POLITICS

The Justice Department sent a last-minute surge of election monitors into Los Angeles Tuesday morning, hours after losing the latest legal tug-of-war over California’s 20,000 contested ballots.

In a pair of decisions late Monday night, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals published and then quickly rescinded a decision that would have allowed the Trump administration to prosecute election workers who processed contested ballots, even after their demands to segregate them were struck down by the Supreme Court.

Then, as dawn broke on Election Day, the Justice Department announced it was sending out “1,000 election monitors and observers” across the U.S. in what it called “the largest monitoring effort in DOJ history.”

Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Detroit were among the dozens of jurisdictions where monitors were sent under the auspices of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — legislation the President Trump has worked tirelessly to gut across both his administrations.

A Justice Department spokesperson said the federal monitors “will be at polling locations,” but that the department is not “giving out precinct details.”

The move was widely seen as an intimidation tactic.

“They’re not doing this to make sure that there are free and fair elections,” said Eric J. Segall, a law professor at Georgia State University and an expert on the Supreme Court. “They’re doing this for nakedly partisan reasons, and the federal government shouldn’t be allowed do that.”

California officials were quick to hit back.

“We’ll have our observers on site keeping an eye on your monitors to ensure the integrity of California’s free, fair, safe, secure, accurate, and reliable elections,” Bonta vowed on social media as the spat escalated early Tuesday morning.

The Justice Department said it would also send monitors to San Diego, Sacramento and Alameda County in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The sudden influx of election monitors and the dramatic about-face in appellate court are the latest wild swings in the Golden State’s protracted midterm brawl with the federal government — a fight that has captured national attention amid growing concerns of election interference by the Trump administration.

“On the eve of Election Day, Defendants insist they must be free to use their prosecutorial powers to do what they could not through their applications for injunctions in this court and the Supreme Court,” 9th Circuit Chief Judge Mary Helen Murguia wrote in her dissent to the initial 2-1 ruling, which appeared just after 8 p.m. Monday night.

“The district court properly attempted to put a stop to Defendants’ efforts to intimidate election workers into abandoning lawful state election procedures through spurious threats of prosecution,” Murguia wrote.

By 11 p.m. the decision had been reversed, with the court setting aside its previous ruling while it reviewed the case with a larger en banc panel.

It was the latest legal blow for the administration in what had been a months long effort to claw back ballots it claims may have been issued to noncitizens, while publicly threatening to prosecute election workers who process them when its efforts were rebuffed in court.

Last week, the Justice Department sent criminal grand jury subpoenas to election workers in Los Angeles seeking reams of data related to efforts to comply with its demands.

Unions and voting rights groups sued in federal court, saying the efforts amounted to “a coordinated campaign to intimidate, threaten, and coerce” civil servants into holding back legitimate ballots.

On Friday, after the 9th Circuit had ruled for California in the ballot claw-back case, U.S. District Court Judge Trina Thompson in San Francisco issued a blistering order blocking the Justice Department from dangling criminal liability over elections workers or demanding voters be stripped from the rolls.

“In the lead-up to the election, high-ranking DOJ and DHS officials have engaged in a campaign to intimidate, threaten, and coerce state and local officials and employees who are engaged in administering the ongoing midterm 2026 election,” Thompson wrote.

“Although Defendants claim that their actions are designed to halt unlawful voting by noncitizens, their actions are likely to have the effect of interfering with election administration and disenfranchising lawful voters,” the judge wrote.

Then, on Monday afternoon, mere minutes after it was asked to consider the question, the Supreme Court returned an unsigned decision in California’s favor, appearing, at least briefly, to foreclose further efforts to stop those ballots being counted.

“This latest decision should put an end to the Administration’s attempt to disrupt California’s elections through emergency court orders,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said in response to the Supreme Court decision Monday.

But it didn’t.

Instead, the late-breaking 9th Circuit decision spurred a flurry of confusion and conjecture just hours before polls were set to open in the country’s most populous state.

In the wake of the court rulings, Segall and others said the Trump administration’s move to deploy election monitors was part of a troubling pattern. The law professor worried the Supreme Court could weaponize what remains of the Voting Rights Act to benefit the president and his party.

“So far they’ve said we’re going to cut the legs off [the Act] so as not to help Democrats, but the next iteration of this will be to use the Voting Rights Act to help the Republican Party,” he said.

WASHINGTON — Americans are heading to the polls Tuesday in a historic set of midterm elections that will determine which party controls the chambers of Congress for the remainder of President Trump’s time in office.

Democrats appear poised to make significant gains, with polling showing the party up between 7 and 11 points on the generic ballot. Republicans are braced for losses but hoping to hang on to Senate control.

The night’s big question is whether a true wave will materialize for Democrats and how sizable it might be — how many U.S. House seats the party can flip, whether it can secure a Senate majority and whether Democrats take control of a majority of governorships.

The first polls close at 3 p.m. PST in parts of Kentucky and Indiana, and more Eastern states follow at 4 p.m. Here’s a rundown of the possible outcomes and what to watch as Tuesday unfolds.

Who could control Congress?

• Blue House, red Senate: Democrats could win a House majority — either substantial or modest — while Republicans retain the Senate.

  Split control of Congress would give House Democrats the ability to launch investigations into the Trump administration and block Republican legislative priorities. Senate Republicans would be able to scuttle legislation coming out of the House and continue approving Cabinet and judicial appointments, including to any openings on the Supreme Court. Legislative gridlock — and possible government shutdowns — would be likely.

• Total Democratic control: A larger “blue wave” could occur, sweeping up House seats for Democrats and tipping key Senate races in their favor to hand Democrats a majority in both chambers. The Senate majority would likely be very narrow and could come down to a single race.

  Democrats would be able to block Senate confirmation of Cabinet and judicial appointments. They would be able to pass legislation, but Trump would hold veto power and the Democrats would be unlikely to secure veto-proof majorities on partisan priorities.

• Wild cards: Most analysts agree there is very little chance that Republicans will keep House control.

  The potential for civic unrest looms over the election. If results in one or more races are contested by a losing party — as Trump and his allies have suggested is possible — the potential exists for prolonged uncertainty or a constitutional crisis.

When will we know the outcome?

The House majority could become clear before the night is over. The Senate majority could require a longer wait, particularly if it comes down to Alaska, which along with Hawaii is the last state to close polls, at 9 p.m. PST.

If the Democrats take the House, their full margin of victory likely won’t be clear Tuesday night. Some key swing races are in states that have slower ballot counts, including California and Pennsylvania.

If a blue wave does not materialize and the race for the House majority narrows, how each party makes out could take longer to ascertain.

Which races will provide early clues?

More than four dozen House races are competitive, including 18 that are considered tossups by election forecaster Cook Political Report. The additional 35 races are considered competitive but leaning towards one party. Whether additional, less competitive seats flip unexpectedly will be one indication of how much of a “wave” election this is.

Seven Senate seats are tossups: Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Ohio and Texas. Three more are potentially competitive: South Carolina, which leans Republican, and Minnesota and New Hampshire, which lean Democratic under Cook’s ratings.

North Carolina and Georgia, originally viewed as competitive seats, are now both seen by forecasters as fairly safe bets for Democrats.

The swing states could largely tip for Republicans or for Democrats, or the majority could come down to just a single race.

Experts say they’re watching a handful of races that could provide early indicators for how the night may go, though predictions are always dicey and outliers are possible. Among the races to keep an eye on:

• Kentucky’s 6th: This Lexington-area U.S. House district has become an unexpected tossup, and with the nation’s earliest poll-closing time, it could be a bellwether. “If Democrats win that district, then it’s a Democratic tsunami,” said Christopher Warshaw, a Georgetown University public policy professor. “Even if it’s close, that would be pretty telling.”
• Iowa’s 2nd: Forecasters have shifted this race to a tossup amid a difficult environment for state Republicans. If Republicans lose this seat — which belonged to Rep. Ashley Hinson, the party’s Senate nominee — it could signal a blue wave on the bigger side.
• New York’s 17th: One of just three districts with a Republican incumbent that went blue in the 2024 presidential election, the outcome of this close race could “tell us a lot,” said Todd Belt, a George Washington University political science professor.
• Texas’ 15th: This district offers a bellwether for Latino voters who moved right in 2024 but, signs indicate, may be shifting back to the left. The 34th and 35th districts in Texas could also be indicative.
• Michigan Senate: If the Democrats lose Michigan, their path to Senate control becomes difficult. A win in Michigan is a best-case scenario for Republicans seeking to retain Senate control. Without Michigan, Democrats would have to flip five out of six swing seats in Alaska, Texas, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas and South Carolina.
• Maine Senate: If Democrat Troy Jackson wins in Maine, that will likely be a good sign for his party’s chances at the Senate majority and their races in Michigan, Ohio and Iowa. Without it, Democrats could still take the majority, but Republicans’ path will become easier.
• Other states: If Democrats pull off wins in purple or red districts in Florida, Virginia and Pennsylvania, those could also signal a blue-leaning night.

Election day is here, which means it’s the final chance to cast your ballot for the midterm election.

Early voting options have allowed more than 5.5 million Californians to cast their ballot ahead of election day, according to Political Data Intelligence, voter data analysis software.

However, with more than 23 million registered voters in the state, there are still nearly 18 million people who potentially could head to the polls, which could translate to long lines at polling places and voting centers.

You can avoid long wait times. Here’s how to do that, plus a few other helpful tips on election day.

How to avoid long lines at the polls

On election day, voting and polling centers are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

The Los Angeles County registrar-recorder/county clerk’s website has a vote center locator online.

By entering your address, the locator will create a list of voting centers that are less than a mile away or as far as 10 miles.

Included with the vote center address is how long the current wait time is at that specific location.

The wait times are color coded as follows:

• Dark green: 15 minutes or less
• Light green: 16 to 30 minutes
• Yellow: 31 to 45 minutes
• Orange: 46 to 60 minutes
• Red: More than 1 hour
• Blue: Wait time unavailable

I’m at a vote center but left my ballot at home

You can request a provisional ballot at any polling place in the county in which you are registered to vote.

A provisional ballot is a regular ballot that is placed in a special envelope prior to being put in the ballot box.

It’s counted once election officials verify that you are a registered voter in that county and haven’t already voted in the election.

How to participate in ‘curbside voting’ for registered voters with disabilities

All polling places and voting centers are required to be accessible to voters with disabilities and will have accessible voting machines.

Any voter who cannot reach the voting area at the center because of architectural barriers or physical limitations may request to vote curbside — whether the voter is physically on the curb or in their car.

There is a sign posted outside of every vote center with a phone number to call an election worker who will bring a ballot to the voter, according to the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder/county clerk.

I forgot my check-in code for in-person voting

Los Angeles County election officials say you can check in at a voting center by scanning your “quick check-in code” — a number that verifies your voter registration.

Your unique code can be found on your mailed sample ballot and vote center postcard. Take either of those hard copies to the vote center.

If you forgot the hard copies, you can find the code online. You retrieve it by verifying your voter registration here. You’ll need to input your last name, birth date, the house number of your residential address and your ZIP Code.

For assistance call, (800) 815-2666, Option 2.

How late is too late to vote at the polls on election night?

In California, any voter who is in line at 8 p.m. when the polls are scheduled to close is allowed to vote, according to the secretary of state.

If there is a line when the polls close, a poll worker stands at the back of the line to let people who arrive after 8 p.m. know that the polls have closed.

Any voter who arrives after the polls have closed may not be allowed to vote, even if voters who were in line to vote before the polls closed are in the process of voting.

More election news

As a criminal investigation into Southern California Edison’s actions before last year’s deadly Eaton fire continues, the state’s for-profit utilities are lobbying for legislation that would protect their shareholders from paying for future catastrophic fires they cause.

According to slides recently presented by a Pacific Gas & Electric executive to a group of state senators, the utilities are asking for a permanent cap to limit their corporate liability for a fire where they are found to have acted negligently or imprudently. The slides were reviewed by The Times.

“If ratepayers are forced to pay the lion share for fires utilities cause, there is no imperative for the for-profit utilities to take safety and fire mitigation seriously,” said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog.

The utilities say their shareholders must be shielded from wildfire costs because the risk of future fires has damaged their credit ratings. Lower credit ratings mean the companies must pay higher interest rates on borrowing, an increased cost that gets passed on to electricity customers.

“It is in our customers’ interest to have action in 2026,” Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, told Wall Street analysts last week when asked about the utilities’ push in Sacramento for a liability cap.

Caroline Choi, Edison’s executive vice president of public policy and corporate affairs, told The Times that the proposal would not change the utilities’ focus on preventing fires. “Safety is our number one priority,” she said.

Executives at Edison and PG&E also recently told their investors that without the liability protection they may cut what they are spending on capital improvements, including to connect new housing developments and green energy projects.

PG&E recently sent letters to thousands of its customers, saying their projects could be delayed next year as it defers $2 billion in spending.

Those comments and PG&E’s letter have angered consumer advocates, wildfire survivors and some lawmakers.

On Sunday, state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes Altadena, sent a letter to the California Public Utilities Commission, pointing out that both companies continue to pay millions of dollars in dividends to their shareholders, while complaining that the wildfire risk had financially weakened them.

“Their decisions to delay or reduce investments in critical projects are particularly troubling given the billions of dollars in profits reported by their parent companies in recent years,” Perez wrote. “The Legislature must not be pressured to roll back utilities’ financial accountability for wildfires through threats to withhold the investments needed to serve our communities.”

The state’s three biggest for-profit utilities, which also include San Diego Gas & Electric, have been lobbying for protection from wildfire costs since early 2025. That’s when videos emerged showing two bright flashes coming from Edison’s transmission lines, just before the Eaton fire ignited.

A government investigation released in August concluded that the devastating fire ignited when an out-of-service transmission line that Edison had not used since 1971 was briefly reenergized in the high winds, causing sparks that landed in dried brush below.

The fire killed 19 people and destroyed a wide swath of Altadena, leaving thousands of families homeless.

Last week, Pizarro told investors that executives believed the utility acted prudently before the fire. If the utilities commission agrees that the company acted prudently, Edison’s liabilities for the fire would be fully covered by a $21-billion state wildfire fund.

