage through the channel from its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The number of U.S. deaths in the conflict has held steady for days — at 13 — but the war continues to exact a daily, devastating toll in the Middle East. In Iran, thousands of targets continued being hit, with the death toll ticking toward 2,000.

Speaking by video during a Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva on Friday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accused the United States and Israel of harboring a “clear intent to commit genocide” in Iran, claiming that more than 600 schools had been damaged or demolished and more than 1,000 students and teachers “martyred or wounded.”

The discussion related in part to a Feb. 28 strike on an elementary school in Minab that killed more than 165 people, most of them children, which evidence reportedly suggests was the work of the U.S. and which the U.S. says is under investigation.

Casualties also continued in Gulf nations allied with the U.S., where Iran continues to strike U.S. military installations and other infrastructure, and in Lebanon, which Israel has invaded and bombed relentlessly in its own war with the Iranian-aligned Hezbollah force.

And yet, Trump has bounced between speaking engagements and more formal meetings with an apparent lightness — seeming unbothered by the weight of the conflict and acting as if U.S. victory were already at hand.

“We’ve already won the war. Militarily we’ve totally won the war,” he told “The Five” on Thursday.

After Trump’s exchange with Perino, fellow host Greg Gutfeld began to change the topic, saying, “I’m debating whether to be serious or not serious.”

“Do you think Biden would do this interview? Can you imagine? You think Biden — Sleepy Joe — he would do it?” Trump said.

He called the war a “little bit of a detour” from what he said were his otherwise winning economic policies, and asserted again — without providing evidence — that Iran was on the cusp of having a nuclear weapon and would have used it to cause devastation across the Middle East and to the U.S. if the U.S. hadn’t struck first, including when it bombed Iran’s nuclear sites last summer.

“You can’t let a madman or you can’t let a mad ideology have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said.

He repeated his long-pushed lie that he won the 2020 election, and suggested his support among his MAGA base remains at 100%.

An AP-NORC poll this week found that most Americans believe that the U.S. military campaign in Iran has gone too far — including about a quarter of Republicans — and that many are worried about gas prices.

During his Cabinet meeting Thursday, Trump seemed supremely confident, but also aware that the conflict was far from settled.

He said that the U.S. was “extremely — really a lot — ahead of schedule” in its war effort, and that “the Iranian regime is now admitting to itself that they have been decisively defeated.” But he also said that “even now, we don’t know if there are any mines” in the Strait of Hormuz, despite the U.S. having wiped out Iran’s “mine droppers,” and acknowledged that “if you think there may be a mine, that’s a bad thought and it stops things up.”

He said the U.S. has “decimated” about 99% of Iranian capabilities, but “the problem with the strait” is that the remaining 1% threat “is unacceptable, because 1% is a missile going into the hull of a ship that cost $1 billion.”

“If we do a 99% decimation, that’s no good,” he said.

During “The Five” interview, Trump was also asked if the CIA had told him that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei — who took on the Iranian leadership role after his father, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in initial strikes — is gay, which would be a crime under Iranian law.

“Well they did say that, but I don’t know if it was only them. I think a lot of people are saying that. Which puts him off to a bad start in that particular country, you know?” Trump said, in a stunning acknowledgment of a previously rumored intelligence briefing.

VAUX-DE-CERNAY, France — Group of Seven foreign ministers met on Friday in France to discuss the Russia-Ukraine conflict, with deep divisions apparent over the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, following President Trump’s repeated complaints that America’s allies have ignored or rejected requests for help in the military operation and in confronting Iran’s retaliatory attacks, including the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to most international shipping.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio joined his counterparts from the G7 just 24 hours after Trump’s latest round of insults lobbed at NATO and as instability in oil markets persisted with the Iran war entering its fourth week along with uncertainty over the status of potential negotiations to end the crisis.

Most of America’s closest allies have greeted the Iran war with deep skepticism, sentiments that were on display as the G7 foreign ministers met at a historic 12th-century abbey in Vaux-de-Cernay, outside Paris, even as they urged a diplomatic solution to resolve the situation.

As the diplomats gathered, France’s Minister of the Armed Forces Catherine Vautrin said the war in the Middle East “is not ours,” adding that the French position is strictly defensive.

“The aim is truly this diplomatic approach, which is the only one that can guarantee a return to peace,” she said on Europe 1 and CNews. “Many countries are concerned, and it is absolutely essential that we find a solution.”

British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, meanwhile, said Britain also favored a diplomatic path, acknowledging differences with the United States. “We have taken the approach of supporting defensive action, but also we’ve taken a different approach on the offensive action that has taken place as part of this conflict,” she said.

Rubio already faced difficulties in trying to sell the U.S. strategy for the Iran conflict, but Trump’s vitriolic comments about NATO countries not stepping up to help the U.S. and Israel during a Cabinet meeting on Thursday will likely make it an even tougher task.

Of the G7 nations — besides the U.S. — Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Italy are members of the trans-Atlantic military alliance. Japan is the only one that is not.

“We are very disappointed with NATO because NATO has done absolutely nothing,” Trump said in comments echoed later by his top diplomat.

“Frankly, I think countries around the world, even those that are out there complaining about this a little bit, should actually be grateful that the United States has a president that’s willing to confront a threat like this,” Rubio said Thursday.

Rubio, who chatted briefly with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, also still has work to do to smooth things over with allies like those in Europe that have faced criticism or outright threats from Trump and others in his Republican administration. The Europeans are still smarting over Trump’s earlier demands to take over Greenland from NATO ally Denmark and are concerned about U.S. support for Ukraine in its war with Russia. The conflict in the Middle East has added another point of tension.

“Today at the G7 I reiterated that President Trump is committed to reaching a ceasefire and negotiated settlement to the Russia-Ukraine war as soon as possible,” Rubio said in a post on X containing a photo of him meeting with his counterparts.

Shortly before leaving Washington Rubio told reporters he was not concerned about G7 unhappiness with the Iran war.

“I’m not there to make them happy,” he said. “I get along with all of them on a personal level, and we work with those governments very carefully, but the people I’m interested in making happy are the people of the United States. That’s who I work for. I don’t work for France or Germany or Japan.”

Trump has complained about lack of support from allies

Trump has complained that he has not been able to rally support behind his war of choice in Iran and that NATO and most other allies have rejected his calls to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran’s chokehold has disrupted oil shipments and pushed up energy prices.

“We’re there to protect NATO, to protect them from Russia. But they’re not there to protect us,” Trump said Thursday.

Before the U.S. leader’s comments, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte reiterated the increase in defense spending by alliance members — which Trump has urged — saying Europe and Canada had been “overreliant on U.S. military might” but a “shift in mindset” has taken hold.

Iran has long insisted that its nuclear program is peaceful, and its ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency has said that the United States and Israel’s “justification that Iran wants to develop nuclear weapons is simply a big lie.” The ambassador, Reza Najafi, has accused the U.S. and Israel of attacking ”Iran’s peaceful safeguarded nuclear facilities.”

G7 host France has been skeptical of the Iran war

France is hosting the G7 meeting near Versailles and has been highly skeptical of the war. Besides Vautrin’s comments on Friday, the chief of the French defense staff, Gen. Fabien Mandon, complained this week that U.S. allies had not been informed about the start of hostilities.

“They have just decided to intervene in the Near and Middle East without notifying us,” Mandon said, lamenting that the U.S. “is less and less predictable and doesn’t even bother to inform us when it decides to engage in military operations.”

However, 35 countries joined military talks hosted by Mandon on how to reopen the Strait of Hormuz “once the intensity of hostilities has sufficiently decreased,” France’s Defense Ministry said.

Rubio said that with Iran threatening global shipping, countries that care about international law “should step up and deal with it.”

Similar sentiments to Mandon’s have been expressed by other allies that also worry about the U.S. commitment to Ukraine as the Iran war closes in on four weeks.

“We must avoid further destabilization, secure our economic freedom and develop perspectives for an end of and the time after the hostilities,” German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said Thursday. “Our joint support for Ukraine … must not crumble now. That would be a strategic mistake with a view to Euro-Atlantic security.”

