POLITICS

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers are returning to Washington this week confronting the fallout from the stunning capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro — and familiar complaints about the Trump administration deciding to bypass Congress on military operations that have led to this moment.

Democratic leaders are demanding the administration immediately brief Congress. Republican leaders indicated over the weekend those plans are being scheduled, but some lawmakers expressed frustration Sunday that the details have been slow to arrive.

President Trump told the nation Saturday that the United States intends to “run” Venezuela and take control over the country’s oil operations now that Maduro has been captured and brought to New York to stand trial in a criminal case centered on narco-terrorism charges.

The administration did not brief Congress ahead of the actions, leaving Democrats and some Republicans expressing public frustration with the decision to sideline Congress.

“Congress should have been informed about the operation earlier and needs to be involved as this situation evolves,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said in a social media post Saturday.

Appearing on the Sunday news shows, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York, ticked through a growing list of unknowns — and laid out plans for their party to try and reassert Congress’ authority over acts of war.

“The problem here is that there are so many unanswered questions,” Schumer said on ABC’s “This Week.” “How long do they intend to be there? How many troops do we need after one day? After one week? After one year? How much is it going to cost and what are the boundaries?”

Jeffries told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he was worried about Trump running Venezuela, saying he has “done a terrible job running the United States of America” and should be focused on the job at home.

In the coming days, Jeffries said Democrats will prioritize legislative action to try and put a check on the administration, “to ensure that no further military steps occur absent explicit congressional approval.”

As discussions over Venezuela loom, lawmakers also face major decisions on how to address rising costs of healthcare, prevent another government shutdown and deal with the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files.

Much of the unfinished business reflects a Congress that opted to punt some of its toughest and most politically divisive decisions into the new year, a move that could slow negotiations as lawmakers may be reluctant to give the other side high-profile policy wins in the lead-up to the 2026 midterm elections.

First and foremost, Congress faces the monumental task of averting yet another government shutdown — just two months after the longest shutdown in U.S. history ended. Lawmakers have until Jan. 30 to pass spending bills needed to keep the federal government open. Both chambers are scheduled to be in session for three weeks before the shutdown deadline — with the House slated to be out of session the week immediately before.

Lawmakers were able to resolve key funding disputes late last year, including funding for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, also known as food stamps, and other government programs. But disagreements over healthcare spending remain a major sticking point in budget negotiations, intensified now that millions of Americans are facing higher healthcare costs after lawmakers allowed Affordable Care Act tax credits to expire on Thursday.

“We can still find a solution to this,” said Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin), who has proposed legislation to extend the tax credits for two years. “We need to come up with ways to make people whole. That needs to be a top priority as soon as we get back.”

Despite that urgency, Republican efforts to be the author of broad healthcare reforms have gotten little traction.

Underscoring the political pressure over the issue, four moderate House Republicans late last year defied party leadership and joined House Democrats to force a floor vote on a three-year extension of the subsidies. That vote is expected to take place in the coming weeks. Even if the House effort succeeds, its prospects remain dim in the Senate, where Republicans last month blocked a three-year extension.

Meanwhile, President Trump is proposing giving more money directly to people for their healthcare, rather than to insurance companies. A White House official said the administration is also pursuing reforms to lower the cost of prescription drugs.

Trump said last month that he plans to summon a group of healthcare executives to Washington early in the year to pressure them to lower costs.

“I’m going to call in the insurance companies that are making so much money, and they have to make less, a lot less,” Trump said during an Oval Office announcement. “I’m going to see if they get their price down, to put it very bluntly. And I think that is a very big statement.”

There is an expectation that Trump’s increasing hostility to insurance companies will play a role in any Republican healthcare reform proposal. If Congress does not act, the president is expected to leverage the “bully pulpit” to pressure drug and insurance companies to lower healthcare prices for consumers through executive action, said Nick Iarossi, a Trump fundraiser.

“The president is locked in on the affordability message and I believe anything he can accomplish unilaterally without Congress he will do to provide relief to consumers,” Iarossi said.

While lawmakers negotiate government funding and healthcare policy, the continuing Epstein saga is expected to take up significant bandwidth.

Democrats and a few Republicans have been unhappy with the Department of Justice’s decision to heavily redact or withhold documents from a legally mandated release of files related to its investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender who died in a Manhattan jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

Some are weighing options for holding Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi accountable.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont), who co-sponsored the law that mandated the release with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), said he and Massie will bring contempt charges against Bondi in an attempt to force her to comply with the law.

“The survivors and the public demand transparency and justice,” Khanna said in a statement.

Under a law passed by Congress and signed by Trump, the Justice Department was required to release all Epstein files by Dec. 19, and released about 100,000 pages on that day. In the days that followed, the Justice Department said more than 5.2 million documents have been discovered and need to be reviewed.

“We have lawyers working around the clock to review and make the legally required redactions to protect victims, and we will release the documents as soon as possible,” the Justice Department said in a social media post on Dec. 24. “Due to the mass volume of material, this process may take a few more weeks.”

Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, told MS NOW last week that pressure to address the matter will come to a head in the new year when lawmakers are back at work.

“When we get back to Congress here in this next week, we’re going to find out really quick if Republicans are serious about actually putting away and taking on pedophiles and some of the worst people and traffickers in modern history, or if they’re going to bend the knee to Donald Trump,” said Garcia, of Long Beach.

WASHINGTON — Top officials in the Trump administration clarified their position on “running” Venezuela after seizing its president, Nicolás Maduro, over the weekend, pressuring the regime that remains in power there Sunday to acquiesce to U.S. demands on oil access and drug enforcement, or else face further military action.

Their goal appears to be the establishment of a pliant vassal state in Caracas that keeps the current government — led by Maduro for more than a decade — largely in place, but finally defers to the whims of Washington after turning away from the United States for a quarter century.

It leaves little room for the ascendance of Venezuela’s democratic opposition, which won the country’s last national election, according to the State Department, European capitals and international monitoring bodies.

Trump and his top aides said they would try to work with Maduro’s handpicked vice president and current interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, to run the country and its oil sector “until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” offering no time frame for proposed elections.

Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem underscored the strategy in a series of interviews Sunday morning.

“If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” Trump told the Atlantic, referring to Rodríguez. “Rebuilding there and regime change, anything you want to call it, is better than what you have right now. Can’t get any worse.”

Rubio said that a U.S. naval quarantine of Venezuelan oil tankers would continue unless and until Rodríguez begins cooperating with the U.S. administration, referring to the blockade — and the lingering threat of additional military action from the fleet off Venezuela’s coast — as “leverage” over the remnants of Maduro’s regime.

“That’s the sort of control the president is pointing to when he says that,” Rubio told CBS News. “We continue with that quarantine, and we expect to see that there will be changes — not just in the way the oil industry is run for the benefit of the people, but also so that they stop the drug trafficking.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told CNN that he had been in touch with the administration since the Saturday night operation that snatched Maduro and his wife from their bedroom, whisking them away to New York to face criminal charges.

Trump’s vow to “run” the country, Cotton said, “means the new leaders of Venezuela need to meet our demands.”

“Delcy Rodríguez, and the other ministers in Venezuela, understand now what the U.S. military is capable of,” Cotton said, while adding: “It is a fact that she and other indicted and sanctioned individuals are in Venezuela. They have control of the military and security forces. We have to deal with that fact. But that does not make them the legitimate leaders.”

“What we want is a future Venezuelan government that will be pro-American, that will contribute to stability, order and prosperity, not only in Venezuela but in our own backyard. That probably needs to include new elections,” Cotton added.

Whether Rodríguez will cooperate with the administration is an open question.

Trump said Saturday that she seemed amenable to making “Venezuela great again” in a conversation with Rubio. But the interim president delivered a speech hours later demanding Maduro’s return, and vowing that Venezuela would “never again be a colony of any empire.”

The developments have concerned senior figures in Venezuela’s democratic opposition, led by Maria Corina Machado, last year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and Edmundo González Urrutia, the opposition candidate who won the 2024 presidential election that was ultimately stolen by Maduro.

In his Saturday news conference, Trump dismissed Machado, saying that the revered opposition leader was “a very nice woman,” but “doesn’t have the respect within the country” to lead.

Elliott Abrams, Trump’s special envoy to Venezuela in his first term, said he was skeptical that Rodríguez — an acolyte of Hugo Chávez and avowed supporter of Chavismo throughout the Maduro era — would betray the cause.

“The insult to Machado was bizarre, unfair — and simply ignorant,” Abrams told The Times. “Who told him that there was no respect for her?”

Maduro was booked in New York and flown by night over the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where he is in federal custody at a notorious facility that has housed other famous inmates, including Sean “Diddy” Combs, Ghislaine Maxwell, Bernie Madoff and Sam Bankman-Fried.

He is expected to be arraigned on federal charges of narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices as soon as Monday.

While few in Washington lamented Maduro’s ouster, Democratic lawmakers criticized the operation as another act of regime change by a Republican president that could have violated international law.

“The invasion of Venezuela has nothing to do with American security. Venezuela is not a security threat to the U.S.,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut. “This is about making Trump’s oil industry and Wall Street friends rich. Trump’s foreign policy — the Middle East, Russia, Venezuela — is fundamentally corrupt.”

In their Saturday news conference, and in subsequent interviews, Trump and Rubio said that targeting Venezuela was in part about reestablishing U.S. dominance in the Western Hemisphere, reasserting the philosophy of President James Monroe as China and Russia work to enhance their presence in the region. The Trump administration’s national security strategy, published last month, previewed a renewed focus on Latin America after the region faced neglect from Washington over decades.

Trump left unclear whether his military actions in the region would end in Caracas, a longstanding U.S. adversary, or if he is willing to turn the U.S. armed forces on America’s allies.

In his interview with the Atlantic, Trump suggested that “individual countries” would be addressed on a case-by-case basis. On Saturday, he reiterated a threat to the president of Colombia, a major non-NATO ally, to “watch his ass,” over an ongoing dispute about Bogota’s cooperation on drug enforcement.

On Sunday morning, the United Nations Security Council was called for an urgent meeting to discuss the legality of the U.S. operation inside Venezuela.

It was not Russia or China — permanent members of the council and longstanding competitors — who called the session, nor France, whose government has questioned whether the operation violated international law, but Colombia, a non-permanent member who joined the council less than a week ago.

When the Mississippi Legislature reconvenes in the Capitol’s marbled halls this month, one voice will scarcely be heard: constituents’.

Citizens and advocates are occasionally invited by lawmakers to speak at the Capitol. But unlike some other statehouses in the U.S., there are no formal opportunities for constituents in Mississippi to provide public comment or testimony in committee hearings, remotely or in writing.

“Constituents should have a voice when it comes to policy making,” said Sarah Moreland-Russell, an associate professor in the School of Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis who has studied testimony’s impact on the lawmaking process.

Moreland-Russell said she was “very surprised” to learn that there are no opportunities for Mississippi’s citizens to regularly provide testimony at the statehouse.

“If you’re not hearing from the people that are actually being affected by a policy, then how do you know it’s truly going to be effective?” she asked.

In Louisiana, House and Senate rules mandate proponents and opponents of bills have the opportunity to speak on a piece of legislation. In Alaska, a network of 22 offices across the state provides opportunities to participate in legislative meetings and submit written public comment, as well as provide legislative information to constituents in remote parts of the state. Every bill in Colorado receives a hearing with public comment. And in Arizona, an online system allows residents to register opinions and request to testify on bills from their homes.

Moreland-Russell’s research showed that most legislators, regardless of political party, find testimony from constituents and experts influential. Testimony increased lawmakers’ awareness of issues, encouraged them to conduct additional research and sometimes even changed their votes.

“Stories can be extremely influential,” Moreland-Russell said. She said legislators found personal anecdotes paired with supporting data most impactful.

In Mississippi, bills frequently fly through the committee process, often with little discussion by lawmakers and no input from the public. The Senate’s typo-riddled bill to phase out the income tax — one of the most notable bills to come out of the 2025 legislative session — quickly passed through committee with little debate.

Senate Public Health Committee Chairman Hob Bryan, a Democrat who has served in the Legislature since 1984, said committee hearings used to involve frequent debate, amendments and discussion among subcommittees.

“Everything now is just perfunctory,” he said.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many state legislatures implemented new ways for the public to participate remotely, including options to present remote testimony or gather constituent feedback online.

But Mississippians who do not live in Jackson or cannot attend the Legislature still do not have the opportunity to watch many of the state’s committee proceedings. The Mississippi House of Representatives does not livestream or record its committee meetings, though it does livestream proceedings in the House chamber.

Meanwhile, the Mississippi Senate livestreams most of its committee meetings and all of its full chamber proceedings. This is a marker of Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann’s commitment to transparency, spokesperson Hannah Milliet said in an email.

Republican House Speaker Jason White told Mississippi Today in 2024 that he has no objection to livestreaming committee hearings and said the Rules Committee would look into the policy.

