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Reporting from Sacramento — Susan Kennedy, the former top aide to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, has agreed to pay $32,500 in fines for shadow lobbying, or advocating for clients before a state agency without registering as a lobbyist, according to documents released Monday.
The state Fair Political Practices Commission’s enforcement staff says Kennedy failed to register though she attempted to influence the California Public Utilities Commission from 2012 through 2014 on behalf of her clients, Lyft Inc. and San Gabriel Valley Water Co. Kennedy was paid $201,000 for the lobbying work.
Kennedy served on the California Public Utilities Commission from 2003 to 2006. She was chief of staff to Schwarzenegger from 2007 to 2011 before she became a consultant.
She signed an agreement with the FPPC enforcement staff admitting to the violations of the state Political Reform Act.
“In this case, the violations were serious since the public and other interested parties were not informed of Kennedy’s lobbying activity,” the agreement says. “While Kennedy maintains she did not intend to qualify as a lobbyist, given her experience and sophistication, she should have been aware at the time that her activity qualified as lobbying.”
The agreement and fines are expected to be approved by the Fair Political Practices Commission on Feb. 15.
The panel has been investigating shadow lobbying for years at the state Capitol and has fined others who have tried to secretly influence state government.
The state defines a lobbyist as someone who receives $2,000 or more in a calendar month to communicate directly, or through an agent, with state officials for the purpose of influencing legislative or administrative action. Such people must register as lobbyists with the state and periodically report who is paying them, how much and for what purpose.
Kennedy failed to register and disclose her payments, resulting in eight violations of the Political Reform Act. In 2012, Lyft Inc. gave Kennedy a $15,000-a-month contract to help “strategic management” of Lyft’s public policy interests, the report said.
Lyft and other ride-hailing firms including Uber were under the scrutiny of the PUC for operating without its approval at the time, and Lyft agreed to pay a fine of $20,000 for operating without the agency’s authority.
After being retained by Lyft, Kennedy contacted CPUC President Michael Peevey, Executive Director Paul Clanon and other staff to convince them that the state should work with the ride-hailing firms, not shut them down.
At Kennedy’s prodding, the California Public Utilities Commission decided to adopt rules on the new industry regarding liability insurance, driver licensing and background checks, driver training programs and vehicle inspections.
James C. Harrison, an attorney for Kennedy, said she “moved immediately once the discrepancy was identified to provide the necessary information requested by the FPPC. Integrity and character are hallmark principles in how Kennedy conducts herself in business, which is why she is acting swiftly and looks forward to its resolution.”
I’m going to start this story on a quiet tree-lined street in Mar Vista, where a couple I met with on Thursday — the day after the L.A. mayoral debate — have a problem.
It’s not an unusual matter, as things go in Los Angeles. On both sides of the street, the sidewalk rises and falls, uprooted and cracked by shallow roots because over many decades, the trees were not properly maintained.
John Coanda, 61, who grew up in Los Angeles, was never bothered by torn-up sidewalks as a kid.
“In fact,” he said when he first emailed me about his predicament, “my friends and I sometimes used the ramping pavement as jumps for our bicycles.”
But his wife, Barbara, was diagnosed in 2024 with ALS, and she uses a wheelchair. When John pushes her, they can’t use the sidewalk if they want to go to the store or meet with friends, or just enjoy a nice pass through the neighborhood without getting into a vehicle.
So John pushes Barbara’s wheelchair in the street, which creates an obvious safety problem. And despite John’s best efforts to get City Hall to fix the sidewalks, he’s not expecting help anytime soon.
I’ll circle back to this story in a bit, but first, about that debate.
I recruited a half-dozen L.A. residents to watch and send me their thoughts about how the candidates tackled the important issues. And then I felt guilty for having done so, because the candidates didn’t do much tackling at all.
Candidate Spencer Pratt is shown on a television while journalists work during the 2026 Los Angeles mayoral debate at Skirball Cultural Center.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
They hit their talking points, for sure, and Mayor Karen Bass, Councilmember Nithya Raman and TV personality Spencer Pratt each had their moments. But by the end of the debate, and two straight nights of gubernatorial debates as well, I came away thinking there were no clear winners, but there was a definite loser.
Voters.
This is the fault of the format more than of the candidates themselves. The deck is stacked against meaningful, substantive discussions, especially when moderators ask — as they did several times — for one-word answers.
“Moderator questions are so meaningless … and they make it easy for candidates to take potshots at each other,” said longtime political sage Darry Sragow. “The format is guaranteed to elicit nothing that matters.”
It’d be better to have single-issue debates, and to have candidates pressed for details by journalists who cover those issues and can push back against unrealistic promises and expose a lack of depth.
My debate watchers did some of that themselves. CSUN librarian Yi Ding had praise and criticism for each candidate, but was looking for concrete plans and didn’t get many.
Ding was also disappointed that two other mayoral candidates — Ray Huang and Adam Miller — were not invited to the debate, and I agree with her. Both have been polling low, but with so many undecided voters, and such high unfavorability ratings for Bass, they should have been in the mix.
Mike Washington, a retired pharmacist and West Adams resident, said Bass has done better than previous mayors on homelessness and he didn’t think Raman or Pratt came off as worthy of bumping her out of City Hall.
“The public would have benefited from more questions related to the challenges young people are facing,” said Juan Solorio Jr., president of the San Fernando Valley Young Democrats club. His colleague David Ramirez agreed, saying he was hoping for “more discussion about the cost of living for young adults,” but he and Solorio are both backing Bass.
West L.A. software developer Mike Eveloff asked the million-dollar question in one of his many observations during the debate:
“Why is LA spending record amounts on homelessness, fire, police, and infrastructure while results deteriorate? Streets and sidewalks crumble. Even the city emblem right in front of City Hall is deteriorated. With the World Cup and Olympics approaching, voters need to know: Do these leaders have the financial discipline and operational competence to manage a fourteen billion dollar city?”
Venice resident Dennis Hathaway, author of “An Octogenarian’s Journal,” said he thinks “these kinds of debates are pretty non-edifying.” And, as someone I wrote about two years ago regarding busted sidewalks in his neighborhood, he shared this lament about Thursday’s debate:
“No mention of broken sidewalks, potholed streets, other deteriorated infrastructure. To me, that’s a much more important subject than non-citizens voting in city elections.”
(Bass did say during the debate that there was a new infrastucture plan in place, and that’s a step in the right direction. But there was no discussion, and when you read the details, 2028 Olympics projects will be prioritized, and it’ll take years to figure out how to fund thousands of additional much-needed fixes.)
The Coandas live not far from Hathaway, and their lives have been upended first by Barbara’s diagnosis and then by John getting laid off in February from his job as a data analyst. Barbara still teaches French via Zoom, and John is tending to her needs. They started a Gofundme campaign to help pay their bills.
With Barbara in a wheelchair, John contacted the city’s Safe Sidewalks L.A. program last fall, and I think it’s fair to say that name is somewhere between a misnomer and a bad joke.
The “program” responded by email on Halloween, appropriately enough, informing him that under the City Council-approved “Sidewalk Repair Program Prioritization and Scoring System,” his request for help merits only 15 points out of a possible 45.
“Currently,” he was informed, “the estimated wait time for completion of an Access Request with a score of 15 is in excess of 10 years.”
Happy Halloween.
Over the years, responsibility for sidewalk repairs has shifted between the city and homeowners. There’s a rebate program available to people who repair their own sidewalks, but it’s capped at an amount that doesn’t always cover the costs. And ruptured pavement is keeping lots of lawyers busy with trip-and-fall lawsuits that cost the city millions each year.
Barbara Durieux Coanda, who has ALS, and her husband, John Coanda, make their way down the ramp in front of their home in Mar Vista.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Coanda told me he doesn’t have the funds at the moment to pay for repairs, and even if he did, there are several more sidewalk disaster zones on both sides of his street, so he’d still have to push his wife’s wheelchair in the street even if he fixed the cracks in front of his own house.
Barbara graciously said she thinks the city has other, higher priorities, but in November her husband contacted the office of Councilmember Traci Park, saying he was told that he would have to wait 10 years for repairs.
“Sadly,” he wrote, “I don’t think my wife will live that long.”
A Park staffer wrote back, saying, “The turnaround time does sound realistic given the budgetary crisis the city finds itself in.” But, the staffer added, maybe the council member’s office could “help move the needle on this request.”
Coanda said he’s been too busy with his wife’s issues to follow up. But Pete Brown, Park’s communications director, told me Friday afternoon that the office is exploring ways to pay for fixes that don’t take 10 years, including the use of discretionary funds.
I don’t know how that might play out, but I do know that L.A. doesn’t need another debate like the last one.
We need a mayor and council members who refuse to accept that it takes 10 years to create safe passage for a wheelchair.
In the national capital of broken sidewalks, we need concrete plans.
Chad Bianco’s campaign for California governor leans heavily on his years as Riverside County sheriff, a record that has drawn praise from voters yearning to return to a tough-on-crime era and harsh criticism from others who consider him a far-right affront to the rule of law.
The stout, mustached Republican is running an unapologetic campaign against the “Democrat policies that have destroyed this state,” launching into angry diatribes about, as he sees it, the left’s failed record in California in debate after debate, on social media and in news interviews, during which where he often accuses the media of being complicit.
In an interview with The Times, Bianco said he is sick of what he calls soft-on-crime Democrats in Sacramento undermining him and other law enforcement leaders across the state, whom he wants to unleash if given the power.
Part of Bianco’s prescription for turning California around: cracking down on theft and drug offenses, stiffening sentences for both petty and violent crime, building more detention facilities, collaborating with federal immigration forces to deport immigrant offenders, and demanding greater personal accountability from homeless people suffering from mental illness and drug addiction.
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a GOP candidate for governor, and Kate Monroe, CEO of VETCOMM, speak with people in the Skid Row area of Los Angeles. .
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
“It is impossible for me to keep my county safe because of politics. It is impossible for me to run my jails correctly because of politics. It is impossible for me to prosecute someone to the fullest extent of the law because of politics,” Bianco said. “Politics is destroying the state of California — and unfortunately for the Democrat Party, they are 100% to blame.”
It’s a message that has clearly resonated with a slice of the California electorate. Bianco has consistently polled above 10% among likely voters, putting the MAGA-aligned sheriff among the top tier of gubernatorial candidates in deep blue California thanks to a slew of Democratic candidates still splitting their party’s much bigger base.
It’s also a message receiving increased scrutiny as the June 2 primary nears, from rival candidates on both sides of the political aisle.
A spokesman for Democrat Xavier Becerra, who served as California attorney general during part of Bianco’s time as sheriff, called Bianco a “tyrant” and said he has run his department “like a man who answers to no one — not the president, not the courts, not the people he was elected to serve.”
Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator endorsed by President Trump, has attacked Bianco for essentially the opposite reason — suggesting Bianco has literally and figuratively bent the knee to liberal forces in the state.
Despite Hilton’s attacks, Bianco’s political record is far right and fully in line with the MAGA base, including on sanctuary policies, election integrity and other issues favored by Trump.
LAPD officers and DEA agents converge along Alvarado Avenue near MacArthur Park targeting an open-air drug market on Wednesday.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
On crime
Crime has been a top issue for California voters for years, and Bianco will no doubt benefit among a portion of the electorate from having the title of sheriff attached to his name on the ballot.
According to a Times analysis of state-collected data through 2024, Bianco’s record on crime has been mixed. The data show violent crime rising for years under his leadership and being solved at lower rates than in surrounding counties. The data also show a more recent turnaround, with declines in such crime and improved clearance rates.
Bianco challenged the accuracy of the state data and offered his own snapshot of crime figures that painted a different picture — of much higher clearance rates, but also a much larger volume of violent crime in his jurisdiction.
Bianco, 58, joined the Sheriff’s Department in 1993 and was a lieutenant when he defeated the incumbent sheriff in 2018, taking over policing and jail oversight in 2019 for a vast swath of one of California’s largest counties. He won reelection in 2022.