Lee writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Lorne Cook in Brussels, John Leicester in Paris and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.

Union members scuffled with reporters and then banned the media entirely from the Communications Workers of America convention floor in a dispute springing from NBC’s labor troubles. Three Democratic presidential hopefuls–Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois and civil rights activist Jesse Jackson–addressed the Miami Beach convention despite the controversy. The media ban by the union, which represents nearly 700,000 workers in the telecommunications and publishing industries and in the public sector, stemmed from a federal court order demanding that the union permit NBC into the convention hall if it allowed any reporters.

SACRAMENTO — As a Ventura County public defender, Liana Johnsson has handled many life-changing cases, but her biggest public crusade these days has been going topless.

For months, Johnsson has been fighting to allow topless women at California beaches and parks, and now the issue has made its way to the Capitol.

A group of lawyers, at Johnsson’s request, has asked the Legislature to make topless sunbathing legal, saying the ban is the last criminal sanction that treats women differently than men.

The new movement has urgency: Because of a December court ruling, Johnsson and other attorneys contend, women convicted of indecent exposure could find themselves listed as sex offenders under Megan’s Law, alongside rapists and child molesters.

“At some point, men’s breasts became liberated and women’s didn’t,” Johnsson said Friday. “This is the only thing left that men are legally allowed to do and, for women, they have to register as a sex offender. The real issue is there should be equal protection under the law.”

The office of state Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer said women should not be concerned about being identified as sex offenders, given that California law considers topless sunbathing to be indecent but not lewd. Lawmakers may soon be tackling the issue to remove any chance of misinterpretation by local prosecutors.

Before her idea reached Sacramento this week, Johnsson presented her arguments to more than 400 delegates at an October bar association convention. She flashed images on a screen of the big-breasted male evildoer from “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me,” as she spoke.

Johnsson — who wears a pink badge that reads, “I support breast equality” — also has produced a two-minute video featuring obese men with large breasts lounging on California beaches, proof, she said, that the law is not applied equally to men and women, as required by the U.S. Constitution.

After a bit of tittering followed by a plea to protect children, the lawyers’ group approved a resolution asking that the criminal codes forbidding topless sunbathing be removed. Lobbyists for the Conference of Delegates of California Bar Associations said they expect a lawmaker next week to introduce the bill Johnsson seeks, although an author and details of the proposal have not been decided.

The issue goes beyond topless sunbathing. The conference lobbyist, Randy Perry with Aaron Read & Associates, questioned whether fraternity boys mooning out a car window or golfers caught urinating in the woods would also be required to register as sex offenders now, if convicted of indecent exposure.

“What we’re talking about is common sense,” said Perry.

He noted that since California legalized public breastfeeding in 1998, the only area of the law exclusively targeting women has been topless sunbathing.

Perry said the 2005 bill would either exempt topless women from Megan’s Law, make topless sunbathing an infraction instead of a misdemeanor or let judges decide whether to require sex offender registration.

In an Orange County case last month, a state Court of Appeal ruled that anyone convicted of misdemeanor indecent exposure must be listed as a sex offender under Megan’s Law. The databank recently was placed on the Internet, so people can search it for sex offenders.

The court said including indecent exposure offenders is not cruel and unusual punishment because Megan’s Law is not technically a “punishment” but simply a regulatory tool. Lawyers in the case said trial judges and prosecutors should have the discretion to decide, but the court took that away.

“Can you imagine the burden on police to now have to track all these people?” asked Carol E. Lavacot, the Orange County public defender who challenged the ruling in the 4th Appellate District. “It’s a way overboard decision.”

It’s extremely rare for women to be convicted of misdemeanor indecent exposure for going topless or, as the law currently reads, exposing “any portion of the breast at or below the upper edge of the areola of any female person.”

Officials at the California Department of Parks and Recreation say it has not been a priority for them to cite women at its 278 parks and beaches. California has dozens of unofficially designated nude beaches and rivers, including the popular Black’s Beach near San Diego, where people lie about in the nude, mostly without interference from police or rangers.

“Our rangers — how can I put this? — are very busy,” said Joe Rosato, a parks department spokesman. “It’s a low, low priority. Instead, what the rangers do is ask the women to put their tops on, and usually it’s 100%. If there are any indecent exposures, it’s more of a flasher or someone jumping out of bush exposing themselves.”

For its part, the state attorney general’s office said Megan’s Law would apply only if the woman has “lewd intent” — and topless sunbathing is not normally considered lewd. In addition, they said, a misdemeanor conviction for indecent exposure requires only registration under Megan’s Law, not public disclosure on the new government websites.

The office of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declined to comment on the possible legislation, and it was unclear if the governor would rank this effort as one of the “silly” bills he says the Legislature often dreams up. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” spokeswoman Margita Thompson said in an e-mail when asked to comment.

The legislation probably faces a fight. Lawmakers in California have been eager to expand Megan’s Law, not carve out exemptions.

Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families, called it a “loopy idea” at a time when California needs to strengthen laws against public nudity.

“We already have too many sexual assaults in society. This will fuel that fire, and if the women don’t understand, that’s because they don’t think like a man,” Thomasson said.

But Johnsson countered the notion that “if you allow topless sunbathing on state beaches … civilization will collapse. I tried to show that we have faced these same fears, like when we gave women the right to vote and enter the armed forces, and we have survived.”

WASHINGTON — The Senate early Friday morning approved Homeland Security funds to pay Transportation Security Administration agents and most other agencies, but not the immigration enforcement operations at the heart of the budget impasse that has jammed airports, disrupted travel and imposed financial hardship on workers.

The deal, which the Senate approved unanimously without a roll call, next goes to the House, which is expected to consider it Friday.

“We can get at least a lot of the government opened up again and then we’ll go from there,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D. “Obviously, we’ll still have some work ahead of us.”

With pressure mounting to resolve the 42-day stalemate over funding for the Department of Homeland Security, the endgame emerged in the final hours before TSA workers miss another paycheck Friday. President Donald Trump said he would sign an order to immediately pay the TSA agents, saying he wanted to quickly stop the “Chaos at the Airports.” The deal did not include any of the restraints Democrats have demanded as they sought to rein in Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said the outcome could have been reached weeks ago, and vowed that his party would continue fighting to ensure Trump’s “rogue” immigration operation “does not get more funding without serious reform.”

What’s in and out of the funding package

Senators worked through the night on the deal that would fund much of the rest of the department, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Coast Guard and TSA, but without funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Customs was funded, but Border Protection was not.

The package puts no new limits on immigration enforcement, which has remained largely uninterrupted by the shutdown. The GOP’s big tax cuts bill that Trump signed into law last year funneled billions in extra funds to DHS, including $75 billion for ICE operations, ensuring the immigration officers are still being paid despite the lapse.

Next steps in the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., holds a slim majority, are uncertain. Passage will almost certainly require bipartisan support, as lawmakers on the left and right flanks revolt.

Conservative Republicans have panned their own party’s proposals, demanding full funding for immigration operations. Many have vowed to ensure ICE has the resources it needs in the next budget package to carry out Trump’s agenda.

“We will fully fund ICE. That is what this fight is about,” Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., said as he tried to offer legislation to fund the agency. “The border is closing. The next task is deportation.”

On-again, off-again talks collapsed

Earlier Thursday, Thune announced he had given a “last and final” offer to the Democrats. But as the day dragged on, action stalled out.

Democrats argued the GOP proposals have not gone far enough at putting guardrails on officers from ICE, Customs and Border Protection, and other federal agencies who are engaged in the immigration sweeps, particularly after the deaths of two Americans protesting the actions in Minneapolis.

They want federal agents to wear identification, remove their face masks and refrain from conducting raids around schools, churches or other sensitive places. Democrats have also pushed for an end of administrative warrants, insisting that judges sign off before agents search people’s homes or private spaces — something new Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has said he is open to considering.

Trump had largely left the issue to Congress, but warned he was ready to take action, threatening to send the National Guard to airports in addition to his deployment of ICE agents who are now checking travelers’ IDs.