But Republican House Rules Chairman Fred Shanks said in November there has not been any talk of livestreaming the meetings. White did not respond to a request for comment.

Simple changes, such as requiring committees to provide notice of hearings and publish agendas ahead of time, would give constituents more opportunities to participate in the legislative process, said Safia Malin, interim policy director for Jackson-based civic engagement nonprofit One Voice.

The Senate has a page on the Legislature’s website to publish agendas, though they are not always shared. The House does not post agendas online. And committee hearings in both chambers occasionally occur at the last minute.

Democratic Rep. Jeramey Anderson has proposed a rule to require House committees to post agendas 24 hours before meeting for the past seven years. None has ever made it out of committee.

“Mississippians deserve to know what bills are being taken up before they walk into a committee room — not five minutes before, and not after the decisions are already made,” Anderson said in a written statement to Mississippi Today.

“The refusal to provide even basic notice isn’t an accident,” he said. “It’s a deliberate choice that keeps the public from testifying, keeps advocates from participating, and keeps voters from holding their elected officials accountable.”

The state Legislature is allowed to meet behind closed doors. The Mississippi Ethics Commission has repeatedly ruled that the Legislature is not covered by the state’s open meetings law. Hinds County Chancellor Dewayne Thomas affirmed the ruling in February.

The House Republican Caucus — which holds a strong majority — frequently meets behind closed doors before committee meetings, effectively shielding discussion on legislation from the public.

Shanks said he has never had a constituent ask him about speaking at the Capitol. He said he makes his phone number available for constituents to call him at any time.

“As far as somebody making a public comment at a committee meeting, a lot of our committee meetings are pretty quick, and some of them are last-minute,” Shanks said.

“It would be pretty hard to do.”

Dilworth writes for Mississippi Today. This story was originally published by Mississippi Today and distributed through a partnership with the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had yet to weigh in on the U.S. operation to remove Nicolás Maduro from power in Caracas as of Saturday night, more than 24 hours since President Trump approved the audacious mission that captured the Venezuelan leader.

Her silence on the operation surprised some in the U.S. intelligence community, which laid the groundwork for the mission over several months, and which had assets in harm’s way on the ground in Venezuela as the operation unfolded.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe, by contrast, accompanied Trump in Mar-a-Lago throughout the night as the extraction was underway, and stood beside the president as he conducted a news conference announcing the results.

“Teamwork at its finest,” Ratcliffe wrote on social media, posted alongside photos of him with the president’s team in the temporary situation room set up at Trump’s Florida estate.

Gabbard, a native of Hawaii who, according to her X account, spent the holidays in her home state, made a name for herself as a member of Congress campaigning against “regime change wars,” particularly the U.S. war in Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein.

In a speech at Turning Point USA’s annual conference last month, Gabbard criticized “warmongers” in the “deep state” of the intelligence community she leads trying to thwart Trump’s efforts to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine.

“Too often we, the American people, are told we must choose between liberty or security, and which side often wins out in that proposition,” she told the gathered crowd. “Liberty loses, and the warmongers claim that they are doing what they are doing for the sake of our security. It’s a lie.”

Outside of government, during Trump’s first term, Gabbard also criticized advocates for regime change in Venezuela, writing in 2019, “It’s about the oil … again.”

“The United States needs to stay out of Venezuela,” Gabbard wrote at the time. “Let the Venezuelan people determine their future.

“We don’t want other countries to choose our leaders,” she added, “so we have to stop trying to choose theirs.”

Well, wouldn’t you want to know… We’d like to know for sure. As usual with Venezuelan constitutional matters, there’s no easy answer to this. We have to look at what is, what should be, what shouldn’t be but probably will be, and speculate what it would be like in the Upside Down.

During yesterday’s presser on Operation Absolute Resolve, Donald Trump very casually said that they (the US) were going to run the country. Not very clear yet what this means, but at some point he also said that they were talking to Maduro’s VP, Delcy Rodríguez (without naming her), and that she was willing to collaborate in making Venezuela great again. There was no mention of democracy during the press conference. If we want to be really optimistic on what they have in store for Venezuela in their plans, it’s likely that somewhere down the line they are looking at some sort of presidential election. This leaves a bunch of questions in the air, but the biggest one in all caps and neon lights: What about Maria Corina Machado and Edmundo González Urrutia, who just won a presidential election by almost 70%?

There should be no doubt that according to Venezuelan law, González Urrutia is the president elect of Venezuela and he should be sworn in. Chavismo decided to derail us from the constitutional path once again when Maduro stole the 2024 presidential elections. Machado and her team have been trying to get the country back to that path, but they don’t only have to deal with Maduro, but also with the one calling the shots in the strategy to depose him: Trump. A harsh reality is that, from the T2 standpoint, a transition with the participation of chavismo is cleaner and cheaper than trying to enforce what the Venezuelan Constitution establishes.

Chavismo may be trying to apply chavista rules to a Trumpist game.

We spoke to the Caracas Chronicles Legal Eagles and asked them what the Venezuelan Constitution said and how it can be interpreted by the different interested parties. And in lawyerly fashion they said: it depends. Depends on what standpoint you’re using to look at it, obviously. Chavismo will look at it assuming that Maduro is legitimate and, of course, the rest of the country looks at it with Edmundo González Urrutia as the depository of the people mandate. The US has its own, independent, POV.

One important caveat: while chavismo steals elections and violates human rights, they do have a very strange legalist fetish, and at moments when one would think that they’ve thrown the book out the window, they come back saying that procedures have to be followed. This doesn’t mean that they follow their laws to the letter, but that they usually leave everything in writing even if they need to come up with far fetched, absurd legal interpretations.

Chavista Law

So, from the chavista standpoint, the capture of Nicolás Maduro by United States special forces should constitute an absolute absence of the President of the Republic. Although Article 233 of the 1999 Constitution establishes the circumstances that qualify as absolute absence—and detention by foreign forces is not expressly listed—it is evident that the current situation constitutes a case of absolute absence.

Because the absolute absence would have occurred within the first four years of the presidential term, a new election must be held within the following thirty consecutive days. In the interim, the office of president would be assumed provisionally by the executive vice president. Easy-peasy, right? Well, not exactly. More on this later.

Venezuelan Constitution

If the will of the Venezuelan people were to be upheld, the legitimate president, González Urrutia, should be sworn in. Therefore, the currently chavista-controlled elections authority, CNE, would be required to formally proclaim him to then proceed with the swearing-in before the chavista-controlled legislature, AN. Let’s be real, for this to take place, a larger amount of lead than what we saw on Saturday would be required.

If it were not possible for the president to be sworn in before either of those two instances, the swearing-in could take place exceptionally before the chavista Supreme Court. Not gonna happen.

Comment from one of the Legal Eagles: “If that were also not possible, the 1999 Constitution provides no explicit solution to the constitutional crisis. Under that scenario, one option would be to consider a swearing-in before the Delegated Committee of the National Assembly elected in 2015. Some constitutional law scholars have suggested that the swearing-in could instead take place before the Supreme Court in exile.” And then we would have another useless president in exile.

Reality (bites)

Yesterday, Delcy Rodríguez held her media event in a sort of veiled response to Trump’s. With the presence of the chavista top brass, Rodríguez said that, even when Maduro was under US custody, he was still the president of the country. Clearly, Maduro will not return and it’s an absolute absence that would require elections 30 days after the Delcy Rodríguez takeover. The Maduro Supreme Court (or perhaps now we should say the Delcy Supreme Court), prompted by her request to approve an internal commotion decree, said that they would not decide immediately over the absence of Maduro and instead granted her the powers of the presidency as if it was a temporary absence (according to article 234, temporary absences of the President are covered by the VP for up to 90 days, which may be extended by 90 more). Again, clearly Maduro isn’t coming back, but this allows chavismo to control the moment when elections should be called, if such elections are called at all. In the past they’ve used similar techniques to win time (for instance, there’s no certainty over the moment of death of Chávez, but elections were held within the timeline from the moment it was announced).

Is this a challenge to what the Trump administration is putting on the table? It’s not clear yet. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in short, told The New York Times that the chavista leadership was to be judged by their actions and not by their words. Another important point is that they didn’t talk about elections or a timeline for them. Rubio, today, was clear in saying that they had to deal with chavismo, that they had to focus on what will happen in the next three weeks or three months, and that they were hoping that they would receive better cooperation than what they were receiving with Maduro. He implied that the opposition couldn’t offer this. Probably a nail on the coffin to the idea of having González Urrutia as president of Venezuela. Although the future looks bleak, Machado may have an opportunity to jump back in the game (but this is for another post).

The regime is likely looking at this as part of their regular game during negotiations and try to keep on dragging time to stay in power. But the truth is that they are negotiating with a gun against their heads. Chavismo may be trying to apply chavista rules to a Trumpist game. And that’s dangerous. Because, whether you like it or not, the game changed on Saturday. For everybody.

THE CURRENT spat between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and President Bush echoes a California discord that contributed to the Republicans losing the presidency in 1916. A lesser prize is at stake this time — the governor’s initiatives — but rankled feelings may end with conservatives losing another November election.

Schwarzenegger’s refusal to join the president at a Ronald Reagan Presidential Library ceremony, and Bush’s rejection of the governor’s plea to postpone a local fundraiser until after next month’s special election, made national as well as local headlines. Neither man blinked, although their sagging popularity cries out for compromise and cooperation within the Republican ranks.

On the eve of the 1916 presidential election, California Gov. Hiram Johnson and Charles Evans Hughes, the GOP presidential candidate, exhibited similar obstinacy. It ended in a stunning defeat for Hughes, who expected to carry a heavily Republican California but instead lost the state and the election to Woodrow Wilson by a handful of votes.

Progressive Republican Johnson, a popular reform governor who was a candidate for the state’s U.S. Senate seat that November, was not a favorite of the more conservative wing of his party. He faced opposition in the GOP primary from mossbacks who rejected his efforts toward social and economic change. That August, Hughes made major speeches in California. At the same time, Johnson was furiously campaigning throughout the state in a close fight for his party’s senatorial nomination.

In mid-August, Hughes and Johnson spent several days in L.A. County. Taking a break from the campaign, Hughes made a quick trip to Long Beach, staying at the Virginia Hotel. Johnson had already checked in at the Virginia, and when word reached him that his party’s presidential candidate was there, he expected a courtesy call from him. But Hughes left without meeting with Johnson, a slight that irritated the progressive wing of the party.

The Times, an ardent supporter of Hughes and critic of Johnson’s progressive Republicans, neither reported Johnson’s campaign visit to Southern California nor Hughes’ snub. But other papers did. During the remaining two months of the campaign, Hughes’ seemingly insurmountable Republican majority evaporated. Among the reasons was his gaffe, which apparently turned off many would-be Republican voters.

(That wasn’t all that hurt Hughes. When he crossed a picket line in San Francisco, he made certain that the media were aware that he had intentionally done so. In an industrializing state, voters turned to Wilson, a more labor-oriented candidate.)

Johnson won the Senate race. Hughes lost California — and the presidency — by less than 4,000 votes.

The Schwarzenegger/Bush brouhaha, occurring in the midst of sagging poll numbers for both men, further weakens their appeal. The governor’s initiative proposals, already in trouble with the voters, may have suffered a fatal setback. The lame-duck president is fortunate not to be on the ballot this fall.

California has tried all manner of design in choosing its governor.

Democrat Gray Davis, to name a recent example, had an extensive background in government and politics and a bland demeanor that suggested his first name was also a fitting adjective.

Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, by contrast, was a novice candidate who ran for governor on a whim. His super-sized action hero persona dazzled Californians like the pyrotechnics in one of his Hollywood blockbusters.

In the end, however, their political fates were the same. Both left office humbled, burdened with lousy poll numbers and facing a well of deep voter discontent.

(Schwarzenegger, at least, departed on his own terms. He chased Davis from the Capitol in an extraordinary recall and won reelection before his approval ratings tanked during his second term.)

There are roughly a dozen major candidates for California governor in 2026 and, taken together, they lack even a small fraction of Schwarzenegger’s celebrity wattage.

Nor do any have the extensive Sacramento experience of Davis, who was a gubernatorial chief of staff under Jerry Brown before serving in the Legislature, then winning election as state controller and lieutenant governor.

That’s not, however, to disparage those running.

The contestants include a former Los Angeles mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa; two candidates who’ve won statewide office, schools Supt. Tony Thurmond and former Controller Betty Yee; two others who gained national recognition during their time in Congress, Katie Porter and Eric Swalwell; and Riverside County’s elected sheriff, Chad Bianco.

The large field offers an ample buffet from which to choose.

The rap on this particular batch of hopefuls is they’re a collective bore, which, honestly, seems a greater concern to those writing and spitballing about the race than a reflection of some great upwelling of citizens clamoring for bread and circuses.