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco takes a knee with demonstrators after thousands marched to the Robert Presley Detention Center and were met with a roadblock of law enforcement during a protest against the death of George Floyd in 2020.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
According to the state data, overall violent crime in that county jumped in 2019, fell slightly in 2020, then increased each year from 2021 to 2023 before falling again in 2024. Homicides increased in 2019 and again in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic raged and cities across the country saw similar spikes, but declined each of the next four years, the data show.
Vehicle thefts have fluctuated during Bianco’s tenure but have been on the decline since 2021, according to the state data. Other forms of theft, as well as drug offenses — something Bianco said is crucial to address while backing Proposition 36, a ballot measure state voters passed in 2024 to increase penalties for such crimes — have also fluctuated in the county for years.
Meanwhile, Bianco’s deputies have struggled to reduce violent crime — like their counterparts in other counties — though they have made improvements under Bianco, according to state statistics.
The department cleared about 38% of violent crimes in 2018 and about 47% in 2024, with several fluctuations within that range in the years between, according to state data.
Law enforcement from surrounding communities, including San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies and CHP officers, close off streets and lock down the perimeter at Loma Linda University Medical Center after a report of a gunman in the emergency department of Children’s Hospital on March 12, 2025.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
By comparison, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department during the same time period saw violent crime clearance rates between about 50% and nearly 64%, while the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department saw rates between about 55% and 63%, the data show.
The Sheriff’s Department is responsible for law enforcement in the county’s unincorporated areas, which include deserts and mountains, as well as cities that contract with the agency — including Temecula, Moreno Valley, Lake Elsinore, Rancho Mirage and others. The Times analyzed state crime and clearance data from all those areas.
In 2021, the ACLU of Southern California wrote a letter to the California attorney general’s office demanding that it investigate Bianco’s department for “racist policing practices, rampant patrol and jail deaths” and noncompliance with past court orders requiring improvements.
In 2022, 19 people died in Riverside County jails, making them among the deadliest in the nation. An investigation by the Desert Sun later blamed “neglect by jail employees, access to illicit drugs, and cell assignments that put detainees at increased risk of violence or did not allow for close oversight.”
In 2023, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta launched a sweeping civil rights investigation to determine whether the Sheriff’s Department had “engaged in a pattern or practice of unconstitutional policing amid deeply concerning allegations relating to conditions of confinement in its jail facilities, excessive force, and other misconduct.”
Bonta’s office declined to comment on the ongoing investigation, which has yet to produce any public findings. Bianco pointed to the lack of results to date as proof there is nothing to uncover in his jails, which he claimed are the best-run in the state.
“If there was all of these bad things that I were doing, are you telling me that he was going to allow me to continue to do them for three years?” Bianco said. “There is not going to be anything because our attorney general is an absolute lying fraud and an embarrassment to law enforcement.”
Gubernatorial candidate Chad Bianco greets supporters during a break at the California Republican Convention at the Sheraton San Diego Resort on April 11.
(John Gastaldo / For The Times)
Bianco argued that crime data put out by the state has been cherry-picked by liberals to make law enforcement look bad.
He said crime was underreported in Riverside County before he took office because residents and business owners didn’t believe anything would be done about it, and that he actually “wanted our crime stats to go up” when he took over because it would mean trust had improved.
He said his agency had been struggling to retain deputies amid poor morale when he took over, but has since rebounded and become “one of the most proactive law enforcement agencies in the country” thanks to his focus on addressing crime “hot spots” and “broken windows” policing — a much-criticized theory that says addressing urban blight and enforcing laws against petty offenses also drives down violent crime.
Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Corona), who has endorsed Bianco, called him a “real law enforcement champion” for Riverside who despite challenges has “consistently made it harder for criminals to succeed in our communities.” Calvert said drug cartels operating in rural stretches of the Inland Empire make solving crime in the region difficult, but Bianco has “done a good job of trying to face up to it and move it in the right direction,” including as an outspoken critic of “soft-on-crime laws” in Sacramento.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.,) center, listens to Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco speak at a news conference in the U.S. Capitol as part of Police Week on May 15, 2024.
Speaking with The Times, Bianco defended the Oath Keepers — which he did again during a recent debate — and said it wasn’t right to judge the entire organization based on the actions of some members. He also said Trump was right to pardon many of the people charged in connection with Jan. 6 — who he said “did absolutely nothing” wrong and were “politically prosecuted with lies” — but that he disagreed with the president’s pardoning of others who were caught on video attacking U.S. Capitol police.
Bianco has claimed expansive powers as sheriff, including to buck state directives, as with COVID; has said his Christian faith is a driving force in his life; and has described his comment about a felon in the White House as a tongue-in-cheek criticism of bogus attacks on Trump.
He joined Huntington Beach in a lawsuit challenging California’s sanctuary policies, which generally bar localities and their law enforcement agencies from participating in federal immigration raids or initiatives, and has sent mixed messages on whether his deputies would work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents despite California’s laws.
In November 2024, he told Fox 11 L.A. that if keeping Riverside County residents safe meant “working somehow around” state laws and “with ICE so we can deport these people victimizing us and our residents, you can be 100% sure I’m going to do that.” In February 2025, he said Riverside County deputies “have not, are not and will not engage” in immigration enforcement, which he said is a federal responsibility.
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco kicks off his campaign to run for governor at the city’s Avila’s Historic 1929 event center on Feb. 17, 2025.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Also this year, Bianco caused an uproar when he seized more than 650,000 ballots from last November’s election as part of what he said was an investigation into whether they were fraudulently counted — a claim he is entertaining from a fringe group of election deniers, despite assurances from county and state officials that the allegations are baseless.
Bonta sued to stop the investigation, arguing there is no basis for it and that Bianco has no such authority without buy-in from him and oversight from state elections officials. He accused Bianco of having gone “rogue” and creating “a constitutional emergency in the process.”
The California Supreme Court halted the investigation as it weighs arguments in the case.
Bianco slammed Bonta for trying to halt his investigation, which he said was “probably one of the most easy criminal investigations you could ever, ever imagine” and normal work for a sheriff.
Bob Shrum, a longtime Democratic strategist and director of the Dornsife Center for the Political Future at USC, said much of what Bianco does, including his seizure of ballots, is “performative Trumpism” — and “out of step with California.”
Chad Bianco, left, answers a question as Tom Steyer watches during a gubernatorial debate at Pomona College on Tuesday, April 28, 2026 in Claremont, CA.
(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)
Joy Silver, chair of the Riverside County Democratic Party, said Bianco has been cultivating an image as a tough-on-crime candidate for years, but in recent debates has shown his true colors as an angry ideologue with few policy ideas and little willingness to work across the aisle.
Silver said Bianco’s simplistic “own the libs” approach to governing has already harmed Riverside, and would serve no one were he governor.
“There’s no policy or solutions or anything that are packed into that,” she said. “It’s just a hateful message.”
The last time the Supreme Court threatened to end access to the country’s most popular abortion method, California’s network of online providers and their pharmaceutical suppliers scrambled to respond.
Now, with the fate of the cocktail used in roughly two-thirds of U.S. terminations once again in the balance, they’re not even breaking a sweat.
Dr. Michele Gomez, co-founder of the MYA Network, a consortium of virtual reproductive healthcare providers, said the supply chain is “ready to switch in a day” to an alternative drug combination.
“It’s not going away and it’s not going to slow down,” Gomez said.
On May 1, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled to block the drug mifepristone from being prescribed virtually and shipped through the mail, making such deliveries illegal across the country. On Monday, the Supreme Court stayed that decision, allowing prescriptions to resume until the court issues an emergency ruling next week.
Mifepristone is the first half of a two-drug protocol for medication abortion, which made up 63% of all legal abortions in the U.S. in 2023.
Between a quarter and a third of those abortions are now prescribed by healthcare providers over the internet and delivered by mail — a path Louisiana and other ban states are fighting to bar.
“Abortion access has gone up with all the telehealth providers,” Gomez said. “We uncovered an unmet need.”
But the cocktail’s second ingredient, misoprostol, can be used to produce abortion on its own — a method that’s often more painful and slightly less effective.
It would be easy for suppliers to switch to a misoprostol-only protocol — and much harder for courts to block it, experts said.
“We heard about this on Friday and organizations that mail pills were mailing misoprostol on Saturday,” Gomez said. “They already knew what to do.”
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade in 2022, California became one of the first states to enshrine abortion rights for residents in its Constitution and legislate protection for clinicians who prescribe abortion pills to women in states with bans.
Last fall, legislators in Sacramento expanded those protections by allowing pills to be mailed without either the doctor or the patient’s name attached.
But cases like the one being decided next week could still sharply limit abortion rights even in states with extensive legal protections, experts warned.
“Even though California has built a fortress around its own constitutional protections of reproductive freedom, those [protections] become vulnerable to the whims of antiabortion states if the Supreme Court gives those states their imprimatur,” said Michele Goodwin, professor at Georgetown Law and an expert on reproductive justice.
Coral Alonso sings in Spanish as protesters rally on the three-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe vs. Wade on June 24, 2025, in Los Angeles. The ruling ended the federal right to legal abortion in the United States.
(David McNew / Getty Images)
Legal experts are split over how the justices will decide the medication’s mail-order fate.
“This is a case where law clearly won’t matter,” Eric J. Segall, a law professor at Georgia State University and an expert on the Supreme Court.
“In a very important midterm election year, I think there’s at least two Republicans on the court who will decide that upholding the 5th Circuit would really hurt the Republicans at the polls,” he said. “If women can’t get this by mail in California or other blue states where abortion is legal, it’s going to have devastating consequences, and I think the court knows that.”
But he and others believe it’s no longer a matter of if — but when and how — the drugs are restricted, including in California.
“This is curating a backdrop for a legal showdown that may surely come,” Goodwin said.
The court’s most conservative justices could find grounds to act in the long-forgotten Comstock Act of 1873. The brainchild of America’s zealously anti-porn postmaster Anthony Comstock, the law not only banned the mailing of the “Birth of Venus” and “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” but also condoms, diaphragms and any drug, tool or text that could be used to produce an abortion.
Though it hasn’t been enforced since the 1970s, the antiabortion provision of the law remains on the books, experts said.
“The next move is with the Comstock Act, which Justices Alito and Thomas have already been hinting at,” Goodwin said. “In that case, it’s like playing Monopoly — we could skip mifepristone and go straight to contraception. The goal is to make sure none of that gets to be in the mail.”
That move would upend how Americans get both abortions and birth control, and put an unassuming L.A. County pharmacy squarely in the government’s crosshairs.
Although doctors in nearly two dozen states can safely prescribe medication abortion to women anywhere in the U.S., only a handful of specialty pharmacies actually fill those mail orders, Gomez explained. Among the largest is Honeybee in Culver City, which did not reply to requests for comment.
Even if the justices don’t reach for Comstock, a decision in Louisiana’s favor next week could create a two-tiered system of abortion across California and other blue states, experts said.
“The people this case hurts the most are the poor and the rural,” said Segall, the Supreme Court expert.
National data show that abortion patients are disproportionately poor. Most are also already mothers. Losing mail access to mifepristone would leave many with the more painful, less effective option while those with the time and means to reach a clinic continue to get the gold standard of care.
“There are fundamental questions of citizenship at the heart of this,” said Goodwin, the constitutional scholar. “Under the 14th Amendment, women are supposed to have equality, citizenship, liberty. It’s as though the Supreme Court has taken a black marker and pressed it against all of those words.”
For Gomez and other providers, that’s tomorrow’s problem.
“The lawyers and the politicians are just going to do their thing,” the doctor said. “The healthcare providers are just trying to get medications to people who need them.”
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A national redistricting battle over U.S. House seats swung toward Republicans on Friday, as a Virginia court invalidated a Democratic gerrymandering effort and Republicans in Alabama approved plans for new primary elections if courts allow GOP-drawn House districts to be used in the November midterm elections.