The White House had floated the extraordinary move of invoking a national emergency to pay the TSA agents, a politically and legally fraught approach. Instead, Trump’s order would pay TSA agents using money from his 2025 tax bill, according to a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss it publicly.

If the Senate package is approved by the House and signed it into law, the action Trump announced to pay TSA agents may be temporary or unneeded.

Airport lines grow as TSA workers endure hardships

The funding shutdown has resulted in travel delays and even warnings of airport closures as TSA workers missing paychecks stop coming to work.

Multiple airports are experiencing greater than 40% callout rates of TSA workers and nearly 500 of the agency’s nearly 50,000 transportation security officers have quit during the shutdown. Nationwide on Wednesday, more than 11% of the TSA employees on the schedule missed work, according to DHS. That is more than 3,120 callouts.

Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said the union is grateful the TSA workers will be paid, but said Congress must stay in session to pass a deal “that funds DHS, pays all DHS workers, and keeps these vital agencies running.”

At George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Melissa Gates said she would not make her flight to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, after waiting more than 2½ hours and still not reaching the security checkpoint. She said no other flights were available until Friday.

“I should have just driven, right?” Gates said. “Five hours would have been hilarious next to this.”

Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti, Kevin Freking, Rebecca Santana, Collin Binkley and Ben Finley in Washington, Lekan Oyekanmi in Houston, Wyatte Grantham-Philips in New York, Rio Yamat in Las Vegas, Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, and Gabriela Aoun Angueira in San Diego contributed to this report.

Mascaro and Jalonick write for the Associated Press.

How would you feel about getting a dream gig only to see it end in disgrace because of, well, you?

That’s what Gregory Bovino gets to think about for the rest of his life. Friday is the Border Patrol lifer’s last day on the job after 30 years — and he ain’t leaving because he wants to.

For the past year, the self-described “hillbilly” was the personification of the Trump administration’s xenophobic deportation deluge. Helicopter invasions of apartment complexes, tear gas canisters thrown into large crowds, defying court orders, glamorous photo shoots: There was no municipality too big, no tactic too crazy, no quote too incendiary for Bovino to take on while he treated immigrant neighborhoods like the shores of Normandy.

The North Carolina native’s caravan of cruelty quickly earned him a promotion from El Centro sector chief to Border Patrol commander at large, a new position crafted just for him. He embraced the role of migra bogeyman like a tween boy scarfing down a bowl of Warheads, always promising more deportations, more chaos, more more.

Not anymore.

In January, Border Patrol agents shot and killed ICU nurse Alex Pretti during a protest against them a few weeks after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer did the same to Renée Good, a mother of three. Bovino threw napalm on the matter by claiming Pretti wanted to “massacre law enforcement” without offering any evidence. The incidents so soured the public on immigration agents that a Public Religion Research Institute poll released this week showed only 35% of Americans surveyed approved of how Trump is handling immigration, compared to 48% a year ago.

Bovino was sent back down to El Centro and lost his social media privileges, where he had long posted cringe-inducing videos about what a swell guy he was. Even Trump turned on his migra man, telling Fox News that Bovino was “a pretty out-there kind of a guy … and in some cases that’s good. Maybe it wasn’t good [in Minneapolis].”

I should’ve warned Bovino the one time we met that failure was his fate.

The setting: the Fox 11 Los Angeles studios in July. Bovino and I were in to do separate interviews with the station’s former anchor Elex Michaelson. Bovino was in the middle of his Los Angeles invasion, which saw immigration agents lay siege to MacArthur Park, storm Home Depots and car washes and show up outside the Japanese American National Museum while politicians inside were decrying Trump.

Dressed in full Border Patrol uniform complete with a clipped-on walkie-talkie on his shoulder, the guy was billing himself as a modern-day Charles Martel defending the homeland from invading infidels. The nasal-voiced Bovino rambled to Michaelson about how “Ma and Pa America” deserved a country free from undocumented immigrants and vowed to remain in Los Angeles “until the operation is over.”

Then-U.S. Border Patrol commander at large Gregory Bovino, center, along with Border Patrol agents as they march to the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building after a show of force outside the Japanese American National Museum where Gov. Gavin Newsom was holding a redistricting press conference on Aug. 14, 2025, in Los Angeles.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

After his interview, Bovino and three Border Patrol agents strolled into the greenroom to grab some homemade cookies while I sat on a couch. He looked me in the eye while bending down to sign Michaelson’s guest book, as if he expected me to not only recognize him but say something.

It was like staring at someone doing an impersonation that was one part Lt. Col. Kilgore from “Apocalypse Now” and two parts Henery Hawk, the short, brash Looney Tunes character that was always trying to capture the much larger Foghorn Leghorn. He really thought that his scorched-earth assault on L.A. would defeat the city and convince other communities to offer no pushback once Bovino’s self-titled “Green Machine” trolled into town.

The opposite happened.

People who had never bothered with politics — even some who voted for Trump or at least agreed with deporting immigrants with criminal convictions — rose up to resist. Everywhere became a front — social media, the streets, courtrooms — and activists across Southern California began to share notes among themselves and with communities nationwide to prepare them for la migra. Bovino flailed back at every affront instead of focusing on his mission, not realizing his recklessness was eroding public support for his cause and threatening it altogether.

Really, Bovino lost the day he has long claimed as a victory: the Battle of MacArthur Park.

That’s when he convinced the Trump administration to send a skeptical National Guard alongside his men to surround the historic L.A. green space in the ludicrously named Operation Excalibur. Armed vehicles parked on Wilshire Boulevard. A grinning Bovino strutted around with media in tow. A wannabe cavalry unit, anchored in the center by an agent on a white horse, swept through a soccer field where children were attending day camp just minutes before.

No one was arrested or detained that day. Instead, Bovino left to a chorus of cuss words and boo birds. The exercise allowed Americans to see the folly of burning millions of taxpayer dollars just so someone could star in a TikTok reel. It also broke the spell Bovino had cast over many critics — myself included — who had feared he truly was an unstoppable Punisher.

Nah, he was just a spiky-haired pendejo.

If Bovino was as smart as he thinks he is, he would’ve followed the longtime strategy of another longtime immigration enforcer. Trump border czar Tom Homan executed a yearslong roundup under the Obama administration with numbers Trump has yet to reach and with nowhere near as much public rancor. Homan, who loves the camera almost as much as Bovino, knew then and now that an issue as explosive as deportations must be approached quietly if it’s to be done successfully.

Instead, not only does he have to clean up Bovino’s mess, there’s now a real chance that the Republicans will lose the midterms because of Latinos who voted for Trump in 2024 but are now furious at his administration. That’s why even Trump is now telling Republicans to tone down their anti-immigrant rhetoric, stat.

Gracias, Bovino!

You thought you would go down in U.S. history as a domestic Patton, a borderlands Sherman. Instead, your last week coincided with the publication of a New York Times profile of you railing at enemies while downing coffee at a burger bar in El Centro.

You called Customs and Border Protection commissioner Rodney Scott “weak-kneed,” mocked Homan and said you could’ve deported 100 million people — a radically racist number considering even the Center for Immigration Studies, which has long pushed for reduced immigration of all kinds, estimated a record 15.4 million illegal immigrants were in this country at the start of Trump’s second term.

Instead, you’re heading off to the Tar Heel State to spend your days hunting… coyotes.

“Maybe I get me some dogs and we go hard,” you told the New York Times. “I’ll take it in my own hands.”

Which reminds me of another hapless cartoon character who thought himself a genius but who kept screwing things up in ceaseless pursuit of his quarry: Wile E. Coyote.

WASHINGTON — A lead attorney for the Department of Homeland Security suggested that federal agents should have “just started hitting the rioters and arresting everyone that couldn’t get away” during an anti-ICE protest in Los Angeles last June, internal emails show.

The note was in an email chain obtained by the nonprofit watchdog group American Oversight through the Freedom of Information Act and shared exclusively with The Times.

In it, attorneys for Homeland Security appear to be discussing the June 9 lawsuit filed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom over President Trump’s deployment of thousands of California National Guard troops to Los Angeles.