In scores of conversations with voters over the past year, the sentiment that came through, above all, was a sense of practicality and pragmatism. (And, this being a blue bastion, no small amount of horror, fear and loathing directed at the vengeful and belligerent Trump administration.)

It’s never been more challenging and expensive to live in California, a place of great bounty that often exacts in dollars and stress what it offers in opportunity and wondrous beauty.

With a governor seemingly more focused on his personal agenda, a 2028 bid for president, than the people who put him in office, many said they’d like to replace Gavin Newsom with someone who will prioritize California and their needs above his own.

That means a focus on matters such as traffic, crime, fire prevention, housing and homelessness. In other words, pedestrian stuff that doesn’t light up social media or earn an invitation to hold forth on one of the Beltway chat shows.

“Why does it take so long to do simple things?” asked one of those voters, the Bay Area’s Michael Duncan, as he lamented his pothole-ridden, 120-mile round-trip commute between Fairfield and an environmental analyst job in Livermore.

The answer is not a simple one.

Politics are messy, like any human endeavor. Governing is a long and laborious process, requiring study, deliberation and the weighing of competing forces. Frankly, it can be rather dull.

Certainly the humdrum of legislation or bureaucratic rule-marking is nothing like the gossipy speculation about who may or may not bid to lead California as its 41st governor.

Why else was so much coverage devoted to whether Sen. Alex Padilla would jump into the gubernatorial race — he chose not to — and the possible impact his entry would have on the contest, as opposed to, say, his thinking on CEQA or FMAP?

(The former is California’s much-contested Environmental Quality Act; the latter is the formula that determines federal reimbursement for Medi-Cal, the state’s healthcare program for low-income residents.)

Just between us, political reporters tend to be like children in front of a toy shop window. Their bedroom may be cluttered with all manner of diversion and playthings, but what they really want is that shiny, as-yet unattained object — Rick Caruso! — beckoning from behind glass.

Soon enough, once a candidate has entered the race, boredom sets in and the speculation and desire for someone fresh and different starts anew. (Will Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta change his mind and run for governor?)

For their part, many voters always seem to be searching for some idealized candidate who exists only in their imagination.

Someone strong, but not dug in. Willing to compromise, but never caving to the other side. Someone with the virginal purity of a political outsider and the intrinsic capability of an insider who’s spent decades cutting deals and keeping the government wheels spinning.

They look over their choices and ask, in the words of an old song, is that all there is? (Spoiler alert: There are no white knights out there.)

Donald Trump was, foremost, a celebrity before his burst into politics. First as a denizen of New York’s tabloid culture and then as the star of TV’s faux-boardroom drama, “The Apprentice.”

His pizzazz was a large measure of his appeal, along with his manufactured image as a shrewd businessman with a kingly touch and infallible judgment.

His freewheeling political rallies and frothy social media presence were, and continue to be, a source of great glee to his fans and followers.

His performance as president has been altogether different, and far less amusing.

If the candidates for California governor fail to light up a room, that’s not such a bad thing. Fix the roads. Make housing more affordable. Help keep the place from burning to the ground.

Leave the fun and games to the professionals.

WASHINGTON — Maria Eugenia Torres Ramirez was having dinner with her family in Los Angeles on Friday night when the flood of messages began. Word had begun to circulate that the U.S. was invading Venezuela and would seize its president, Nicolás Maduro.

Torres Ramirez, 38, fled her native country in 2021, settled in L.A. and has a pending application for asylum. Her family is scattered throughout the world — Colombia, Chile and France. Since her parents died, none of her loved ones remain in Venezuela.

Still, news that the autocrat who separated them had been captured delivered a sense of long-awaited elation and united the siblings and cousins across continents for a rare four-hour phone call as the night unfolded.

“I waited for this moment for so long from within Venezuela, and now that I’m out, it’s like watching a movie,” said Torres Ramirez, a former political activist who opposed Maduro. “It’s like a jolt of relief.”

Many Venezuelans across the U.S. celebrated the military action that resulted in Maduro’s arrest. Economic collapse and political repression led roughly 8 million Venezuelans to emigrate since 2014, making it one of the world’s largest displacement crises.

About 770,000 live in the U.S. as of 2023, concentrated mainly in the regions of Miami, Orlando, Houston and New York. Just over 9,500 live in L.A., according to a 2024 U.S. Census estimate.

In the South Florida city of Doral, home to the largest Venezuelan American community, residents poured into the streets Saturday morning, carrying the Venezuelan flag, singing together and praising the military action as an act of freedom.

In Los Angeles, a different picture emerged as groups opposed to Maduro’s arrest took to the streets, though none identified themselves as being of Venezuelan descent. At a rally of about 40 people south of downtown Los Angeles, John Parker, a representative of the Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice, called the raid a “brutal assault and kidnapping” that amounted to a war crime.

The United States’ intervention in Venezuela had nothing to do with stopping the flow of drugs, he said, and everything to do with undermining a legitimate socialist government. Parker called for Maduro to be set free as a few dozen protesters behind him chanted, “Hands off Venezuela.”

Parker said when he visited Venezuela a few weeks ago as part of a U.S. peacemaking delegation, he saw “the love people had for Maduro.”

A later demonstration in Pershing Square drew hundreds out in the rain to protest the U.S intervention. But when a speaker led chants of “No war in Venezuela,” a woman draped in a Venezuelan flag attempted to approach him and speak into the microphone. A phalanx of demonstrators circled her and shuttled her away.

At Mi Venezuela, a restaurant in Vernon, 16-year-old Paola Moleiro and her family ordered empanadas Saturday morning.

A portion of one of the restaurant’s walls was covered in Venezuelan bank notes scrawled with messages. One read: “3 de enero del 2026. Venezuela quedo libre.”

Venezuela is free.

Around midnight the night before, Paola started getting messages on WhatsApp from her relatives in Venezuela. The power was out, they said, and they forwarded videos of what sounded like bomb blasts.

Paola was terrified. She’d left Venezuela at age 7 with her parents and siblings, first for Panama and later the U.S., in 2023. But the rest of her family remained in Venezuela, and she had no idea what was going on.

Paola and her family stayed up scanning television channels for some idea of what was happening. Around 1:30 a.m., President Trump announced that U.S. forces had captured Maduro.

“The first thing I did, I called my aunt and said, ‘We are going to see each other again,’” she said.

Because of the Venezuelan state’s control over media, her relatives had no idea their leader had been seized by U.S. forces. “Are you telling me the truth?” Paola said her aunt asked.

Paola hasn’t been home in nine years. She misses her grandmother and her grandmother’s cooking, especially her caraotas negras, or black beans. As a child, she said, certain foods were so scarce that she had an apple for the first time only after moving to Panama.

Paola said she was grateful to Trump for ending decades of authoritarian rule that had reduced her home country to a shell of what it once was.

“Venezuela has always prayed for this,” she said. “It’s been 30 years. I feel it was in God’s hands last night.”

For Torres Ramirez, it was difficult to square her appreciation for Trump’s accomplishment in Venezuela with the fear she has felt as an immigrant under his presidency.

“It’s like a double-edged sword,” she said. “Throughout the course of this whole year, I have felt persecuted. I had to face ICE — I had to go to my appointment with the fear that I could lose it all because the immigration policies had changed and there was complete uncertainty. For a moment, I felt as if I was in Venezuela. I felt persecuted right here.”

During a news conference Saturday morning, Trump said Maduro was responsible for trafficking illicit drugs into the U.S. and the deaths of thousands of Americans. He repeated a baseless claim that the Maduro government had emptied Venezuela’s prisons and mental institutions and “sent their worst and most violent monsters into the United States to steal American lives.”

“They sent everybody bad into the United States, but no longer, and we have now a border where nobody gets through,” he said.

Trump also announced that the U.S. will “run” Venezuela and its vast oil reserves.

“We’ll run it professionally,” he said. “We’ll have the greatest oil companies in the world go in and invest billions and billions of dollars and take that money, use that money in Venezuela, and the biggest beneficiary are going to be the people of Venezuela.”

Torres Ramirez said that while she’s happy about Maduro’s ouster, she’s unsure how to feel about Trump’s announcement saying the U.S. will take over Venezuela’s oil industry. Perhaps it won’t be favorable in the long term for Venezuela’s economy, she said, but the U.S. intervention is a win for the country’s political future if it means people can return home.

Patricia Andrade, 63, who runs Raíces Venezolanas, a volunteer program in Miami that distributes donations to Venezuelan immigrants, said she believes the Trump administration is making the right move by remaining involved until there is a transition of power.

Andrade, a longtime U.S. citizen, said she hasn’t been to Venezuela in 25 years — even missing the deaths of both parents. She said she was accused of treason for denouncing the imprisonment of political opponents and the degradation of Venezuela’s democracy under Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez. She said she worries that Venezuela’s remaining political prisoners could be killed as payback for Maduro’s arrest.

“We tried everything — elections, marches, more elections … and it couldn’t be done,” she said. “Maduro was getting worse and worse, there was more repression. If they hadn’t removed him, we were never going to recover Venezuela.”

While she doesn’t want the U.S. to fix the problems of other countries, she thanked Trump for U.S. involvement in Venezuela.

She said she can’t wait to visit her remaining family members there.

CARACAS, Venezuela — It was about 2 a.m. Saturday Caracas time when the detonations began, lighting up the sullen sky like a post-New Year’s fireworks display.

“¡Ya comenzó!” was the recurrent phrase in homes, telephone conversations and social media chats as the latest iteration of U.S. “shock and awe” rocked the Venezuelan capital. “It has begun!”

Then the question: “¿Maduro?”

The great uncertainty was the whereabouts of President Nicolás Maduro, who has been under Trump administration threat for months.

The scenes of revelry from a joyous Venezuelan diaspora celebrating from Miami to Madrid were not repeated here. Fear of the unknown kept most at home.

Hours would pass before news reports from outside Venezuela confirmed that U.S. forces had captured Maduro and placed him on a U.S. ship to face criminal charges in federal court in New York.

Venezuelans had watched the unfolding spectacle from their homes, using social media to exchange images of explosions and the sounds of bombardment. This moment, it was clear, was ushering in a new era of uncertainly for Venezuela, a nation reeling from a decade of economic, political and social unrest.

Government supporters display posters of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, right, and former President Hugo Chávez in downtown Caracas on Saturday.

(Matias Delacroix / Associated Press)

The ultimate result was an imponderable. But that this was a transformative moment — for good or bad — seemed indisputable.

By daybreak, an uneasy calm overtook the city of more than 3 million. The explosions and the drone of U.S. aircraft ceased. Blackouts cut electricity to parts of the capital.

Pro-government youths wielding automatic rifles set up roadblocks or sped through the streets on motorcycles, a warning to those who might celebrate Maduro’s downfall.

Shops, gas stations and other businesses were mostly closed. There was little traffic.

“When I heard the explosions, I grabbed my rosary and began to pray,” said Carolina Méndez, 50, who was among the few who ventured out Saturday, seeking medicines at a pharmacy, though no personnel had arrived to attend to clients waiting on line. “I’m very scared now. That’s why I came to buy what I need.”

A sense of alarm was ubiquitous.

“People are buying bottled water, milk and eggs,” said Luz Pérez, a guard at one of the few open shops, not far from La Carlota airport, one of the sites targeted by U.S. strikes. “I heard the explosions. It was very scary. But the owner decided to open anyway to help people.”

Customers were being allowed to enter three at a time. Most didn’t want to speak. Their priority was to stock up on basics and get home safely.

Rumors circulated rapidly that U.S. forces had whisked away Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

There was no immediate official confirmation here of the detention of Maduro and Flores, both wanted in the United States for drug-trafficking charges — allegations that Maduro has denounced as U.S. propaganda. But then images of an apparently captive Maduro, blindfolded, in a sweatsuit soon circulated on social media.

There was no official estimate of Venezuelan casualties in the U.S. raid.

Rumors circulated indicating that a number of top Maduro aides had been killed, among them Diosdado Cabello, the security minister who is a staunch Maduro ally. Cabello is often the face of the government.

But Cabello soon appeared on official TV denouncing “the terrorist attack against our people,” adding: “Let no one facilitate the moves of the enemy invader.”

Although Trump, in his Saturday news conference, confidently predicted that the United States would “run” Venezuela, apparently during some undefined transitional period, it’s not clear how that will be accomplished.

A key question is whether the military — long a Maduro ally — will remain loyal now that he is in U.S. custody. There was no public indication Saturday of mass defections from the Venezuelan armed forces. Nor was it clear that Maduro’s government infrastructure had lost control of the country. Official media reported declarations of loyalty from pro-government politicians and citizens from throughout Venezuela.

In his comments, Trump spoke of a limited U.S. troop presence in Venezuela, focused mostly on protecting the oil infrastructure that his administration says was stolen from the United States — a characterization widely rejected here, even among Maduro’s critics. But Trump offered few details on sending in U.S. personnel to facilitate what could be a tumultuous transition.