If the commission instead determines that Edison acted imprudently — a California regulatory standard that is similar to negligence — the company’s shareholders would still pay no more than $4.3 billion for the Eaton fire under a 2019 law known as Assembly Bill 1054.

The law was passed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers to protect utilities from bankruptcy if their power lines spark a catastrophic fire. Since then, utility equipment has continued to spark major wildfires, even though the companies have charged customers tens of billions of dollars to prevent them.

The slides presented to state senators propose that the cap on damages — when a utility is found to have acted imprudently — be made permanent. Under current law, the cap will end when the state wildfire fund, as well as an additional $18-billion reserve created last year, are depleted, leaving shareholders exposed to greater costs of future fires.

The proposed limit on shareholder liability would be equal to 20% of each utility’s transmission and distribution equity rate base, which differs based on the size of the grid maintained by each company. This number for Edison is now $4.3 billion. For PG&E, it is $5.1 billion, according to the slides, while it is $1.5 billion for SDG&E.

The companies’ customers would have to shoulder the rest of a fire’s costs, which would be added to monthly electricity bills.

Mark Toney, executive director of the Utilities Reform Network, called the idea of permanently capping shareholders’ liabilities for fires “completely unacceptable.”

“There needs to be a cap on ratepayers’ liability,” he said.

Earlier this year, the utilities’ stock prices began to rise as executives told investors that Newsom was working on legislation to reduce the companies’ financial risks from fires.

But wildfire survivors were angered when details emerged that Newsom’s proposal would limit payments to victims for pain and suffering and cap attorney fees. Another proposed measure would have increased property insurance premiums across the state by reducing the amounts that insurers could collect after a utility-caused fire.

The utilities’ stock prices then fell when legislators agreed to a much smaller legislative package that did not have the protections the companies wanted. That bill died after the Assembly declined to vote on it.

The utilities are now asking Newsom to call a special session in which lawmakers would debate how to reduce the utilities’ fire risks, including the possible limit on what shareholders would pay.

“A predictable limitation would enable utilities to maintain investment grade credit ratings to better access capital at lower borrowing costs for customers,” Lynsey Paulo, a PG&E spokesperson, said in an e-mail.

In February, Edison disclosed that the Los Angeles County district attorney was investigating whether Edison should be criminally charged for its actions leading to the Eaton fire. And last month, an investment firm published a report claiming that there was evidence that Edison “acted with conscious and willful disregard for the rights and safety of others,” which would make its shareholders liable for all Eaton fire costs. The costs have been estimated to be tens of billions of dollars.

Pizarro told investors last week that he believed there was no evidence that Edison acted criminally before the fire. And he similarly dismissed the investment firm’s report.

“Just to be very crystal clear on this, not only do we not see any basis for felony liability, we certainly don’t see any basis for allegations of conscious or willful disregard,” Pizarro said on the conference call. “I think I said this to all of you before — that is not something I lose sleep over.”

Nearly two-thirds of California voters are worried that the Trump administration may try to halt the vote count early, stoking disquieting levels of election anxiety on the eve of the midterms, a new poll shows.

Those fears arise as the Justice Department continues its aggressive efforts to challenge or wrest control over state voting processes, including threatening to prosecute uncooperative elections officials in California, after years of baseless claims of widespread election fraud by the Republican president.

Among California voters, 63% worry that the federal government may attempt to stop the counting of votes in California and other states in the days following Tuesday’s election, according to the poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by The Times. Around half of voters — 49% — are not confident that the state’s election will be free of federal interference, the survey found.

“Both of the items, together, I think should raise alarms for threats against democracy in California,” said Matt Barreto, director of the UCLA Voting Rights Project.

California voters also have grievances with the state’s ballot propositions, a slate of 14 measures that include new taxes on billionaires and funding for cancer research. More than 8 in 10 of the state’s likely voters said that this year’s propositions were worded in a way that made them hard to understand and that special interests groups have too much influence over which propositions appear on the ballot.

Those concerns were shared across partisan lines, unlike how Californians felt about the threats posed to integrity of elections by the Trump administration. The high level of fear in the state reflects the fact that registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by nearly 2 to 1 in California.

While 58% of Democrats are not confident the election will be free of federal interference, 27% of Republicans feel the same way, according to the poll. Similarly, 85% of Democrats are worried about the vote count being halted, compared with 22% of Republicans. A majority of California voters not affiliated with either party also expressed fears of interference by the Trump administration.

“I think voters are reflecting the reality,” Barreto said. “For the past month, the president and the Department of Justice have been attempting to directly interfere and take over California elections and voters are aware of that.”

The Department of Justice has sued California requesting the state set aside some 20,000 ballots the federal government has flagged as being potentially from noncitizens. Federal prosecutors have threatened criminal actions against election officials who refuse to comply. On Monday, the Trump administration escalated its effort to discount the flagged California ballots to the Supreme Court, which rejected its request to set aside the ballots.

Over the weekend, Newsom sent a letter to U.S. District Court judges across California sharing his “grave concerns federal agents will seek search warrants to seize ballots and ballot materials before the election results are certified” and urging judges not to comply.

Newsom wrote that President Trump’s history of weaponizing the Department of Justice to carry out his partisan agenda supports “legitimate concerns about further attempts to disenfranchise voters and undermine election integrity.” Newsom said this could include an attempt to prevent the certification of California’s election.

Concerns have also been raised about the presence of immigration agents around voting centers and performing door knocks and street stops to try to identify voter fraud.

Court rulings have recently dealt a series of blows to the Trump administrations efforts to intervene in the state’s voting process. Nonetheless, distress over election integrity remains extremely high, according to the poll.

Fears of federal meddling in the election are slightly higher among voters of color; 64% of Black voters and 54% of Latino voters said they are not confident the election will be free of interference, compared with 44% of white non-Hispanic voters, according to the poll.

Voters of color tend to lean more liberal, but the historic and ongoing efforts to disenfranchise minorities probably also contribute to this disparity, Barreto said.

Black voters have been a target of voter suppression efforts from the post-Civil War Reconstruction era through the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, he said. More recently, the Trump administration has singled out Latino Californians, accusing them of being noncitizens and voting illegally.

Professor Eric Schickler, co-director of the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, described the level of alarm over election integrity in California and across the nation as without precedent.

He noted that both parties are distrustful about different things, with Republicans focused on allegations of fraudulent voting and Democrats fearful that the federal government may attempt to overturn results.

The last time America saw extreme political polarization paired with widespread claims of illegitimacy over election outcomes was during the Reconstruction era in the late 19th century, when there were widespread accusations of voter suppression in the South and of people voting illegally in the North, he said.

“That hasn’t happened really in the United States for well over a century now,” Schickler said, “so what we’re seeing now is really unusual, especially for a modern and long-lived democracy.”

Schickler said his highest level of concern with possible federal efforts to halt California’s vote count would be with congressional races. A handful of California races could play a pivotal role in deciding which party takes control of the U.S. House of Representatives. However, he said current polling data do not indicate that a Democratic path to victory in the lower house will rely on Golden State voters.

Trump in the past has criticized California for being one of the slowest states in the nation to finish tabulating its election results due to its large population and high number of voters who mail in their ballots. He’s also complained about late arriving ballots. Votes processed after election day in California typically contain a higher proportion of Democratic ballots than those processed on election night.

In addition, to highlight the unprecedented anxiety many California voters are feeling, the poll also shines a light on frustrations voters have with the state’s ballot propositions. Among likely voters, 82% agree that the wording of this year’s propositions made them hard to understand and 82% also agree that special interest groups have largely taken over which initiatives qualify.

In addition, 62% of likely voters feel that there are too many propositions on this year’s ballot. There are 14 statewide propositions, with many voters also seeing additional initiatives at a county and city level.

“The initiative is meant to be an outlet for voters when special interest groups lead legislators to fail to respond to their concerns,” Schickler said. “But now most voters believe the initiative process is itself too beholden to special interests.”

In the last 20 years, California’s ballot initiative campaigns have become increasingly controlled by large corporations or union groups. Part of this is due to the fact that it takes at least $50 million to run an effective campaign capable of reaching the state’s 23 million registered voters, making it challenging, but not impossible, to run a grassroots campaign, Barreto said.

The poll surveyed 2,787 registered voters in California from Oct. 19 to 25 in English and Spanish and has an overall estimated margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. Among likely voters, the estimated margin of error is about 3 percentage points in either direction.

Times staff writer Kevin Rector contributed to this report.

Homeless encampments line the streets. Buying a home — or even finding an affordable place to rent — is increasingly out of reach. Roads are riddled with potholes, tens of thousands of streetlights are out, and water and power bills are surging.

For many Angelenos, morale is poor and quality of life in the city is slipping.

This is the challenge for whoever becomes Los Angeles mayor — and it is one that has left some longtime political experts wondering how much one person can control in this vast city of 3.8 million.

“The expectations, given the powers that the mayor actually has, are probably too high,” said Tom Hogen-Esch, a professor of political science at Cal State Northridge. “You have all of these wicked problems that are difficult to solve in a perfect scenario, and [even more] in a governmental system as tangled and confused as L.A.”

The next mayor will have to deal with enduring problems of deteriorating infrastructure, police reform and budget woes. But there is also the unprecedented task of rebuilding Pacific Palisades after catastrophic firestorms and trying to help the city’s ailing film industry — all while preparing the city for the global spotlight of hosting the 2028 Olympics.

A recent UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll of likely L.A. voters, co-sponsored by The Times. found that the top priority for the next mayor to address was reducing the number of homeless encampments, followed by ensuring public safety and building more affordable housing. Protecting immigrant communities was the next most cited concern, followed by balancing the city budget.

After studying L.A. politics for more than three decades, Hogen-Esch said the city feels stuck.

“We’re talking about the same issues over and over and over … and a general underlying frustration with city government,” he said. “It’s almost like you could wake up 30 years later in a Rip Van Winkle dream, and you’re in the same spot.“

Homelessness

When Karen Bass launched her 2021 mayoral campaign, she proclaimed homelessness was her “overwhelming top priority.”

After nearly four years of her leadership, homelessness has gone up. This year, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority announced that more than 45,194 people in the city were homeless — up from 41,980 homeless people in 2022 — an increase the agency attributed to external funding cuts and rising economic pressures.

After spending more than $391 million on Inside Safe, Bass’ flagship program to clean up homeless encampments and house homeless people, the city moved about 6,500 people into interim housing. But about 42% of the program’s participants have returned to homelessness.

Bass insists Inside Safe has made progress, clearing 140 encampments across the city. But the difference is not visible to many residents as more encampments continue to block city sidewalks.

Over the last four years, L.A. budgeted about $4 billion to address the homeless crisis — about $100,000 for every homeless person in the city, according to Lee Ohanian, a professor of economics at UCLA.

But the city has not spent all that money. L.A. underspent its homelessness budget by at least $473 million in the 2025-26 fiscal year, L.A. City Controller Kenneth Mejia said, because of its decentralized approach to homelessness, budget structure, staffing shortages and long approval delays for affordable housing.

Part of the challenge in addressing homelessness is that L.A. adopts a fragmented approach, sharing responsibility with the county and spreading programs among different nonprofits, said Fernando Guerra, founding director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University. Unlike in New York, the L.A. mayor does not oversee the health department, mental health and drug recovery programs, and jails.

“The challenge for the mayor has always been that she or he is only given basically half of the arsenal to fight homelessness,” Guerra said.

Poor oversight is also a problem. Federal prosecutors have charged multiple nonprofit leaders with defrauding taxpayer funds meant to support the homeless. Last month, a nonprofit chief executive pleaded guilty to wire fraud and embezzling $23 million in homeless funds to pay for a $7-million Westwood home and vacation property in Greece.

But perhaps the biggest challenge is the staggering cost of building housing for homeless people in L.A.. Because of complex government financing, prevailing wage requirements, environmental rules, and the integration of medical and social services, a single unit in L.A. can cost as much as $600,000.

Housing affordability

Nearly 6 out of 10 renters in L.A. are cost-burdened, and polls show a majority of L.A. voters have considered leaving the city because housing is so expensive.

Bass has taken steps to accelerate the building of affordable housing. Her signature program, Executive Directive One, succeeded in cutting the time it takes to review 100% affordable projects and led to a flurry of development proposals. But after tenant advocates warned that rent-controlled apartments would be demolished and homeowners complained that density threatened historic neighborhoods, Bass restricted the locations eligible for the program.

Nearly four years after Bass took office, developers are not exactly seeing a building boom. Last month, the mayor’s office said more than 47,000 units of affordable housing are in the pipeline, but only 7,728 are under construction.

As with homelessness, the mayor has limited power to improve affordability.

A big test for the new mayor will be the state’s push to pass laws that spur more housing, such as state Senate Bill 79, designed to accelerate development around transportation hubs. With new buildings likely to face opposition in many parts of the city, Bass has opposed SB 79, arguing that it will erode local control.

Whoever the next mayor is, they will have to balance the need to build significantly more housing with homeowner opposition to new development, said Christian Grose, a professor of political science and public policy at USC.

“Voters probably are somewhere in the middle,” Grose said, “and there doesn’t seem to be a policy agenda that reaches those voters.”

Ailing infrastructure

When Chief Deputy City Controller Rick Cole retired from City Hall last year, he complained that “mind-numbing bureaucracy” had made the city ungovernable. Los Angeles was paying for city leaders’ decision long ago to organize the city to disperse authority, he said, citing deteriorating city infrastructure as a key example.

“Beneath the broken sidewalks,” Cole said, “is a broken system.”

More than 5,000 requests for sidewalk repairs are pending. Tens of thousands of streetlights are out. Last year, the city stopped repaving streets for eight months as officials struggled with staffing shortages to meet federal requirements to construct curb ramps for wheelchairs and new city rules that mandate bike, bus and pedestrian enhancements.

“The city can’t seem to manage the basics,” Bass’ challenger, City Councilwoman Nithya Raman, said when she announced her campaign in February.

Guerra said it was astounding that such a large city government — with a $14.8-billion budget and more than 5,500 public works employees — was so behind on fixing streetlights and resurfacing roads.

“How could that be?” Guerra said. “You cannot tell us that you need more people and more money to do this. What is happening?”