The Alabama legislation, which was signed quickly into law by Republican Gov. Kay Ivey, is part of an effort by Republicans in Southern states to capitalize quickly on a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that significantly weakened Voting Rights Act protections for minorities.
Tensions ran high in the Alabama Statehouse. And Republican lawmakers in Louisiana and South Carolina also faced staunch opposition from civil rights activists and Democrats as they presented plans Friday to redraw their congressional districts.
The action came just a day after Tennessee enacted new congressional districts that carve up a Democratic-held, Black-majority district in Memphis. The state Democratic Party sued on Friday, seeking to prevent the districts from being used until after this year’s elections because of the tight time frame
Even before last week’s Supreme Court ruling in a Louisiana case, Republicans and Democrats already were engaged in a fierce redistricting battle, each seeking an edge in the midterm elections that will determine control of the closely divided House. That battle tilted further toward Republicans when the Virginia Supreme Court ruled Friday that Democratic lawmakers had violated constitutional requirements when placing a redistricting amendment on the ballot.
Since President Trump prodded Texas to redraw its congressional districts last summer, Republicans think they could gain as many as 14 seats from new districts in several states while Democrats think they could gain up to six seats. But the parties may not get everything they sought, because the gerrymandering could backfire in some highly competitive districts.
Alabama primaries could be in flux
Demonstrators outside the Alabama Statehouse on Friday shouted “fight for democracy” and “down with white supremacy.”
“I was out there in 1965 marching for the right to vote, and now we are back here in 2026 doing the same thing,” Betty White Boynton said.
During debate inside the statehouse, Black lawmakers sharply criticized the Republican legislation, saying it harks back to the state’s shameful Jim Crow history. The new law would ignore the May 19 primary results for some congressional seats and direct the governor to schedule a new primary under revised districts, if a court allows it. Lawmakers also approved a similar bill related to state Senate districts.
“What happened here today is that we were set back as a people to the days of Reconstruction,” Democratic state Sen. Rodger Smitherman said after the vote.
Senate Democrats shouted “hell no” and “stop the steal” as the vote occurred in the Alabama Senate.
The special primary would happen only if the courts agree to lift an injunction that put a court-selected map in place until after the 2030 census. That order required a second district where Black voters are the majority or close to it, resulting in the 2024 election of Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures, who is Black. If a court lifts the injunction, Republican officials want to put in place a map lawmakers drew in 2023 — which was rejected by a federal court — that could allow them to reclaim Figures’ district.
“With this special session successfully behind us, Alabama now stands ready to quickly act, should the courts issue favorable rulings in our ongoing redistricting cases,” Ivey said in a statement.
Virginia ruling centered on timing of election
Democrats had hoped to gain as many as four additional U.S. House seats under new districts narrowly approved by voters in April. But the state Supreme Court invalidated the measure because it said the Democratic-led legislature violated procedural requirements.
To place a constitutional amendment before voters, the Virginia Constitution requires lawmakers to approve it in two separate legislative sessions, with a state election sandwiched in between. The legislature’s initial approval of the redistricting amendment occurred last October — while early voting was underway but before it concluded on the day of the general election. The legislature’s second vote on the amendment occurred after a new legislative session began in January.
The Supreme Court said the initial legislative approval came too late, noting that more than 1.3 million ballots already had been cast in the general election, about 40% of the total votes ultimately cast.
Louisiana lawmakers look at map options
A Louisiana Senate committee considered several redistricting options Friday from Republican state Sen. John “Jay” Morris that would eliminate either both or one of the current Black-majority U.S. House districts.
“Every one of these maps reduces Black voting power in every one of the districts. And I think that’s a problem,” Democratic state Sen. Sam Jenkins told Morris.
Morris denied that the proposed redistricting maps were racially discriminatory. He said his goal was to be “respectful of the traditional boundaries” of the state’s six congressional districts.
“I don’t think we should care that much about race,” Morris said.
The only four Black congressmen who have represented Louisiana since the end of the Reconstruction era appealed to state senators to keep two majority-Black districts in a state where one-third of voters are Black.
Leona Tate, who as a 6-year-old girl was escorted by federal marshals through a racist white mob trying to prevent her from desegregating a New Orleans elementary school, told lawmakers she felt they were taking a step backward in time by reducing Black political power.
“You have a choice in front of you: You can draw a map that reflects what Louisiana actually is — a state where Black voices belong in the halls of Congress,” said Tate, 71. “Or you can draw a map that tells my grandchildren that their votes don’t count, that their faces don’t matter and that the progress I helped build with my own two feet as a 6-year-old can be erased at will.”
South Carolina considers a House map
A small group of South Carolina lawmakers held a rare Friday meeting to discuss a proposed new congressional map intended to allow Republicans a clean sweep of the state’s seven U.S. House seats.
The hearing was the first step in redistricting. But its future remains murky. The state Senate has yet to agree to consider new districts later this month, an action that would require a two-thirds vote.
The new map has some Republicans nervous. Breaking up the 6th District, represented by Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), makes the other six districts less Republican.
At Friday’s subcommittee meeting, lawmakers heard hours of testimony, almost all against the new map. The hearing included a consultant who reviewed the map, saying it appeared to be legal under the Supreme Court’s decision in the Louisiana case.
“I agree if the law allows us to do it, then we can do it,” Democratic state Rep. Justin Bamberg said. “But I can slap somebody’s mama and it’s not the right thing to do.”
Some absentee ballots already have been returned for the state’s June 9 primary elections. The legislative subcommittee advanced a plan to delay the congressional primaries to August and reopen a candidate filing period, if a new map is approved.
Chandler, Brook, Collins and Lieb write for the Associated Press. Collins reported from Columbia, S.C.; Brook from Baton Rouge, La.; and Lieb from Jefferson City, Mo.
WASHINGTON — A man charged with attacking the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner is seeking to disqualify top Justice Department officials from direct involvement in prosecuting him because they could be considered victims or witnesses in the case, creating a potential conflict of interest.
Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche and U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro were attending the April 25 event at the Washington Hilton when Cole Tomas Allen allegedly ran through a security checkpoint and fired a shotgun at a Secret Service officer.
In a court filing late Thursday, Allen’s attorneys argued that it creates at least the appearance of a conflict of interest for Blanche and Pirro to be making any prosecutorial decisions in the case.
“As this case proceeds closer to trial, the country and the world will continue to wonder — how can the American justice system permit a victim to prosecute a criminal defendant in a case involving them?” defense attorneys Eugene Ohm and Tezira Abe wrote.
Ohm and Abe, who are assistant federal public defenders, suggested that the appointment of a special prosecutor might be warranted. They urged U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump nominee assigned to Allen’s case, to disqualify Pirro, Blanche and possibly other Justice Department officials from direct involvement in the investigation and prosecution.
“Both heard gunshots, which presumably forced them to duck below the tables with the rest of the occupants. They were quickly evacuated. Shortly thereafter, they learned that law enforcement believed the target was certain administration officials,” Ohm and Abe wrote.
Pirro said her office will respond to the defense lawyers’ arguments in its own court filing.
“We will not tolerate people who come to the District of Columbia to engage in antidemocratic acts of political violence; and we will prosecute all such acts to the fullest extent of the law,” Pirro said in a statement.
Allen is scheduled to be arraigned Monday on charges in an indictment handed up Tuesday by a grand jury in Washington.
The charges include attempting to assassinate President Trump, who is a longtime friend of Pirro’s. Blanche served as a personal attorney for Trump before joining the Justice Department last year.
Blanche, through a spokesperson, referred a request for comment to Pirro’s office.
Allen also is charged with assaulting a federal officer with a deadly weapon and two additional firearms counts. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted of the attempted assassination charge alone.
The Secret Service officer who was shot once in a bullet-resistant vest fired his own weapon five times without hitting anybody. Allen, 31, of Torrance, was injured but was not shot.
SACRAMENTO — Newborns won’t be leaving the hospital empty-handed in California.
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Friday that the state is partnering with Baby2Baby to provide 400 free diapers to every newborn. Baby2Baby is a national nonprofit based in California that provides clothing and other basic necessities to children.
The governor said it would help families with the rising cost of living.
“Since the pandemic, we have seen the cost of diapers go up by 45%,” said Newsom, speaking at a press conference in San Francisco. “One out of four families skip meals to pay for diapers.”
The new program, dubbed the Golden State Start, will launch this summer. Participating hospitals will distribute the diapers to families at the time of discharge. Forty million diapers will be distributed during the program’s first year, with a goal of later expanding the program to provide 160 million.
Newsom said the state will prioritize hospitals that serve large numbers of parents enrolled in Medi-Cal, California’s version of the federal Medicaid program providing healthcare coverage to low-income Americans. The state plans to later expand to additional hospitals and birthing centers.
The governor described the program as the first of its kind in the nation.
“We are not imitating; we are a model to others,” he said.
Kim Johnson, secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency, said the initiative would help families enjoy their first few weeks at home with a new baby.
“The first days at home with a newborn should be focused on the love, connection, and joy of an expanded family, not stress about affording diapers,” Johnson said in a statement. “This program helps ensure families can begin that journey with greater stability and peace of mind.”
The National Diaper Bank Network, a national nonprofit that tracks diaper insecurity, found about 60% of low-income families nationwide struggle with the cost of diapers and rely on less-frequent changes to get by. The organization said dirty diapers leave babies at risk of developing rashes or urinary tract infections.
When Gavin Newsom ran for California governor in 2018, his support for a state-run single-payer healthcare system was considered a risky move and earned him hefty labor endorsements.
Today, leading Democrats in the wide-open race to succeed Newsom have embraced single-payer healthcare as a political necessity, an answer to voters fed up with rising premiums and other spiraling healthcare costs.
But with no clear front-runner, they are sparring among themselves in debates and political ads over who is most committed to a government-run model. No candidate has outlined how California would fund comprehensive health coverage for its 40 million residents, leaving voters unable to discern which candidate has a concrete plan for the nation’s most populous state.
Healthcare and political experts said the concept of single-payer has shifted from progressive pipe dream a decade ago to today’s mainstream talking points in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly 2 to 1. Democrats have pledged the model as the best way to lower costs in an attempt to woo voters worried about affordability as ballots arrive for the June 2 primary. The top two Republicans, meanwhile, have dismissed government-run healthcare as a “disaster” and “socialism.”
“In many ways, single-payer healthcare has become a progressive litmus test,” said Larry Levitt, a former White House policy advisor and a healthcare expert at KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.
Few voters fully understand the term single-payer, let alone expect the next governor to achieve it, Levitt said. Rather, he added, the term has become more of a signal to voters about a candidate’s approach to healthcare reform.
Xavier Becerra, the former U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, who for decades backed single-payer healthcare in Congress, has come under criticism from opponents for a nuanced but clear shift away from single-payer. It came after Becerra secured an endorsement from the California Medical Assn., a powerful group representing doctors and a longtime opponent of single-payer healthcare bills in California.
At a May 5 debate put on by CNN, Becerra declared his support for “Medicare for All,” a proposal for a federally run system that’s been stalled for years, but he declined to say whether he’d pursue a California-led effort. He said his immediate focus would be on mitigating the drastic federal cuts expected to hit low-income and disabled enrollees in Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program, which covers more than a third of residents.
Becerra is counting on voters not to distinguish between the often-confused terms single-payer, Medicare for All, and universal coverage, noting during the debate that “Californians don’t care what you call it, so long as they have affordable healthcare.”
“A lot of people aren’t clear what single-payer is, and they need a metaphor to understand it,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic strategist and one of the lead pollsters for former President Biden’s 2020 campaign.
Billionaire activist Tom Steyer, who’s touted his self-funding as a signal he can’t be bought, has emerged as the race’s most vocal advocate of single-payer after opposing it during a short-lived 2020 presidential bid. As governor, Steyer has said, he would pass legislation backed by the California Nurses Assn. that has failed to come to fruition under Newsom’s tenure. Pressed on how he would cover the estimated $731.4-billion cost, Steyer told KFF Health News that “God is going to be in the details.”