Meantime, Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez surfaced on official television and demanded the immediate release of Maduro and his wife, according to the official Telesur broadcast outlet. Her comments seemed to be the first official acknowledgment that Maduro had been taken.

“There is one president of this country, and his name is Nicolás Maduro,” the vice president said in an address from Miraflores Palace, from where Maduro and his wife had been seized hours earlier.

During an emergency meeting of the National Defense Council, Telesur reported, Rodríguez labeled the couple’s detention an “illegal kidnapping.”

The Trump administration, the vice president charged, meant to “capture our energy, mineral and [other] natural resources.”

Her defiant words came after Trump, in his news conference, said that Rodríguez had been sworn in as the country’s interim president and had evinced a willingness to cooperate with Washington.

“She’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again,” Trump said.

Pro-government armed civilians patrol in La Guaira, Venezuela, on Saturday after President Trump announced that President Nicolás Maduro had been captured and flown out of the country.

(Matias Delacroix / Associated Press)

Somewhat surprisingly, Trump also seemed to rule out a role in an interim government for Marina Corina Machado, the Venezuelan Nobel Peace Prize laureate and longtime anti-Maduro activist.

“She’s a very nice woman, but doesn’t have respect within the country,” Trump said of Machado.

Machado is indeed a controversial figure within the fractured Venezuelan opposition. Some object to her open calls for U.S. intervention, preferring a democratic change in government.

Nonetheless, her stand-in candidate, Edmundo González, did win the presidency in national balloting last year, according to opposition activists and others, who say Maduro stole the election.

“Venezuelans, the moment of liberty has arrived!” Machado wrote in a letter released on X. “We have fought for years. … What was meant to happen is happening.”

Not everyone agreed.

“They want our oil and they say it’s theirs,” said Roberto, 65, a taxi driver who declined to give his last name for security reasons. “Venezuelans don’t agree. Yes, I think people will go out and defend their homeland.”

Special correspondent Mogollón reported from Caracas and staff writer McDonnell from Boston. Contributing was special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in Mexico City.

President Trump’s decision to send U.S. forces into Venezuela to capture President Nicolás Maduro and his wife and return them to the U.S. to face drug charges elicited condemnation from legal experts and other critics who argued that the operation — conducted without congressional or United Nations approval — clearly violated U.S. and international law.

Such criticism came from Democratic leaders, international allies and adversaries including Mexico, France, China and Russia, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and experts on international law and wartime powers.

“Nicolás Maduro was a thug and an illegitimate leader of Venezuela, terrorizing and oppressing its people for far too long and forcing many to leave the country. But starting a war to remove Maduro doesn’t just continue Donald Trump’s trampling of the Constitution, it further erodes America’s standing on the world stage and risks our adversaries mirroring this brazen illegal escalation,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) wrote on X.

A U.N. spokesman said Guterres was “deeply alarmed” by the U.S. operation and “deeply concerned that the rules of international law have not been respected.”

China’s foreign ministry said “such hegemonic acts of the U.S. seriously violate international law and Venezuela’s sovereignty,” while France’s foreign minister said the U.S. operation “contravenes the principle of the non-use of force that underpins international law.”

Republicans largely backed the president, with both House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) defending the operation as “decisive” and legally justified. However, other Republicans questioned Trump’s authority to act unilaterally, and raised similar concerns as Schiff about other world leaders citing Trump’s actions to justify their own aggression into neighboring nations.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) defended Trump’s actions as “great for the future of Venezuelans and the region,” but said he was concerned that “Russia will use this to justify their illegal and barbaric military actions against Ukraine, or China to justify an invasion of Taiwan.”

Trump defended the operation as a legitimate law enforcement action necessary to combat threats to the U.S. from Maduro, whom he accused of sending violent gang members and deadly drugs across the U.S. border on a regular basis.

“The illegitimate dictator Maduro was the kingpin of a vast criminal network responsible for trafficking colossal amounts of deadly and illicit drugs into the United States,” Trump said at a news conference. “As alleged in the indictment, he personally oversaw the vicious cartel known as Cartel de los Soles, which flooded our nation with lethal poison responsible for the deaths of countless Americans.”

However, Trump also made no secret of his interest in Venezuela’s oil. He said U.S. officials would be running Venezuela for the foreseeable future and ensuring that the nation’s oil infrastructure is rebuilt — to return wealth to the Venezuelan people, but also to repay U.S. businesses that lost money when Maduro took over the industry.

Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi announced that Maduro, who had previously been indicted in the U.S. in 2020, is now the subject of a superseding indictment charging him, his wife and several others with narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices and conspiracy to possess such weapons and devices.

“They will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts,” Bondi wrote on X.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio also framed the operation as a law enforcement effort, and defended the lack of advance notice to Congress.

“At its core, this was an arrest of two indicted fugitives of American justice, and the Department of War supported the Department of Justice in that job,” Rubio said. “It’s just not the kind of mission that you can pre-notify, because it endangers the mission.”

Trump said Congress could not be notified in advance because “Congress will leak, and we don’t want leakers.”

Michael Schmitt, an international law professor at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom and a professor emeritus of international law at the U.S. Naval War College, said Trump’s actions were a “clear violation” of international law.

He said the U.S. had no authority from the U.N. Security Council to conduct military operations in Venezuela, nor any legitimate justification to act in self-defense against an armed attack — which drug trafficking does not amount to.

Schmitt said the operation in Venezuela went far beyond a normal law enforcement action. But even if it were just a law enforcement action, he said, the U.S. would still lack legal authority under international law to engage in such activity on Venezuelan soil without the express permission of Venezuelan authorities — which it did not have.

“International law is clear. Without consent, you cannot engage in investigations or arrest or seizure of criminal property on another state’s territory,” he said. “That’s a violation of that state’s sovereignty.”

Because the operation was illegitimate from the start, the resulting occupation and interference in Venezuela’s oil industry are also unlawful, Schmitt said — regardless of whether the country’s nationalizing of U.S.-tied oil infrastructure was also unlawful, as some experts believe it was.

“That unlawfulness — of seizing U.S. business interests, nationalizing them, in a way that was not in accordance with the required procedures — is not a basis for using force,” Schmitt said.

Matthew Waxman, chair of the National Security Law Program at Columbia Law School, said that in the days ahead, he expects the Trump administration to try to justify its actions not just as a law enforcement operation, but “as part of a larger campaign to defend the United States against what it has characterized as an attack or invasion by Maduro-linked drug cartels.”

“All modern presidents have claimed broad constitutional power to use military force without congressional authorization, but that is always hotly contested. We’ll see if there’s much pushback in Congress in this case, which will probably depend a lot on how things now play out in Venezuela,” Waxman said. “Look at what happened last year in Iran: The president claimed the power to bomb nuclear program infrastructure, and when the operation didn’t escalate, congressional opponents backed off.”

Already on Saturday, some members of Congress were softening their initial skepticism.

Within hours of posting on X that he was looking forward “to learning what, if anything, might constitutionally justify this action in the absence of a declaration of war or authorization for the use of military force,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) had posted again, saying Rubio told him that the military action was “to protect and defend those executing the arrest warrant” for Maduro.

Such action “likely falls within the president’s inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution to protect U.S. personnel from an actual or imminent attack,” Lee added.

Others remained more skeptical.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said Trump’s remarks about taking over the country and controlling its oil reserves did not seem “the least bit consistent” with Bondi’s characterization of the operation as a law enforcement effort.

WASHINGTON — An audacious overnight raid by elite U.S. forces that seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from his bedroom in Caracas plunged the country into turmoil on Saturday, prompting international concern about Venezuela’s future and President Trump’s decision to take control of a sovereign nation.

Trump justified the stunning attack by accusing Maduro of sending “monsters” into the United States from Venezuelan prisons and claiming his involvement in the drug trade. But Trump focused more on Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, accusing the Venezuelan government of stealing U.S. oil infrastructure in the country decades prior and vowing that, under new U.S. government control, output would increase going forward.

The president spoke little about democracy in Venezuela, dismissing a potential role for its longstanding democratic opposition in running the country in the immediate aftermath of the operation. Instead, Trump said his team was in touch with Maduro’s hand-picked vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, whom he called “very gracious” and said was “essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to Make Venezuela Great Again.”

“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said. “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure and start making money for the country.”

“We’re not afraid of boots on the ground,” he added.

President Trump, alongside Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, speaks to the media on Saturday following U.S. military actions in Venezuela.

(Jim Watson / AFP via Getty Images)

The president did not offer a timeline for how long a transition would take, or which Venezuelan factions he would support to assume leadership.

Maria Corina Machado, a leader of the Venezuelan opposition and a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, said Saturday that she and her team were prepared to assume control of Venezuela.

“The hour of freedom has arrived,” she wrote on social media. “We are prepared to assert our mandate and take power.”

But in a surprising statement, Trump told reporters on Saturday that he did not believe Machado had the “respect” needed to run the country.

Trump instead focused on how the United States intends to run Venezuela in the immediate aftermath, saying American oil companies are ready to descend on the oil-rich country and begin “taking out tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground.”

“That wealth is going to the people of Venezuela and people from outside of Venezuela that used to be in Venezuela, and it goes to the United States of America, in the form of reimbursement for the damages caused to us by that country,” Trump said.

The operation began with explosions throughout Caracas, as more than 150 U.S. aircraft, including F-35 fighter jets, B-1 bombers and remotely piloted drones, cleared away Venezuelan air defenses to make way for the interdiction team, which included U.S. law enforcement officers. Electricity was cut throughout much of the city as the assault unfolded, Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters.

A Delta Force unit penetrated Maduro’s heavily fortified compound at 2:01 a.m. local time, capturing him and his wife as they attempted to escape into a safe room, U.S. officials said. Only one helicopter in the U.S. fleet was hit by Venezuelan fire, but was able to continue flying through the mission. No U.S. personnel were killed, Caine said.

Trump, who had ordered the CIA to begin monitoring Maduro’s movements months ago, watched as the operation unfolded from a room at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, “literally like I was watching a television show,” the president said in an interview with Fox News on Saturday morning.

From there, Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were taken to the USS Iwo Jima, stationed in the Caribbean alongside a third of the U.S. naval fleet, before the ship set course for New York, where Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said Maduro will face “the full wrath of American justice” over his alleged ties to illicit drug trafficking.

“If you would’ve seen the speed, the violence,” Trump told Fox. “Amazing job.”

In Caracas on Saturday, the mood was tense. Long lines formed at supermarkets and pharmacies as shoppers, fearful of uncertainty, stocked up on essentials.

Maduro’s supporters gathered throughout the city, many bearing arms, but seemed unsure of what to do next. Across Latin America, reaction to the U.S. operation was mixed. Right-leaning allies of Trump including Argentina’s Javier Milei and Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa backed the U.S. attack, while leftists broadly condemned it.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro criticized an “aggression against the sovereignty of Venezuela and Latin America” and said he was ordering the deployment of the Colombian armed forces along his nation’s 1,300-mile-long border with Venezuela.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said that the U.S. “crossed an unacceptable line” and compared the action to remove Maduro to “the darkest moments of [U.S.] interference in Latin America and the Caribbean.”

Trump, meanwhile, boasted that the U.S. operation in Venezuela would help reassert U.S. dominance in Latin America.

“American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again,” he said. “We are reasserting American power in a very powerful way in our home region.”

Embattled Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan, who was convicted of obstruction last month for helping an immigrant evade federal officers, has sent her resignation letter to the governor.

The letter was sent Saturday. Republicans had been making plans to impeach her since her Dec. 19 conviction. A spokesperson for Gov. Tony Evers said his office received Dugan’s letter, and he would work to fill the vacancy without delay.

Dugan wrote that over the last decade she handled thousands of cases with “a commitment to treat all persons with dignity and respect, to act justly, deliberately and consistently, and to maintain a courtroom with the decorum and safety the public deserves.”

But she said the case against her is too big of a distraction.

“As you know, I am the subject of unprecedented federal legal proceedings, which are far from concluded but which present immense and complex challenges that threaten the independence of our judiciary. I am pursuing this fight for myself and for our independent judiciary,” Dugan said in her letter.

Last April, federal prosecutors accused Dugan of distracting federal officers trying to arrest a Mexican immigrant outside her courtroom and leading the man out through a private door. A federal jury convicted her of felony obstruction.

The case against Dugan was highlighted by President Trump as he pressed ahead with his sweeping immigration crackdown. Democrats insisted the administration was trying to make an example of Dugan to blunt judicial opposition to the operation.

Republican Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos praised Dugan’s decision.

“I’m glad Dugan did the right thing by resigning and followed the clear direction from the Wisconsin Constitution,” Vos said.

Democrat Ann Jacobs, who is chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission board, said she agreed with Dugan that Milwaukee should have a permanent judge in place while this fight plays out.

“Despite her situation, she is ever the champion of justice, wanting to remove the judiciary from a political battle over her fate. I’m sure this is terribly hard for her but she is true to her faith and her principles,” Jacobs said in a post on X.