To speed up infrastructure repairs, some public officials are urging voters to pass Measure LA, which would require the city to develop a long-term capital infrastructure plan and distribute more power to the director of public works. Supporters say the measure would cut systemic bureaucracy and fragmentation. Critics, however, say it would lead to one person holding too much authority.

Balancing an unstable city budget

Last year, the City Council and mayor declared a fiscal state of emergency as they faced a $1-billion deficit due to revenue shortfalls as well as increased liabilities from the Palisades fire. Rating agencies, including S&P and Kroll, downgraded the city to a “negative” outlook.

Mejia cited ongoing revenue shortfalls, liability payouts and departmental overspending as the key reasons for the ballooning budget, which has grown by about 25% over the last four years.

The Bass administration has increased pay and benefits to thousands of city employees and police officers. It has also had to hand out record liability settlement payments due to LAPD excessive force claims and dangerous street and transport conditions.

Raman, a democratic socialist, has frequently voted against high city spending, opposing pay raises negotiated by Bass for Los Angeles Police Department officers and the $2.6-billion expansion of the Los Angeles Convention Center.

“She’s the one that says, ‘We cannot afford that. How are you going to pay for that?’ ” Guerra said of Raman. “It’s very, very strange that the socialist is the fiscal hawk.”

Police reform

Violent crime in L.A. has plummeted. Last month, Bass announced a 47% drop in homicides since she took office, and she has also touted a decline in property crime such as burglaries.

But police reform and police pay remain issues. While Raman has reversed her past stance on defunding the police, she has stated she would replace LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell, who she says has “lost the confidence” of Angelenos on the issue of immigration. The city, she says, needs a police chief who ensures officers do not cooperate with federal immigration officers. She has vowed to conduct an audit of the department to determine whehter there are gaps between Los Angeles’ “sanctuary city” policies and police practices.

Bass has publicly backed McDonnell, supporting his efforts to stem officer attrition and rebuild the department’s ranks. The department would be significantly disrupted, she has argued, if the chief is removed before the 2028 Olympic Games.

City Hall credibility

The new mayor will also face a challenge that is harder to qualify: making residents believe City Hall can fix Los Angeles’ many problems.

“I think we’re beyond pessimism in some places,” Hogen-Esch said, noting that for the first time in a quarter of a century he has spotted no mayoral campaign signs in his El Sereno neighborhood.

When it comes to homelessness, Angelenos would be happy to spend money if it actually solved the problem, said Jim Newton, a veteran journalist and editor of UCLA Blueprint magazine. Most want encampments gone for good, and not by locking people up or punishing them for being poor, but by genuinely helping them to be better.

“Is that possible?” he said. “I don’t know.”

Others say it will take new ideas and big swings that can be challenging in a city where the mayor has only limited powers.

“When they first took power, they were incredibly innovative and incredibly creative,” Guerra said. “Now they not only lack creativity and innovation in Los Angeles, but compared to other city governments, they’re laggard in implementing new ideas.”

For all their dominance, California Democrats will emerge from Tuesday’s election facing considerable challenges.

As polls show nearly 6 out of 10 Californians believe the state is going in the wrong direction and even more anticipate bad financial times ahead, the state’s new governor and legislators will have to confront some chronic problems, including a severe budget deficit, housing unaffordability, homelessness, and rising energy and insurance costs.

They will also have to grapple with difficult decisions on whether the state can provide Medi-Cal healthcare to low-income residents, how to make the state more resilient to climate change, and who pays for wildfire damage.

“There’s not going to be a long honeymoon period,” said Mark Baldassare, the survey director at the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.

Californians are in a “pretty grumpy mood,” Baldassare said. Although their dissatisfaction is mostly hyperpartisan, with Democrats pointing the finger at President Trump and Congress as Republicans blame Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sacramento legislators, he said, a majority of Californians are worried about the state of the economy and want to see better government performance.

A construction worker on a new home under construction at the Taylor Morrison Avalon at Cypress.

(Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Affordability and housing

For voters, a key concern is unaffordability. More than half of Californians rank cost of living, inflation and the economy — along with housing cost and availability — as the most important issues facing California today.

The state has long suffered from a housing shortage, driven largely by local zoning restrictions, high construction costs and lengthy permitting bureaucracy. Newsom made housing a centerpiece of his 2018 gubernatorial campaign, initially pledging to build 3.5 million homes by 2025. He has largely fallen short of that goal.

Since Newsom took office in 2019, about 692,000 homes have been built across the state.

“I don’t know if anyone sees a new direction to go,” said Thad Kousser, a professor of political science at UC San Diego. California Democrats have passed a slew of laws designed to solve the housing crisis and spur home building, he said, but although they have helped at the margins, prices keep creeping up.

The median price of a California home has risen from about $570,000 in 2018 to $900,000 in 2026.

Even if California’s housing woes are partly a product of its successful economy, Kousser said, “that’s no solace for anyone trying to make the rent or have a place to live, so these will remain defining problems for the next governor.”

Before the governor can do anything, voters will decide whether to pass a series of consequential propositions on housing and taxes.

Proposition 1 would allow the state to borrow $11.25 billion for low-income and veteran housing, and Proposition 37 would allow the state to amass a $25-billion down payment assistance program for middle-class households. Proposition 45 would enable the state to overhaul the California Environmental Quality Act to speed up reviews for housing, roads and water projects — a proposal that leaves many torn between protecting the environment and wanting more affordable housing.

“There are going to be a series of difficult choices that Californians will have to make,” Baldassare said.

Budget woes

One of the governor’s first challenges out of the gate will be submitting a state budget in January to legislators.

This fiscal year, California has an estimated $18.5-billion operating deficit, according to the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office. By the end of the year, the office predicts the state’s “wall of debt” to balloon to about $29 billion — even as the state’s economy and revenue have grown.

Lee Ohanian, a professor of economics at UCLA, said the major issue California faces is that the state budget has expanded about 75% in the last eight years. This translates to a 40% increase when adjusted for inflation.

California’s budget growth is particularly alarming, Ohanian said, considering politicians have had limited success in addressing major challenges such as homelessness and had delayed maintenance of public road and water infrastructure.

“It would have been one thing if that 75% increase had fixed all those issues,” Ohanian said. “But the next governor and state Legislature are going to be faced with some of the same exigencies that we’ve had for a very long time and they may struggle to pay for those repairs and that deferred maintenance. The question is: Where is the money going to come from?”

In many cases, Ohanian said, California’s ballooning budget has not resulted in higher quality of public services. The state’s school budget per classroom is over $500,000 a year, he noted, well above the national average. But only about 38% of California students met or exceeded state standards in mathematics.

“The Democratic Party just needs to at some point have a come to-Jesus moment,” Ohanian said. “With the amount of money we’re spending, we can do better.”

Leisure Picon, 35, with her 3-year-old daughter, Ivanka Mendoza, for a doctor’s appointment in Lynwood

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

Healthcare for the masses?

After pledging in 2018 to bring universal healthcare to California, Newsom set about expanding the state’s Medi-Cal program that began under his predecessor, Gov. Jerry Brown.

In 2024, California expanded Medi-Cal to cover all income-eligible adults, regardless of immigration status.

Spending on Medi-Cal now accounts for 40% of the state’s total spending and is expected to reach $219 billion this fiscal year — more than double what it was a decade ago. But as the state faces massive cuts in federal Medicaid funding, rising healthcare costs and budget shortfalls, it has begun to roll back that commitment.

Last year, Newsom and state legislators agreed to freeze new enrollment for Medi-Cal benefits for adult immigrants without legal status. Next year, many adults under 60 enrolled in the program will also face a $30 monthly premium.

Democrat Xavier Becerra, who polls predict will beat Republican Steve Hilton by a wide margin, has promised to protect Californians’ health by “cracking down on fraud” and “cutting waste.” Becerra has significant healthcare experience after serving as secretary of Health and Human Services under President Biden, but he has yet to provide specific policy details.

More or less taxes? And who pays?

As Californians become more concerned about affordability, Baldassare said, they are becoming increasingly fiscally conservative. Polls now show a majority of Californians now say that they’d rather pay lower taxes and have fewer services.

But at the same time, about 6 in 10 likely voters also say the wealthiest Californians should pay more taxes.

“There’s a more liberal orientation, but that doesn’t translate into people saying ‘I want to pay higher taxes and have more services,’” Baldassare said. “It just is ‘I want to have more services. I want to be sure that we’re going to have healthcare’… but looking to others to take that fiscal responsibility.”

The midterms offered Californians a chance to weigh in on who should pay. The measure that grabbed the most headlines was Proposition 40, the so-called billionaire tax that would authorize the state to impose a new one-time tax on residents with assets over $1 billion.

But Californians also got to vote on a string of other tax measures that could affect the state’s budget. Propositions 41 and 42 would constrain state government’s ability to raise potential taxes on assets in the future, and Proposition 43 would make it more difficult for special taxes to be increased by local governments.

Proposition 3 would make permanent a temporary tax increase enacted in 2012 on individuals who earn at least $371,000 a year to fund schools and healthcare. Kousser described the original 2012 tax increase as a game-changer that allowed the state to redistribute wealth from rich to poor regions.

“If that political deal falls apart,” he said, “the state will face much more strain.”

Embers blow down a street as the Palisades fire ravages a neighborhood amid high winds in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood.

(Ethan Swope / Associated Press)

Who pays for wildfires?

As California contends with ever more catastrophic wildfires, Democratic politicians have so far failed to agree on who should be financially liable when a fire is sparked by electrical equipment: Wildfire victims? Insurers? Utility company investors? Ratepayers?

Earlier this year, Newsom pushed a controversial plan to limit utility companies’ liability, arguing that holding them fully financially responsible would raise the state’s already high power bills and thwart utilities’ ability to modernize and meet state clean-energy mandates.

But Newsom’s deal would have shifted more of the cost to property insurers, risking the prospect of rising insurance premiums. After wildfire victims dubbed the plan a corporate bailout, Newsom abandoned most of it and tried to push a compromise that would help fire victims receive quicker compensation. That deal also fell through, however, when the Assembly declined to vote on it

Political experts agree it will be a tricky issue to resolve.

The utility companies are not popular, said Rob Stutzman, a GOP strategist. Yet to shore up utilities’ risk profile and prevent upward pressure on utility rates, he said, the state will probably have to grant some liability caps.

“We’re going to pay for it through utility rates, or insurance rates, or subsidies from the government,” Stutzman said. “Those are basically the three options — and none of those are going to be that pleasant for the governor or for the Legislature.”

Artificial intelligence

With momentum building for regulating AI, California is in a unique position as the hub of the technology boom.

Politicians in Sacramento face intense lobbying from major tech companies and venture capitalists as they seek to limit AI’s potential for disruption and misinformation without stifling an industry that’s fueling the state’s economic growth — and has provided a critical stream of tax revenue to the state.

But some political experts say the issue may not prove as thorny for California as issues like housing or wildfires.

Most voters oppose data centers in their areas and support AI safeguards. Even some AI pioneers are calling out for more regulation. In recent weeks, Anthropic and OpenAI have written open letters to Newsom urging stronger safety requirements.

“That creates an unparalleled political opportunity for a governor and the state to lead the nation in addressing the issues,” Kousser said.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday called for a significant expansion of the state’s film and TV tax incentives in the face of mounting evidence that producers are fleeing California in search of cheaper locales.

Newsom said in a statement Monday that he favors expanding California’s current Film and Television Tax Credit Program from $750 million to at least $1 billion annually.

Notably, Newsom’s proposal would include credits for actors and other above-the-line talent and extend the tax credit through 2040, according to the statement. That would make California’s program more competitive with those of other states such as Georgia and New York that allow tax credits to offset the cost of actors’ salaries.

If approved by the state Legislature, the credit would be the country’s largest capped film and TV tax credit, Newsom’s office said.

“We’re the capital of entertainment and we’re going to keep it here,” Newsom said in the statement. “Through this expansion, we will maintain the momentum and success of our historic expansion last year.”

Newsom’s announcement comes as the outgoing California governor and possible presidential candidate is looking to burnish his image as a champion of Hollywood as the state is increasingly losing production to other hubs in the U.S. and abroad, where tax incentives are higher and production costs lower.

The proposal puts pressure on fellow Democrat Xavier Becerra, who is widely expected to be California’s next governor, to take up the mantle of helping Hollywood at a time when the state faces rising financial pressures.

Newsom expanded the program last year, when the annual credit was raised from $330 million to $750 million through 2030. Since then, the credit has generated more than $8 billion in direct production spending and over 43,000 jobs, according to the governor’s office.

Newsom also recently signed California’s first stand-alone postproduction credit to bring back jobs for the industry’s editors, sound mixers, composers and visual effects artists.

With a budget of $10 million, the program will allow a 35% to 50% credit on qualified expenses related specifically to postproduction work done in California, even for productions that don’t shoot in the state.

Despite the expanded incentives, local film and TV production in the Los Angeles area continues on a downward trend.

On-location shoot days in the Los Angeles area fell nearly 5% between July and September from the same period a year earlier, and were 29% below the five-year average, according to FilmLA, the nonprofit group that handles film permits for city and county.

Newsom said the expanded credits would address some of California’s limitations.

For example, the new incentives would allow companies that commit to shooting two different productions in California to get a 5% boost in credits. Independent productions would be eligible for $100 million in annual funding, up from $26 million.

Steve Kang, president and chief film liaison for the city’s Board of Public Works, welcomed the proposed enhancements.

“This is a huge win because the current expanded program is helpful, but there were a lot of exceptions and caveats, which limited its full potential,” Kang said.

Others welcomed Newsom’s proposal as “a good start,” but said more was needed to keep the industry in Southern California.

Many productions that shoot locally still face logistical and operational problems with permitting and specific shoot requirements, said Cale Thomas, policy legislative director for Stay in L.A., a grassroots coalition.

“We just need to make it cheaper and easier to shoot here,” Thomas said. “A multifaceted problem takes multifaceted solutions.”

Scott Budnick, a producer of the successful “The Hangover” franchise who lobbied for the state’s enhanced film tax credits last year, also praised Newsom’s proposal, but said the state needs to remove a cap on funding that has created significant hurdles for filmmakers.