At a forum last year, former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter said she didn’t believe achieving such a system was realistic in the near term, but the Orange County Democrat later told party delegates that she would “deliver single-payer.” Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, Democrats who are trailing their competitors in the polls, don’t support single-payer. The top two vote-getters — regardless of party — advance to the November general election.
Some of the most seasoned politicians have failed to deliver single-payer. Newsom, who campaigned on the promise of being a “healthcare governor,” dialed back his ambitions upon taking office, choosing instead to pursue “universal access” to health coverage under a series of Medi-Cal expansions and efforts to contain healthcare spending.
The campaign bus for billionaire activist Tom Steyer, who has made single-payer healthcare a central pillar of his run for governor, in downtown Oakland.
(Christine Mai-Duc/KFF Health News)
Vermont, which remains the only state to pass a single-payer healthcare law, reversed course when leaders there couldn’t identify a funding source.
To enact single-payer, California would need permission from the federal government to redirect billions of dollars from Medicaid, Medicare and other funding that currently flows to the system — approval not likely to come from the Trump administration.
More than half of adults nationally say healthcare costs will have a major impact on whom they vote for in November, according an April KFF poll.
Danielle Cendejas, a Los Angeles-based Democratic consultant who works with state legislative candidates, said single-payer healthcare increasingly appears on candidate questionnaires from small-business advocates as well as hyperlocal Democratic clubs, in state legislative races and national union endorsements. What most California voters want to hear, Cendejas said, is how candidates plan to give them more immediate relief from higher premiums, expensive drug costs and long waits to access care.
The high price tag doesn’t faze Jennifer Easton, a 63-year-old Democrat from Oakland, who said other countries with similar models have proved they can lower costs. She said she supports a single-payer health system because it’s clear to her that Americans have reached the limits of working within the existing system. But she isn’t expecting any of the current candidates to succeed in implementing one, and she hasn’t decided whom to support.
“No one can in four years,” she said. Seeing a candidate enthusiastically support the concept gives her a good idea of their philosophy. “It is, if we’re lucky, a 20-year, 25-year plan.”
Rob Stutzman, a Republican political consultant who advised former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, said while Americans may be supportive of single-payer in polls, focus groups suggest that approval drops quickly when voters realize it could mean losing their current doctor or insurance plan.
At the CNN debate, Steve Hilton, the Republican candidate President Trump has endorsed, said Californians would end up with subpar patient care and “taxes sky high to pay for it,” like in his native United Kingdom. Instead, Hilton suggested the state stop providing “free healthcare for illegal immigrants who shouldn’t even be in the country in the first place.”
Mai-Duc writes for KFF Health News, anational newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism.
ROME — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged European allies Friday to move beyond rhetoric and take concrete action against Iran, even as he sought to repair strained ties with Italy and the Vatican during a two-day visit following tensions over the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran.
Speaking after meetings with Premier Giorgia Meloni and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, Rubio warned that Tehran was attempting to assert control over the strategic Strait of Hormuz, calling the move “unacceptable” and a threat to global security.
“Everybody says Iran is a threat. Everybody says that Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon … but you’ve got to do something about it,” Rubio told reporters in Rome. “If the answer is no … then you better have something more than just strongly worded statements to back it up.”
Clear ‘red line’
Rubio said Iran was trying to normalize control over an international waterway, a precedent he warned could encourage similar actions elsewhere. He also cautioned Tehran against targeting U.S. maritime assets, saying the United States had thwarted attacks on three Navy ships in the strait.
“The red line is clear. They threaten Americans, they are going to be blown up,” he said.
Rubio said Washington was pursuing a diplomatic track, including a proposed U.N. Security Council resolution aimed at preserving freedom of navigation. He added the U.S. was awaiting Iran’s response on Friday to ongoing diplomatic efforts.
Rubio’s visit comes after weeks of sharp disagreements between Washington and Rome over the Iran war, tariffs and President Trump’s criticism of both Meloni and Pope Leo XIV.
Differences remain over Iran war
Meloni described her meeting with Rubio as “constructive, frank and productive,” focused on both bilateral relations and major international issues. She said the talks covered strategic topics, including the Middle East, freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, Ukraine, China and areas of Italian interest such as Libya and Lebanon.
“We both understand how important the trans-Atlantic relationship is, but we also understand that each country must defend its own national interests,” Meloni stressed after the meeting.
Tajani struck a more conciliatory tone after meeting his U.S. counterpart, reaffirming the importance of the trans-Atlantic alliance.
“I am convinced Europe needs America — Italy needs America — and the United States also needs Europe and Italy,” Tajani said, adding he hoped “tensions have been calmed.”
He said discussions covered the Iran conflict and its spillover into Lebanon, as well as Venezuela and Cuba. The U.S. State Department said Rubio also raised the need to protect economic interests and end the war in Ukraine.
Despite the effort to ease tensions, differences remain over the Iran conflict. Italy has opposed the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign, with Meloni calling it “illegal,” and has resisted involvement in offensive operations.
Tajani said Italy would be prepared to contribute naval forces to demine the Strait of Hormuz once a permanent ceasefire is reached, and would maintain its role in the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon. He also stressed the importance of continued U.S. troop presence in Europe amid concerns about possible reductions.
No final decision on NATO troops adjustments
Rubio said “no final decision” had been made on NATO troop adjustments, noting that any changes would depend on U.S. national interests and global priorities.
The U.S. has announced a decision to pull 5,000 military personnel from Germany and Trump has threatened to withdraw more troops from Italy and Spain over their stance on the war.
Italy, a key logistics hub for U.S. and allied operations in the Mediterranean and beyond, has already signaled limits to its cooperation. In March, it declined to allow U.S. bombers bound for the Middle East to use a base in Sicily without parliamentary approval, reflecting constitutional constraints and strong domestic opposition to the war.
Meloni, weakened by a recent referendum defeat and facing public unease over the conflict, has insisted that any use of Italian bases for offensive operations would require parliamentary backing.
The war has also raised economic concerns in Italy, with Meloni warning that disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz risk driving up energy costs and inflation, while U.S. tariff threats weigh on the country’s export-driven economy.
An attempt to de-escalate at the Vatican
Rubio also sought to ease tensions with the Vatican following Trump’s criticism of the pope’s calls for peace. After a lengthy meeting on Thursday with the pontiff and Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Rubio said Washington remained committed to a “productive and fruitful” relationship with the Catholic Church.
“The president’s perspective is clear. He thinks that Iran is a threat, and it needs to be addressed. And that position remains unchanged,” Rubio said.
Rubio confirmed that Cuba was also discussed at the Vatican, with Washington hoping the church’s Caritas charity organization would continue distributing humanitarian aid.
Rubio said the U.S. has provided about $6 million in humanitarian aid to Cuba, to be distributed through Caritas, should the Cubans allow it. He added Washington has also offered up to $100 million in additional aid, but the Cuban government has not accepted it so far. Rubio blamed Cuba’s government for blocking assistance and worsening conditions, describing it as “incompetent.”
U.S. officials said the Vatican talks underscored strong bilateral ties and a shared commitment to promoting peace, even as differences over the Iran war persist.
Zampano and Winfield write for the Associated Press.
Walt Disney Co.’s ABC is forcefully resisting Federal Communications Commission efforts to soften the network’s programming, accusing the federal agency of an overreach that violates 1st Amendment freedoms.
Last week, the FCC took the unusual step of calling in the licenses of eight Disney-owned television stations for early review. The move — widely interpreted as an effort to chill the network’s speech — came a day after President Trump demanded that ABC fire late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel over a joke about First Lady Melania Trump.
The FCC separately has taken aim at ABC’s daytime discussion show, “The View,” which delves deeply into politics.
The FCC has questioned whether the show, which prominently features Trump critics Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar, could continue toclaim an exemption to rules that require broadcasters to provide equal time for opponents of political candidates.
In its filing this week with the FCC, Disney’s Houston television station raised the stakes in the dispute over “The View,” calling the commission’s actions “unprecedented” and “beyond the Commission’s authority.” The ABC station’s petition for a declaratory ruling said “The View,” has long qualified as a “bona fide” news interview program with freedom to conduct interviews of legally qualified political candidates.
“The Commission’s actions threaten to upend decades of settled law and practice and chill critical protected speech, both with respect to The View and more broadly,” the Houston station KTRK-TV said in the filing.
The network’s firm stance sets up a clash with the Trump administration, including the president’s hand-picked FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who has made no secret of his disdain for Kimmel and other ABC programming. Earlier this year, Carr announced that decades-old exemptions from the so-called “equal time rule” for news programs, including “The View,” were no longer valid.
ABC’s strenuous arguments mark a departure for the Disney-owned outlet.
In December 2024, a month after Trump was elected to a second term, the network quickly settled a lawsuit over statements made by news anchor George Stephanopoulos that Trump found offensive. ABC agreed to pay Trump $15 million to end his legal fight — sparking an outcry among free speech advocates, who accused the network of caving on a case it could have won.
“Some may dislike certain—or even most—of the viewpoints expressed on The View or similar shows,” the station said in its filing. “Such dislike, however, cannot justify using regulatory processes to restrict those views. The government does not get to decide ‘what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.’”
The station noted that, while the FCC has questioned the exemption for “The View,” which dates back to 2002, the FCC hasn’t showed interest in regulating programs on other networks, “including the many voices — conservative and liberal — on broadcast radio.”
“The danger is that the government will simply decide which perspectives to regulate and which to leave undisturbed,” ABC said.
On April 28, Carr called for a review of Disney’s broadcast licenses two years before any of them were set to expire, citing the agency’s year-old inquiry into Disney’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies and whether they violated federal anti-discrimination rules.
Two press freedom groups that own shares in Paramount Skydance are demanding to see the company’s books and internal documents, citing allegations that the company’s leaders may have promised favors to the White House to win approval for Paramount’s deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery.
The letter, sent Thursday to Paramount chief legal officer Makan Delrahim, says that media reports alleging that Paramount owner David Ellison and others promised favors to the Trump administration “create credible concern that Paramount leadership has offered, solicited, or effectuated a corrupt exchange,” which the groups argue would “constitute a breach of fiduciary duties” and open the company up to a “range of potential civil and criminal penalties.”
The letter cites Delaware law that allows stockholders to inspect the company’s books and records “for any proper purpose.”
Paramount declined to comment on the letter.
Among the issues raised in the letter are promises reportedly made by David Ellison and his father, Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison, that they would make “sweeping” changes at the news network CNN, which is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.
The Ellison family acquired Paramount, which includes CBS and the storied Melrose Avenue film studio, last summer.
The letter cites changes implemented in CBS since their acquisition, including their decision to end late night television house Stephen Colbert’s show days after he characterized a settlement Paramount reached with Trump as a “big fat bribe.”
Under Ellison’s ownership, the letter says, numerous high-profile reporters have left the network and its ratings have dropped to “historic lows.”
Larry Ellison, who is backing the financing of Paramount’s proposed takeover of Warner, reportedly told White House officials that Paramount would “implement the CBS playbook” at CNN if the merger is approved, and remove anchors and commentators at the cable news network that Trump doesn’t like, according to the letter.
The effort comes just two weeks after Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders overwhelmingly approved the proposed merger. Investors have supported the Larry Ellison family takeover, which would become the biggest Hollywood merger in nearly a decade. The deal would pay Warner stockholders $31 per share — four times the stock price a year ago.
The letter was written on behalf of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which develops secure communication tools for journalists and tracks violations of press freedom, and Reporters Without Borders, which tracks press freedom globally.
The organizations are being represented by former federal prosecutor Brendan Ballou, who established the Public Integrity Project this year to challenged alleged government corruption, as well as Delaware attorney Ronald Poliquin.
The missive, which could be a precursor to a lawsuit, opens another avenue of attack against the controversial $111-billion deal, which would transform the smaller Paramount into an industry titan.
With Warner Bros. Discovery, the Ellisons would also control HBO, TBS and the vast film and TV library of Warner Bros., which includes the Harry Potter, DC Comics, and Scooby-Doo, in addition to CNN.