On April 18, immigration officers went to the Milwaukee County courthouse after learning 31-year-old Eduardo Flores-Ruiz had reentered the country illegally and was scheduled to appear before Dugan for a hearing in a state battery case.

Dugan confronted agents outside her courtroom and directed them to the office of her boss, Milwaukee County Chief Judge Carl Ashley, because she told them their administrative warrant wasn’t sufficient grounds to arrest Flores-Ruiz.

After the agents left, she led Flores-Ruiz and his attorney out a private jury door. Agents spotted Flores-Ruiz in the corridor, followed him outside and arrested him after a foot chase. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced in November he had been deported.

Funk writes for the Associated Press.

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s David Zahniser, dishing up the latest on city and county government.

It’s not hyperbole to say that 2025 was a terrible year for Los Angeles.

Wildfires ravaged huge stretches of Pacific Palisades, Altadena, Malibu and other communities. Federal immigration raids tore families apart and disrupted the economy, prompting furious protests in downtown and elsewhere. L.A.’s political leaders, facing a brutal budget year, signed off on cuts while working to stave off layoffs of public employees.

Now, we’re heading into a year of uncertainty — one with the potential to bring fresh faces both to City Hall and the county’s Hall of Administration, while also ushering in bigger, structural changes.

Here are a few of the political issues we’ll be tracking over the next twelve months, in this newsletter and elsewhere:

1) WILL HE OR WON’T HE? It’s January, and we still don’t know if real estate developer Rick Caruso will seek a rematch against Mayor Karen Bass in the June 2 primary election. A second Caruso run would deliver a jolt to the campaign, complicating Bass’ attempt to win a second four-year term in a single shot. He’s got to decide soon!

Per Mike Murphy, a political strategist and longtime Caruso friend: “He is close to a decision.”

Caruso, a fierce critic of the city’s handling of the Palisades fire, lost to Bass by 10 percentage points in 2022. If he jumps in, he would join a long list of challengers that includes former L.A. schools superintendent Austin Beutner, community organizer Rae Huang and an assortment of unknowns.

The larger the field, the tougher the road Bass will have in trying to avoid a November runoff — and winning her election overall.

2) WILL THE COUNCIL GET BIGGER? The Charter Reform Commission, which is made up of a dozen or so citizen volunteers, is heading into the home stretch as it works on a plan to update the City Charter, the governing document for L.A.

The commission’s report, due in April, is expected to say whether voters should expand the number of City Council members, scale back the duties of the elected city attorney and grant the city controller additional authority. There are also some smaller proposals, including a move to a two-year budget process.

The council will then decide which of those proposals will go on the November ballot. Raymond Meza, who chairs the commission, sounded optimistic about the prospects.

“There’s been a lot of serious public input and energy behind this process, and we think the council is going to thoroughly consider our recommendations,” Meza said.

3) WILL CITY HALL KEEP MOVING LEFT? Eight council seats are up for grabs this year, with bruising campaigns looming on the Eastside, on the Westside, in the west San Fernando Valley and in South L.A.

Councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez and Traci Park are among those battling for a second term. Voters also must find replacements for Curren Price and Bob Blumenfield, each of whom is facing term limits after a dozen years on the council.

Ground Game LA, Democratic Socialists of America and other groups inspired by the victory of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani are looking to keep pulling the Overton window in their direction on public safety, tenant protections and other issues.

The ballot will also feature two other citywide contests, with City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto and City Controller Kenneth Mejia both seeking reelection.

4) CAN L.A. AFFORD MORE COPS? Bass has been pressuring the council to free up the money to hire more officers in the new year. She’s not likely to let up, even as she begins preparing her newest citywide budget.

Still, a fight over LAPD hiring could spur the council to take a fresh look at Bass’ other major policy initiative — Inside Safe, which has been moving homeless people indoors since she took office.

Amid growing concerns about the city’s financial stability, some council members have begun exploring the idea of paying the county to deliver homeless services — an idea that Bass panned in a Daily News opinion piece last month.

That op-ed drew some icy rebuttals from County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who called the city’s track record on homelessness “indefensible.”

5) WHITHER THE COUNTY? Speaking of the county, officials inside the Hall of Administration will likely spend the coming year trying to figure out how to prevent Measure J — which requires public spending on alternatives to incarceration — from being struck down by Measure G, the reform measure approved by voters in 2024.

(Measure G, which was largely about expanding the number of county supervisors and establishing an elected CEO, inadvertently set the stage for a pending repeal of Measure J, in what has been billed as an enormous bureaucratic snafu.)

We’ll also be watching as the county’s new homelessness department gets up and running. And we’ll monitor Sheriff Robert Luna’s bid for reelection, as well as the campaign for two supervisorial seats.

6) COULD WE SEE A BUILDING FRENZY? L.A. County’s fire-scarred communities are hoping to see a ramp up in the pace of rebuilding in 2026. But will fire victims stay put? Or will they sell their burned-out sites to developers? The stakes are high, not just for those communities but for the elected officials who represent them.

Of course, there are plenty of other issues to track in the new year beyond the big six. For example, there’s the proposed sales tax hike to fund Fire Department operations; the push for higher taxes to pay for park facilities; the gambit to slow down wage hikes for hotel and airport workers; and the movement to hike the city or county minimum wage.

Then there are the preparations, and behind-the-scenes negotiations, over the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, which have huge cost implications for the city.

Are you exhausted yet? If not, we’ll see you next week.

State of play

— ‘HIGHLY UNPROFESSIONAL’: The author of the Fire Department’s after-action report on the Palisades fire declined to endorse it because of changes that altered his findings, according to an email obtained by The Times. “Having reviewed the revised version submitted by your office, I must respectfully decline to endorse it in its current form,” wrote Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook, about an hour after the report was made public. Cook also called the final version of the report “highly unprofessional.”

— PLAYING WITH FIRE: Two groups have sued the city of L.A., alleging that agencies ignored state wildfire safety regulations while signing off on development in areas with severe fire hazards. The State Alliance for Firesafe Road Regulations and the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Assns. offered what they described as 75 examples of building permits and other plans that violate the state’s “minimum firesafe regulations.”

— DIGGING INTO DTLA: It’s been a tumultuous year for DTLA Law Group, which grew from a small firm focused on car crash victims into a litigation powerhouse with thousands of sexual abuse claims against government agencies. The firm’s activities are now the subject of an investigation by the DA’s office, amid lingering questions about how DTLA amassed so many plaintiffs so quickly. The Times spoke with dozens of former clients and employees who described aggressive tactics to bring in new clients.

— RADIO SILENCE: L.A.’s parking enforcement officers were removed from the field last weekend after copper wire thieves damaged a key communications tower in Elysian Park, leaving some workers with inoperable radios.

— LUCKY NUMBER 13: The Charter Reform Commission might finally get its 13th member, just a few months before it wraps up its work. Councilmember Bob Blumenfield recently nominated Jason Levin, a onetime spokesperson for his office, to fill the seat after his previous pick, former Councilmember Dennis Zine, flamed out. Levin is an executive vice president at the firm Edelman, focusing on crisis and risk.

— NEW YORK STATE OF MIND: City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson and Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez flew to New York City this week for Mamdani’s inauguration. Hernandez, on Instagram, called the event “a reminder that the movement for dignity, justice, and humanity is bigger than any one city.”

— READY FOR SIGNATURES: The City Clerk’s office recently cleared the way for the firefighters’ union to begin gathering signatures for a sales tax hike to pay for fire stations, fire equipment and other emergency resources. The proposal comes amid complaints that department brass sought to cover up findings about the Palisades fire.

— YET ANOTHER WAGE HIKE: The fire tax proposal comes a few weeks after the city clerk cleared the way for another ballot petition — this one hiking the city’s minimum wage to $25 per hour. The proposal includes provisions to ensure that hotel employees are “paid fairly for burdensome workloads” and prohibit “the exploitative practice of subcontracting housekeeping work.”

— BIG DAY FOR THE VA: The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court order requiring the federal Department of Veterans Affairs to build more than 2,500 units of housing on its West L.A. campus. “Rather than use the West Los Angeles VA Grounds as President Lincoln intended, the VA has leased the land to third party commercial interests that do little to benefit the veterans,” wrote Circuit Judge Ana de Alba.

— CHANGING CHAIRS: One of Harris-Dawson’s top aides, senior advisor Rachel Brashier, is switching offices at City Hall. Brashier, who frequently sits next to the council president as he presides over meetings, has taken a job with the mayor, according to Harris-Dawson spokesperson Cerrina Tayag-Rivera. Brashier will serve as a deputy chief of staff, per Bass’ team.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to combat homelessness did not launch any new operations over the holiday.
• On the docket next week: L.A. marks the one-year anniversary of the Palisades and Eaton fires with a number of events. Among them is “They Let Us Burn,” a demonstration in Pacific Palisades where community leaders plan to highlight their demands to city, county and state leaders.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@latimes.com. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

The gubernatorial recall election comes at a particularly opportune time for one of California’s ascendant special interests — Native American tribes that have exclusive rights to operate Las Vegas-style casinos in the state.

For months, Indian leaders have been frustrated by the slow pace of talks with Gov. Gray Davis over new gambling compacts that would help small tribes in generally remote locations.

At the same time, other tribes with large casinos are pressing for an increase in the number of slot machines allowed, and are growing concerned over what they see as attempts by the state and local governments to erode their authority as sovereign entities.

Now, with total gambling revenues of about $5 billion per year, California tribes are poised to exert significant influence in the Oct. 7 election. Since 1998, tribes have spent more money on state political campaigns — in excess of $120 million — than any other interest group.

Because donors are subject to limits on direct contributions, unlimited independent expenditures may become even more important in this truncated campaign. The tribes have access to large amounts of money and have demonstrated a willingness to spend on campaigns.

“The tribes were invisible until they started writing checks,” said Jim Knox of California Common Cause. “There is no better illustration of the power of money in politics.”

Interviews with tribal chairmen, consultants and political experts indicate that Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante is the favored candidate among some California Indian leaders.

“We’re hoping for strong support,” said Richie Ross, Bustamante’s lead campaign strategist. “But there really has been no quantification of that. The tribes will be involved. I don’t know to what extent.”

Ross also serves as a lobbyist and political consultant for two major casino-operating tribes: the Barona and Viejas bands of Indians in San Diego County. The two tribes have donated a combined $487,500 to Bustamante since 1998, when he was elected lieutenant governor.

Tribal leaders are intrigued by the candidacy of Arnold Schwarzenegger and eager to learn his position on Indian gambling. Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock of Thousand Oaks has spoken out on behalf of tribal sovereignty and is viewed favorably by some tribes.

And the possibility still exists that tribes will oppose the recall. After all, it was Davis who granted them the exclusive gambling rights they had sought for so many years and had failed to secure under Republican Gov. Pete Wilson. So far, no tribes have publicly stated plans to support the recall.

“Has Gray Davis really done that bad of a job?” asked Vincent Armenta, chairman of the Santa Ynez Band of Mission Indians. “I think it is pretty difficult to blame one individual for all of the state’s problems.”

Tribes are taking a wait-and-see approach.

“Nobody is showing their hands in any significant way,” said Howard Dickstein, a Sacramento attorney who represents several tribes.

Armenta said he hopes to meet next week with Bustamante, Davis and McClintock. “I believe all of them have potential to be a decent governor,” Armenta said.

Deron Marquez, chairman of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, said his tribe has decided to sit out the recall campaign, at least for the time being.

“In my mind, the recall is more than a done deal. I think the governor is on his way out,” he said. “We’re just basically waiting to see who is for real and who is not.”

Many of the tribes want to see where the candidates stand on expanded tribal casinos and whether California should authorize slot machines at card rooms and horse tracks, a proposition the tribes oppose.

“Like a lot of special interests, tribal casino leaders will invest in a lot of candidates when they’re not certain of the outcome,” said former Assembly Speaker Leo McCarthy, a San Francisco Democrat and a critic of expanded gambling. “They’ll bet on more than one horse.”

The ability of the tribes to influence an election was illustrated in the Los Angeles mayor’s race in 2001. Antonio Villaraigosa had angered the tribes by the way he handled their issues when he was Assembly speaker, so they launched a mail campaign attacking him as being soft on crime. He lost to James K. Hahn.

“The tribes played hardball against Villaraigosa, letting him know and everybody else that if they oppose the tribes, they will come in and pour massive amounts of money against them — and massive amounts of money they have,” said Robert Stern, head of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles.

Under Davis, Las Vegas-style gambling has exploded on reservations throughout California, particularly in San Diego County and the Palm Springs area. In 2000, voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure granting tribes exclusive rights to operate slot machines.

Davis has signed individual compacts with 62 tribes, some of which have no casinos. The agreements permit them to operate a maximum of 2,000 slot machines at any one casino. The machines are the most lucrative form of gambling for casino operators.