“I feel very strongly that the biggest problem with the current credit is because we have a cap,” Budnick said. “It makes every piece of the credit 10 times harder.”

The effort in California comes after congressional leaders introduced the Motion Picture, Television and Entertainment Revitalization Act in September. The bill would establish a 20% federal tax credit on U.S. labor for eligible film and TV productions, including postproduction and visual effects work.

If the federal incentive passes, the hope is for U.S. productions to stack incentives and make the U.S. more attractive for major studio shoots. The federal incentive, however, also is likely to raise the competitive stakes for California as other states compete for Hollywood’s business.

“This is about protecting the future of an industry that has helped define California for generations,” Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur (D-Los Angeles) said in response to Newsom’s proposal. It would ensure “the next generation of creative workers and small business owners can raise their families right here at home,” he said.

Newsom has faced tense relations with Hollywood. Many in the industry remain angry with Newsom over his role in the Paramount acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. Newsom was instrumental in behind-the-scenes lobbying to get state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to abandon the court fight challenging Paramount-Skydance’s takeover of the legacy studio, which is expected to lead to widespread layoffs.

Newsom’s support for the deal came after Paramount threatened to move operations to Tennessee or Texas, placing more pressure on Bonta to come to an agreement and blunt efforts to lose California’s signature industry.

Top officials in California are bracing for unprecedented election interference from the Trump administration in coming days, including potential ballot seizures.

They are warning the public about such actions in striking messages casting President Trump and U.S. Department of Justice officials as threats to the vote and to American democracy. They have begged federal judges to reject warrant requests and hold the line against lawless probes. They have deployed armies of election lawyers and volunteer monitors, particularly to areas where congressional races could be close.

“California is dead serious about the security of [Tuesday’s] midterm elections. If Trump tries to meddle with California’s ballots, you can be sure as hell that we’ll prosecute those who help him,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday. “Californians deserve a free and fair election, and that is exactly what we’ll deliver.”

Those efforts, echoing others from Democrats in Congress and liberal officials in other political battlegrounds, are like nothing seen before in the U.S., and in response to an equally extraordinary campaign by the Trump administration to intervene in state-run elections based on claims — espoused by Trump for years — that voting in places such as California has been corrupted by widespread fraud.

On Monday, Justice Department officials redoubled their effort to block about 20,000 California ballots from voters who they allege may be noncitizens by appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, after lower courts rejected the request — and as another judge in a separate challenge barred them Monday from demanding California officials segregate the same ballots. The Supreme Court denied the request.

They and local partners also rolled out criminal charges against seven noncitizens accused of illegally voting or registering — bringing the total number of lawful permanent residents recently charged with election-related offenses in the state to 35.

Beyond California, the Trump administration is trying to preemptively negate any win by the Democrat in the Alaska Senate race, based on claims that the presence on ballots of a third candidate with the same name as incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) is confusing voters.

The incumbent senator is identified as such on the ballot, and Alaska courts have already rejected similar challenges. A federal judge dismissed the administration’s suit Sunday.

The White House and the Justice Department have said they are simply trying to ensure American citizens’ votes aren’t diluted by illegitimate votes from noncitizens, and that Democrats aren’t able to steal the Alaska race by intentionally confusing voters.

But Democratic leaders have alleged that the lawsuits are part of a broader Trump administration effort to establish a “pretext” to challenge the outcome of Tuesday’s midterm elections if they don’t like the results.

On Saturday, Newsom wrote to federal district court judges across the state, urging them to deny any Trump administration requests for judicial warrants that would allow them “to seize ballots, election records, or certified voting technology while an election is underway and before the results are certified.”

Newsom wrote that he has “grave concerns” that federal agents will “quickly pivot” to making such requests in criminal courts given their mounting losses on other fronts.

The state’s “strict chain of custody, documentation, and retention laws related to ballots and ballot materials ensure any evidence of alleged wrongdoing tied to ballots or ballot materials is preserved and appropriately supervised by a court, so there is no legitimate law enforcement reason to seize ballots, ballot materials, and equipment needed to process and tabulate ballots,” Newsom wrote.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta — whose office has been fighting the Trump administration in court — has also been increasingly vocal about his belief that Trump will take increasingly drastic steps to try to control the election results.

“He’s intent on pulling out all the stops, engaging in whatever type of lying, cheating, and stealing is necessary to get the outcome he wants. He starts with the outcome and he backs it out from there, and will do anything seemingly necessary to try to get to the outcome that he wants — instead of letting the facts, and the law, and the votes determine what the outcome is,” Bonta said in an interview on MS NOW that he posted Sunday.

Elections experts point to the administration’s many losses in court as evidence that its efforts are not working, and said most voters won’t experience any problems with casting their ballots.

They said they do have concerns about future efforts by the administration to intervene, including through dramatic steps such as ballot seizures, but whether it takes such steps may hinge on whether the balance of power in the House or Senate depends on the outcome of a small enough number of close races.

If the expected “blue wave” is large and races are not particularly close, it will be more difficult for the Trump administration to sway the outcome in its favor and less likely it will even try to do so — even if Trump publicly rejects the outcome as illegitimate.

In announcing the latest charges, First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutors in Los Angeles, and San Luis Obispo County Dist. Atty. Dan Dow said the fight is not partisan. Six of the charges were federal; the seventh was brought by Dow locally.

Dow, the county’s district attorney since 2014 who has denied previous claims that he harbors anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant sentiments, last week announced that he was investigating a subset of “63 suspected non-citizens registered to vote” in the county from the broader federal list of 20,000 names statewide. On Monday, he appeared alongside Essayli to announce the one person charged in his county — and said more such cases could be coming.

He said California’s system, which requires registering voters to attest to the fact that they are citizens, is an “honor system” that doesn’t work.

One of those charged federally was Moria Dahan, 35, an Israeli national living in West Hills. Dahan was charged with making false statements on her naturalization application to become a U.S. citizen. Prosecutors alleged she illegally registered to vote, voted in person in 2024, and later falsely stated on naturalization papers, under penalty of perjury, that she had never claimed to be a U.S. citizen or registered to vote in a U.S. election.

Tiffany Feder, Dahan’s attorney, described the issue as a mix-up, and said her client never intended to illegally participate in voting. She said Dahan “was targeted through a very extensive scheme to induce her to register and vote,” and like other green card holders with limited English skills, believed the forms she was filling out were official and required.

“The truth is that the moment we discovered this, at her interview, we promptly withdrew her application for naturalization,” Feder said.

California has more than 23.4 million registered voters — meaning the 20,000 flagged individuals would account for less than one-tenth of 1% of all voters in the state, and the 35 charged a tiny sliver of that. State officials and election experts have pointed to the small numbers of arrests, despite a sweeping probe to find such voters by Essayli and others, as proof such fraud is rare.

Essayli argued the exact opposite Monday — saying the charges were just a “sampling” from the broader list of 20,000 individuals, and part of an effort to force state officials to take that list seriously by moving forward with local law enforcement partners such as Dow instead of waiting on the courts.

“Our goal is not to charge all 20,000 people,” Essayli said. “Our goal is to get California to not count the votes of noncitizens.”

WASHINGTON — After spending a month asking voters to treat the midterms as a vote on him, President Trump closed his monthlong campaign sprint on Monday sounding like a man bracing for defeat.

“For some reason, the sitting president doesn’t win the midterms,” Trump said. “But we gave this a very strong shot.”

Still, Trump said he hopes Americans are “ready to do the right thing” and insisted that Republicans could hold on to Congress if voters who buoyed his 2024 victory turn out again. He urged voters to do so, calling this election “the most important midterm, I believe, in our lifetime.” The alternative, he warned, will be a “radical agenda” in Washington as he finishes his last two years in office.

“With your vote, we will decide if these extremists will be given power or not,” Trump said, claiming that the Democratic Party has “nominated the most extreme and dangerous slate of candidates in American history.”

The message capped a dizzying campaign push in which Trump made himself the focus of the midterms as he held dozens of rallies in mostly Republican states. In those rallies, he promised $5,000 checks and brighter days ahead to Americans who vote to keep Republicans in control of Congress. But heading into Tuesday, most polls are predicting a Democratic wave amid a voter backlash to Trump’s handling of the economy and a war in Iran.

Democrats are heavily favored to retake power of the House and are leading in all the key states that would be the likeliest to decide which party will control of the Senate, according to a New York Times/Siena University poll released Sunday. But polling can be flawed, as evidenced by forecasts that underestimated Trump’s support in the 2016 and 2020 elections.

Trump’s approval rating is near historic lows this time around, the poll found. A separate NBC News poll released Sunday found nearly two-thirds of voters are seeking a change from the direction Trump is leading the country.

This year, early voting has already seen strong turnout, outpacing the last midterm election cycle, a trend that could mean bad news for Republicans. If a Democratic surge materializes, party leaders have vowed to use their potential congressional powers to investigate Trump and his family’s business dealings, with a focus on alleged corruption and economic harm to the American people.

Trump told Fox News on Sunday that if Democrats win control of both chambers he will “become Mr. Veto” and “make deals” with them, but hopes he won’t have to “worry about that.”

On the eve of the election, Trump’s message once again seemed to acknowledged that possibility, but his focus was largely focused on the numerous beautification projects his administration is leading in the nation’s capital.

President Trump holds up an image of algae in the Reflecting Pool as he delivers remarks Monday.

(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)

His final pitch to voters was made in front of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, a landmark his administration has spent months trying, and at times failing, to repair. For the first 20 minutes, he did not mention the election at all. Instead, he flipped through photos of the damaged pool, describing in detail how crews resurfaced and re-caulked its granite, and worked to address the “tremendous algae” that covered the pool.

“Look, it is not an easy thing. The algae is brutal. It forms easily and I don’t think you’ll see too much,” Trump said as he showed a picture of the algae layered over the water. “The green, that’s not grass, that’s algae. It took over the entire pool.”

The renovation has not gone as promised. When he took on the project in April, he said contractors he knew would refinish the pool within weeks for about $1.5 million. The work wrapped up behind schedule at more than 10 times that cost, after algae blooms and a peeling blue liner forced crews to drain it again in July. Trump blamed vandals for the issues, but federal prosecutors in Washington attributed the problems to shoddy workmanship.

Trump spent time listing numerous other renovation projects around the capital, arguing that the construction work shows how his presidency is delivering for the American people.

“Our country is strong, respected and prosperous once more and our capital is cleaner and safer and more spectacular than ever,” Trump said.

His focus on renovation projects drew the attention of Democrats, who argued his message was out of touch with what American voters want from leaders now.

“This is just [what] the median voter wants to hear — an update on various capital improvement projects in the District of Columbia,” Ashley Schapitl, a former Biden Treasury official, posted on X.

It was not the first time Democrats had poked fun at the president’s for being too focused on construction projects. At a rally last week, former President Obama said Trump “should be on HGTV,” ridiculing his ballroom project and the changes he has made to the Rose Garden and the Oval Office.

“He has the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory,” Obama said. “There’s just gold everywhere.”

Trump has bristled at such criticism, insisting that renovations relax him and that he gets them done quickly.

His message on Monday struck a similarly dismissive tone as in other campaign events. Even as voters say they are struggling with the cost of living, Trump has insisted the economy is “booming” and brushed off higher gas prices as a “very small price to pay” for the war in Iran.

The contrast was on display over the weekend at a glitzy Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s private club in Florida. As hundreds gathered in the club’s ballroom, eating Alaskan king crab and caviar, Trump showed off the crowd to reporters.

“Look at all my rich members,” Trump told reporters. “They spent all day getting ready. Look at these guys.”

October 29 was a good day for the post-Maduro optimists. María Corina Machado gave her first public address after coming back, in front of an enthusiastic student crowd in the private Andrés Bello Catholic University. Legacy TV network Venevisión broadcasted the event, where she didn’t rule out a meeting with Delcy Rodríguez, said a negotiation was the best shot for the regime and the nation moving forward, and spoke positively of the opposition-chavismo talks.

“We not only refrain from obstructing [the US-sponsored agenda], we are very interested in seeing it succeed and fulfil its mission.”

Becoming Venezuela’s stateswoman-in-waiting starts with building trust with actors with whom tensions have flared in recent years, but with whom she will likely have to work in the near future. 

Talks between the delegations led by Jorge Rodríguez and Dinorah Figuera have both lagged and half-delivered in some important areas. Yet, for Machado, the negotiations revolve around five crown jewels, a political ladder she must climb in the leadup to the next presidential vote, even if addressing each step is far from simple.

The first rung begins with what Rubio envisions as a robust Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ). The nomination process began last week, and according to Rubio, appointments will bypass the Rodríguez-led National Assembly, running through the Judicial Nominations Committee.

A star-spangled TSJ?

The Supreme Court represents a big opportunity for Machado. The US is driving that train, a slower one than the oil and gas train, as economist Asdrúbal Oliveros has said. However, Henry Alviarez, her most senior party aide until she arrived on Sunday, has criticized the talks where TSJ reform is getting its initial shape. The day after Machado’s return, he called the ongoing negotiating table a “stool” that doesn’t listen to the people. 

As hard as it sounds, Machado can’t afford to snub a process whose first landmark was the decision to exclude her. Not because the other parties involved could try to mold the new institutions to her detriment, but because the US might try to build a train custom-made for its interests in Venezuela. The new judges could decide over important commercial deals where foreign powers participate, reverse decisions deemed unconstitutional, rule over key issues concerning transitional justice, among other subjects.

Machado must carefully coordinate her allies from other parties and exert influence over the restitution process if she hopes to secure her next objectives.

In Monday’s off-the-record statement, Secretary Rubio said he views the new Venezuelan Supreme Court as an anchor of the chavista regime, and made it sound like he wants the nascent one to be the backbone of the new republic. 

We don’t need to go too far to understand the practical implications. In neighboring Brazil, the Supreme Court is not shy to twist the arm of politicians, huge companies and fellow institutional actors alike—even in contentious ways, becoming a headache to the Trump administration and the Bolsonaros. Drawing from that example, and the likelihood that our republic won’t be perfect or perfectly balanced straight away, either Machado tries to influence some of these reforms and new appointments, or her future government could be shaped by conflict with a crop of powerful men in robes. Perhaps that sounds alien right now, but it’s the game in the inefficient democracies and hybrid regimes that abound.