Paramount, led 43-year-old David Ellison, wants to finalize its Warner Bros. takeover by the end of September. President Trump favors the deal; he has long agitated for changes at CNN.
Politicians, unions and progressive groups separately have pressed California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to scrutinize the proposed merger, hoping that he brings an antitrust lawsuit in an attempt to upend the deal.
More than 4,000 film industry workers, including Ben Stiller, Bryan Cranston, Ted Danson, J.J. Abrams, Jane Fonda and Kristen Stewart, have signed an open letter imploring Bonta and other regulators to block the merger. The group lamented the proposed tie-up, saying it “would reduce the number of major U.S. film studios to just four.”
Opponents fear the consolidation would lead to massive layoffs and diminish the quality of programming that Warner Bros., CNN and HBO are known for.
Hollywood has sustained thousands of layoffs over the last seven years since Walt Disney Co. swallowed Fox’s entertainment assets in another huge merger. In addition, the film production economy hasn’t recovered from shutdowns during the 2023 labor strikes. An estimated 42,000 entertainment industry jobs were lost from 2022 and 2024.
On Thursday, 34 California Democrats in Congress also sent a letter to Bonta, encouraging him to look closely at the merger.
The deal is expected to become one of the largest leveraged buyouts ever.
Ballou, who is working with the press freedom groups, previously served as a Justice Department special counsel with expertise in private equity transactions.
He resigned from the Justice Department in January 2025 when Trump returned to office. In his book, “Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America,” Ballou examined large leveraged buyouts and found that many of which resulted in bankruptcies.
The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down a voter-approved Democratic congressional redistricting plan, delivering another major setback to the party in a nationwide battle against Republicans for an edge in this year’s midterm elections.
The court ruled that the state’s Democratic-led legislature violated procedural requirements when it placed the constitutional amendment on the ballot to authorize the mid-decade redistricting. Voters narrowly approved the amendment April 21, but the court’s ruling renders the results of that vote meaningless.
“This violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void,” the court said in its opinion.
Democrats had hoped to win as many as four additional U.S. House seats under Virginia’s redrawn U.S. House map as part of an attempt to offset Republican redistricting done elsewhere at the urging of President Donald Trump. That ruling, combined with a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision severely weakening the Voting Rights Act, has supercharged the Republicans’ congressional gerrymandering advantage heading into this year’s midterm elections.
Legislative voting districts typically are redrawn once a decade after each census to account for population changes. But Trump started an unusual flurry of mid-decade redistricting last year when he encouraged Republican officials in Texas to redraw districts in a bid to win several additional U.S. House seats and hold on to their party’s narrow majority in the midterm elections.
California responded with new voter-approved districts drawn to Democrats’ advantage, and Utah’s top court imposed a new congressional map that also helps Democrats. Meanwhile, Republicans stand to gain from new House districts passed in Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Tennessee. They could add even more after the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the Voting Rights Act case, which has prompted some other Republican states to consider redrawing their maps in time for this year’s elections.
Virginia currently is represented in the U.S. House by six Democrats and five Republicans who were elected from districts imposed by a court after a bipartisan redistricting commission failed to agree on a map after the 2020 census. The new districts could have given Democrats an improved chance to win all but one of the state’s 11 congressional seats.
Under the Demcoratic-drawn map, five districts would have been anchored in the Democratic stronghold of northern Virginia, including one stretching out like a lobster to consume Republican-leaning rural areas. Revisions to four other districts across Richmond, southern Virginia and Hampton Roads would have diluted the voting power of conservative blocs in those areas. And a reshaped district in parts of western Virginia would have lumped together three Democratic-leaning college towns to offset other Republican voters.
The state Supreme Court’s seven justices are appointed by the state legislature, which has toggled back and forth between Democratic, Republican and split control over recent years. Legal experts say the body doesn’t have a set ideological profile
The case before the court focused not on the shape of the new districts but rather on the process the General Assembly used to authorize them.
Because the state’s redistricting commission was established by a voter-approved constitutional amendment, lawmakers had to propose an amendment to redraw the districts. That required approval of a resolution in two separate legislative sessions, with a state election sandwiched in between, to place the amendment on the ballot.
The legislature’s initial approval of the amendment occurred last October — while early voting was underway but before it concluded on the day of the general election. The legislature’s second vote on the amendment occurred after a new legislative session began in January. Lawmakers also approved a separate bill in February laying out the new districts, subject to voter approval of the constitutional amendment.
Judicial arguments focused on whether the legislature’s initial approval of the amendment came too late, because early voting already had begun for the 2025 general election.
Attorney Matthew Seligman, who defended the legislature, argued that the “election” should be defined narrowly to mean the Tuesday of the general election. In that case, the legislature’s first vote on the redistricting amendment occurred before the election and was constitutional, he told judges.
An attorney for the plaintiffs, Thomas McCarthy, argued that an “election” should be interpreted to cover the entire period during which people can cast ballots, which lasts several weeks in Virginia. If that’s the case, he told justices, then the legislature’s initial endorsement of the redistricting amendment came too late to comply with the state constitution.
In January, a judge in rural Tazewell County, in southwestern Virginia, ruled that lawmakers failed to follow their own rules for adding the redistricting amendment to a special session last fall. Circuit Judge Jack Hurley Jr. also ruled that lawmakers failed to initially approve the amendment before the public began voting in last year’s general election and that the state had failed to publish the amendment three months before the election, as required by law. As a result, he said, the amendment is invalid and void.
The Virginia Supreme Court placed Hurley’s order on hold and allowed the redistricting vote to proceed before hearing arguments on the case.
With President Trump continuing to tank in the polls, the parlor game we know as “2028 Republican primary speculation” is back in full swing among the chattering classes.
Vice President JD Vance — who would normally be considered the heir apparent, and who just happened to make a campaign stop in Iowa recently — now finds his “America First” brand positioning complicated by Trump’s Iran misadventure. So much for an easy glide path to the nomination.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio would seem to benefit from Vance’s stumbles, but in a political moment that fetishizes “authenticity,” Rubio risks coming across like a man who irons his blue jeans. Add to that his reputation as a foreign policy hawk in a party that increasingly wants out of “forever wars,” and he’d be the ideal presidential candidate for … 2004.
All of which has opened the door to more imaginative speculation. “If Pat Buchanan and Roger Ailes had a baby,” former “Meet The Press” host Chuck Todd recently quipped, “it would be Tucker Carlson.”
Ailes, of course, was the media-savvy evil genius who took Fox News to No. 1. And while “Pitchfork Pat’s” populist presidential campaigns weren’t ultimately victorious, he is credited with paving the way for Trump’s eventual 2016 victory.
As this comparison suggests, Carlson could make a formidable Republican presidential candidate. The hitch? Carlson and Trump have recently been trading blows, which is not where any potential Republican candidate wants to be.
Even if you dismiss talk of a third Trump term as overwrought constitutional fan fiction, it’s hard to imagine a Republican nominee emerging without Trump’s blessing — let alone in defiance of it.
Which brings us to the latest theory making the rounds: Trump isn’t going to pass this torch to anyone lacking the proper surname.
In this telling, Vance is the loyal, if naive, assistant manager waiting for the boss to retire and hand him the keys to the office — only to discover it’s a family business and the ne’er-do-well son has just pulled into the parking lot in a Ferrari.
Enter Donald Trump Jr., whose chief qualification is name recognition so strong it could probably win a Republican primary on its own.
Add to that daddy’s endorsement, and as the Bulwark’s Jonathan V. Last has noted about Vance and Rubio, “Challenging Don Jr. would turn them into enemies of the people.”
But that doesn’t mean this is a slam dunk for Junior.
As British-American journalist Sarah Baxter recently wrote, “like Logan Roy, the patriarch in the television drama Succession, Trump loves playing his children off against each other. He thinks it instills a healthy killer instinct in his privileged offspring.”
This is to say that Junior isn’t the only potential heir lurking in the wings.
Last year, for example, Eric Trump told a journalist: “I think I could do it. And by the way, I think other members of our family could do it too.”
Which brings us to the wildest speculation of all: Ivanka Trump.
Now, to be sure, Ivanka has kept a polite distance from politics (and her father) in recent years, and she doesn’t exactly electrify the MAGA faithful. But she was always her father’s favorite, and her aforementioned liabilities could be overcome with a sufficiently enthusiastic paternal endorsement.
And once she became the standard bearer, Ivanka could market herself as both continuity and “change” — a neat trick, if she can pull it off.
In that sense Republicans could keep the Trump brand while offering a kinder, gentler, fresher face — all while making GOP history with a female presidential nominee.
This, of course, raises the question: Why would Ivanka — or any of the Trumps — want to be part of a political dynasty?
Among the many reasons, the Trump family is raking in cash. Lots of it. And as long as the next president could conceivably be a family member — a possibility that remains operable even if a Trump family member were to lose the general election in 2028 — the spigot will remain on.
That’s one of the reasons that, although Vance would normally be Trump’s obvious successor, the smart money might actually be to bet on someone with the last name “Trump.”
Now, if this dynastic denouement sounds far-fetched, of course it is. But so was electing a thrice-married casino magnate to the presidency in 2016. And so reelecting him in 2024.
We’re living in an era when the seemingly improbable isn’t just possible — it might even be likely.
Sigal’s most recent book is “The Secret Defector” (HarperCollins). He teaches journalism at USC
“We don’t go in for that kind of crap that you have back in New York–of being obliged to print both sides. We’re going to beat this son of a bitch Sinclair any way we can. . . . We’re going to kill him.”
The speaker: Kyle Palmer, Los Angeles Times political editor, to Turner Catledge of the New York Times.
The time: 1934, when socialist writer Upton Sinclair, who had just swept the Democratic primary for governor of California, threatened to beat handily the GOP candidate, Frank Merriam, in the November election.
Kyle Palmer, the pope of Southern California right-wing politics, was neither kidding nor exaggerating. Nor was he exceptional in his venom toward Upton Sinclair and his mass movement, End Poverty in California (EPIC). According to Greg Mitchell in his fascinating and valuable study, EPIC “was nothing less than a roundabout route to socialism.” On this point, “Political pundits, financial columnists, and White House aides, for once, agreed: Sinclair’s victory represented the high tide of radicalism in the United States.” This tide had to be pushed back, or California would suffocate under the weight of Sinclair’s “maggot-like horde” of supporters, as the Los Angeles Times called EPICers.
In 1934, a year racked by general strikes and epidemic unemployment, the maverick pamphleteer-novelist Sinclair–author of muckraking tracts like “The Jungle” and the most widely translated American writer abroad–was a menace not only to the so-called Vested Interests. Down deep, he embodied a revulsion felt by many Californians toward the capitalist system. EPIC’s program of production-for-use-not-profit, land colonies, barter exchanges and cooperation versus competition was a potentially deadly blow to the American Dream. It was subversive because it spoke to the misery of desperate, Depression-ruined Americans yearning for relief from the day-to-day savagery of a skewed, inefficient system that seemed to be failing everybody but the very rich. At its height, EPIC enrolled 100,000 members from San Diego to Sacramento, and its newspaper sold 2 million copies.
In “The Campaign of the Century,” Greg Mitchell has chosen to focus not on EPIC itself but “on the cataclysmic response to Sinclair’s emergence as the Democratic nominee.” Thus we learn relatively little about EPIC or about Sinclair, but a lot about the nuts and bolts of the “most astonishing . . . smear campaign ever directed against a major candidate.” Our present-day “media politics” with its emphasis on image over substance, was born in the ferocious, fraudulent anti-Sinclair campaign, says Mitchell.
A subtext of Mitchell’s book is how strongly adherents felt about Sinclair and EPIC. They “came from every strata, although nearly all were white. It was not . . . a poor people’s movement. Most of the activists were middle-class and middle-aged . . . Many were down-on-their-luck businessmen.” Any given EPIC club might include “Utopians, technocrats, Townsendites, progressive Republicans, New Deal Democrats, ex-Socialists and secret Communists, all united by a belief in a perfectible society.” No EPIC, aside from clerical staff, earned a cent from the movement. “Members paid a dollar, penny, or a collar button” to join; “Some EPICs hocked the gold fillings in their teeth to raise money.” Although broad-based and decentralized, “EPIC was far from democratic” and indifferent to unions. And Sinclair’s portrait occupied a holy place in many homes.