Gaming industry experts estimate that Indian casinos in the state will generate revenue of about $5 billion this year, up from about $1.4 billion in 2000.

This ranks California as the second-largest gambling state in the nation, behind Nevada’s $9.3 billion in casino revenue. Experts said California will probably become No. 1 within a few years. Nevada gambling revenue is expected to remain steady or even decline, while California Indian casinos continue a rapid expansion.

Early today the Santa Ynez Band unveiled its $150-million Chumash Casino expansion north of Santa Barbara. In Riverside County, the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians is building a $90-million casino on reservation land in downtown Palm Springs that is scheduled to open this fall.

About 15 miles away, the Morongo Band of Mission Indians is constructing a 309-foot-tall resort hotel between scenic peaks in the San Gorgonio Pass.

In June, the once-impoverished United Auburn Indian Community opened a $200-million casino in suburban Sacramento. On opening day, traffic backed up eight miles.

Many of those facilities are approaching a Vegas-style experience by offering upscale dining, shopping and entertainment. Jay Leno is scheduled to appear at a private VIP party celebrating the opening of the Chumash Casino this week.

Amid all the expansion, tribes are renegotiating their existing 20-year compacts with Davis, who is asking for a share of casino profits to help ease the state’s budget crisis. The original agreements negotiated by Davis did not include payments to the California treasury similar to the shares of casino proceeds that go to Nevada, New Jersey, Connecticut and other states.

Tribal leaders were angered earlier this year when Davis began renegotiations by saying he wanted $1.5 billion in gaming revenues in exchange for lifting the cap on slot machines. The governor has since lowered that demand to $680 million for this year.

Bustamante, for one, said this month that he would support a proposal by Anthony Pico, chairman of the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Mission Indians, that tribes pay taxes at the same level as other corporations. That amount would be far less than the $680 million that Davis has been seeking.

Bustamante is also on record as saying he believes the marketplace should determine the number of slot machines in an Indian casino. After a groundbreaking ceremony in May for the $250-million resort hotel on the Morongo reservation, Bustamante told the Desert Sun newspaper: “The tribes are not getting what they want [from the state]. The tribes want more machines. In-N-Out Burger doesn’t have to ask how many burgers it can make.”

When he announced his candidacy earlier this month, Bustamante called Indian gambling “one of the strongest parts of the California economy. It is creating tens of thousands of jobs. It is providing tremendous charity.”

Ross, Bustamante’s main campaign strategist, explained such support by recalling that the lieutenant governor forged his alliance with tribes when they were under political attack from Nevada gaming interests and “were economically weak and in legal jeopardy.”

“Many of the longer-term leaders know that he has been one of the few people who understood sovereignty, and stood up for them,” Ross said.

Stern of the Center for Governmental Studies said the tribes run a risk if they decide to bankroll Bustamante’s campaign in a recall election.

“The big problem that Bustamante will have is that he doesn’t want to be pictured as a tool of the tribes,” he said.

At this point, tribal leaders said, they don’t know what to make of Schwarzenegger.

Michael Lombardi, a tribal gaming consultant and former general manager of the Chumash Casino in Santa Ynez and Casino Morongo near Banning, said he wonders whether the actor knows anything more about Indians than what he saw in John Wayne movies.

“We did notice that one of the heroes in ‘Predator’ was Indian,” Lombardi said. “That guy was handsome and brave and died a good death. We noticed that [Schwarzenegger] is not a part of the Hollywood hypocrisy that always portrays Indians as savages.

“We are intrigued by Arnold,” he said. “Would he allow slot machines to expand by market demand? I think there are tribes out there waiting to hear some answers.”

Schwarzenegger spokesman Rob Stutzman declined Friday to describe the candidate’s views. One of the candidate’s top advisors is former Gov. Wilson, who battled tribes over gambling expansion. A co-chairman of Schwarzenegger’s campaign is Assemblyman Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria), who backs Indians in their efforts to maintain sovereignty and expand their casinos.

“If I’m advising him,” Maldonado said, “I say give them special attention because they’ve done a great job for the community.”

Another issue of concern is whether cities and counties should be compensated so they can better cope with the environmental impacts of casino developments.

“I think in Indian country there is a feeling that the state of California should live up to that 20-year deal approved by the voters, the Legislature, the governor and both political parties,” said Lombardi.

“Right now we’re confronted with the dilemma that county governments need money and they want to get it from the tribes because the tribes are so successful,” he added.

Under the current agreements, tribes are required to contribute roughly $140 million to two special state accounts. One is an Indian Gaming Special Distribution Fund for expenditures such as repairing roads, treating compulsive gamblers and subsidizing emergency rescue services. The other is used to redistribute revenues to impoverished reservations.

The Davis administration also has been engaged in talks over the last three years with tribes that haven’t signed gambling compacts.

On Wednesday, he signed the first compact with a California tribe that will pay casino proceeds directly to the state treasury. The agreement with the Torres-Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians in the Imperial Valley requires the tribe initially to pay the state 3% of the revenue from its first 350 slot machines; the share increases to 5% in the third year of operation.

Wednesday’s announcement prompted speculation that, after years of stalled negotiations, Davis suddenly will shift gears and accelerate talks with tribes.

“It doesn’t take a genius to figure this out,” said I. Nelson Rose, a gambling expert and professor at the Whittier Law School in Costa Mesa. “I think we will see a couple of dozen new compacts before the recall campaign is over.”

Robert Rosette, a Sacramento attorney who represents several tribes that are eager to open casinos, said his clients are watching the recall campaign closely.

“They were very surprised at Gov. Davis’ sudden decision to grant Torres-Martinez that contract,” he said. “They also became hopeful that they will get theirs. We will see very soon how that pans out.”

Aides to Davis said that the recall campaign had no bearing on the timing of the Torres-Martinez announcement and that it is unlikely the governor will strike numerous other deals in the coming weeks.

“Nobody should view this signing … as having anything to do with politics,” said Steve Maviglio, Davis’ press secretary. “These things take time. They are very complex. They last for years. They don’t operate on a political calendar.”

*

Times staff writer Gregg Jones in Sacramento contributed to this report.

HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S. C. — With the wounds from last week’s election defeats still tender, Republican governors and political leaders met Monday in this robustly sunny resort to chart a suddenly clouded political future.

Calls for increased emphasis on education and the environment were squelched by other sounds: teeth-gnashing, backbiting and bemoaning of the turn of political events.

Just a year ago, in the flush of George Bush’s presidential victory, Republicans saw the 1990 elections as a historic opportunity to overthrow the Democrats and control the powerful reapportionment process stemming from the 1990 census.

Now, as they looked forward, mostly what they saw was the troubling issue of abortion, which is credited with breathing new life into the Democratic Party and is at least partly responsible for last week’s Democratic gubernatorial victories in New Jersey and Virginia.

“If you look at last Tuesday’s results, you are hard pressed not to say . . . that the pro-choice coalition has indeed, definitely, become a force,” Republican pollster Linda DiVall warned the governors.

“If we in the Republican Party don’t recognize that, we are setting ourselves up for some major defeats.”

The emergence of abortion as a potent tool to be wielded against anti-abortion Republicans has sent the party scrambling to regain the offensive for 1990.

Strategy for 1990

In plans outlined Monday, party leaders detailed a two-pronged approach to next year’s elections–playing down abortion while pressing issues that could overshadow that emotional topic.

Vice President Dan Quayle, in a speech here Monday, pointedly did not mention abortion but tried to rally support for a more activist 1990 program modeled after Bush’s 1988 race.

“We will continue to work and identify with issues beyond peace and opportunity,” he said, “and (will) relate to opportunity the importance of education, the importance of the environment, the importance of enhancing our competitiveness, renewing an attack on poverty.

“These will be Republican issues,” he said.

Also, Quayle underlined the firm break between the 1990s-version Republican Party with its Reagan-era predecessor. He touted the importance of government–a position precisely the opposite of that pronounced by Ronald Reagan at the turn of the last decade.

“We cannot adopt an idea that somehow all government or any government is simply evil,” Quayle said. “That’s not the case.”

In talking to reporters later, the vice president said that an emphasis on popular topics like education and the environment will help Republican candidates. And he argued that the party’s anti-abortion stance “is going to be a neutral issue.”

But other Republicans roll their eyes at such rosy predictions and worry nervously that abortion will prove the difference in 1990’s elections.

Next year, 34 Senate seats, 36 governorships and all 435 House seats will be on the ballot. More important, the elections will put into office governors and state legislators who can shape new boundaries for political districts, which will remain in force for 10 years. Whoever wins in 1990, in short, has a distinct advantage for the next decade.

Republicans are still smarting over the last reapportionment, in which Democrats controlled the process and came away with strong holds on many states, most particularly California.

Despite the success of the GOP in winning the presidency, Democrats currently hold 29 governor’s seats and control 28 legislatures. Among the 1990 battlegrounds will be California, Texas and Florida, which have gained in population and thus will gain congressional seats, and the Northeast and Great Lakes states, which are losing seats.

Major GOP Efforts

Republicans will be mounting major efforts as well in states where they are close to holding a majority of legislators in a legislative body–Illinois, Pennsylvania, Oregon and Florida among them, Republicans here said.

Republicans acknowledge that there are limits to their ability to force abortion onto the back burner. The Supreme Court, which unleashed a fury of political activity with its July decision permitting the states to place some restrictions on abortion, is due to consider the subject again next term. And abortion rights groups, which mobilized in the wake of the court decision, have vowed to exact revenge on anti-abortion legislators in 1990.

But, as they shift focus to newly embraced issues like education and the environment, the Republicans hope to take the edge off of the abortion issue by instructing party candidates to announce their position and stick to it. Many Republicans here castigated their losing gubernatorial candidates–J. Marshall Coleman of Virginia and James Courter of New Jersey–for waffling on the issue.

“You don’t shift positions,” said Florida Gov. Bob Martinez, who after the Supreme Court decision called a special session of the Florida Legislature to adopt new abortion restrictions–only to have the Legislature table the proposals.

“If you’re shifting around on quicksand based on the political winds, you’re gonna die,” he added.

Conservative South Carolina Gov. Carroll A. Campbell Jr. spoke what is rapidly becoming the party line–that voters will accept an anti-abortion stance as long as it is consistent and expressed sensitively.

There has been no large-scale test of the theory since the Supreme Court’s decision was announced.

“The problem with Republicans is that they have not gone out in advance and told the public what they believed in,” Campbell said.

“The Democrats in this instance (last week’s races) went out and defined the issue (and) left the Republican candidates there with no clear message of what they stood for. And I’m going to tell you something: You’ll beat nothing with something every time.”

Thompson Disagrees

Illinois Gov. James R. Thompson, a moderate who has opted not to run again in 1990, split ranks with Campbell on the direction that party candidates must take in the future.

“At least at the state level, a candidate in any party who takes a strong pro-life stance is going to lose,” Thompson said.

“The old days when only the pro-life movement was political are gone,” he added. “The Republican Party is going to be pushed in the direction of the pro-choice movement.”

Most Republicans agree that all but the most rabid anti-abortion activists will have to silence in 1990 their once-public demands for a constitutional amendment banning abortion and for other highly restrictive measures.

“There’s room for an offensive–but the offensive is clearly in the middle,” Republican National Committee member Haley Barbour of Mississippi said.

Like others, Barbour suggested that moderate attempts at abortion restrictions–like advocating that parents be notified when a young girl seeks to have an abortion–will remain on the agenda, because polls show Americans to be more sympathetic to them than to more comprehensive barriers.

“Politics is the art of the achievable,” he said.

CARACAS, Venezuela — The United States hit Venezuela with a “large-scale strike” early Saturday and said its president, Nicolás Maduro, had been captured and flown out of the country after months of stepped-up pressure by Washington — an extraordinary nighttime operation announced by President Trump on social media hours after the attack.

Multiple explosions rang out and low-flying aircraft swept through Caracas, the capital, as Maduro’s government immediately accused the United States of attacking civilian and military installations. The Venezuelan government called it an “imperialist attack” and urged citizens to take to the streets.

It was not immediately clear who was running the country, and Maduro’s whereabouts were not immediately known. Trump announced the developments on Truth Social shortly after 4:30 a.m. ET. Under Venezuelan law the vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, would take power. There was no confirmation that had happened, though she did issue a statement after the strike.

“We do not know the whereabouts of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores,” Rodriguez said. “We demand proof of life.”

Maduro, Trump said, “has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country. This operation was done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement. Details to follow.” He set a news conference for later Saturday morning.

The legal implications of the strike under U.S. law were not immediately clear. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) posted on X that he had spoken with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who briefed him on the strike. Rubio told Lee that Maduro “has been arrested by U.S. personnel to stand trial on criminal charges in the United States.”

The White House did not immediately respond to queries on where Maduro and his wife were being flown to. Maduro was indicted in March 2020 on “narco-terrorism” conspiracy charges in the Southern District of New York.