Stairway to power

Next comes the National Electoral Council (CNE), which Rubio insists must be purely technical and “nonpolitical.” Here, too, Rubio claims the National Assembly will not participate at all. The State Department has hinted at dismantling the existing electronic voting infrastructure, though that detail was conspicuously absent from the official statement. Whether that State Department post was tied to domestic midterm political posturing—amid Trump’s warnings that he might not recognize results if opponents cheat “like in 2020”—remains an open question. What is clear is that both Machado and Trump share a deep aversion to electronic voting machines, and Machado’s team has been preparing proposals and expertise to help Washington shape a new system for Venezuela.

The restitution of political parties to their legitimate leadership represents a third, critical battleground. This is a common cause for thousands across the country, unless your name is Brito or Bernabé. Some of Machado’s most vital allies lead traditional opposition parties, and she will inevitably need their territorial machinery and clout when the time comes: Juan Pablo Guanipa in Zulia, Andrés Velásquez in Bolívar, Henry Ramos Allup wherever he may be, and so on. Machado must carefully coordinate these allies and exert influence over this process if she hopes to secure her next objectives. The restitution process is delicate because it could require the reshuffling of party leaderships, which could trigger factional unrest. Machado has refrained from committing her support to anyone, though some leaders have become closer to her organization than others.

Then comes the official registration of Vente Venezuela as a recognized political party. Machado’s electoral advisor suggests this could happen simultaneously with the previous step. For Delcy Rodríguez and the remnants of chavismo, the ideal scenario would be to sideline Vente Venezuela and rush regional, municipal, or legislative contests ahead of any presidential election. As Pedro Garmendia has noted, holding sub-national races first could dilute Machado’s momentum and boost the older, “mainstream” party apparatuses. Forcing a breakthrough here hinges on her maneuvering in the “party restitution” stage, ultimately requiring Machado to submit her party’s standing to the newly constituted TSJ and CNE—regardless of how imperfect those institutions prove to be.

While her Jorge Rodríguez jeered at the apellidos in public, these pragmatists found a shared dialect with the State.

The final and most contentious hurdle remains the lifting of Machado’s political ban. Unlocking her eligibility will likely demand recognizing Delcy and Jorge Rodríguez as legitimate interlocutors, whatever cognitive dissonance that pill carries. After all, one of them would inevitably hand her the presidential sash in the future, and nobody wants curses and insults inaugurating a new republic. It will require recognizing whoever the PSUV settles on as its candidate. Right now, Delcy looks like an uninspiring choice.

That is the five-step ladder Machado must navigate ahead of the next presidential election, whose actual date remains unknown regardless of what Rubio, Figuera, Axios, or La Divina Pastora seem to suggest. These hurdles represent her greatest challenges, especially since the electoral calendar is not hers to set.

Hovering over all of this is another crucial detail: Rubio’s statement (the most consequential since January 28) made no mention of parliamentary elections. If a presidential vote were to take place between 2027 and 2029, a hypothetical President Machado would face the immediate prospect of governing in direct confrontation with a chavista-dominated parliament within an intensely presidential system, or being forced into uncomfortable compromises. That is a bitter toad she may be watching with caution, one she may have to swallow to govern the country, or one that might compel her to reconsider her current trajectory.

“Business is business”

An effective domestic presence not only requires a positive influence on the Supreme Court and electoral board designations, but also mending ties with a key constituency that was punished (and at times manipulated) by chavismo: the Venezuelan private sector. 

When Machado emerged as the opposition’s undisputed frontrunner, the table was tilted clean: the CNE was an arm of the ruling elite, the Supreme Court was run by thugs or close friends of Cilia Flores, and Parliament was packed with loyalists. In the background, the opposition lost some of its staunchest economic allies as chavismo’s predatory omnipresence exhausted legacy companies and proud family businesses. Some fled abroad. Others opted for quiet, apolitical survival just to break even. A few big shots decided that surviving meant engaging, finding a receptive ear in a rising, ostensibly “more competent” Delcy Rodríguez. Assertions like “Delcy is no Maduro” or “I’d have Delcy over Diosdado” soon became common currency over rounds of Scotch in Caracas country clubs.

While her brother Jorge jeered at the apellidos in public, these pragmatists found a shared dialect with the State: peace, dialogue, cooperation and sanctions relief. If single-party China could pull off the miracle of Deng Xiaoping, they reasoned, so could an oil-rich Venezuela sitting right on America’s doorstep.

Machado must treat Delcy like a lame duck, engaging with the people that,  from outside the government, have helped her to run the country.

Nowadays, the relationship between some business leaders and acting president Delcy Rodríguez doesn’t look as central as it used to be. Sanctions are out of the way, or at least most of them. New investors and foreign companies are considering whether it’s time to come in. Maduro and Cilia are living in Brooklyn. Some of the things I find most refreshing are the groups of pundits, business figures and scholars speaking out over several subjects that were taboo before January 3—no elections and political uncertainty, lacking public services, poor policymaking in PDVSA and the central bank—the same subjects some important people learned not to discuss on the record.

That certain actors are already behaving like this, while retaining direct personal and/or financial stakes in the country, is an encouraging sign that incentives have shifted.

In this sense, Machado should recast her relationship with the Venezuelan private sector, even with those elements that have been associated with Delcy or Maduro before her. Some will be easier to navigate than others.

In my view, Machado must treat Delcy Rodríguez like a lame duck, engaging with the people that,  from outside the government, have helped her to run the country. Rodríguez has done so in the past few years not because she’s a genius technocrat, but because she reached an understanding with a series of actors that allow the country to operate amidst material struggle and daunting economic inefficiencies. 

We expect Machado to do a much better job than Delcy. She has a first-100-days plan, a program, and an experienced set of advisors that have spent years preparing to command energy, education and electoral reforms. Her children, who are having careers in some of the world’s most important technology and financial organizations, could also help her in private. Still, we know governance is more than world-class personnel and projects under your belt. The story of CAP 2 seems to teach that sometimes, not dealing with longstanding power players while pursuing groundbreaking reforms can outweigh having the brightest minds in your cabinet.

The example of 1958 also comes in handy. The private sector had had a beneficial relationship with the military dictatorship, yet backed Wolfgang Larrazábal when incentives shifted. Betancourt, with a radical and ideologically-charged background, learned to embrace them.

Venezuelan businesses face other steep challenges today, including the absence of a functioning banking system, a severe lack of investment, and restrictive labor laws. Delcy is already opening up the economy; Colombian capital, for instance, has secured access to profitable businesses. An avowed proponent of Friedman-style liberalism, a President Machado would also need to navigate the necessities of a dwarfed Venezuelan private sector with the urgent need for foreign investment and fresh competition.

For now, the opposition leader is back home, embracing friends, victims, students, and survivors. She is free to move and embrace almost whomever she pleases. The possibilities, at least on the surface, have never looked brighter than they do today.

WASHINGTON — Over the past decade, President Trump has steadily expanded executive power, pushing the limits of his authority and evading traditional constraints. But a Democratic takeover of Congress on Tuesday could set up one final constitutional test for the Trump era, challenging the legislative branch to reclaim its role as a check on an increasingly powerful White House.

A blue wave could give Democrats control of both chambers of Congress, handing them not only investigative and subpoena powers in the House, but also, through the Senate, the authority to confirm presidential appointments, pursue impeachments trials, and control legislation and federal spending.

That would historically be enough to bring a president to heel. Yet the Trump administration’s broad assertion of executive privilege and politicization of the Justice Department could make oversight from a Democratic Congress sluggish — if not impossible — over Trump’s final two years.

The Office of Legal Counsel has claimed that even Trump’s communications with private advisors could be shielded by privilege. Independent watchdogs across the federal government, which have traditionally supported congressional oversight, have been systematically removed. And a Justice Department that historically pursued congressional criminal referrals regardless of their political implications is poised to ignore them under current leadership.

A combative administration will pose a challenge to Democratic congressional leaders, who may face internal party calls to pursue a third impeachment of the president over any number of scandals, and will likely shape debate over the coming presidential campaign season.

“Our system of checks and balances and the requirements of super majorities makes it difficult for the legislature to hold the executive fully accountable,” said Alan Dershowitz, a professor emeritus at Harvard and a lawyer to Trump during his first Senate impeachment trial.

“This is a good thing,” he added, “leaving ultimate accountability to the voters, who are the ultimate check in a democracy.”

Norm Eisen, who served as chief ethics lawyer for President Obama and counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during Trump’s first impeachment trial, acknowledged the Trump administration is likely to aggressively resist Democratic probes.

“To be sure, those in the government may resist,” Eisen said, “but the incredible scale of corruption over the past 20 months has also implicated a wide variety of those in the private sector. They will cooperate because the consequences for not doing so are too great.”

Democratic control will also challenge the expansive vision of presidential power that Trump and his closest aides have successfully advanced since the 2024 campaign.

Project 2025 — a conservative effort pioneered by Trump allies that ultimately joined the administration — embraced a sweeping theory of unitary power, under which the president would exercise near-total control over the executive branch, including the Justice Department.

A conservative Supreme Court, featuring three Trump appointees, has endorsed key elements of that theory, affirming broad presidential authority to remove executive officials and granting presidents absolute immunity for exercising their core constitutional powers, along with presumptive immunity for other official acts.

Practical limits on the oversight powers of a Democratic Congress already has some leaders thinking of other, coercive means of using congressional power to exact accountability.

A cabinet fleeing for the campaign trail, or for the safety of the private sector, may create a series of openings that will be difficult for Trump to fill with a Democratic majority in the Senate, said Andrew Rudalevige, a professor of government at Bowdoin College and author of “The New Imperial Presidency.”

“Trump doesn’t have a huge legislative agenda, but there are some things he wants,” Rudalevige said. “Those can be held up. And relatedly, Democrats could embrace the power of the purse, since the budget is the one bill that needs to pass.”

Already, several Democratic House members are debating whether to demand the resignation of Pete Hegseth, Trump’s embattled defense secretary, as a condition of further appropriations funding for the department in its pursuit of war with Iran, the Hill first reported last month.

Democrats may find it difficult to hold the administration accountable for past actions, much of which are already being litigated in federal courts, said Peter Kastor, history department chair at Washington University in St. Louis. The larger question, he said, is how the two parties could govern together — particularly if Trump defies congressional authority, such as by impounding funds appropriated by lawmakers.

“I think it will be extremely difficult for Democrats to take any action to punish the administration for its actions until now, much as Democrats may want this,” Kastor said, suggesting the greatest wild card may lie not in Democratic strategy, but in the actions of a Republican minority.

“The big question is not whether they will desert Trump,” he added, “but rather what role they would see for themselves as a minority caught in the middle of a grand political battle.”

In an interview with the New York Post, Trump suggested he is expecting a wave, stating he will “become Mr. Veto” if Democrats sweep control.

But a president who long viewed concession as weakness may now have to pivot.

“At some point, we’ll probably make deals,” he added.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Monday dismissed a criminal complaint against two former FBI officials accused of making false statements to Congress about Hunter Biden, saying the investigation that produced the charges was rushed, overtly political and dogged by “critical mistakes.”

“What has transpired here cannot be described as anything other than weaponization,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui said in a scathing ruling from the bench that dismissed the case against former officials Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides.

He noted that the investigation was opened a day after a primetime speech by President Trump in which he rehashed grievances over his 2020 election loss and that it was mandated and closely tracked by FBI Director Kash Patel. He also pointed out that the Justice Department could have brought the case, which arises from statements made in 2023, at any time but opted to do so two weeks ago, in the run-up to Tuesday’s midterm voting.

“I will not bury my head in the sand and pretend that I cannot read a calendar,” Faruqui said.

The decision followed a dramatic hearing in which he scolded prosecutors for their unorthodox maneuvers and an FBI agent who worked the case testified that he had been concerned the investigation would be seen as “political.”

The Justice Department may still have an opportunity to pursue a grand jury indictment against the two former officials, whose lawyers had pressed for dismissal of the charges. But the judge’s ruling nonetheless represents an unmistakable setback for the Justice Department, particularly given the difficulty it has had in persuading grand juries in the nation’s capital to return indictments in politically charged prosecutions like this one.

The judge’s concerns about the case were apparent almost immediately, when he raised questions about why the Justice Department had charged the case through a criminal complaint — which is more typically done when investigators have a pressing need to take a defendant into custody — as opposed to an indictment that requires a grand jury’s approval.

Then, at a preliminary hearing last week, he criticized the Justice Department for filing overnight an amended complaint with an additional criminal charge straight to the docket instead of first clearing the new charge with the court — something he said he had never seen before.

The hearing also featured testimony from an FBI agent who worked the case, who said that the investigation had been opened right after Trump gave an election security speech last July and that it had been mandated by FBI Director Kash Patel, who kept close watch on it.

The case accused the two former FBI officials of misleading Congress in 2023 about their involvement in, and knowledge of, efforts to investigate a laptop the Justice Department says was dropped off by Hunter Biden, former President Joe Biden’s son, at a Delaware computer repair shop in 2019.

But it also sought to echo longstanding grievances by Trump and his Republican allies that the FBI attempted to suppress information during the 2020 presidential campaign that was seen as potentially harmful to the Biden family. Candidate Joe Biden, a Democrat, ultimately defeated Trump, the Republican incumbent, in the 2020 election.

The Justice Department’s case noted, for instance, how Floris and Benavides had given lawmakers in 2020 a “defensive briefing” that Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin have said was used to undermine their investigation into the Biden administration and link it to Russian disinformation.

Tucker writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON  — On the day before the midterm election, Trump administration lawyers asked the Supreme Court to intervene and set aside ballots from 20,000 California voters who the administration says may not be citizens.

Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer filed an emergency appeal on Monday.

“The Court should issue a limited injunction directing California to stop commingling suspected illegal ballots with legal ones,” he wrote, “pending completion of the United States’ appeal to the 9th Circuit and further review in this Court.”

He said the court should require “California to segregate mail ballots from persons whom the United States has identified as likely non-citizens. The court should also enter an administrative injunction to that effect while it considers this application.”