In any other state, EPIC might never have flown. But California’s populist tradition, open-mindedness (or wackiness), absence of party bosses or deep ethnic loyalties meant that a challenge to established authority was as relatively easy to mount as it was difficult to organize a counter-revolution. At first, the state’s wealthy were so rattled that their political representatives were caught completely off balance by Sinclair’s spectacular rise. Only loonies had expected him to win the primary, and nobody had been crazy enough to predict he would outpoll all six of his opponents together.
But like a great octopus, California’s Republicans and conservative Democrats, equally terrified of EPIC, slowly thrashed up from the murk of politics-as-usual to deal with the “enemy within.” “The prospect of a socialist governing the nation’s most volatile state,” says Mitchell, “sparked nothing less than a revolution in American politics.”
Spurred by “fear and desperation,” ad men like Albert Lasker and especially Clem Whittaker, hired conservative guns, broke the old rules and “virtually invented the modern media campaign.” Whittaker and his associate Leone Baxter introduced the radical idea that free-lance outsiders like themselves, not party chiefs, would “handle every aspect of a political campaign.” Whittaker’s “cozy relationship” with California’s 700 newspaper publishers meant that local editors were happy to run his press releases “as news stories–even as editorials.” The anti-Sinclair “lie factory” twisted and distorted; but worst of all, his enemies quoted from Upton Sinclair’s own works, in which he had attacked everything from wedded bliss (“marriage plus prostitution”) to religion (“a mighty fortress of graft”) and the Boy Scouts. After his defeat, Sinclair confessed wearily and with justice, “I talk too much. I write too much, too.”
By most accounts, Sinclair was a decent, generous, puritanical man of genuine sweetness. What his blurted half-jokes and honest indiscretions failed to supply, Hollywood and Madison Avenue concocted by way of movie propaganda and, probably even more effectively, radio shots–like an anti-Sinclair “One Man’s Family”-type series. Film studio bosses, alarmed by Sinclair’s not-very-serious threat to socialize movie production, colluded with what a Scripps-Howard reporter called a “reign of unreason bordering on hysteria.” Big-time screenwriters like Carey Wilson and directors like Felix Feist (later of “Peyton Place” fame) were enlisted or dragooned to produce Goebbelsesque films, often using faked footage, that drilled home the message: EPIC equals Armageddon. Studio workers were forced to contribute to Frank Merriam’s campaign. Very few Hollywood stars had the guts to refuse. (Holdouts included James Cagney and Jean Harlow.)
Law ‘n’ order also came to the rescue of the anti-Sinclair forces. Election officials, GOP activists and local district attorneys intimidated EPIC supporters away from the polls by challenging the credentials of at least 150,000 voters and threatening to arrest them. All across the state preachers thundered, “Go and Sinclair no more!” and Aimee Semple McPherson, hungry for respectability after her recent kidnaping hoax, turned against Sinclair, despite the pro-EPIC sympathies of her flock.
Finally, the Democrats themselves carved up EPIC. At first friendly to Sinclair, President Roosevelt, needing conservative support for his faltering New Deal, cut a deal with the Republicans. In return for Frank Merriam converting to a pallid form of New Dealism, the party dumped the divisive Sinclair. Frightened Democrats and “third party” anti-EPICers formed around a candidate named Haight, who may have drawn off enough votes to beat the insurgent–but not by all that much. Final results: Merriam 1,100,000; Sinclair 900,000; Haight 300,000. In defeat, Sinclair received twice as many votes as any previous Democratic candidate for governor.
EPIC soon disappeared in a backlash of internal Red-baiting. (The communists and socialists opposed EPIC, but the Communist Party also tried to take it over.) Sinclair stopped muckraking to write the “Lanny Budd” series of best-sellers. Waves of fright and self-interest quickly covered over EPIC’s writing in the sand. Today, who remembers it?
Later, Sinclair insisted that the EPIC campaign had “changed the whole reactionary tone of the state.” EPIC was “the acorn from which evolved the tree of whatever liberalism we have in California,” claimed state Supreme Court justice Stanley Mosk, a Sinclair supporter in ’34. And as a direct result of EPIC and the studio bosses’ much-resented bullying, “politics in Hollywood moved steadily to the left over the next few years.”
Of course, the Right learned, too. “A number of men who would become legends in California politics, on both sides of the ideological fence, virtually cut their teeth on the ’34 campaign,” writes Mitchell. These included Earl Warren (Merriam’s campaign manager), Asa Call, Edmund G. (Pat) Brown (sending what encoded messages to his son today?), Murray Chotiner, Augustus Hawkins, Cuthbert Olson–a whole generation of pols whose experience taught them just how powerful the rich, who own the media, can be when aroused.
Lessons for liberals are harder to come by in this sizzling, rambunctiously useful book. If we take note of this nation’s recent rash of insurgencies–from Carol Moseley Braun to Ross Perot–maybe one lesson is that nothing good ever completely dies, it just goes to sleep for a while.
BOOK MARK: For an excerpt from “The Campaign of the Century,” see the Opinion section, Page 6.
WASHINGTON — President Bush left many viewers mystified last week when, answering a question in his debate with Democratic challenger John F. Kerry, he invoked the 1857 Dred Scott decision that upheld slavery.
The answer seemed to be reaching far back in history to answer the question about what kind of Supreme Court justice Bush would appoint. But to Christian conservatives who have long viewed the Scott decision as a parallel to the 1973 Roe vs. Wade ruling legalizing abortion, the president’s historical reference was perfectly logical — and his message was clear.
Bush, some felt, was giving a subtle nod to the belief of abortion foes, including Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, that just as the high court denied rights to blacks in the Scott case it also shirked the rights of the unborn in Roe, which many conservatives call the Dred Scott case of the modern era.
“It was a poignant moment, a very special gourmet, filet mignon dinner,” said the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, a prominent conservative advocacy group based in Washington. “Everyone knows the Dred Scott decision and you don’t have to stretch your mind at all. When he said that, it made it very clear that the ’73 decision was faulty because what it said was that unborn persons in a legal sense have no civil rights.”
Sheldon, who said he confers frequently with Bush and his senior campaign advisors on outreach to religious conservatives, though not in this instance, credited the use of Dred Scott with raising the abortion issue to “a very high level” and “back to the front burner.”
“It didn’t just slip out by accident,” Sheldon said.
Douglas Kmiec, a Pepperdine University constitutional law professor who served as a lawyer in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, said the reference instantly struck him for its appeal to abortion opponents, advocates for judicial restraint and even civil rights advocates who regard the Scott case as the court’s all-time worst moment.
“I thought it had so many constituencies that could applaud that comment; it was one of the most intelligent things that I heard in the debate,” he said.
Bush’s remark Friday came after a questioner in the St. Louis debate — which occurred just miles from the courthouse where Scott filed his lawsuit seeking his freedom — asked whom he might appoint to the court should there be a vacancy.
Kerry and other Democrats, looking to mobilize their base, have warned that Bush would fill vacancies with judges who would overturn Roe. Bush has often said that he believes in appointing justices who would not legislate from the bench.
He repeated that refrain Friday night but did not mention abortion in his answer. Instead, he pointed to Dred Scott as an example of a court action he found objectionable, along with another favorite citation of religious conservatives: the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal’s ruling that the reference to God in the Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional.
“Another example would be the Dred Scott case, which is where judges years ago said that the Constitution allowed slavery because of personal property rights,” Bush said. “That’s a personal opinion. That’s not what the Constitution says. The Constitution of the United States says we’re all — you know, it doesn’t say that. It doesn’t speak to the equality of America.”
That answer left many wondering what he meant.
Bush campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel said Tuesday that the president did not intend to draw a parallel between the slavery and abortion cases, but that he was merely giving voters an example of a case in which he felt the court erred.
But Bush has a history of using language with special meaning to religious conservatives, a critical portion of his base that senior strategists have said will assure his reelection only if they turn out in larger numbers than in 2000.
Bush himself is an evangelical Christian, and his speeches are frequently sprinkled with phrases that sound merely poetic to many, but to others sound a more spiritual theme.
His reference in many campaign speeches to his belief in a “culture of life” often draws the loudest applause from his largely conservative audiences.
In his State of the Union this year, he spoke of the nation’s “grace to go on” despite its grief over terrorist attacks, and in a subtle reference to religious texts that refer to divine service as a time “set apart,” he said: “Having come this far, we sense that we live in a time set apart.”
Activists and legal scholars on both sides of the abortion debate said Tuesday they believed the president was sending a signal to that base.
Bush, who opposes abortion, has walked a careful line on the issue in a campaign in which women make up a large portion of undecided voters. Abortion has been overshadowed this year in the culture wars by gay marriage, but activists say it remains a motivating force for many.
Polls show a majority favor abortion rights. Critics say the Dred Scott reference was an attempt by Bush to make his point without alienating moderates who might decide the election.
“The minute he said it, I said to myself, ‘Here he goes,’ ” said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority. “He’s not going to say to anybody that he would pick a Supreme Court justice that’s opposed to Roe vs. Wade because he’s afraid that would cost him. So he’s trying to keep his base riled up in a way that won’t offend moderate women.”
Harvard University law professor Laurence Tribe, a Bush critic who has written extensively about the abortion debate, said Bush was signaling that he believed there was a direct parallel between women who would abort a fetus and slave masters of the 19th century.
Tribe pointed to Scalia’s dissent to a 1992 ruling that upheld Roe, in which the justice drew the parallel. Scalia wrote that both cases focused on issues of “life and death, freedom and subjugation.”
“He’s talking in code, but it’s not obscure code,” Tribe said of Bush. “This has been a fixture in the talking points of the religious right for years.”
SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom said his administration is “moving forward aggressively” to continue laying the groundwork for a giant tunnel beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to replumb the state’s water system.
“We got to move faster. Move faster,” Newsom said to regulators during a speech Thursday at a conference held by the Assn. of California Water Agencies. “We all have to be held to a higher level of accountability.”
California’s 40th governor provided a chronological look back at his water policies since taking office in 2019 and asserted the need to continue his effort to modernize state infrastructure to provide for cities and farms into the future.
Newsom cast the tunnel as a “climate adaptation project,” noting that climate change is projected to shrink the amount of water the state can deliver with its current infrastructure.
With his term expiring at the end of the year, Newsom acknowledged that he will soon “pass the baton” on water policy to the next governor. Democrat or Republican, that person could decide the fate of his signature water project.
“The Delta Conveyance, if we had it last year alone, would have provided enough water, in terms of what we could have captured with an updated system, enough water for 9.8 million Californians’ needs for over a year,” Newsom said. “We’ve got to get that done.”
Water has been a focus of the Newsom administration since his first day in office, when the governor took his cabinet to Monterey Park Tract, a rural Central Valley community that lacked access to safe drinking water.
Described by Newsom as “the forever problem” in California, water policy is also among the most politically contentious issues in the state.
The tunnel would create a second route to transport water from new intakes on the Sacramento River to the south side of the Delta, where pumps send water into the aqueducts of the State Water Project.
The project is particularly acrimonious, drawing out geographical battles between north and south and thorny fights between officials who want to build the tunnel and environmentalists and Delta residents seeking to protect the local ecosystem and their way of life.
Newsom and other supporters have said the tunnel would protect the state’s water system as climate change intensifies severe droughts and deluges. Opponents call the project a costly boondoggle, arguing it’s not necessary and would destroy the Delta.
It’s been mired with regulatory hurdles and other challenges for years.
The State Water Resources Control Board is considering a petition by the Newsom administration to amend permits so water could be tapped where the tunnel intakes would be built.