Maduro last appeared on state television Friday while meeting with a delegation of Chinese officials in Caracas.

The explosions in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, early on the third day of 2026 — at least seven blasts — sent people rushing into the streets, while others took to social media to report hearing and seeing the explosions. It was not immediately clear if there were casualties on either side. The attack itself lasted less than 30 minutes and it was unclear if more actions lay ahead, though Trump said in his post that the strikes were carried out “successfully.”

The Federal Aviation Administration issued a ban on U.S. commercial flights in Venezuelan airspace because of “ongoing military activity” ahead of the explosions.

The strike came after the Trump administration spent months escalating pressure on Maduro. The CIA was behind a drone strike last week at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels — the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the U.S. began strikes in September.

For months, Trump had threatened that he could soon order strikes on targets on Venezuelan land following months of attacks on boats accused of carrying drugs. Maduro has decried the U.S. military operations as a thinly veiled effort to oust him from power.

Some streets in Caracas fill up

Armed individuals and uniformed members of a civilian militia took to the streets of a Caracas neighborhood long considered a stronghold of the ruling party. But in other areas of the city, the streets remained empty hours after the attack. Parts of the city remained without power, but vehicles moved freely.

Video obtained from Caracas and an unidentified coastal city showed tracers and smoke clouding the landscape sky as repeated muted explosions illuminated the night sky. Other footage showed an urban landscape with cars passing on a highway as blasts illuminated the hills behind them. Unintelligible conversation could be heard in the background. The videos were verified by The Associated Press.

Smoke could be seen rising from the hangar of a military base in Caracas, while another military installation in the capital was without power.

“The whole ground shook. This is horrible. We heard explosions and planes,” said Carmen Hidalgo, a 21-year-old office worker, her voice trembling. She was walking briskly with two relatives, returning from a birthday party. “We felt like the air was hitting us.”

Venezuela’s government responded to the attack with a call to action. “People to the streets!” it said in a statement. “The Bolivarian Government calls on all social and political forces in the country to activate mobilization plans and repudiate this imperialist attack.”

The statement added that Maduro had “ordered all national defense plans to be implemented” and declared “a state of external disturbance.” That state of emergency gives him the power to suspend people’s rights and expand the role of the armed forces.

The website of the U.S. Embassy in Venezuela, a post that has been closed since 2019, issued a warning to American citizens in the country, saying it was “aware of reports of explosions in and around Caracas.”

“U.S. citizens in Venezuela should shelter in place,” the warning said.

Reaction emerges slowly

Inquiries to the Pentagon and U.S. Southern Command since Trump’s social media post went unanswered. The FAA warned all commercial and private U.S. pilots that the airspace over Venezuela and the small island nation of Curacao, just off the coast of the country to the north, was off limits “due to safety-of-flight risks associated with ongoing military activity.”

U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, posted his potential concerns, reflecting a view from the right flank in the Congress. “I look forward to learning what, if anything, might constitutionally justify this action in the absence of a declaration of war or authorization for the use of military force,” Lee said on X.

It was not clear if the U.S. Congress had been officially notified of the strikes.

The Armed Services committees in both houses of Congress, which have jurisdiction over military matters, have not been notified by the administration of any actions, according to a person familiar with the matter and granted anonymity to discuss it.

Lawmakers from both political parties in Congress have raised deep reservations and flat out objections to the U.S. attacks on boats suspected of drug smuggling on boats near the Venezuelan coast and the Congress has not specifically approved an authorization for the use of military force for such operations in the region.

Regional reaction was not immediately forthcoming in the early hours of Saturday. Cuba, however, a supporter of the Maduro government and a longtime adversary of the United States, called for the international community to respond to what president Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez called “the criminal attack.” “Our zone of peace is being brutally assaulted,” he said on X. Iran’s Foreign Ministry also condemned the strikes.

President Javier Milei of Argentina praised the claim by his close ally, Trump, that Maduro had been captured with a political slogan he often deploys to celebrate right-wing advances: “Long live freedom, dammit!”

The U.S. military has been attacking boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean since early September. As of Friday, the number of known boat strikes is 35 and the number of people killed is at least 115, according to numbers announced by the Trump administration.

They followed a major buildup of American forces in the waters off South America, including the arrival in November of the nation’s most advanced aircraft carrier, which added thousands more troops to what was already the largest military presence in the region in generations.

Trump has justified the boat strikes as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the U.S. and asserted that the U.S. is engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels.

Cano and Toropin write for the Associated Press. Toropin and AP journalist Lisa Mascaro reported from Washington.

Eric Neff’s tenure at the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office ended after he was placed on administrative leave in 2022 over accusations of misconduct in the prosecution of the CEO of Konnech, a software company that election conspiracy theorists said was in the thrall of the Chinese government.

Now, three years later, Neff is serving as one of the Trump administration’s top election watchdogs.

Late last year , his name began appearing on lawsuits filed by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, listed as “acting chief” of the voting section.

Neff’s appointment, first reported by Mother Jones, has prompted renewed scrutiny of his work at the L.A. County district attorney’s office.

The Times interviewed several of Neff’s former colleagues, who revealed new details about claims of misconduct that emerged from the Konnech case, and said they were alarmed that someone with almost no background in federal election law was named to a senior position.

Neff led the 2022 investigation of Konnech, a tiny Michigan company whose software is used by election officials in several major cities. In a criminal complaint, Neff accused the company’s CEO, Eugene Yu, of fraud and embezzlement, alleging the company stored poll worker information on a server based in China, a violation of its contract with the L.A. County registrar’s office.

Six weeks after a complaint was filed, prosecutors dropped the case and launched an investigation into “irregularities” and bias in the way evidence was presented against Konnech, the D.A.’s office said in a 2022 statement.

The county paid Konnech $5 million and joined a motion to find Yu factually innocent as part of a legal settlement.

The internal probe was focused on accusations that Neff misled supervisors at the district attorney’s office about the role of election deniers in his investigation, according to two officials with direct knowledge of the case who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

Neff also allegedly withheld information about potential biases in the case from a grand jury, according to the two officials.

In a civil lawsuit filed last year, Neff said the internal review by the D.A.’s office cleared him of wrongdoing. The two officials familiar with the probe who spoke on the condition of anonymity disputed Neff’s characterization of the findings.

A spokesman for Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman declined to comment or provide the results of the investigation into Neff, which the officials said was conducted by an outside law firm that generated a report on the case. Neff’s attorney also did not provide a copy of the report.

A Department of Justice spokesman declined to comment.

Neff’s attorney, Tom Yu — no relation to the Konnech CEO — said his client had no obligation to provide background information about the origins of the case to the grand jury.

Neff’s appointment comes as President Trump continues to remake the DOJ in his own image by appointing political loyalists with no criminal law background as U.S. attorneys in New Jersey and Virginia and seeking prosecutions of his political enemies, such as former FBI Director James Comey.

Trump has never recanted his false claim that he won the 2020 election.

When then-L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón announced the charges against Konnech in 2020, Trump said the progressive prosecutor would become a “National hero on the Right if he got to the bottom of this aspect of the Voting Fraud.”

The Konnech case was centered on contract fraud, not voter fraud or ballot rigging. Six weeks after the charges were filed, the case disintegrated.

The D.A.’s office cited Neff’s over-reliance on evidence provided by True the Vote, the group that pushed the unfounded Chinese government conspiracies about Konnech and also appeared in a film that spread claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

Gascón initially denied that True the Vote was involved in the case, but weeks later, a D.A.’s office spokesman said a report from the group’s co-founder, Gregg Phillips, sparked the prosecution. Phillips testified in court in July 2022 that it was Neff who first contacted him about Konnech.

The two officials who spoke to The Times said that Neff withheld True the Vote’s role from high-level D.A.’s office staff, including Gascón, when presenting the case.

Gascón declined an interview request, noting he is named in Neff’s pending lawsuit, which is slated for trial in early 2026.

Neff’s attorney insisted the case against Konnech was solid.

“He was let go because Trump tweeted a statement of ‘Go George Go’,” the attorney said. “That’s why Eugene Yu was let go. Because Gascón was so scared he was going to lose votes.”

Calls and emails to an attorney who previously represented Eugene Yu were not returned.

In his lawsuit, Neff claimed he had evidence that “Konnech used third-party contractors based in China and failed to abide by security procedures” to protect L.A. County poll worker data. The evidence was not attached as an exhibit in the lawsuit.

A DOJ spokesperson declined to describe Neff’s job duties. His name appears on a number of lawsuits filed in recent months against states that have refused to turn over voter registration lists to the Trump administration.

Neff is also involved in a suit filed against the Fulton County clerk’s office in Georgia seeking records related to the 2020 election, records show.

“We will not permit states to jeopardize the integrity and effectiveness of elections by refusing to abide by our federal elections laws,” Asst. Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon, the California conservative who now leads the civil rights division, said in a recent statement. “If states will not fulfill their duty to protect the integrity of the ballot, we will.”

Dhillon declined to comment through a DOJ spokesman.

The voting section “enforces the civil provisions of the federal laws that protect the right to vote, including the Voting Rights Act,” according to the DOJ’s website.

It does not appear that Neff has any background working on cases related to federal election law. He first became an L.A. County prosecutor in 2013 and spent years handling local crime cases out of the Pomona courthouse. He was promoted and reassigned to the Public Integrity Division, which investigates corruption issues, in 2020, according to his lawsuit.

While there, he handled only two prosecutions related to elections. One was the Konnech case. The other involved allegations of election rigging against a Compton city council member.

In August 2021, Isaac Galvan, a Democrat, was charged with conspiring to commit election fraud after he allegedly worked to direct voters from outside his council district to cast ballots for him. Galvan won the race by just one vote, but was booted from office when a judge determined at least four improper ballots had been cast.

Galvan’s criminal case is still pending; he recently pleaded guilty to charges in a separate corruption and bribery case in federal court. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles said there was no overlap between the D.A.’s election rigging case and the bribery case against Galvan. Federal prosecutors are not reviewing the Konnech case, the spokesman said.

Court filings show Neff was involved in Galvan’s L.A. County case, but the prosecution was led by a more senior attorney.

Justin Levitt, a constitutional law professor at Loyola Law School who served in the civil rights division during the Obama administration, said section chiefs normally have decades of experience in the area of law they’re meant to supervise.

“The biggest problem with somebody with Neff’s history is the giant screaming red flag that involves filing a prosecution based on unreliable evidence,” Levitt said. “That’s not something any prosecutor should do.”

Neff’s attorney, Yu, scoffed at the idea that his client was not experienced enough for his new role in the Trump administration, or that he was selected due to his involvement in the Konnech case.

“Eric got the job because he’s qualified to get the job. He didn’t get the job for any other reason. He got the job because he’s an excellent advocate,” Yu said. “I think the Justice Department is very fortunate to have Eric.”

Times Staff Writer Seema Mehta contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Tuesday weakened one of the nation’s most aggressive efforts to combat climate change, releasing new fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks that handed a victory to the oil and gas industry.

The new rule, from the Environmental Protection Agency and Transportation Department, will almost immediately be plunged into litigation as environmental groups and states with stricter standards, led by California, plan to challenge it.

“We intend to make sure the backsliding doesn’t reach California’s doorstep,” California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra said Tuesday in announcing the state’s plan to go to court to defend its tougher standards.

If the administration’s policy survives those fights, it would spare automakers from having to meet ambitious gas mileage and emissions requirements put in place in 2012 under President Obama. It is among the biggest steps the administration has taken to reverse an existing environmental policy.

The final rule is a dialed-down version of the one the administration originally planned. Instead of proposing zero improvements in fuel efficiency in coming years, it would require automakers to increase fuel economy across their fleets by 1.5% a year, with a goal of achieving an average of about 40 miles per gallon by 2026. That’s still a major departure from current rules, which mandate annual increases of 5%, reaching an average of 54 mpg by 2025.

Nearly 900 million more tons of carbon dioxide are expected to be released under the new rule than under the Obama-era standards, a result of less efficient cars burning an additional 78 billion gallons of fuel.

“We are delivering on President Trump’s promise to correct the current fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions standards,” EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in a statement. The administration’s plan, he said, “strikes the right regulatory balance that protects our environment and sets reasonable targets for the auto industry.”

Environmentalists and public health advocates said the change would likely contribute to thousands of premature deaths and asthma attacks. They criticized the decision to make the new standards final in the midst of a global pandemic, arguing that the rollback would damage public health at a time when thousands of people are gravely ill and the nation’s economy is in tatters.

But after repeatedly postponing the release of the new rule as it scrambled to justify the change, the administration faced deadlines that may have forced its hand.

For one, the longer the government delayed the new rule, the less effect it would have. Although Trump had initially announced that the new standards would affect vehicles in model year 2020, those cars were built under the Obama-era stringent fuel efficiency standards and are already on the road.

Unless the administration finalized its rollback by April 1, it was in danger of missing the deadline to apply the new standards to the 2022 model year.