Under the subject line “California DOD Lawsuit,” officials coordinated legal filings defending the Trump administration and included a draft declaration by the Los Angeles field office director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement supporting the deployment of military forces.

The final email in the thread was from Joseph Mazzara, then-acting DHS general counsel, and he appears to be referring to an incident in which protesters tried to breach a protective line at a federal building.

On June 11, he wrote: “Every time I read about the battering ram incident I’m just floored at how wild that is.”

Referring to law enforcement as “they,” he continued: “They should have, when they brought the line in, just started hitting the rioters and arresting everyone that couldn’t get away from them. No one likes being hit by a stick, and people tend to run when that starts happening in earnest.”

The Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Mazzara was later appointed deputy commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Politico reported that Mazzara is among 10 staffers who followed former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to the State Department after she was fired this month from DHS and given a new role as special envoy for the Shield of the Americas.

The battering ram incident Mazzara referred to is detailed in court documents for the lawsuit.

A June 19 order from a panel judges from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals states that Trump administration attorneys presented evidence of protesters interfering with federal officers. The protesters threw objects at ICE vehicles, “pinned down” several Federal Protective Service officers and threw “concrete chunks, bottles of liquid, and other objects,” the order said.

Protesters also “used ‘large rolling commercial dumpsters as a battering ram’ in an attempt to breach the parking garage of a federal building,” the order states.

Mazzara’s comment in the email thread with other Homeland Security attorneys was given to American Oversight with a watermark showing the agency had intended to withhold it. American Oversight also received a version of the documents with that statement redacted.

Chioma Chukwu, executive director of American Oversight, said it’s no wonder the administration wanted to keep Mazzara’s comments hidden.

“They reveal a level of hostility toward protesters that is deeply at odds with the government’s obligation to protect civil liberties — and there’s no FOIA exemption that justifies hiding them,” she said.

Kerry Doyle, the former top ICE attorney during the Biden administration, said Mazzara’s comments show a shocking carelessness about the potential for harm against both the general public and the officers he was employed to protect.

The email, she said, “seems to encourage, or, at the very least, support constitutional violations by the operators that are supposed to be getting legal counsel from him to avoid violating the law.” Plus, commenting on operational strategy is outside the scope of his responsibilities, she said.

“He’s doing a disservice to the people that are on the front line, that rely on him and his colleagues to give them the parameters of what they can and can’t do,” Doyle added. “If you give them bad legal advice, you are setting them up for liability.”

Noem’s removal came amid backlash against an escalation of violence during Trump’s crackdown on immigration, including the shooting deaths of U.S. citizen protesters by immigration agents.

Doyle said part of the secretary’s job is to set the tone for the agency so the rank and file know what is expected of them. Mazzara’s comments, she said, show how that tone has permeated all facets of the agency.

After the U.S. Supreme Court cast doubt on the Trump administration’s legal theory for using troops in domestic law enforcement operations, the president in December began removing the National Guard from Los Angeles and other Democratic-led cities.

The protests last summer caused significant property damage in a small section of downtown Los Angeles. But grand juries refused to indict many demonstrators accused by federal prosecutors of attacking agents, and a Times review of alleged assaults found that most incidents resulted in no injuries.

Here are some excerpts from Jesse Jackson’s recent campaign speeches:

PHILOSOPHY:

When we turn to each other, and not on each other, that’s victory. When we build each other, and not destroy each other, that’s victory.

Red, yellow, brown, black and white–we’re all precious in God’s sight. Everybody is somebody.

Where do we find common ground? It’s at the plant gate that locks workers out . . . . It’s at the farm auction, when farmers are driven from their land with no place to go. When someone is sick and dying in the admitting office because they don’t have a green or yellow card.

We the people must come together, demand health insurance. We the people must demand better pay for our teachers, demand jobs and security. We the people must say: drive drugs out, drive jobs in.

No one has earned the right to do less than your best.

Our children need strong men and strong women. But you’re not a man just because you make a baby.

It’s just not right to bring a child in this world and abandon that child. It’s just not right . . . . We must rebuild people–that’s a first step to rebuilding the cities.

THE UNDERCLASS:

When you look at Jesse Jackson, you look at the American dream of hope and possibility unfolding before your very eyes. In a real sense, I was born in the underclass . . . born to a teen-age mother who was born to a teen-age mother.

I went to school where teachers received less pay than their white counterparts, by law . . . .

We lived in a three-room house, bathroom on the back porch, slop jar by the bed for the family. Wallpaper used not for decoration, but for a wind breaker.

As your President, I will open up the door of opportunity, but you must walk through those doors . . . . I have faith in you. I want you to have faith in yourself . . . . If you rise above your circumstances, you can make it.

POVERTY:

People aren’t fighting for welfare. They’re fighting for fair-share.

Most poor people are not black or brown. Most poor people are white, female and young. Color it pain, color it hurt.

Most poor people aren’t on welfare. They work every day. They change the beds in hotels. They raise other people’s children.

They work every day. They drive cabs. They’re orderlies in hospitals. They’re not lazy. They work every day. They bathe the bodies sick with fever. They empty their bedpans. They clean out the commodes. No job is beneath them.

And yet, when they get sick, they cannot afford health insurance, and they cannot lie in the beds they’ve made up every day.

We can do better than that. There are 38 million people in America without health insurance. We need to sit down and devise a national health insurance plan. Because it’s right.

I choose to invest in Headstart, and day care, and prenatal care on the front side of life, rather than jail care and welfare on the backside of life.

THE ECONOMY:

Every generation has a challenge. Our challenge today is to end economic violence.

You know something has gone awry when profits go up and wages go down, and 600,000 farms are foreclosed, and plants are closed and workers are abandoned.

It’s called reverse Robin Hood. It’s taking from the poor and giving to the rich. And that is not fair.

Now the top 1% of wage earners 10 years later pay 20% less in taxes, instead of paying 20% more. Government (has been) used as a lever to take from working people and the poor and to give to the rich.

DRUGS:

The No. 1 threat to this nation is drugs–cocaine, crack, heroin, PCP. We’re consuming $150-billion worth of drugs a year. The No. 1 tax-free industry in America is drugs.

Drugs are corrupting leaders, killing our children. But don’t just focus on children and ballplayers. Children do not buy $150-billion worth of drugs a year. And ballplayers do not launder $150 billion in drug money through banks.

We must get serious about ending the war of drugs in this country. Stop the cocaine, the crack, the heroin. Ban the drugs. Ban the handguns. Make our streets secure and safe again.

In 1986 the Coast Guard interdicted 10,000 pounds of cocaine. In 1987, the Coast Guard interdicted 26,000 pounds of cocaine. Then, the Administration cut the Coast Guard budget by $100 million. They busted the Coast Guard and gave the drug smugglers the green light.

I want to cut the supply of drugs. I want you to join me and cut the demand.

TRADE:

The No. 1 exporter from Taiwan is not Taiwan. It’s General Electric. Which owns RCA. Which owns NBC. Which says, “Buy American,” while NBC workers are forced to strike and make concessions.

The first four years of the Reagan Administration, GE made $10 billion. That’s all right. But as profits went up, wages and jobs went down. They paid zero taxes. That’s not all. They got a $100-million tax rebate, while workers on unemployment compensation had to pay taxes. That is economic violence.

FOREIGN POLICY:

The Russian bear is in check because we have the mental preparedness and the military preparedness. But the drug war is hitting us where we have no defense, in our character, in our lives, in our dreams.

In Latin America, our fight is not with 3 million Sandinistas. They do not threaten us. If they did, 15,000 Contras could not save us from them.

MINNEAPOLIS — Airport security video shows another way federal agents are taking immigrants to detention centers — in some cases they’re using commercial flights, with escorts dressed like any other passenger.

Video obtained through a public records request shows a 5-year-old boy who became a face of the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis being flown with his father to Texas on a Delta Air Lines flight, just a day after they were taken into custody. He had been detained while wearing a bunny hat.