There have also been other complications. A state appeals court in December rejected the state’s plan for financing the project, and the California Supreme Court in April declined to take up the case. The state Department of Water Resources said it still plans to issue bonds to finance the project.
Other court challenges by Delta-area counties and environmental groups are also pending.
Whether the project is ultimately built may hinge on whether large water agencies, including the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, decide to participate and pay for its building.
State officials have said that the tunnel, called the Delta Conveyance Project, ultimately would be paid for by participating water agencies.
The state estimated in 2024 that the tunnel would cost $20.1 billion, while opponents say it could cost three to five times more than that.
In the last seven years, California has invested $11 billion in water infrastructure, Newsom said.
The Democratic governor reflected on other parts of his water policies, saying he has prioritized securing funds to provide clean drinking water to more communities where Californians live with contaminated tap water.
He said while there has been progress in bringing safe drinking water to more communities, there is still “a lot more work to be done.”
Newsom touted his administration’s investment in replenishing groundwater in the Central Valley and its efforts supporting plans to build the Sites Reservoir near Sacramento.
Newsom said the Sites Reservoir is critical for the state’s future, and he indicated some frustration about the pace at which it’s advancing.
“We’ve got to do the groundbreaking at Sites,” he said. “If you can’t agree to an off-stream investment in this world of weather whiplash, we’re as dumb as we want to be.”
He said his administration has also made progress on environmental projects including restoring wetlands around the shrinking Salton Sea, removing dams on the Klamath River, and developing a strategy to help salmon, which have suffered major declines in recent years.
Touching on issues that generate heated debate, Newsom talked about a controversial plan for new water rules in the Delta that relies on so-called voluntary agreements in which water agencies would contribute funding for wetland habitat restoration projects and other measures.
Newsom described the approach, called the Healthy Rivers and Landscapes program, as a solution to break away from the traditional conflict-ridden regulatory approach and improve the Delta’s ecological health.
“Got to maintain the vigilance on these voluntary agreements. At peril, we go back to our old ways,” he said.
Environmental advocates argue that the proposed approach, which is widely supported by water agencies, would take too much water out of the Delta and threaten native fish that are already in severe decline.
Newsom said climate change is increasingly driving “weather whiplash” in California and that the state must prepare. He noted that his tenure included the extreme drought from 2020-22, followed by extremely wet conditions in 2023, which revived Tulare Lake on thousands of acres of farmland.
He said the state needs to manage water differently because the effects of climate change have been apparent over the last several years: “The hots were getting a lot hotter, the dries were getting a lot drier, and the wets were getting a lot wetter.”
MINNEAPOLIS — A man who sprayed vinegar at Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar at a town hall meeting in Minneapolis pleaded guilty to assault Thursday in federal court after reaching a deal with prosecutors.
Anthony Kazmierczak, 55, is awaiting sentencing.
Kazmierczak, dressed in bright orange jail clothing, gave only a fragmentary explanation Thursday of the Jan. 27 assault, which came as the city was already on edge after the fatal shootings of two people by federal agents during a White House crackdown that brought thousands of immigration officers to Minnesota.
After being asked what he remembered of the assault, he told U.S. District Judge Joan N. Ericksen: “It’s fuzzy.”
Kazmierczak, who was in the audience during Omar’s January town hall, leaped up when the representative called for the ouster of then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. He sprayed liquid from a syringe as court documents say he shouted that Noem would not resign and that Omar was “splitting Minnesota apart.”
Security officers tackled Kazmierczak, who told them the liquid was vinegar.
“I didn’t want anybody to think she was in danger,” he said Thursday.
Omar, who was not injured, continued with the town hall after the arrest.
Authorities later determined he’d sprayed her with a mixture of water and apple cider vinegar. He was charged with assaulting a U.S. officer.
Court documents say Kazmierczak, a critic of Omar who has made online posts supportive of President Trump, told a close associate several years ago that “somebody should kill” her.
Omar, a refugee from Somalia, has long been a target of Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. After she was elected seven years ago, Trump said she should “go back” to her home country. He has described her as “garbage” and said she should be investigated.
Trump has also accused Omar of staging the attack, telling ABC News, “She probably had herself sprayed, knowing her.”
On Thursday, Kazmierczak told Ericksen that he was being treated for Parkinson’s disease, and that he’d been diagnosed with ADHD, or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and a form of post-traumatic stress.
After his arrest, his then-attorney said that he did not have access to the medications he needed for Parkinson’s and other serious conditions.
Minnesota court records show that Kazmierczak, who was convicted of felony auto theft in 1989, has been arrested multiple times for driving under the influence and has had numerous traffic citations. There are also indications he has had significant financial problems, including two bankruptcy filings.
In social media posts, Kazmierczak had criticized former President Biden and referred to Democrats as “angry and liars.” Trump wants the U.S. to be “stronger and more prosperous,” he wrote.
Threats against members of Congress have increased in recent years, peaking in 2021 following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters before dipping slightly, only to climb again, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Capitol Police.
NEW YORK — President Trump’s 10% global tariffs were declared unlawful by a federal trade court in a fresh blow to the administration’s economic agenda, several months after the U.S. Supreme Court vacated earlier levies he’d imposed.
A divided three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of International Trade in Manhattan on Thursday granted a request by a group of small businesses and two dozen mostly Democrat-led states to vacate the tariffs. Trump imposed the 10% duties in February under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which had never previously been invoked.
The court for now only immediately blocked the administration from enforcing the tariffs against the two companies that sued and Washington state, making clear that it was not issuing a so-called universal injunction. The panel found that the other states that sued lacked standing because they aren’t direct importers, instead arguing that they were harmed by having to pay higher prices for goods when businesses passed on tariff costs.
It wasn’t immediately clear what the ruling would mean for now for other importers that had been paying the contested levies.
The majority of the panel rejected the administration’s stance that “balance-of-payments deficits” — a key criterion for imposing the Section 122 tariffs — was “a malleable phrase.” They concluded that Trump’s proclamation imposing the levies failed to identify that such deficits existed within the meaning of the 1974 law, instead using “trade and current account deficits to stand in the place.”
The decision is the latest setback for the president’s effort to levy tariffs without input from Congress. Earlier duties — overturned by the Supreme Court on Feb. 20 — were issued under a different law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA. In that case, the justices ruled Trump had exceeded his authority, kicking off a legal scramble by importers for almost $170 billion in refunds.
The U.S. Justice Department could challenge the trade court’s latest ruling by taking the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which ruled against the Trump administration during the last tariff fight.
Section 122 allows presidents to impose duties in situations where the U.S. faces what the law defines as “fundamental international payments problems.” Even before Trump issued the tariffs, economists and policy experts debated whether the president would be able to build a solid legal framework using the statute.
In a proclamation declaring the use of Section 122, Trump said that tariffs were justified because the U.S. runs a “large and serious” trade deficit. He also pointed to the negative net flows of income from investments Americans have overseas and other things that showed the U.S. balance-of-payments relationship with the rest of the world was deteriorating.
Under the law, presidents have the ability to impose tariffs on goods imported into the U.S. on a short-term basis to address concerns about how money is flowing in and out of the country. Those concerns include “large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits” and an “imminent and significant depreciation of the dollar.”
Unlike other legal options Trump might pursue to impose tariffs, Section 122 can be invoked without waiting for a federal agency to conduct an investigation to determine whether the levies are justifiable. But they can still be challenged in court.
The small businesses and states that sued argued that Section 122 became outdated when the U.S. ditched the gold standard decades ago. They say Trump improperly conflated “balance-of-payments deficits” with U.S. trade deficits in order to justify using the law.
They also allege that Trump’s order announcing the Section 122 tariffs was “riddled with omissions and mischaracterizations” around the meaning of a balance-of-payments deficit. The trade deficit cited by Trump is just one part of calculating the country’s balance of payments position, the states say.
Under Section 122, the president can order import duties of as much as 15%. The executive action can last 150 days, at which point Congress would have to extend it. Trump has said he would aim to increase the rate to 15% from 10%.
The states argue that Trump’s new tariffs violate other requirements in Section 122, including that such duties not be discriminatory in their application. The states argue that Trump’s new tariffs improperly exempt some goods from Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.
According to the complaint, the Trump administration conceded during the previous litigation over his IEEPA tariffs that trade deficits “are conceptually distinct from balance-of-payments deficits.”
The clash over Section 122 emerged just as the legal fight over refunds from Trump’s IEEPA tariffs began to heat up. A different judge in the Court of International Trade, U.S. Judge Richard Eaton, is overseeing the massive refund effort and ordered Customs and Border Protection to give him regular updates on a largely automated process the government will use to issue most refunds.
WASHINGTON — Louisiana’s state attorneys on Thursday urged the Supreme Court to stand aside for now and to uphold an appeals court ruling that would stop the mailing of abortion pills nationwide.
They blamed former President Biden for undermining the state’s strict bans on abortion and the Trump administration for slow-walking a study on the federal regulations that permit sending the pills through the mail.
The justices are likely to act soon on emergency appeals filed by two makers of mifepristone. They argued the pills have been shown to be safe and effective for ending an early pregnancy.
But last week, the conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled for Louisiana and revived an earlier regulation that would require women to obtain the pills in person from a doctor.
The three-judge panel also took the unusual step for putting its order into effect immediately. On Monday, Justice Samuel A. Alito, who oversees the 5th Circuit, issued an administrative stay that will keep the case on hold through Monday.
The justices have to decide whether Louisiana had standing to sue over the federal drug regulations, and if so, whether judges have the authority to overrule the Food and Drug Administration.
Two years ago, the Supreme Court by a 9-0 vote dismissed a similar challenge to the abortion pills that came from the 5th Circuit. And Chief Justice John G. Roberts has said in the past that judges should usually defer to the federal agency that is responsible fo regulating drugs.
In response to anti-abortion advocates, Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. agreed to have the FDA review the safety record of mifepristone.
It was approved in 2000 as safe and effective for ending early pregnancies. And in the past decade, the agency had relaxed earlier restrictions, including a requirement that pregnant women visit a doctor’s office to obtain the pills.
But the FDA said last month its review is far from complete.
In October, Louisiana Atty. Gen. Liz Murrill decided to bypass the FDA review and went to federal court seeking a ruling that would prevent the pills being sent by mail.
A federal judge refused to decide on the issue while the FDA was undertaking its review. But the 5th Circuit chose to act now. The Louisiana state attorney put the focus on the Biden administration.
When the Supreme Court was considering the Dobbs case, which overruled Roe vs. Wade and the right to abortion, “the Biden Administration was preparing a plan that predictably would undermine that decision,” she wrote in Thursday’s response.
“Although Louisiana law generally prohibits abortion and the dispensing of mifepristone to pregnant women, out-of-state prescribers—freed from the in-person dispensing requirement — are causing approximately 1,000 illegal abortions in Louisiana each month by mailing FDA-approved mifepristone into the state,” she said.
The Trump administration has yet to tell the court of its views on this case.
Within days of California’s long-anticipated single-use plastic law going into effect, environmentalists, anti-waste activists and the packaging industry reacted with anger and frustration.
Anti-plastic activists say Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration and CalRecycle inserted exemptions favoring the plastic industry into the law’s regulations that weaken it and undermine legislative intent.
“These new rules create huge loopholes for plastic packaging that violate the law,” said Avinash Kar, senior director of the toxics program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
On the other side, the packaging industry has sued over similar laws in other states. “Our members have real concerns about cost, compliance, and constitutionality,” said Matt Clarke, spokesman for the National Assn. of Wholesaler-Distributors, which sued Oregon earlier this year over a similar waste law.
CalRecycle, the state’s waste agency, did not respond in time for publication. The final regulations putting the law into effect were released May 1 and posted for review Tuesday.
The environmental organizations say the law’s new final regulations open the door to what is known as “chemical recycling,” which produces large amounts of hazardous waste. The law also contains problematic exemptions for certain categories of plastic foodware, they say.
The language of the law forbids any kind of recycling that would produce significant amounts of hazardous waste. The new regulations allow for these recycling methods if the facilities are properly permitted.