It’s not clear whether the court will see this as an emergency.

The appeal goes first to Justice Elena Kagan. She could ask for a response from California, which would take days.

So far, the administration has lost before a federal judge in Los Angeles and twice at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

Those judges said that Trump’s lawyers were wrong on the Constitution and that their complaint came too late for this election.

In May, more than 23 million Californians were registered to vote, and the majority lean in favor of Democrats. But Trump claimed again last week “there are hundreds of thousands of bad ballots, bad votes, in California. Millions, in my opinion.”

In mid-October, the Trump administration sued and said federal courts should require California and Los Angeles County to “set aside vote-by-mail ballots from persons identified by the federal government likely to be non-citizens.”

Federal law says that within 90 days of an election, officials may not “systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters.”

Separately, the Supreme Court also has repeatedly frowned on “late-breaking, court-ordered rule changes” involving elections.

The California court cases have also put a spotlight on the state vs. federal divide in election law.

Usually, federal laws are deemed to be the “supreme law” and override state laws that are in conflict. No one disputes U.S. prosecutors may bring criminal fraud charges against noncitizens who violate a federal law by registering with a state to vote and casting an illegal ballot.

But election rules and procedures are different. The Constitution says “the Times, Places and Manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each state,” unless Congress acts by law to “alter” its regulations.

The 9th Circuit judges in Friday’s opinion said that “this clause expressly dictates which sovereign has the authority to prescribe the manner in which congressional elections are conducted.”

“If the United States believes different procedures are necessary for vote-by-mail ballots, we believe it should take that suggestion to Congress, not the courts,” said Judges Mark J. Bennett, a Trump appointee, and Gabriel P. Sanchez, a Biden appointee.

Dissenting Judge Patrick J. Bumatay, a Trump appointee, called the administration’s proposal to separate the 20,000 ballots a “reasonable request” and a “modest remedy” for the problem of illegal voting.

The majority cited a 2013 opinion written by the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

“The Elections Clause functions as a default provision,” he wrote. “It invests the states with responsibility for the mechanics of congressional elections,” unless Congress adopts a different rule.

Scalia spoke for a 7-2 majority that rejected an Arizona law that required voters to show documentary proof of their citizenship when registering to vote. In the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, Congress said voters may register to vote by filling out a form and attesting under oath they are citizens.

California does the same under state law.

Scalia said the federal voter registration law did not allow Arizona to adopt new and stricter rules.

In dissent, conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito said they would go farther to protect the states from federal interference in elections.

“Given states’ exclusive authority to set voter qualifications and to determine whether those qualifications are met,” Thomas said the Arizona restriction should have been upheld.
“The Constitution reserves for the States the power to decide who is qualified to vote in federal elections,” Alito added.

Last month, Trump’s prosecutors brought fraud charges against 28 lawful immigrants in California who are alleged to have registered or voted in the past even though they are not citizens. They did so under a 1996 immigration law which made it “unlawful for any alien” to vote in a federal election.

The notion of segregating potentially suspect ballots is not a new issue for the Supreme Court.

In November 2020, Alito agreed with Pennsylvania state officials and said they should set aside late-arriving mail ballots to be counted separately.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, state election officials and the state Supreme Court agreed to waive part of the state’s law and allow for counting mail ballots that arrived up to three days late.

Republicans strongly objected. That led to Alito’s order. But in the end, the small number of late votes made no difference because the Democratic candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden, decisively won Pennsylvania’s votes and defeated Trump.

The California dispute is different because the state has not changed its voting rules or election procedures. Instead, it is the Trump administration that sought a late change in California’s voting rules and election procedures.

The stakes in Tuesday’s midterm elections are so high that Shane Dunn voted for the first time in his life, at age 65.

After a career as a cook up and down the East Coast, Dunn moved to the Philadelphia suburbs and voted last week in Levittown. “I was always a busy man,” he said outside his polling place. But now, “I’m learning what’s going on within our country, and this is actually what brought me out.”

Democrats got his vote. “It feels great, to put my word in,” he said, patting the “I Voted” sticker on his black hoodie.

Voters across the United States are getting their word in, too, as they determine which party controls the Senate and the House and takes charge of governors’ offices, legislatures and state leadership posts in the final two years of Republican Trump’s presidency.

What many of them see is that the America they’ve known is slipping away.

They see lawlessness coming from those who create the laws. They see hate stirred by politicians among neighbors, corruption at every turn, billionaires ruling the roost and a culture that doesn’t speak to how they live — in short, American bedrock at risk of crumbling. Not to mention those crazy gas prices.

In dozens of Associated Press interviews with people who cast ballots at advance polling places or drop boxes across the country, the angst was palpable, most sharply from those who oppose Trump but also from many who support him.

A vote is cast to stop the ‘madness’

“I saw my vote today as trying to put the brakes on just the madness,” said Arthur Horner, 59, who runs a food importing and marketing company that has been hurt by tariffs, after dropping his mail ballot at Dauphin County’s election bureau in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He voted for Democrats.

In Sioux City, Iowa, cattle rancher Elizabeth Marlett, 61, voted in Woodbury County’s historic Prairie-style courthouse and walked out stewing about a variety of things — the chemicals in processed food, her son’s struggles to get his veterans’ benefits and, perhaps most of all, what she sees as society’s leftward lurch. Things seem broken to her, too.

“Family values are going by the wayside, and they need to be brought back,” she said. “Our liberties have been stomped all over. Religion has been stomped all over. And I believe we in the majority need to step up and stop being silent.” She voted Republican.

Voters despair at the stoking of anger by Trump and allies

The anger in the air, stirred by a cursing president who abides no slights, is too much for some people.

“He’s just destroying us,” Democrat Linda Markle, 72, said of the president. She spoke outside the Warminster Township library in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

“I am so afraid for this country,” she said. “People used to look out for each other. Not anymore.”

“All people do now is just hate each other,” she said, and Trump “seems to have given them the courage to go ahead and be like that. … The division is horrible, absolutely horrible, and I can’t wait to see the back of him.”

Republican Chris Smith, 27, a Harrisburg software engineer who voted for Trump in 2024, sympathizes with Markle’s sentiment, to a point.

“A lot of people hate him for various reasons, and I can understand why,” he said, noting that ”I think he’s kind of going a bit crazy on a lot of things.” But he likes Trump’s effort to return manufacturing to the U.S. along with the goals of his tariffs, and he voted Republican because he still thinks that party is more fiscally responsible than Democrats.

In Ohio, Lori Wilkinson, a retired home health worker from New Pittsburg, and her husband, David, a janitor, consider themselves independents. David recently wrote to their Republican governor, Mike DeWine, to tell him what a good job he’s doing, and they voted for Republican George W. Bush for president in the past.

Trump? “He’s the worst president in United States history,” David said from the Wayne County election center. “You get up every day, and you’re like, ‘What’s he going to do now?’” Said Lori: “He’s got the hate just so bad, it’s just out of hand. It’s just out of control.” She fears that if Democrats win widely Tuesday, Trump will “go fricking berserk.”

Trump supporter Therese Mennell gets it. “There’s that kind of arrogant vibe about him that people don’t like, and sometimes I shut him off because of the way he talks,” the retiree said from the Wayne County center. “But, I mean, he’s doing the right thing. He is saving our country.”

Some pretend Trump is on the ballot

Despite his striking unpopularity in polls, Trump repeatedly asked supporters to pretend he’s on the midterm ballot, betting that would motivate fans to vote who otherwise might not. But that cuts both ways.

Samontae Mwangi, 20, and his brother, Gathenya Mwangi, 19, voted for the first time, casting early ballots Tuesday at their election center in Topeka, Kansas. Both work at a plant that manufactures trackside buildings for railroads.

They went with their grandfather, Lynn Henderson, 68, a retired Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. worker and a former Marine lance corporal who wore a Marine’s cap. Henderson said he took his grandsons to vote because his own mother died recently and he wanted them to have an event to remember him when he’s gone.

All three are hoping that the election produces Democratic victories and political change. Gathenya said the economy and discontent with Trump could motivate people who’ve voted in the past to show up, as well as those who never have. “It really could change, make a difference, I feel, if a lot of people vote,” he said.

Denise Wunder, a retired sandwich shop manager, pulled up to the center in a van featuring a decorative license plate with an American eagle. The strong Trump supporter is the daughter of Democrats. Illegal immigration is her top issue.

“I think Trump is kind of our last hope, because otherwise this world’s going to go to hell in a handbasket,” she said. “Yeah, he says stupid stuff, but, you know, so do we.”

In the Richmond, Virginia, suburb of Henrico County, voters arrived at a steady clip on a crisp fall afternoon a week from Election Day. The moment of decision found one conservative couple, Joan and Frank Bark, lamenting the country’s direction.

“I’m afraid Trump has gotten so egotistical, it’s affecting his ability to make intelligent or more favorable decisions,” Frank said. But, he said, “I don’t want the decisions that would be generated from that far left side, either.”

Joan, a retiree like her husband, said of Democrats: “I haven’t found very much that they want to change or work with. It’s just mostly, ‘I hate Trump.’” But Trump really isn’t on the ballot. They voted for Republican candidates.

In Nanuet, New York, people streamed into the small room of a community center to vote; some were in Halloween costumes. Primrose D. Sullivan, a nurse, is an independent. She scoffed at Trump’s wish that voters act as if he’s running.

“No, because he’s not,” she said. “When a patient comes into the hospital, you want me dealing in facts, not in, ‘Hmm, let me act like you might have cancer.’ No. Do you or do you not have cancer? We need to proceed based on facts.” She voted for Democrats.

Yet some see a cancer on politics, if not the presidency

Sullivan was among a number of voters who singled out the billionaires Trump has made common cause with and how that might feed into American decline.

“I don’t begrudge any of our wealthy people, Jeff Bezos or, you know, Elon Musk,” she said. “But I do have a certain problem with them wanting more and more and doing things that really don’t help humanity.”

“If we keep going the way these guys are going,” she went on, meaning both the political and CEO classes, “we’re not going to have anything like what we had in the past.” Theirs is a “self-destructive attitude,” she added, “because, honestly, if the whole planet destroys itself, the wealthy go with us.”

Outside the polling station at the YMCA in Fort Mill, South Carolina, Benjamin Updegraft offered a piercing denunciation of the elite as he traced his evolution from a “full-throated young Republican” who voted for Trump as a young man in 2016 to a “lifetime Democrat,” after casting his ballot in the Senate race.

He cited Musk’s throttling of his Starlink satellite internet service in Ukraine, which disrupted a key defense against Russian attacks, and Republican Vivek Ramaswamy’s ad in the Ohio governor’s race featuring the estranged mother of Democratic rival Amy Acton among the reasons powerful men must be brought to heel.

“That needs to be cut out from this country like a cancer,” Updegraft said. “We have an incredible responsibility to take back the stranglehold that the worst people in this country have on the reins of power and to inflict punishment on them for their actions.”

In Scottsdale, Arizona, David Lee described his conservative upbringing, his past voting for Republicans and now his decision to turn against that party and vote Democratic in the contested races for governors and the House. He considers Trump’s heavy-handed immigration enforcement to be lawless.

“Nobody wants open borders, but you’re treating these people without due process, sending people to countries they don’t even belong to,” said Lee, 63. “There’s no more rules.”

Then there are those prices. And that war

The Trump supporters interviewed by the AP at the polls signaled their tolerance of the surge of gas prices from the Iran war, in some cases blaming factors other than the actual cause. Nor did they break with him on the war itself.

Among them was David Stouffer, 59, branch manager for a mortgage bank and three-time Trump voter, who spoke outside the Harrisburg elections office. “Iran has been killing Americans for 50 freaking years,” he said. “Yeah, I’ll suffer with some higher gas prices in the interim until they get that nonsense figured out.”

Does that put a crunch on your household budget, Stouffer was asked. “Of course it does.” How to cope with that? “I just keep driving.”

“He’s made the tax cuts real,” Stouffer said. “He has secured the borders. That, to me, is a very, very big deal.”

By the dozens, Democrats, independents and Republicans outside the core of Trump’s support differed with that assessment, even as some of them granted the president his achievements on taxes and immigration.

Horner, the food importer, is going “bonkers” with the tariffs and all the other moves bouncing between the Trump administration and the courts while a “feckless” and now electorally endangered Republican Congress largely stands aside.

“You can’t do business when every month you have to readjust your pricing because the president gets a wild hair on something that he’s not even constitutionally allowed to do,” Horner said. He added, “He’s just playing out the clock on all of this stuff — where you just know he knows it’s wrong.

“And what do we have? Higher healthcare, higher food, higher gas, a business environment that is complete chaos.”

But Jerry Casner, 74, of Mechanicsburg, a suburb of Harrisburg, wants as much of Trump as he can get. Alas, “he can’t run again,” Casner noted.

“Well, technically,” Casner said, “he can’t run again.”

Levy, Catalini, Hanna and Woodward write for the Associated Press. Hanna reported from Topeka, Kan.; Levy from Harrisburg, Pa.; Catalini from Levittown, Pa.; and Woodward from Washington. AP journalists Julie Carr Smyth in Wooster, Ohio; Erik Verduzco in Fort Mill, S.C.; Thomas Beaumont in Sioux City, Iowa; Joseph Frederick in Nanuet, N.Y.; Tassanee Vejpongsa in Warminster, Pa.; Mikella Schuettler in Scottsdale, Ariz.; and Sarah Rankin in Henrico, Va., contributed to this report.

SACRAMENTO —  Xavier Becerra hasn’t even been elected yet — officially, anyway — and I am already bored.

The Democrat merely seemed to be going through the motions in a plodding gubernatorial campaign he couldn’t possibly lose.

That said, it isn’t a governor’s job to excite any journalist or to entertain the public.

It’s OK for a governor to be boring — Pete Wilson and George Deukmejian, for example — if they can produce results that improve the state and lives of its residents.

California needs a governor who gets stuff done. Boring is acceptable, even in this fast-paced polarized world. But a do-nothing governor who’s just moseying along is intolerable.

We’ve had a showboat governor for nearly eight years. Gavin Newsom and Californians would have been better off if he’d spent more time governing hands-on and less chasing national media and the presidency.