Adrian Conejo Arias and son Liam Conejo Ramos seemed calm in these recordings as they were being escorted through the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport by a man and two women dressed in plain clothes. Since the father and boy didn’t appear to be in custody, their trip to San Antonio probably went unnoticed by fellow passengers.

The Trump administration, like its predecessors, is mostly using ICE Air Operations charter flights as it detains hundreds of thousands of people for deportation. Human rights monitors are trying to keep track as detainees are loaded onto planes in shackles in parts of airports the public can’t easily see.

The video of Liam and his father, they say, exposes another route that’s harder for rights monitors to document, despite happening in plain view inside the same airport terminals where Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents wearing tactical, military-style gear are now being deployed to support security checkpoints.

What happened in this case?

The father, who was seeking asylum from Ecuador, and son were detained by ICE officers in Minnesota on Jan. 20 and taken to Texas. They were released on a judge’s orders and returned to Minnesota, but then an immigration judge denied their asylum request. The family’s lawyer said they’re appealing.

The video that revealed their commercial airline travel was first obtained by Nick Benson, an aviation enthusiast and activist with MN 50501, a grassroots group involved in anti-ICE and No Kings protests. Benson said he’s never seen children while monitoring ICE charter flights, so he suspected the agency was flying them commercially. He identified the time and day the father and son were flown out of Minneapolis, filed a public records request for the security video — and there they were.

The Associated Press obtained the same video through a similar request to the MSP Airport Police Department. It shows the father carrying the boy’s Spider-Man backpack as a woman shows an airline agent their boarding passes. A man and the other woman follow them onto the jet bridge.

Delta declined to comment on the video. But the airline said most government travel is booked through third-party agencies, with no advance notice about who is flying or why. The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

What is ICE Air?

ICE Air Operations transfers and deports people mostly using flights chartered through airline broker CSI Aviation, which has subcontracted with small airlines such as GlobalX, Eastern Air Express, Bighorn Airways, Key Lime Air and Avelo Airlines.

ICE Air continues to rapidly expand both domestic transfer and deportation flights, according to Human Rights First, which documented 1,630 immigration enforcement flights in February alone. Of that total, 183 were deportation flights and 1,170 were domestic transfer flights.

ICE also uses U.S. Coast Guard planes. Flight Monitor said it has tracked hundreds of flights since June in which Coast Guard planes were used to transport immigrants domestically.

“It seems that ICE sometimes uses commercial flights to destinations where they don’t carry out kind of larger scale ICE Air deportation flights,” said Savi Arvey, director of research and analysis for refugee and immigrant rights at Human Rights First.

The monitors use flight-tracking websites to follow the charter planes, but these tools can’t track individual passengers on commercial flights, making them “less in the public eye,” Arvey said. “It adds another level of opaqueness.”

Bellisle and Vancleave write for the Associated Press. Bellisle reported from Seattle. AP writers Rio Yamat in Las Vegas and Rebecca Santana in Washington contributed to this report.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced Thursday that it has launched an investigation into two California women’s prisons to determine if they unconstitutionally provided housing and preferential treatment to “biological male prisoners.”

In a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom, Assistant Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon — who heads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division — said investigators will look into “widely reported allegations of deprivation of female prisoners’ rights” at the Central California Women’s Facility in Madera County and the California Institution for Women in San Bernardino County.

The Justice Department said in a news release that there have been allegations “of sexual assaults, rape, voyeurism and a pervasive climate of sexual intimidation due to the presence of males in the women’s prison.”

Newsom’s office referred The Times to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. A spokesperson for the agency said it is “committed to providing a safe, humane, respectful and rehabilitative environment for all incarcerated people.”

The Department of Justice also notified Maine Gov. Janet Mills of an investigation into allegations that the state “has allowed a biological male inmate to remain housed with women despite complaints that the male inmate has assaulted or harassed several female inmates.”

Dhillon said in a video posted on X that the investigations are part of a new project called the “single-sex prisons initiative” to look for potential civil rights violations in which female inmates are forced “to be in the same rooms with men who are posing as women to get access to the female prisons.”

“In California there are reports of many dozen such men housed in women’s prisons which of course is exposing these women to sexual assault and other forms of violence and harassment that, if true, are extremely troubling and could violate the civil rights of these women,” Dhillon said.

In 2020, Newsom signed into law Senate Bill 132, which gives transgender, nonbinary and intersex inmates at state prisons the right to be housed at either men’s or women’s facilities. Opponents of the law sued the following year, alleging that it was unconstitutional and created an unsafe environment for women in female facilities, with some plaintiffs claiming they were assaulted.

At the time, LGBTQ+ advocates slammed the suit as baseless and damaging.

“The way they wrote [the complaint] is saying that trans women are men and they are putting men in women’s prisons, which is completely false,” Bamby Salcedo, president and chief executive of the TransLatin@ Coalition, which cosponsored SB 132, previously told The Times. “They’re making a claim that is not accurate and not respectful towards trans women specifically.”

In an interview with the Times Thursday, Salcedo said that while there may be instances in which people have abused the law, she stressed “it is the responsibility of the CDCR to protect people who are incarcerated.”

“They should be able to not just follow the law, but also to be able to screen people appropriately,” Salcedo said.

Salcedo said she was not surprised to hear about the new Justice Department investigation, calling it “an effort for this administration to continue to deny opportunities and access to trans people in our society.”

The Women’s Liberation Front, which brought the lawsuit, announced this week that a federal court had dismissed the case but that they planned to appeal. In an emailed statement, Elspeth Cypher, Women’s Liberation Front board president, called the Justice Department investigation “welcome and long overdue.”

“I hope that this investigation provides the women in prison with some hope that finally someone is listening,” Cypher said.

Under the bill enacted in 2021, 1,028 inmates housed at male prisons have requested to be moved to female facilities, according to data as of March 4. The department had granted 47 requests and denied 132. Another 140 applicants “changed their minds,” according to the department.

State officials said that 84 inmates sought to be transferred into men’s facilities from women’s prisons. Of those, seven were approved.

According to the corrections department, 2,405 inmates identify as nonbinary, intersex or transgender. Those populations are said to experience excessive violence in prison. A 2007 UC Irvine study that included interviews with 39 transgender inmates found that the rate of sexual assault is 13 times higher for transgender people, with 59% of those surveyed reporting experiencing such encounters.

The Justice Department said Thursday that its investigation was just getting underway and that it “has not reached any conclusions regarding allegations in these matters.”

“I’m very determined to ensure that no woman who’s incarcerated in the United States is subject to potential rape, sexual assault or other violations of her civil rights as a condition of incarceration to satisfy some woke ideology by the state,” Dhillon said. “If these states are violating these rights and they don’t stop, we will make them through litigation.”

WASHINGTON — President Trump said Thursday he would sign an order instructing the Homeland Security secretary to immediately pay Transportation Security Administration agents as Congress struggled to reach a deal to end a budget impasse that has jammed airports and left workers without paychecks.

Trump announced his decision in a social media post saying he wanted to quickly stop the “Chaos at the Airports.”

“It is not an easy thing to do, but I am going to do it!” the president posted.

With pressure mounting, the White House had floated the extraordinary move of invoking a national emergency to pay TSA agents, while senators were reviewing a “last and final” offer from Republicans to Democrats to end the funding impasse at the Department of Homeland Security.

Details of the president’s plan were not immediately available, but a national emergency declaration would be politically fraught and almost certain to face legal challenges. Instead, the president may simply be shifting money from other sources.

Democrats have been refusing to fund Homeland Security as they seek changes to rein in Trump’s immigration enforcement operations. The Senate came to a standstill and senators, ready to leave town for their own spring break, had prepared to stay all night to reach a deal.

“The president is doing absolutely the right thing,” said Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), the GOP whip. “The TSA agents are going to be paid.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the chair of the Appropriations Committee, has said there is funding elsewhere that can be legally used to pay the TSA as well as the Coast Guard without declaring a national emergency.

The funding shutdown, now in its 41st day, has resulted in travel delays, missed paychecks and even warnings of airport closures. TSA workers are coming up on their second missed payday Friday, with thousands refusing to show up for work.