Additionally, under the Congressional Review Act, new rules issued after May 19 could be invalidated by the next Congress.

The new standards will apply nationwide. Although California has historically set its own tougher car pollution rules, the Trump administration last year moved to strip the state of that authority. California and many of the other states that have adopted its clean-car standards have sued the administration over this change, and that issue likely won’t be resolved until next year at the earliest.

Just hours after the administration unveiled the final rule Tuesday, Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board, disclosed that Volvo was in talks with the state to reach a voluntary emissions agreement. Four other automakers — Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW — have already made a deal with the state that would preserve emissions standards that are not as tough as the Obama standards, but are significantly more ambitious than Trump’s proposal.

The change in fuel-economy standards has been in development since the early days of the administration, when two lobbying groups representing automakers asked then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to relax the Obama-era standards.

The administration’s original proposal would have frozen fuel-economy standards at this year’s levels. That met a furious response from officials in California and several other states as well as unexpected resistance from some auto companies, which worried the administration was going overboard and dragging them into years of court battles with states.

Karl Brauer, an analyst for the research firm Cox Automotive, said that Trump’s rule had put automakers in an impossible position. If they opposed the rollback, their investors would be unhappy. If they endorsed it, they would be branded as anti-environment.

The rollback will likely make it easier to sell cars by making them cheaper, he said, but automakers are concerned it may not survive legal scrutiny or the next election.

“I think automakers will feel a lot of uncertainty until Nov. 3,” Brauer said.

“The auto industry has consistently called for year-over-year increases in fuel efficiency,” said John Bozzella, president of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group that lobbies on behalf of the world’s largest car companies. “Looking to the future, we need policies that support a customer-friendly shift toward these electrified and other highly efficient technologies.”

Trump has boasted that his plan would save lives, improve the economy and lower the cost of new cars.

In a phone call with reporters on Tuesday, senior EPA and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration officials said their analysis showed that lowering the cost of a new car would allow more Americans to replace aging vehicles with newer, safer ones. That turnover in the nation’s fleet would prevent more than 3,300 traffic fatalities, according to the government’s projections, as well as 46,000 post-crash injuries.

They also emphasized the rollback’s estimated cost savings for automakers — as much as $100 billion over the lifetime of the vehicles built under the new rule.

But while administration officials said the change would help drivers and the environment, the government’s analysis was not as optimistic.

Its estimates showed that while loosening fuel-economy standards could shave about $1,000 off the price of a new car, drivers would have to buy more gas than they would have under the current rule.

David Friedman, vice president of advocacy for Consumer Reports, said his group’s projections show that each vehicle sold under the Trump rule will cost its owner on average $2,100 more, even if gas prices continue to fall.

Automakers and their suppliers could also suffer. The government’s analysis shows that American car companies could experience a loss of thousands of jobs by making dirtier cars that would be locked out of many overseas markets.

The change is also expected to result in significantly more greenhouse gas emissions, which trap the sun’s heat, worsening the effects of climate change. Hotter temperatures contribute to more smog, which can damage the lungs and cause other serious health problems.

“Of all the bad things President Trump has done to the environment, this is the worst,” said Dan Becker, head of the Safe Climate Campaign, a Washington-based consumer advocacy group. “He is rolling back the biggest single step any nation has taken to fight global warming, cut oil use and save money at the pump.”

In a February report to Wheeler, the agency’s science advisory board warned that the technical analysis underpinning the government’s draft proposal was so flawed that it had possibly led the EPA to the wrong conclusion.

“In other words,” the board wrote, “the standards in the 2012 rule might provide a better outcome for society than the proposed revision.”

Phillips reported from Washington and Mitchell from Los Angeles.

Gov. Pete Wilson on Thursday formally named Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce President Lee Grissom as senior policy adviser for economic development.

Grissom, 49, resigned from the chamber on Tuesday after heading the business group for 17 years. Over that period he oversaw the chamber’s growth from 1,400 to 3,700 member firms and helped mold the organization into an influential force in city politics.

In his new job, Grissom will advise the governor on economic planning as well as issues relating to the state’s efforts to attract and retain jobs.

Grissom has experience in that area, having served on the Governor’s Council on California’s Competitiveness, a blue-ribbon group that surveyed the problems of doing business in California contrasted with other states.

CALIFORNIA HAS sometimes been referred to as “the Great Exception,” but for better and worse, this term applies quite well to all of our United States.

We commenced our independence as the nation that overthrew a government of men for a government of laws. William Blake wrote poems about us; the French Revolution was in part inspired by us. Like all institutions, we often fell short of our best possibilities, but bit by bit, falteringly and over decades and centuries, we improved ourselves. Belatedly and grudgingly, we abolished slavery; still more belatedly, we admitted that equality of representation included women as well as men. There are places on this Earth that have not yet achieved this much.

Nor did we rest there. I have visited any number of countries where free speech is not even a dream. In America, I can rail against my government to my heart’s content, knowing that there will be no midnight knock at my door. If some bully in uniform does pick on me, I have a decent chance of legally escaping his clutches.

Not only has America striven intermittently to be fair and even good, it remains an excellent place to make and keep money. It is, as they say, the locus of the easy life. And so, in spite of Native American genocide, Jim Crow, ruthless monopolism, etc., we became and for a very long time remained an ideal for ourselves and others.

I remember an old man from what used to be called Czechoslovakia; he escaped the communist regime by skiing over many mountains, and he finally found haven in California. I ate at his restaurant 40 years later. He told me that he had always dreamed of living in America. He still considered America the best place on Earth. In so many countries — from Kazakhstan to Colombia to Afghanistan — I have met people like him, people who long to be saved by going to America.

I remain grateful to have been born an American. As I get older, I admire our Constitution more and more. But what I love the most about my experience of American-ness is our famous individualism. Not everyone needs to like me, but I assume, with some correctness, that my eccentricities will be tolerated. I am my own person — and sometimes lonely for that, but that is the price that an American pays. I am, as you are, an exception in a crowd.

We are Americans, and so until recently, we knew that we were the best. Because so many people wanted to be us, we could act as we pleased — and we did, because we were the Great Exception; we were America the Blessed. Hence our complacent belief, so long borne out by the facts, that American movies and American brands would always sell. Hence also our comforting faith that the Kyoto Protocol did not apply to us, so that we could spew out all the greenhouse gases we liked, and use a pig’s share of the world’s resources. (Just this week, I learned of the U.S.’ new plan for energy independence: coal plants, subsidized for the next 25 years.)

Being America the Perfect, we invented the doctrine, even before 9/11, that we could seize war criminals in any part of the globe and whisk them off to The Hague. Of course, we insisted that should we ever commit war crimes, we would remain immune to prosecution in that court. Well, after all, how could Americans do any wrong?

Our current administration of torturers (this word sounds so shrill, so preposterous in relation to the America I believe in, that I have to remind myself over and over that it is literally accurate, that this president and his two attorneys general have quite literally legalized torture) has gone further in this direction than I ever could have imagined. President Bush’s modus operandi is this: Bull your way ahead. If you meet obstacles, overcome them with arrogant bluster. If this fails, proceed to vicious, mendacious brutality.

I wish I could blame him alone for the degradation of the America I loved. Unfortunately, Americans not only voted for this man, but after he proved himself to be a criminal, they reelected him. As one of my friends replied when I asked why we should attack Iraq when Iraq had done nothing to us: “Why not attack Iraq?”

We were Americans, you see. Why not do whatever suited our whims?

And now what? “They hate us,” we whisper to one another in amazement. In another decade, we might even begin to wonder about the degree of our exceptionality. What if we had to follow the rules that everyone else does?

Well, why not put off that pain as long as possible? It’s much more fun to remain the Great Exception.

Alas, while we hunker down behind the drawbridge, awaiting our next 9/11, we don’t even take the trouble to be united. Exceptionalism undermines us from within.

Alaskan towns are tilting in the melting permafrost, but who cares down in the Lower 48? Republicans and Democrats hate each other. Automobiles isolate us. Generations of advice-givers have made us believe that profit best defines the successful life, and so the white-collar crooks of Enron and the ghetto thugs who murder as they please celebrate their own exceptionalism against the rest of us.

Exceptionalism may be understandable and even excusable, but it should not be eternally acceptable. All-white juries have unjustly convicted black defendants in this country, and that makes me ashamed; but the notion that a 21st century criminal trial cannot be fair unless at least some jurors are the same race as the defendant is of a piece with the idea that men and women will never understand each other, that Muslim cab drivers can refuse to pick up passengers who carry liquor and that right-to-life pharmacists can refuse to fill a desperate woman’s prescription for the morning-after pill.

Let’s pander while Rome burns! I’m not worried; I’ll never catch fire. Like each and all of us, I’m my own favorite exception.

Reporting from NEW YORK — The National Enquirer kept a safe containing documents on hush money payments and other damaging stories it killed as part of its cozy relationship with Donald Trump leading up to the 2016 presidential election, people familiar with the arrangement told The Associated Press.

The detail came as several media outlets reported on Thursday that federal prosecutors had granted immunity to National Enquirer chief David Pecker, potentially laying bare his efforts to protect his longtime friend Trump.

President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty this week to campaign finance violations alleging he, Trump and the tabloid were involved in buying the silence of a porn actress and a Playboy model who alleged affairs with Trump.

Several people familiar with the National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., who spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity because they signed nondisclosure agreements, said the safe was a great source of power for Pecker, the company’s chief executive.

The Trump records were stored alongside similar documents pertaining to other celebrities’ catch-and-kill deals, in which exclusive rights to people’s stories were bought with no intention of publishing to keep them out of the news. By keeping celebrities’ embarrassing secrets, the company was able to ingratiate itself with them and ask for favors in return.

But after the Wall Street Journal initially published the first details of Playboy model Karen McDougal’s catch-and-kill deal shortly before the 2016 election, those assets became a liability. Fearful that the documents might be used against American Media, Pecker and the company’s chief content officer, Dylan Howard, removed them from the safe in the weeks before Trump’s inauguration, according to one person directly familiar with the events.

The AP cannot say whether the documents were destroyed or simply were moved to a location known to fewer people.

American Media did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Pecker’s immunity deal was first reported Thursday by Vanity Fair and the Journal, citing anonymous sources. Vanity Fair reported that Howard also was granted immunity.

Court papers in the Cohen case say Pecker “offered to help deal with negative stories about [Trump’s] relationships with women by, among other things, assisting the campaign in identifying such stories so they could be purchased and their publication avoided.”

The Journal reported Pecker shared with prosecutors details about payments that Cohen says Trump directed in the weeks and months before the election to buy the silence of McDougal and another woman alleging an affair, porn star Stormy Daniels. Daniels was paid $130,000, and McDougal was paid $150,000.

Although Trump denies the affairs, his account of his knowledge of the payments has shifted. In April, Trump denied he knew anything about the Daniels payment. He told Fox News in an interview aired Thursday that he knew about payments “later on.”

In July, Cohen released an audio tape in which he and Trump discussed plans to buy McDougal’s story from the Enquirer. Such a purchase was necessary, they suggested, to prevent Trump from having to permanently rely on a tight relationship with the tabloid.

“You never know where that company — you never know what he’s gonna be —” Cohen says.

“Maybe he gets hit by a truck,” Trump says.

“Correct,” Cohen replies. “So, I’m all over that.”

Pecker is cooperating with federal prosecutors now, but American Media previously declined to participate in congressional inquiries.

In March, in response to a letter from a group of House Democrats about the Daniels and McDougal payments, American Media general counsel Cameron Stracher declined to provide any documents, writing that the company was “exempt” from U.S. campaign finance laws because it is a news publisher and it was “confident” it had complied with all tax laws. He also rebuffed any suggestion that America Media Inc., or AMI, had leverage over the president because of its catch-and-kill practices.

“AMI states unequivocally that any suggestion that it would seek to ‘extort’ the President of the United States through the exercise of its editorial discretion is outrageous, offensive, and wholly without merit,” Stracher wrote in a letter obtained by the Associated Press.

Former Enquirer employees who spoke to the AP said that negative stories about Trump were dead on arrival dating back more than a decade when he starred on NBC’s reality show “The Apprentice.”

In 2010, at Cohen’s urging, the National Enquirer began promoting a potential Trump presidential candidacy, referring readers to a pro-Trump website Cohen helped create. With Cohen’s involvement, the publication began questioning President Obama’s birthplace and American citizenship in print, an effort that Trump promoted for several years, former staffers said.

The Enquirer endorsed Trump for president in 2016, the first time it had ever officially backed a candidate. In the news pages, Trump’s coverage was so favorable that the New Yorker magazine said the Enquirer embraced him “with sycophantic fervor.”

Positive headlines for Trump were matched by negative stories about his opponents, including Hillary Clinton: An Enquirer front page from 2015 said “Hillary: 6 Months to Live” and accompanied the headline with a picture of an unsmiling Clinton with bags under her eyes.