We can’t know yet what kind of governor Becerra will be — except rather boring, most likely. No Jerry Brown or Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Will this 68-year-old career politician with the yardlong resume have the resolve and courage to stand up to special interests — labor as well as business, immigration rights activists and rich techies alike — and make timely decisions they won’t like?

Decisions such as whether the state should continue rolling back Medi-Cal healthcare benefits for undocumented immigrants.

Newsom and the Democrat-dominated Legislature began providing free Medi-Cal for all low-income Californians regardless of their immigration status. But reality quickly smacked them in the face. The state couldn’t afford the generosity. So the governor and lawmakers began retreating.

Becerra, who will be California’s first elected Latino governor, is the proud son of Mexican immigrants. Will he make the prudent decision to chop more Medi-Cal benefits for undocumented noncitizens, especially in the wake of President Trump’s huge cutbacks in federal healthcare funds?

The new governor will need to act fast on all things involving money. He must send his first state budget proposal to the Legislature by Jan. 10, six days after taking office. For practical reasons, he has to decide by mid-December.

He could kick the can down the road until the annual May budget revision, using the excuse of revenue uncertainty and needing more time for study. But that would be seen by many as a sign of indecisiveness and weakness. Not a good start.

During the campaign, Becerra talked vaguely about the lofty goal of universal healthcare coverage, but never was specific about how he’d achieve it.

He has long advocated “Medicare for all.” But that’s not the same as government-run “single payer,” the dream of Democratic progressives. Medicare for all is, well, just that. And Medicare is not single-payer because it allows for supplemental private insurance. The issue of universal coverage is horrendously complicated and the goal is massively expensive.

Another contentious budget decision Becerra must make soon is what to do about the sputtering bullet train. Scrap it or keep throwing tax money at the failed project that’s decades behind schedule and $100 billion over budget. No tracks have even been laid.

One immediate problem: High-speed rail’s anticipated $1-billion annual funding source from the state’s Cap-and-Invest program is drying up. That’s because industrial polluters aren’t buying permits to emit greenhouse gas like they were. It’s a long story that means short revenue for rail construction.

“We’re going to build the bullet train, but not this bullet train,” Becerra told me in April. “It’s too expensive. Sit everybody down and come out with a position.”

Lately, he has been promising to “clean shop” at the High-Speed Rail Authority and “get this done the right way. We’re not gonna have this overspending.”

OK, but based on his campaigning, Becerra still doesn’t know “the right way.” That’s understandable. No one else seems to either. Take your time, Xavier, but not a lot — or you’ll be seen as part of the problem, like Newsom is.

There’s a long list of nagging state dilemmas we didn’t hear specific solutions for during Becerra’s sleepwalk campaign. He spoke mostly in generalities. Did he not know the fixes? Or was he too risk-averse to speak out? Probably both.

Becerra adhered to the old playbook taught to young political consultants in campaign management 101:

If you’re ahead, hide. When you do emerge from under the bed, avoid risky provocation. It could cost you poll points and potentially the election.

Becerra did get out and jog round the track — never a sprint and always stepping cautiously.

He missed a golden opportunity.

Becerra had nothing to lose. He was a Democrat running against a Trump-embraced Republican in a deep blue state angry at the GOP president. He could have created some excitement by making bold pronouncements about, for example, what he’d do “first thing on Day One.”

He certainly should have participated in more than one general election debate, especially after initially declaring that he would. He performed well in his one debate — coming across as calm, likable and capable.

Becerra should have held more — and more meaty — news conferences with reporters. The few he engaged in were relatively brief and unenlightening, I’m told by colleagues.

He missed a chance to build a solid statewide support base that could help when the postinaugural honeymoon quickly ends.

But that‘s not his natural style. And, anyway, when all the votes are counted, he’ll be a landslide winner.

One smart move at the end: helping Democratic candidates in hot House races by campaigning with them.

Becerra could be just the governor California needs: an experienced pol knowledgeable on most issues — a longtime U.S. House member, state attorney general and U.S. Health secretary.

Importantly, he’s not someone who craves national attention. He’ll be focused on the job he was elected to.

He’ll just need to be bolder, more decisive and move faster than what we saw during the campaign — while having the guts to tell allies “no.”

That wouldn’t be boring. It could be exciting.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Support dwindles for wealth tax, voter ID ballot measures, new poll shows
CA vs. Trump: Justice Dept. sent subpoenas to L.A. election officials. What that means and what happens next
The L.A. Times Special: Voter guide to the 2026 California general election

Until next week,
George Skelton

—
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WASHINGTON — An acutely contentious and historically expensive midterm campaign barrels to a finish Monday, on the eve of elections that will set the nation’s course for the remaining half of President Trump’s second term.

Republicans are bracing for a backlash from voters as Democrats prepare for gains — but the magnitude of any “blue wave,” and whether it could sweep not only the U.S. House but also the Senate into Democratic control, will be the key question as Americans finish casting ballots Tuesday.

Early voting had already seen strong turnout, including among influence blocs such as Latino and Black voters. Candidates spent the weekend crisscrossing their states and pulling in surrogates to make a final push for voters still on the fence.

Capping a turbulent first half of Trump’s second term, the campaign has been defined by affordability and economic issues that have created headwinds for Republicans and spurred a possible turn toward Democrats by voters. And as Trump has pushed the limits of executive power, the midterms could act as a consequential check on his presidential reach.

In recent polls, voters have consistently put Democrats several points ahead on the generic ballot and given a historically low approval rating to Trump.

Eyes are now on Senate control, as an unexpected competitiveness by Democrats in a handful of red states has put the majority into play. It would require a “massive” wave for Democrats, but the fact that it is a possibility at all reflects an “extraordinary situation,” said Thaddeus Kousser, a UC San Diego political science professor.

With seven toss-up seats, tough math for Democrats and tough polling for Republicans, the outcome is far from certain. There may not be a large difference between the Democrats eking out enough seats for the majority or Republicans succeeding at holding it, said Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll.

“Just a little bit better night for the Democrats, and they pick up quite a number of these very close seats,” Franklin said. “Just a little bit better night for the Republicans, and Democrats fall slightly short in several of these competitive seats.”

The outcome in competitive races will not only set the dynamic between Trump and Congress for the next two years, but also hold signs for the 2028 presidential campaign. Both parties are closely watching how well Democrats can do in red states, how Republicans perform in Michigan and how far to the left Trump-voting districts swing.

The party out of power typically wins House control in midterm elections. This year, fatigue with Trump — fueled by the war in Iran, immigration policy, tariffs and other issues — merged with concern about prices, housing and AI issues to drive that movement toward the minority party, analysts said.

“This is an opportunity for the American people to try to put some brakes on the government,” said Todd Belt, a professor of political management at George Washington University.

The midterms are designed to function as a potential check on every presidency, said Christopher Warshaw, a Georgetown University public policy professor.

“The reason we have a democracy is in part because the out party does well in midterm elections,” Warshaw said. “That function of midterms is really important regardless of who’s in power.”

In many races, the quality of individual candidates also is poised to be a deciding factor, including in Texas, where Republican Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton has struggled to gain traction, and in Maine, where Democrat Troy Jackson has labored to confront Republican Sen. Susan Collins’ staying power.

The campaign has held significant twists, among them the unexpected death of Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina; the dropping out of Democrat Graham Platner from Maine’s Senate race; and the questions about the alleged involvement of operatives aligned with Democrat Mary Peltola’s campaign in the presence of a spoiler candidate on the Alaska ballot.

And Trump gambled on a largely dismissive approach toward voters’ affordability concerns; in recent days, he has also drawn attention with off-script comments at his rallies about Republican candidates’ rear ends and for lashing out at a reporter who questioned why he had canceled his final two rallies, which Trump later rescheduled.

Voter turnout could also have a significant effect on results; both parties have worked to reach independent voters while turning out their bases.

Across the country, nonpartisan groups are holding last-minute voting events, encouraging people to fill out their ballots. A hotline run by a nonprofit coalition organized by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law is receiving hundreds of calls a day about how to vote.

Brandon Waithe, 42, an Air Force veteran who has organized get-out-the-vote events through Project HALO, a voting initiative, said he hoped to help raise turnout.

He hosted a line dancing event in a Cleveland public plaza last month aimed at reminding people to vote — and to “tie some positive emotion to the act of voting,” he said.

“It’s like, ‘Ah, cool, all right, voting’s not so bad,’” Waithe said. “There’s no pressure. … We’re not telling you which party to vote for or which candidate. We’re just like, ‘Thank you for participating in voting.’”

The speed with which results are known Tuesday will partly depend on how large a blue wave might occur. The House majority could become clear Tuesday night, but the margin could take a little more time with swing races in slower-counting states such as California and Pennsylvania.

If the Senate majority comes down to Maine or Alaska and if those races are very close, the outcome will probably take some days to verify, Kousser said.

“What I’ve been telling people is you’re going to have to buckle up and wait,” he said.

And, of course, one of the few certainties of an election is that no one knows exactly what will happen. The electorate is volatile, said Sonoma State University political science professor David McCuan, and there are always wild cards.

“There will be a surprise on election night,” McCuan said.

The last day to register to vote online for the Nov. 3 general election was Oct. 19. You still can register to vote, however, through the “same day” voter registration process.

Here’s what you need to know.

Who can register to vote in California?

You must be a United States citizen and a California resident, 18 years or older on election day, not serving a state or federal prison term for a felony and not deemed mentally incompetent by a court.

How to register via the ‘same day’ voter registration process

If you missed the registration deadline, you can register as a conditional voter through the same-day voter registration process.

Eligible citizens who need to register or re-register to vote within 14 days of an election can complete this process at county elections offices, polling places or vote centers.

You’ll need to re-register to vote if you’ve changed your:

• name
• residence address or mailing address
• political party

If you’ve become a U.S. citizen fewer than 15 days before the election, you may register to vote by visiting your county elections office anytime before the polls close on election day. You must bring proof that you are a U.S. citizen and sign a form saying you are eligible to vote in California.

For more information, contact your county elections office; a complete list of contact information for each county office can be found here.

What documentation will I need to complete the registration process?

The application requires a state driver’s license or California identification card number, or you can use the last four numbers on your Social Security card.

If you don’t have any of those, you still can register. You’ll be assigned a unique identifier to validate your registration.

Here’s how that information is verified:

• California ID numbers are matched with Department of Motor Vehicles records.
• Social Security numbers are matched with Social Security Administration records.
• Unique identifiers are verified by election officials.

What if I need a guide or voting instructions in another language?

Voters can choose to get election information in English, Spanish, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Tagalog, Thai or Vietnamese by calling the phone numbers listed here or by using these online options to get help.

Where can I complete the ‘same day’ voter registration process?

You can visit an early voting location. Now through Nov. 2, in-person voting centers are open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., according to the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder/county clerk’s office.

You also can complete the same-day voter registration process on election day. All polling locations are open on election day from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

What’s a provisional ballot and when will my vote be counted?

With same-day registration, you are “conditionally” registered to vote and your ballot is provisional.

The provisional ballot is a regular ballot that is placed in a special envelope prior to being put in the ballot box.

This just means that elections officials must confirm that you are registered to vote in that county and that you did not already vote in that election. After that information is confirmed, your ballot will be processed and counted.

More election news

Spearheading the campaign in opposition of Proposition 38 is Robert Kaplan, senior scholar at the Clinical Excellence Research Center at Stanford School of Medicine, and David Panush, who served as a senior health policy and budget advisor to five state Senate presidents.

Kaplan stated, “As written, Proposition 38 is deceptive,” because the proposed criteria for awarding the grant funding would appear to create an extremely minuscule pool of qualified recipients.

To qualify, a recipient institution must be established since Jan. 1, 2025, and have at least 200,000 square feet of research space it controls. From that start date, the recipients also must have an affiliation agreement with a UC campus and be affiliated with a UC Health system that records more than 35,000 inpatient admissions and 3.5 million outpatient visits annually. The qualification requirements also include having identified at least $250 million in philanthropic support and securing two $50-million commitments for designated research programs.

Kaplan argues medical research grants should be awarded through a competitive process that gives all applicants equal opportunity. Instead, his campaign states, only the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy, co-founded by billionaire Gary K. Michelson, would qualify under the proposed criteria. In a Cal Matters report, a UCLA spokesperson confirmed that among all nonprofit entities affiliated with the school, “only the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy could satisfy the stipulations of Prop. 38.”

Robin Swanson, spokesperson for the Yes on 38 campaign, said that “lots of institutions would qualify for funds under this measure.”

“But it is very likely that [the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy], which is a research institute affiliated with UCLA, will qualify for half of the funds under the current criteria,” she added during a virtual news conference in mid-September.

Swanson said it was likely that other research institutions from Stanford, Scripps Research, USC and Cedars Sinai would qualify for the other 50% of funds, “and that really is what we wanted to ensure that we had research institutes that were ready to hit the ground running.”

Ultimately, she said, the decision lies with the California Department of Public Health.

Michelson’s institute first became a nonprofit in 2022, and the co-founder has donated at least $120 million to the research organization. The billionaire is the board chair of the institute, which is housed at a research center owned by UCLA, according to the opposition campaign.

The Vote No on Prop. 38 campaign also argues against the financial model of the measure, saying a bond would saddle taxpayers with decades of debt and that any potential future revenue from the research is uncertain.

DETROIT — Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed’s former opponent in the U.S. Senate primary, Rep. Haley Stevens, stunned party officials Sunday by endorsing his Republican rival, Mike Rogers, after Democratic tensions boiled over days before the election that could determine the balance of power on Capitol Hill.

Stevens endorsed Rogers after attending a Detroit church service with him. The remarkable show of support for the President Trump-backed candidate in the tightly contested race comes after she was uninvited to a joint event the same day with El-Sayed, who defeated the congresswoman by a slim margin in the August primary.

“Our Democratic nominee for Senate said I was no longer welcome in his campaign and that I should stay away,” Stevens said in a video announcing the endorsement. “And he’s right. And that’s why I am endorsing Mike Rogers for the United States Senate today.”

El-Sayed dismissed the endorsement when asked about it by reporters later Sunday, saying he’s focused on issues voters care about, such as the high cost of living.