Multiple airports are experiencing greater than 40% callout rates of TSA workers and nearly 500 of its nearly 50,000 transportation security officers have now quit during the shutdown. Nationwide on Wednesday, more than 11% of the TSA employees on the schedule missed work, according to DHS. That is more than 3,120 callouts.

Trump, who has largely left the issue to Congress to resolve, had warned he was ready to take action, even threatening to send the National Guard to airports, in addition to his deployment of ICE agents who are now checking travelers’ IDs — a development drawing concerns. The White House has been considering a menu of options.

“They need to end this shutdown immediately or we’ll have to take drastic measures,” Trump said during a morning Cabinet meeting at the White House.

At George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Melissa Gates said she would not make her flight to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, after waiting more than 2½ hours and still not reaching the security checkpoint. She said no other flights were available until Friday.

“I should have just driven, right?” Gates said. “Five hours would have been hilarious next to this.”

A ‘last and final’ offer on the table

Earlier Thursday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) announced he had given the final offer to Democrats.

Thune did not disclose details of the new framework, but he said that it picked up on what had been the Republican offer over the weekend, before talks with the White House and Democrats had broken off.

“Enough is enough,” he said.

But as senators retreated to privately discuss the new plan, the action stalled out.

Democrats argue the GOP proposals have not gone far enough at putting guardrails on officers from ICE, Customs and Border Protection and other federal agencies that are engaged in the immigration sweeps, particularly after the deaths of two Americans protesting the actions in Minneapolis.

They want federal agents to wear identification, remove their face masks and refrain from conducting raids around schools, churches or other sensitive places. Democrats have also pushed for an end of administrative warrants, insisting that judges sign off before agents search people’s homes or private spaces.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said they needed to see real changes. “We’ve been talking about ICE reforms from day one,” he said.

Any deal will almost certainly need to involve a compromise as lawmakers on the left and right flanks revolt. Conservative Republicans have panned their own GOP proposals, demanding full funding for immigration operations and skeptical of the promise from leaders that they would address Trump’s proof-of-citizenship voting bill in a subsequent legislative package.

Republicans said after a private lunch meeting that there were other options to shift money than invoking the national emergency.

The GOP’s big tax cuts bill that Trump signed into law last year funneled billions to DHS, including $75 billion for ICE operations, ensuring the money is flowing for his immigration and deportation agenda even with the funding shutdown. ICE and other immigration officers are still being paid.

Republicans say the Trump administration has already made strides to meet Democrats’ demands, particularly after swearing in former Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin as the new homeland security secretary to replace Kristi Noem. He has given a nod to the need for the judicial warrants for searches.

Airport lines grow as TSA workers endure hardships

“This is a dire situation,” the acting TSA administrator, Ha Nguyen McNeill, testified at a House hearing Wednesday.

She described the multiple hardships facing unpaid TSA workers — piling-up bills and eviction notices, even plasma donations to make ends meet — and warned of potential airport closures if more employees refuse to come to work.

“At this point, we have to look at all options on the table,” she said.

McNeil also said TSA officers working at the nation’s airports had experienced a more than 500% increase in the frequency of assaults since the shutdown began.

“This is unacceptable,” McNeill said.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Treasury Department is working on plans to put President Trump’s signature on all new U.S. paper currency, the agency announced Thursday.

The move would be a first for a sitting president. The news was first reported by Vanity Fair.

It’s the latest instance of Trump putting his name and likeness on American cultural institutions, following his renaming of the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Kennedy Center performing arts venue and a new class of battleships, among other tributes.

The plans come in tandem with an effort to get Trump’s face on a coin.

This month, a federal arts commission approved the final design for a 24-karat gold commemorative coin bearing Trump’s image to help celebrate America’s 250th birthday on July 4.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s signature would also appear on the currency, according to a Treasury news release.

Bessent said in a statement that “there is no more powerful way to recognize the historic achievements of our great country” than with U.S. dollar bills bearing Trump’s name.

U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach said in a statement that printing Trump’s signature on the American currency “is not only appropriate, but also well deserved.”

The Mint, which is part of the Treasury Department, manufactures and distributes the currency.

Hussein writes for the Associated Press.

It’s like that time Pinocchio became a real boy: News that was labeled “fake” last week is real today, per the Kennedy Center, and Bill Maher will indeed be the 27th person to receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

The White House strongly dissed the Atlantic’s reporting (followed by unreporting) last week that Maher was the next in line for the 2026 prize that Conan O’Brien got last year and Kevin Hart picked up the year before that. The Twain honor has been bestowed on comics almost annually since 1998 by the Kennedy Center, a “tired, broken, and dilapidated” building that President Trump slapped his own name on in December and plans to close for two years’ worth of renovations starting July 4 — hence the response from White House flacks.

“Literally FAKE NEWS,” said Steven Cheung, White House director of communications, on his official X account reacting Friday to the Atlantic story. Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary, said in a statement to the publication, “This is fake news. Bill Maher will NOT be getting this award.”

But People reported Thursday that although the Atlantic’s news was deemed “fake” at the time, according to word from a White House official, the situation had “evolved” in the six days since then.

You say tomato, I say to-mah-to? At any rate, Bill’s getting the Twain, given previously to comedic luminaries including Richard Pryor, Whoopi Goldberg, George Carlin, Lily Tomlin, Steve Martin, Lorne Michaels, Tina Fey and Dave Chappelle.

Maher had no response on social media, perhaps reserving his reaction for the upcoming “Real Time With Bill Maher” episode due out Friday on HBO or his next “Club Random” podcast. But he did issue a dryly amusing statement Thursday in a Kennedy Center news release, saying, “Thank you to the Mark Twain people: I just had the award explained to me, and apparently it’s like an Emmy, except I win.”

(Maher’s show has been nominated for Emmy Awards 22 times, from 2004 through 2024, including 13 nods for variety series and the rest for writing, directing and personal performance. It has won exactly zero of those times. Even Susan Lucci only had to wait through 18 Daytime Emmy nominations before she finally won on the 19th — and proceeded to lose out on two more.)

The comic’s statement continued: “I’d just like to say that it is indeed humbling to get anything named for a man who’s been thrown out of as many school libraries as Mark Twain.”

“For nearly three decades, the Mark Twain Prize has celebrated some of the greatest minds in comedy,” Roma Daravi, vice president of public relations for the Kennedy Center, said in a statement of her own. “For even longer, Bill has been influencing American discourse — one politically incorrect joke at a time.”

Maher, a self-described liberal who has no love for the Republican Party, found himself in strange-new-respect territory among conservatives in recent years after he started slamming far-left ideology as ruthlessly as he slammed the far right. Then last spring he accepted an invitation for dinner with Trump at the White House, and many heads exploded.

“OK, as you know, 12 days ago, I had dinner with President Trump, a dinner that was set up by my friend Kid Rock because we share a belief that there’s got to be something better than hurling insults from 3,000 miles away,” said Maher, who lives on the West Coast, on the April 11, 2025, episode of “Real Time.”

“And let me first say that to all the people who treated this like it was some kind of summit meeting, you’re ridiculous. Like I was going to sign a treaty or something. I have — I have no power. I’m a f— comedian, and he’s the most powerful leader in the world. I’m not the leader of anything except maybe a contingent of centrist-minded people who think there’s got to be a better way of running this country than hating each other every minute.”

Maher said he brought with him to the dinner a list of almost five dozen epithets the president had hurled his way over the years, intending to ask Trump to sign it for him. Which the president did. And after sharing some anecdotes from the visit, including some snappy retorts, Maher told his audience that Trump was “much more self-aware than he lets on in public.”

“I never felt I had to walk on eggshells around him. And honestly, I voted for Clinton and Obama, but I would never feel comfortable talking to them the way I was able to talk with Donald Trump. That’s just how it went down. Make of it what you will.”

The Mark Twain Prize will be given to Maher at a gala set for June 28, with Netflix streaming the event at a later date, yet to be determined.

WASHINGTON — When President Trump ordered immigration raids in Los Angeles last June, only a handful of those arrested were violent criminals. The sweeps split families, cost businesses millions of dollars and drove many undocumented residents into hiding.