The new regulations also exempt certain products if they are already covered by federal law. For instance, a packaging company, retailer or distributor can claim that they have such a preemption, Kar said, and CalRecycle might not immediately review that claim. “And as long as they don’t review it, they’ll get the exemption for as long as CalRecycle doesn’t review it,” creating a potential “forever loophole.”
“Californians were promised a system where producers take real responsibility for the waste they create,” said Nick Lapis, advocacy director for Californians Against Waste. “When regulations introduce broad exemptions and redefine key terms, that promise starts to erode. The details matter here, and right now they don’t line up with the intent of the law.”
Senate Bill 54, the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act, was signed by Newsom in 2022. It was considered landmark legislation because it addressed the scourge of single-use plastics, requiring plastic and packaging companies to use less of them and ensuring that by 2032, all food packaging is either recyclable or compostable.
The law’s intent was not only to reduce it, but also to put the onus and cost of dealing with it on packaging producers and manufacturers, not consumers and local governments. It was supposed to incentivize companies to consider the fate of their products and spur innovation in material redesign.
According to one state analysis, 2.9 million tons of single-use plastic and 171.4 billion single-use plastic components were sold, offered for sale, or distributed during 2023 in California.
Similar laws have been passed in Maine, Oregon, Colorado, Minnesota, Maryland and Washington. Oregon’s law, however, is on hold while a lawsuit by the National Assn. of Wholesaler-Distributors works its way through the courts.
“We see a lot of the same problems in California that we flagged in Oregon,” said Clarke, the trade group spokesman. “Given California’s scale, the cost implications are going to be even larger. Our legal counsel has noted that California’s proposed fees are already higher than what other states have put forward.”
Jan Dell of Last Beach Cleanup, an anti-plastic waste group based in Laguna Beach, doesn’t believe the law will work — irrespective of the final regulations — and said the “exorbitant” cost of its implementation will either spur producers to sue, or they’ll end up passing the higher costs onto consumers.
She referred to a report from the Circular Action Alliance, the state-sanctioned group established to represent and oversee the implementation of the law on behalf of the plastic and packaging industry. It finds the law will increase the cost of disposal between six and 14 times for common products, such as Windex bottles, made of polyethylene terephthalate.
“If the producers don’t successfully sue to stop the fees, this will certainly add to product inflation for CA consumers,” she said in an email. “Californians already have to pay exorbitantly high curbside collection fees for trash, recycling, and organics … so, starting in 2027, our groceries will cost a LOT more but we won’t see a reduction in our waste bills.”
Christopher “Smitty” Smith, a partner at law firm Saul Ewing in Los Angeles, who councils companies and interest groups on SB 54 and other Extended Producer Liability laws, said that although he could see areas of the law that “could be sharper and avoid the legal challenges … you can’t stop people from suing.” Environmentalists and anti-waste activists say they are preparing a lawsuit.
Smith said the law already has sparked changes in how companies think and respond to concerns about waste.
One of his national fast-food chain clients has realized that if its brand name is on plastic packaging, it’s that company’s responsibility, he said, so “they’ve spent the past year mapping out their franchise agreements, their supply chain agreements, their producer agreements, to figure out” what it needs to do to comply.
He said in the past, companies have paid little attention to these details and just let their franchisees figure this kind of thing out. Now, they’re spending a lot of time and money “to wrap their arms around what their supply chain looks like and like, what post consumer use of their plastic products looks like and what their regulatory obligations are.”
It’s bringing a new dialogue within companies. And that, Smith said, is what could make this law so powerful.
Times staff writer Meg Tanaka contributed to this report.
In the ancient days of 2022, when the Supreme Court sledgehammered abortion rights with the Dobbs decision, the (Republican) party line was that the issue had returned to where it belonged: the states.
Fast forward to 2026 and it would now seem that the antiabortion crowd, faced with the aggressive pro-choice response of states such as California and lethargy on the part of the Trump administration to do more toward implementing a national ban, is no longer satisfied with that outcome.
They are now out to stomp on California, and a handful of other reproductive health sanctuaries, to ensure that what happens inside our borders fits their ideology.
“It’s strategic, it’s targeted,” Mini Timmaraju, president and chief executive of Reproductive Freedom for All, told me. “Even if you’re in a ‘blue state,’ you’re not safe.”
The U.S. Supreme Court will decide next week whether to take up the abortion issue again, in a case that could end medication-only procedures as we know them.
That would force women into a less-safe regimen with a lower success rate that would almost certainly lead to more complications — and therefore more controversy. Even in California, which would not be spared by what the court could do, and whose policies are central to the case.
Let’s break it down.
Union members, immigrant rights supporters and anti-Israel demonstrators participate in a May Day rally and march in Washington, D.C., on Friday.
(Robyn Stevens Brody / Sipa USA via Associated Press)
Six other states put early time limits on the procedures, and others passed bans in the second trimester, leaving women in much of the South and the Great Plains with no access to in-person care for hundreds or even thousands of miles.
In many of those places, those bans include making it illegal to receive abortion-inducing medications in the mail from states such as California. But that’s a hard law to enforce unless you go around opening lady-mail.
In recent years, the number of U.S. abortions arranged through telehealth and mailed medication has skyrocketed to more than a quarter of all procedures, though the often illegal nature of this route probably means the number is higher but underreported.
To protect the doctors and providers who are prescribing and sending these medications, California and other states have passed numerous laws to make it easier and safer — from allowing the prescriber to remain anonymous to shield laws that ensure those providers can’t be penalized or extradited to other states for prosecution, though some states are trying.
Earlier this year, Louisiana (a state with a full ban) tried to extradite a California doctor with no luck. Gov. Gavin Newsom gleefully denied that request, promising to “never be complicit with Trump’s war on women.”
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, speaks during the annual March For Life at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 23.
(Graeme Sloan / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Rogue Louisiana
In the Supreme Court case, Louisiana is thinking bigger — and expressing antiabortionists’ frustration with the Trump administration. The state is suing Trump’s Food and Drug Administration because it allows mifepristone, one of two medications used in abortions, to be prescribed via telehealth.
“Patients and these states with bans and extreme restrictions have relied on providers in blue states, abortion access states, to really help provide care,” Timmaraju said. “And this is a way to stop that.”
Antiabortion groups had hoped (and pushed) Trump to simply have the FDA remove its approvals of mifepristone, but Trump ain’t that dumb. Despite all his promises on the campaign trail, the administration would prefer to kick the can instead of the hornet’s nest on this one, especially before the midterms — since most Americans support abortion rights. So the FDA has said it’s “studying” mifepristone, which could take awhile.
Louisiana is claiming it had to spend $90,000 in taxpayer money to help two women who sought medical treatment after medication abortions (though it has not said they received the medication in the mail).
That’s a real harm, it argues, and gives them standing to sue the FDA to stop mifepristone from being prescribed by telehealth at all, claiming the FDA hasn’t done its due diligence to ensure that’s safe and it makes them really sad that they can’t stop women from ordering it.
The FDA has remained “completely silent on this point because the Trump administration doesn’t want to get involved,” said Mary Ziegler, a UC Davis law professor and expert on reproductive law.
“It’s totally one of the signs that the antiabortion movement is in an open rebellion, and is using the federal courts to express that because the political branches have been pretty non-responsive,” she said.
The Contemplation of Justice statue is seen outside the U.S. Supreme Court building on Monday in Washington.
(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)
The Supreme Court lifted a stay Monday imposed by the 5th Circuit that stopped mifepristone from being tele-prescribed. So it’s available until at least May 11.
After that, who knows. It’s up to a court that has proven it’s no friend to reproductive rights.
It’s an issue with real consequence for Trump. If the court takes the case, the midterms must contend with abortion. If they don’t, the pressure on Trump to do so sometime intensifies. But its also an issue with real consequence for Californians.
Consequences in California
In California, there are 22 counties without an abortion clinic, Ziegler points out. In the far north of the state, women without access to telehealth abortions would be little better off than those in Louisiana if mifepristone by mail is stopped.
Instead, women would probably be forced to use the second medication, misoprostol, alone. This single-drug regimen has a lower effectiveness rate than the combined drugs, meaning more women will have to seek out secondary care — often in places where even in-person care is hard to come by. That could lead to more real harm, and therefore more high-profile cases of botched abortions to fuel a further ban on misoprostol.
Steve Hilton takes an interview after the California gubernatorial debate at Skirball Cultural Center on Wednesday.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
And then there’s the fact that Newsom won’t be governor for much longer, and it will be up to the next chief executive to protect in-state providers from extradition. The top Republican contender, Steve Hilton, has previously said he would allow Louisiana to grab our California doctor if he were in charge.
Those kinds of threats have a chilling effect, both Ziegler and Timmaraju said. If enough providers are scared of the consequences of providing telehealth — or any — abortions, a ban becomes self-imposed.
WASHINGTON — The first baby boomer on the Supreme Court hit a milestone on Thursday, becoming the second-longest-serving justice in history at a time when his influence has never seemed greater.
Once an outlier on the nation’s highest court, Justice Clarence Thomas has become a towering figure in the conservative legal movement over the last decade as he helped secure landmark rulings on abortion, voting and Second Amendment rights.
The only justice with a longer tenure is liberal William O. Douglas. Thomas would overtake Douglas in 2028 if he remains on the court — and there’s no sign he plans to retire anytime soon.
“I think he’s more energized and excited now than when I first met him,” said John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who served in Republican President George W. Bush’s administration after his time as a Thomas clerk three decades ago.
Thomas was confirmed in 1991 after contentious hearings that included sexual harassment allegations. More recently, his acceptance of luxury trips has raised a storm of ethics questions. He’s nevertheless gone from near-silence at oral arguments to asking the first questions and penning a landmark ruling expanding Second Amendment rights.
Following the appointment of three conservative justices by Republican President Trump, Thomas is now the most senior member of a supermajority that’s also overturned abortion as a constitutional right, ended affirmative action in college admissions and sharply limited the Voting Rights Act.
“The court has radically moved in his direction over the course of his time on the court,” said Stanford University law professor Pamela Karlan. Thomas’ seniority means he can decide who writes an opinion if he’s part of a majority that doesn’t include Chief Justice John Roberts, a factor that can nudge other votes behind closed doors, Karlan said.
Off the bench, Thomas’ sphere of influence also includes his large, close-knit network of former clerks, who have served in the Trump administration and are increasingly filling out the ranks of federal judges.
“That is an important legacy that he will leave,” said Sarah Konsky, director of the Supreme Court and Appellate Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. “Even as justices’ own time on the court winds down, significant influence lives on through their clerks.”
That’s not to say Thomas’ time on the court is up. In a recent speech, Thomas tied the nation’s highest ideals to a conservative vision of limited government — and launched a broadside on progressivism seen by critics as unfair and inappropriate. In the room at the University of Texas, though, it earned a standing ovation.
Thomas, who became the second Black member of the court, now has a tenure that tops 34 years, putting him ahead of Justice Stephen J. Field, who was appointed by Lincoln before the end of the Civil War and served as the only 10th justice until 1897.
For Thomas, 77, it’s a long way from the hearings at which his nomination by Republican President George H.W. Bush was nearly derailed by allegations that he had sexually harassed Anita Hill, a charge he forcefully denied.
Thomas has more recently come under scrutiny for lavish, undisclosed trips from a GOP megadonor and the conservative political activism of his wife, who backed false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. The justice has said he wasn’t required to disclose the trips he took with friends and ignored calls to recuse himself from cases related to the election.
On the court, though, recent years have also brought perhaps the most significant work of his career, especially a 2022 opinion he wrote that found people generally have the right to carry a gun in public. The justice did not respond to a request for comment on his tenure.
His own jurisprudence has changed little over the years, said Scott Gerber, author of “First Principles: The Jurisprudence of Clarence Thomas.” Even as the majority moves his way, he’s continued to write dissents that get noticed.
“He’s incredibly consistent,” Gerber said. Once known for solo dissents, “now he writes majority opinions.”