“At the end of the day I actually don’t think about Haley Stevens,” he said, adding later: “None of this matters.”

Michigan Democratic leaders were left shocked. With just less than 48 hours to go before election day, a party that had spent months trying to unite behind its Senate nominee was suddenly grappling with an extraordinary defection in one of this year’s most important races.

Tensions between the two Democrats have festered since the primary. Stevens is a staunch supporter of Israel, while El-Sayed is a fierce critic of the U.S. ally. He has also been criticized by some in the community for past remarks regarding a Michigan synagogue attack and for appearances with controversial streamer Hasan Piker.

El-Sayed, a former Michigan public health official, is facing Rogers, an ex-congressman, for the seat held by the retiring Democrat, Gary Peters. Keeping Michigan in Democratic hands is vital to the party’s effort to win a majority for the final two years of Trump’s second term.

Stevens and El-Sayed were originally scheduled to attend church together, along with other Michigan and national Democrats, including South Carolina Rep. James E. Clyburn. Democrats hoped it would be a show of unity as they worked to boost turnout in the Detroit area, where concerns have lingered about enthusiasm among Black and Jewish voters in key Democratic strongholds.

Instead, Stevens swayed to gospel music alongside Rogers in the pews at Perfecting Church, while El-Sayed was a few miles away at a different house of worship campaigning alongside prominent Democrats, including Clyburn.

Stevens’ top aide resigns

After the church service north of Detroit, where Stevens and fiance Jason Turkish worshiped with Rogers and his wife, Kristi, the congresswoman told reporters, “I’m not turning my back on Democrats. It is this one vote.”

Rogers, standing beside her, said he was “honored” by her support.

Their appearance came days after Stevens publicly reaffirmed she would vote for El-Sayed. It also led her longtime chief of staff to resign, with a number of staff members expected to follow soon, according to a person familiar with the developments who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.

“We are shocked and heartbroken,” the aide said in a statement.

The state party chair, Curtis Hertel, said Stevens’ endorsement “shows that she has abandoned everything she claims to care about.”

“We reject the attempts by Stevens and bad-faith actors to divide our party and undermine our momentum,” Hertel wrote, adding that they won’t let such eleventh-hour “distractions” deter the campaign. Hertel later wrote that Stevens “is not a current member of the Michigan Democratic Party, nor will she be in the future.”

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who supported Stevens in the primary, denounced her endorsement of Rogers.

“This is a despicable betrayal from Rep. Stevens,” Schumer, of New York, wrote in a social media post.

Dingell disinvited Stevens after it became ‘distracting’

Among the Democrats who joined El-Sayed at church Sunday morning were Rep. Debbie Dingell of Michigan, Sen. Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who dropped out of the Senate primary before voting began.

Dingell, a senior Democratic figure in the state who helped organize the planned joint appearance, said she asked Stevens not to attend and that Stevens told her she would abide by that.

“I’m the one who pulled it because it had become way too distracting,” Dingell said a telephone interview Sunday before Stevens’ appearance with Rogers. “This is not how I was going to spend my weekend before the election, to be perfectly frank.”

In the August primary, Stevens defeated El-Sayed in Wayne County, which includes Detroit, and neighboring Oakland County, drawing support from Black and Jewish voters who are important parts of the Democratic coalition.

Early voting for Tuesday’s election has been underway since Oct. 24. As of Friday, more than 1.8 million people had already voted in Michigan.

How did we get here?

The Democratic primary was among the most bitter this year. Each candidate accused the other of making personal attacks. Tens of millions of dollars in outside spending poured into the race, including from the super PAC affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as AIPAC, which backed Stevens. El-Sayed took particular offense to an outside group’s ad accusing him of disrespecting women.

Although Stevens pledged after the primary to help El-Sayed however she could, the two have not appeared together publicly since a unity breakfast two days after his primary win.

Last week Stevens’ fiance told the Detroit News that he would vote for Rogers. Stevens later appeared on CNN to reaffirm her support for El-Sayed but urged his campaign to “shut out the hate and call it out.”

But on Friday, after the Associated Press reported on the planned joint appearance, Stevens released a lengthy statement calling on El-Sayed to condemn an ad by an independent left-wing group that linked U.S. support for Israel to high grocery prices.

“Abdul promises to get money out of politics,” Stevens wrote. “He can begin by getting Israel out of his explanation for everything Michigan cannot afford.”

El-Sayed then responded: “So while Congresswoman Stevens seems intent on relitigating a primary that ended three months ago, let’s all focus on the task at hand.”

He made clear the ad was not made by his campaign and said “I do not agree with the contents of that ad.”

The Michigan-born Democratic nominee, meanwhile, has been the frequent target of Islamophobic attacks, including from Trump. At a rally last weekend, Trump called El-Sayed a “jihadist,” adding: “He would be the only senator that will have to go through a metal detector before he’s allowed to go into the Senate.”

Trump and Republicans revel in the discord

Trump praised Stevens in a social media post, saying she was “a Highly Respected Democrat” and that her support from Black and Jewish voters in Michigan is “virtually unprecedented.”

“Haley said what few people are willing to say. She showed great and almost unprecedented loyalty to the Great People of Michigan with what she did,” Trump wrote. “It’s a thing called bravery, and few people have it like just displayed by Congresswoman Haley Stevens!”

Appearing with Trump in Iowa for a campaign rally, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said that he spoke to Stevens after she endorsed Rogers. Johnson said he “encouraged her to stay safe and keep speaking the truth.”

Stevens is not seeking reelection to her House seat Tuesday.

A spokesman for the Republican National Committee, Hunter Lovell, said Democrats who feel abandoned by El-Sayed “have a home” with Rogers.

Cappelletti, Williams and Householder write for the Associated Press. Cappelletti reported from Washington.

WASHINGTON — People heading into the Affordable Care Act open enrollment period with plans to sign up for insurance should expect a variety of changes in 2027, including higher premiums and fewer coverage options.

The sign-up window for the marketplace, also known as Obamacare, started Sunday in most states and runs through Jan. 15.

Big changes to the exchange include expiring financial assistance, rising rates, potential delays in working with a broker, new restrictions on immigrants, and stricter enrollment checks.

Financial help, including premium tax credits and cost-sharing reductions, is now restricted for many groups of people who were previously eligible.

Across the board, healthcare experts predict less coverage and higher prices, with the average price of health insurance purchased through the marketplaces expected to rise by 13% in 2027, according to analysis of new CMS data by the healthcare research nonprofit KFF.

Increases are driven by multiple factors

Cynthia Cox, a vice president and director of the ACA program at KFF, said the increase is primarily driven by rising healthcare costs, hospital market concentration, and potential factors such as the No Surprises Act, which took effect in 2022 and bans surprise billing, or the rising availability of GLP-1 drugs.

The people who will be most affected by the new increases are those who do not qualify for a subsidy.

“They may or may not be able to afford to continue to keep their coverage into next year,” Cox said, adding that “a lot of them have already moved into bronze plans, which are the cheapest plans.”

A CMS fact sheet about open enrollment that was distributed Friday says, “Americans using HealthCare.gov will have robust access to low-cost plans.”

The price of ACA insurance has skyrocketed for many people during President Trump’s second term after Republicans opposed extending COVID-era subsidies that had helped offset the costs of health insurance for most enrollees during the Biden administration.

That resulted in 1.2 million fewer people signing up for coverage in the exchanges.

Falling number of enrollees

As of February, roughly 19.2 million people in the United States were actively enrolled in ACA marketplace health plans, according to the Department of Health and Human Services website. The number of enrollees grew during the COVID-19 pandemic when enhanced subsidies became available through the American Rescue Plan Act and Inflation Reduction Act, both signed into law by President Biden.

New regulations starting in 2027 will also limit tax credits for certain lawfully present immigrants, which could result in an additional 1 million uninsured individuals over time.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has been removing ACA enrollees from the program as part of the ongoing campaign against what it characterizes as waste, fraud and abuse.

In September, Vice President JD Vance and other officials in the Republican administration announced plans to remove 760,000 ACA enrollees from public healthcare exchanges, alleging the individuals were fraudulently enrolled in the program or simply did not exist.

Vance said the discovery and canceled subsidy payments for hundreds of thousands of people from the exchanges, part of an administration-wide crackdown on alleged fraud, would result in $2.2 billion in cost savings.

It’s unclear how many more people will drop off of ACA coverage in 2027, Cox said. But with higher premiums, immigration eligibility changes and the anti-fraud efforts, “I think there’s going to be fewer people enrolled in this market, but it’s going to be harder to understand why.”

Hussein writes for the Associated Press.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — When the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act this year, U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures knew he was going to be targeted.

Alabama’s Republican-controlled Legislature soon after redrew the 2nd Congressional District, one of only two in the state represented by a Democrat, to make it easier for the GOP to win.

Figures, one of several Black members of Congress who saw their districts redrawn, has complicated that plan. He is fighting to hold on to his seat by not only rallying Black voters in cities such as Montgomery and Tuskegee, both steeped in the nation’s struggle for civil rights, but also talking to voters deep in conservative territory, tugging at their concerns over rising prices of food, fuel and fertilizer.

“We know that the deck has been stacked. We know that the rules have been changed in the middle of the game, but we know what we’ve got to do,” Figures told a cheering crowd recently in Montgomery. “All we’ve got to do is show up. All we’ve got to do is show out. All we’ve got to do is fight.”

National groups have taken notice.

Spending on television advertising in the district has gone from almost nothing to nearly $10 million in the last seven weeks, according to AdImpact, with Democratic groups outspending Republicans.

Figures’ race against Rhett Marques, a state lawmaker endorsed by President Trump, is drawing attention as another sign of potential trouble for Republicans as they try to hold their majorities in Congress. The contest also has become a rallying point for Black voters angry over how Southern states swiftly gerrymandered congressional districts after the Supreme Court decision.

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker said the Alabama election is an opportunity to send a message on voting rights.

“The people of Alabama have a chance again to say this is a moral moment — ‘Not on my watch,’” Booker (D-N.J.) said during a campaign stop with Figures. “I will not stay seated while you try to take away our power.”

Racial gerrymandering

Figures was elected in 2024 after a federal court ordered new districts, ruling that the Legislature had unlawfully diluted the voting power of Black residents. Alabama is 27% Black and has seven U.S. House seats. With Figures’ victory, the state added a second Black member of Congress for the first time in its history, aligning its representation with its demographics.

But the Supreme Court decision last term paved the way for drawing new lines. The map Alabama is using on election day reduces the Black voting-age population in Figures’ district from 48% to 40%, making the district more likely to go Republican. Trump carried the area within the new district by 14 percentage points two years ago.

Despite the district’s conservative lean, Democrats are hoping a redistricting backlash and frustration over the economy will galvanize voters on Tuesday and send Figures back to Congress.

Some Black voters say they see echoes of the state’s Jim Crow past in the redrawing of the district.

“I’m 75, and history is repeating itself,” said Francis Fanning, a retired substitute teacher in Montgomery.

Sheyann Webb-Christburg was 8 in 1965 when she and other voting rights marchers were attacked by law enforcement in Selma.

“Much blood, sweat and tears was shed in an effort for African Americans to gain their right to vote,” said Webb-Christburg, who lives in Montgomery, and remembers a feeling of excitement when Figures was elected two years ago.

“It’s very sad that we are in this place,” she said. “But we still got to continue just as we did back in the ’60s. Lift our voices, because we always keep hope alive.”

Republican says he’s aligned with ‘Alabama values’

For the GOP, the new lines are about reclaiming a district that was reliably Republican before it was altered by the federal court.

“We have an opportunity to not only flip a seat from Democrat back to Republican here in Alabama, but to also hold the majority in the House with a win,” Marques said.

He emphasizes his legislative record, which includes support for school choice, law enforcement and restrictions on transgender athletes’ participation in girls’ sports and gender-affirming care for minors. Marques said he is more aligned with “the Alabama values in this district.”

He acknowledged voter concerns about affordability, but put the blame on President Biden’s administration.

Marques has deep ties to the heavily Republican areas of the district, where he served on the Enterprise City Council and ran an automotive store for decades.

“I know his values and I trust him,” said Coffee County Sheriff Scott Byrd, who appeared with Marques at an event with local law enforcement officials.

Republicans are optimistic about reclaiming the seat, but have expressed concerns about the potential for lackluster turnout as Figures mounts an aggressive campaign. Marques said he expects to prevail “if the Republicans and the people who believe in freedom” go vote.

U.S. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said the district is one of three dozen swing seats that will determine control of Congress.

“This seat absolutely will have a larger say on the direction of the country. Do we want conservative policies that are rooted in common sense, or do you want far-left socialists?” Scalise (R-La.) said at a campaign event for Marques in the city of Dothan.

From Black churches to Boll Weevil festival

Figures has been campaigning in both heavily Republican and Democratic areas as he seeks to maximize Democratic turnout while trying to persuade more conservative and independent voters.

He said affordability is the overriding issue facing all voters, from grocery and gas prices to farmers’ high fertilizer costs.

“The cost of living in this country is getting out of control. And we don’t come from a district or a state where people have the means to just continue to pump out money for $4 a gallon for gas or $8 for ground beef,” Figures said.

Figures often notes that the median individual income in Alabama is $34,000 and people struggle with access to hospitals and healthcare. He framed the race as a choice between “someone with a record of serving the people” or someone there to serve a president.

On an October weekend, his heavy schedule of stops included greeting people at the annual Boll Weevil Fall Festival in Enterprise, a predominantly white city of about 31,000. The festival is named for the cotton-destroying insect that forced the community’s pivot to more prosperous peanut farming a century ago.

The next day, he made a string of appearances through largely Black churches in nearby Dothan, urging people to vote.

Figures often notes that the district was never drawn as majority Black, but initially was split evenly between Black and white voters.

Speaking at Greater Beulah Baptist Church, a predominantly Black church in strongly Republican Houston County, Figures said the district was reconfigured in a way that makes it more difficult for “somebody who looks like me” to be able to win. That doesn’t mean it’s not possible, he said.

“Even though they are changing district lines, we still have the right to show up and make our voices heard,” he said.

Chandler writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines contributed to this report.