Activists protested the Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions, prompting the president to deploy thousands of federal troops in what he called a security operation. A federal judge called it unlawful and said the deployment caused “greater harm” to the city.

Now, Trump wants a redo.

At a Cabinet meeting Thursday, he called on the mayors and governors of several blue cities and states to allow troops to “come in and stop the crime,” pointing to purported successes in Washington, Memphis and New Orleans.

“Crime is down 75% in a short period of time,” Trump told his top advisors. “We could do that for L.A. and we could do that for, frankly, San Francisco.”

The president framed the deployments as both a crime-fighting and immigration enforcement tool, saying that federal authorities can remove people from cities in ways local officials cannot.

“We can do it much more effectively, because [local leaders] can’t do what we do,” Trump said. “All the time, people come up to me … and they say ‘thank you so much.’ I know immediately what they’re talking about. They’re able to walk to work.”

Trump also said this week that he would consider deploying the National Guard at airports to assist with mounting security delays amid a 40-day partial government shutdown.

The renewed call comes after a series of controversial federal interventions in cities across the country. In Washington, Trump has repeatedly touted a visible security presence near federal buildings, crediting it with improving public safety, though local officials and analysts have debated how much of any decline in crime can be attributed to his order.

U.S. Marines stationed outside the federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles in June.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

In January, Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy troops to Minneapolis during the civil unrest that followed the fatal shooting of Renee Good by a federal immigration agent. The Pentagon prepared active-duty troops for a possible deployment, but they were ordered to stand down following the shooting of a second Minneapolis civilian, Alex Pretti, the same month.

Immigration sweeps in Los Angeles targeted workplaces, neighborhoods and churches, stirring widespread panic and forcing many undocumented residents — including those with long-term residency and native-born children — into hiding. As a result, businesses reported sharp declines in revenue and customer traffic. A county analysis found that 82% of surveyed businesses experienced negative impacts, with some losing more than half their income amid workforce shortages and traffic reductions.

During the fallout, Mayor Karen Bass condemned Trump’s deployment of some 4,000 California National Guardsmen and 700 U.S. Marines.

“Deploying federalized troops on the heels of these raids is a chaotic escalation,” she said. “The fear people are feeling in our city right now is very real — it’s felt in our communities and within our families, and it puts our neighborhoods at risk. This is the last thing that our city needs.”

The president called the occupation off after U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled that control of the California National Guard should be returned to the governor, rejecting the federal government’s authority to maintain control indefinitely. A similar Supreme Court ruling effectively ended federalized deployments throughout the country.

“The judges are really hurting this country,” Trump said Thursday. “Frankly, the justices — the Supreme Court — has really hurt our country, too.”

At the meeting, Trump also narrowed his comments on San Francisco and its mayor, Daniel Lurie.

“San Francisco was a great city, could quickly become a great city again,” Trump said. “But we can do it much more effectively.”

Last year, Trump considered carrying out similar federal law enforcement operations in the city. He backed off after a somewhat conciliatory phone call with Lurie, in which Trump said the mayor asked him “very nicely” to call off the deployment. Afterward, he agreed to give the newly elected mayor “a chance” to address crime in the city.

“In San Francisco, crime is down 30%, encampments are at record lows, and our city is on the rise,” Lurie said in a statement Thursday. “Public safety is my number one priority, and we are going to stay laser focused on keeping our streets safe and clean.”

A spokesperson for Lurie’s office said the two have not spoken since that October conversation, indicating Trump’s latest remarks do not reflect any new request or ongoing negotiations. Even so, the president struck a measured tone toward the San Francisco mayor on Thursday. He said Lurie is “trying very hard” but insisted federal intervention would get the job done faster.

Whether any Democrat-led city will take Trump up on that offer remains to be seen. City leaders have previously resisted federal deployments, arguing they undermine local control and risk inflaming already tense situations.

The White House did not respond to questions about whether any current plans exist to redeploy federalized troops to California cities.

Times staff writer Melissa Gomez in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has settled for roughly $1.2 million a lawsuit from Michael Flynn, the former national security advisor to President Trump who pleaded guilty during the Republican’s first term to lying to the FBI about his conversations with a top Russian diplomat and was later pardoned.

Court papers filed Wednesday do not reveal the settlement amount, but a person familiar with the matter, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity to disclose nonpublic information, confirmed the total as about $1.2 million.

The settlement resolves a 2023 lawsuit in which Flynn sought at least $50 million and asserted that the criminal case against him amounted to a malicious prosecution. It also represents a stark turnabout in position for a Justice Department that during the Biden administration had pressed a judge to dismiss Flynn’s complaint. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, a former personal lawyer for the president, has openly criticized the Russia investigation in which Flynn was charged and the Justice Department in the last year has opened investigations into former officials who participated in that inquiry.

The Justice Department cast the settlement as an “important step in redressing” what it says was a “historic injustice” of the Russia investigation that shadowed Trump for much of his first term.

“This Department of Justice will continue to pursue accountability at all levels for this wrongdoing. Such weaponization of the federal government must never be allowed to happen again,” a spokesperson said.

In a separate statement, Flynn said: “Nothing can fully compensate for the hell that my family and I have endured over these many years — the relentless attacks, the destruction of reputations, the financial ruin, and the profound personal toll inflicted upon us all. No amount of money or formal resolution can erase the pain caused by a prosecution that should never have been brought.”

The settlement is the latest turn in the long-running legal saga involving Flynn, one of six Trump associates charged as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into potential ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. That investigation found Russia interfered in the election on Trump’s behalf and that the Trump campaign eagerly welcomed the help, but it ultimately found insufficient evidence of a criminal conspiracy.

Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general who vigorously campaigned at Trump’s side, served for weeks as his first national security advisor before being pushed out of his position. He remained a Trump ally even after agreeing to cooperate with Mueller’s team. He was pardoned in the final weeks of the president’s first term.

Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to the FBI when he said he had not discussed with the Russian envoy, Sergey Kislyak, sanctions that the outgoing Obama administration had just imposed on Russia for election interference. During that conversation, Flynn advised that Russia be “even-keeled” in response to the punitive measures, and assured him “we can have a better conversation” about relations between the countries after Trump became president.

The conversation alarmed the FBI, which at the time was investigating whether the Trump campaign and Russia had coordinated to sway the election. In addition, White House officials were stating publicly that Flynn and Kislyak had not discussed sanctions, which the FBI knew was untrue.

Flynn was ousted from his position in February 2017 after news broke that Obama administration officials had warned the White House that Flynn had indeed discussed sanctions with Kislyak and was vulnerable to blackmail. He pleaded guilty months later to a false statement charge.

But Flynn later sought to withdraw his guilty plea, saying federal prosecutors had acted in “bad faith” and broken their end of the bargain when they sought prison time for him.

The Justice Department in 2020 moved to dismiss the case, asserting that the FBI had no basis to interview Flynn about Kislyak and that any statements he made during the interview were not material to the FBI’s broader counterintelligence probe.

Flynn was pardoned by Trump in November 2020, ending the court case and the legal wrangling.

In his lawsuit, Flynn maintained his innocence and said he was targeted by the “virulently anti-Trump leadership” of the FBI’s Russia investigation. He contended that investigators pursued him despite knowing there was no evidence of a crime and coerced his guilty plea.

“He was falsely branded as a traitor to his country, lost at least tens of millions of dollars of business opportunities and future lifetime earning potential, was maliciously prosecuted and spent substantial monies in his own defense,” says the lawsuit, adding that Flynn will continue to suffer “mental and emotional pain.”

Tucker and Richer write for the Associated Press.

Once upon a time in California, I went to the Orange County fairgrounds to watch Arnold Schwarzenegger give the signal for a wrecking ball to drop onto a vehicle.

The audience went wild, and Schwarzenegger went on to become governor and deliver on his promise to roll back a car tax increase, thereby blowing a $4-billion hole in the state budget.

I think it’s fair to say that in the current gubernatorial campaign season, the excitement level is several decibels below what we experienced in 2003. But once again, it’s fair to say we’ve not seen anything quite like this year’s derby.

“There’s no historical precedent in modern California history for a governor’s race with such a large field or such an amorphous field of candidates,” said longtime political observer Dan Schnur. “Unless you’re paying very close attention, it feels like a big multi-headed political blob.”

To break that down, eight Democrats and two Republicans are running in the primary, and here’s the craziest thing about that:

The two Republicans could be the top two vote-getters because the Democrats have arranged themselves into a circular firing squad. While the Dems scramble for votes in the June 2 primary, the two Republicans lead in the polls because they’re splitting the GOP vote, and under the rules of the top-two primary, they could face off in the November election.

That means that California, which is one of the bluest states in the country and has nearly twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans, could end up with a Republican governor, which would be like having a Dodgers manager who wears a Yankees jersey in the dugout.

And by the way, if it happens, the Republican would be able to shuffle regulatory boards, attempt to squeeze budgets and create a bit of chaos, but still not get much accomplished because of Democratic super-majorities in the Senate and Assembly.

And he would be targeted for recall even before he takes office. (More on that in a minute.)

There is a way for the Democrats to avoid this humiliation, but they can’t seem to agree on anything at the moment. Party leaders have all but asked the candidates at the bottom of the polls to bow out, but understandably the response has been, “Why me? I’m no worse than the others.”

USC decided to host a debate night, a simple enough proposition, but then flubbed the deal by leaving four candidates off the invitation list — four candidates of color. A kerfuffle followed, and the debate was dumped, and an attempt to let everyone into the party fell apart.

So now what?

It’s possible the Dems will huddle around one or two candidates who then move up in the polls and remove the threat of the unthinkable — two Republicans head-to-head. That would be Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco going against former Fox TV host Steve Hilton.

It’s also possible the Dems will play dirty and either spend money to promote one of the two Republican candidates or torpedo one of them. All they want, at the moment, is for a Democrat to make it past the primary, because that would all but ensure victory in November, given voter registration advantages.

And then, if that doesn’t work, there’s the recall scenario.

“You could shut it down probably within five or six months,” said Mike Madrid, a longtime California GOP political consultant.

“It would surely happen,” said Rob Stutzman, a GOP strategist who helped Schwarzenegger knock Gov. Gray Davis out of office, and take his job, in the 2003 recall.

A wealthy Democratic donor could bankroll the recall campaign, Stutzman said. Or public employee unions might put up the money, given that a Republican winner is likely to create a state version of Elon Musk’s ham-handed attempt to fire nearly everyone on the federal payroll.

“The pitch,” Stutzman said of the recall strategy in an email, would be that “Trump still looms and CA must resist, and a GOP gov is a fluke of weird election law. Difficult to imagine it wouldn’t succeed.”

I thought of one more approach the Democrats could use to make sure at least one of them is on the ballot in November. Tom Steyer, a leader for many years on one of the most critical issues in California and the world, climate change, has already spent tens of millions of dollars on TV ads that run about every two minutes, promoting him as the best candidate for governor.

They’re so repetitious, you can’t help but tune them out.

But everyone would pay close attention if Steyer instead ran ads offering incentives for either Bianco or Hilton to leave the state. Steyer could offer $10 million cash for Bianco to move to Hawaii, and maybe throw in a beach house. He could buy a private jet for Hilton to take him back to his native Britain. Every day, there could be new ads upping the ante until one of them leaves the Golden State.

Wouldn’t that be a better use of Steyer’s money? It might even get him elected.

To be honest, having some honest pushback against Democratic authority in California wouldn’t be a terrible thing. It’s not as if Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democrats are winning the battle against homelessness, housing shortages, affordability and other big challenges, and voters understandably want more — way more — for their tax dollars.

An experienced, no-nonsense, sensible, fiscally conservative GOP candidate would do the state good.

The problem is that the two Republicans in the running, Bianco and Hilton, are Trump toadies.

In an embarrassingly amateurish political stunt, Bianco blew the president a kiss and all but begged for an endorsement by seizing 650,000 ballots from last November’s election to determine whether they were fraudulently counted.

Hilton recently said in an interview with ABC’s Eyewitness News 7 that he believes “everybody supports” Trump’s immigration policies.

Hilton might have missed the news that U.S.-born residents are carrying their passports in case they’re targeted by skin color. That Californians by the thousands have joined the resistance. That despite claims, most deportees don’t have criminal records. And that even some of the state’s GOP lawmakers have begged Trump to stop raiding industries that rely on immigrant help (and are often owned by Republicans).

And by the way, is this a smart time for a GOP candidate in California to be doing his best Trump impression?

The president’s popularity is down, consumer prices are up, he’s shamelessly pardoned drug lords and Jan. 6 barbarians, he thinks the presidency is a game of Battleship after promising to keep us out of wars, gas prices are sky high, he just said he was glad that Vietnam War hero and former FBI Director Robert Mueller had died, and he’s playing golf all day as if everything’s hunky dory.

Like I said, there’s not a big-name character like Schwarzenegger in the race, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t good options. If you like Bianco or Hilton, so be it. Otherwise I suggest you read up on the other eight:

Steyer, Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, former L.A. Mayor and legislative leader Antonio Villaraigosa, former Rep. Katie Porter, former state attorney general and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, former State Controller Betty Yee, San José Mayor Matt Mahan, and U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell.

And you better act fast.

The primary is less than 10 weeks away.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

The U.S. can continue to detain immigrants without bond, an appeals court ruled on Wednesday, handing a victory to the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.

The opinion from a panel of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis overturned a lower court ruling that required that a native of Mexico arrested for lacking legal documents be given a bond hearing before an immigration judge.

It’s the second appeals court to rule in favor of the administration on this issue. The 5th Circuit in New Orleans ruled last month that the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to deny bond hearings to immigrants arrested across the country was consistent with the Constitution and federal immigration law.

Both appeals court opinions counter recent lower court decisions across the country that argued the practice is illegal.

In November, a district court decision in California granted detained immigrants with no criminal history the opportunity to request a bond hearing and had implications for noncitizens held in detention nationwide.

Under past administrations, most noncitizens with no criminal record who were arrested away from the border had an opportunity to request a bond hearing while their cases wound through immigration court. Historically, bond was often granted to those without criminal convictions who were not flight risks, and mandatory detention was limited to recent border crossers.

In the case before the 8th Circuit, Joaquin Herrera Avila of Mexico was apprehended in Minneapolis in August 2025 for lacking legal documents authorizing his admission into the United States. The Department of Homeland Security detained Avila without bond and began deportation proceedings.

He filed a petition seeking immediate release or a bond hearing. A federal judge in Minnesota granted the petition, saying the law authorized detention without bond when a person seeking admission is not clearly and beyond a doubt entitled to being admitted. The judge found this was not the case for Avila because he had lived in the country for years without seeking naturalization, asylum or refugee status and thus wasn’t “seeking admission.”

Circuit Court Judge Bobby E. Shepherd wrote for the majority in a 2-1 opinion that the law was “clear that an ‘applicant for admission’ is also an alien who is ‘seeking admission,’” and so Avila couldn’t petition on these grounds.

Circuit Court Judge Ralph R. Erickson dissented, saying that Avila would have been entitled to a bond hearing during his deportation hearings if he had been arrested during the past 29 years. Now, he wrote, the Circuit Court has ruled that Avila and millions of others would be subject to mandatory detention under a novel interpretation of “alien seeking admission” that hasn’t been used by the courts or five previous presidential administrations.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing Avila, didn’t immediately return an email message seeking comment.

Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi hailed the ruling, writing in a social media post: “MASSIVE COURT VICTORY against activist judges and for President Trump’s law and order agenda!”

At question is the issue of whether the government is required to ask a neutral judge to to determine whether it is legal to imprison someone.

It’s based on the habeas corpus, which is a Latin legal term referring to the constitutional right for people to legally challenge their detention by the government.

Immigrants have filed more than 30,000 habeas corpus petitions in federal court alleging illegal detention since Trump took office, according to a tally by the Associated Press. Many have succeeded.

McAvoy writes for the Associated Press.